Doris Lessing - The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

Infinitely refreshed, I suggested to Incent that he might turn over and look. He did so, but at once groaned out, ‘Snowflakes!’ and flipped back again, to lie face down.

I continued to amuse myself with the mathematical game, and altered the controlling mechanisms from Automatic to Manual, so that I could at will move from the plane into the multi-dimensional and back again, for no sooner had I decided that I could never be seduced from the fascination of the dance of the polyhedrons, than I knew that I could contemplate for ever a ceiling that had become flat and decorated luminously with the patternings and intricacies of the interlacing polygons.

While I was returning to myself, Incent was also recovering, or at least showing signs of wanting to. ‘I have been thinking about Governor Grice,’ he said.

‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘Do you have to? You really do have no sense at all of your boundaries, Incent!’

‘Oh. Is that it? Is that what’s wrong with me?’ At the idea that there was some hope of a diagnosis he brightened: it is quite extraordinary how these children of Rhetoric are comforted by the word.

When I did not say anything, he said, ‘Oh, Klorathy, when I think of how unjust I was. After all, Grice was only doing what he had to do. And yet I was wanting to punish him as an individual.’

‘Incent,’ I said, ‘if you’d only do your homework – Do you do it? Do you in fact study what has been set for you? Because there are no indications in your speech or behaviour that you do anything of the sort! If you did, you’d know that when individuals or groups or associations of groups are made exemplar for the populace, they are always blackened and vilified before the ritual sacrifice. After all, you could even look at it as a sign of decency, or of the embryonic beginnings of justice, that it is so hard to get people to kill – even in hot blood – other people who they think are only doing their duty, though misguidedly. No, they have to be told that Grice is Greasy, and that Klorathy is Cruel, and that Incent is –’

‘There is something very stale and boring about that,’ said he, turning over suddenly and lying with his forearm across his eyes, ready to shield them, but gazing into the intricate patternings above us.

‘You mean the words are stale,’ I said. ‘You have heard them a thousand times in our schools. But they do not seem to affect the behaviour, certainly have had little effect on yours, so the idea isn’t. When you enthusiasts and revolutionaries can withstand Krolgul and refuse to allow yourselves to be whipped into lathers of self-righteousness at slogans like Grice the Greasy, then you can use words like stale –’

‘I wish I could go and apologize to him.’

‘There is nothing stopping you.’

‘Why do you put this terrible burden on us?’

‘Why is this burden placed upon us all?

‘You too, of course. I forgot.’

‘All of us.’

‘Why, it is too much. We are not fit. I am not fit. Oh, no …’ And he shut his eyes, away from a vision in the cool shade above of how a pattern of star octagons shifted from the flat into the three-dimensional, and back, lines and planes of dark grey on light grey, then a slight, fine black on shadow that was white only because a sharper white did not lie close enough to contrast with it and contradict. White upon white, or white that was as if a subtle warmth had been withdrawn, a world of strict and formal shapes lived in the spaces beneath the ceiling, which was itself unbounded, seemed to dissolve into nothing.

‘Oh, yes, we are,’ I said. ‘Everyone of us has felt exactly like you.’

‘You too?’

‘Of course.’

‘And Johor too – and everyone?’

His incredulity echoed mine. For of course I find it hard to believe that you, Johor, were ever so feeble, as Incent does of me.

‘And then?’

‘You’ll learn, Incent. But in the meantime –’

‘You do rather despair of me?’ And his giggle was quite consoling, being full of vitality.

‘Oh, you’ll do all right. But in the meantime –’

‘You’d rather I didn’t go running after Governor Grice?’

‘If that’s what you have to do, it’s what you have to do.’

‘Hmm … I can hear that there is something about him I don’t know. What is it?’

‘If I were to tell you that in some quarters he is regarded as a Sirian agent, what would you say?’

He exploded into laughter, a good coarse crude bray of scornful laughter. I felt an increase of optimism about him.

‘I suppose I can take it that you are planning to bump him off, or get someone else to, and that you have to blacken him first.’

‘Logical thinking,’ I said. ‘Congratulations.’

‘Oh, don’t laugh at me. They used to tell me at school that I always had to worry any proposition through into its own opposite before I could let it go … Well, is he a Sirian agent?’

‘That is one of the things I am here to find out. You, Incent – though I can tell by the sudden change in the set of your shoulders you find the news a disappointment – are not my only responsibility down here. Though I can assure you, there are times when you are quite enough for me … Do you think you can get along for a while by yourself in here, if I go out and do some fact-finding? Johor is waiting for a report.’ He watched me, soberly enough, as I prepared myself to leave. ‘Do you want the ceiling show left switched on?’

‘Yes. It makes me think of Canopus.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you trust me to stay here alone, after having made a fool of myself so often?’

‘I have no alternative, Incent,’ I said.

If you were to pay a visit to Volyen now, Johor, I wonder if you would be struck most by the changes, or the lack of change? You were here when Volyen reached its peak as an Empire, having just conquered PE 70 and PE 71, and before it began falling back in on itself. It was very rich, self-satisfied, proud, complacent. Its public note, or tone, was the liturgic chant of self-praise characteristic of Empires at that stage. New wealth poured in from PE 70 and PE 71; Volyenadna and Volyendesta were already well integrated into the economic whole. The cities of Volyen itself grew and fattened with explosions of population due to an increase of general well-being: Volyen had been poor and backward for a long time, after having been sucked dry during its previous colonial period under Volyenadna. But the cities were horrible contrasts of extreme wealth and extreme poverty, for even at its richest Volyen was not able, was not willing, to keep its labouring classes in decency. These millions came into existence because of an improvement in conditions; but they were not allowed to live any longer than was useful to the privileged classes who employed them.

This was perhaps the most striking part of your Report, Johor, and one which was used in the Colonial Service classes I was teaching that to illustrate an Empire can be described as wealthy; can increase its wealth many times in a century through loot and plunder; can present an image of itself, far and wide through a galaxy, of splendour and prosperity and growth; yet the bulk of its citizens may still be living as meanly and hopelessly as the most neglected of slaves. These, the poorest classes of Volyen, were worse off than slaves.

Your Report came out just at the time I was on leave on Canopus, and had undertaken to teach the course on Comparative Empires: Sirius, whose Empire had lasted almost as long as ours; and Volyen’s, whose Empire in comparison is an affair of moments, provided my material. Your Report made the strongest impression on my students, and on me. I was able to base not only single lectures but also subsidiary courses on a single sentence. For instance: