The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (10 page)

Her voice cracked on
work;
the buzzer went. She strode off, bravely, but in tears of disappointment.

The next was one of the frail, pale citizens of Slovin, who always have so much difficulty in getting the solid, stolid, robust denizens of the other planets to believe in their strength. Tough and enduring and with a nervous system much less susceptible to emotional inflammation than most, they are in fact, once one has experienced them, much prized. The platform expected great things of this apparently fragile revolutionary; and in fact she went easily past all the trigger words that had undone the others. ‘ … honest work, and in the next sicken at the sight of the overindulged and the purposeless. Why? Why?' These two
whys
caused all her recordings to rise almost to danger level, but she recovered herself. ‘Why? We all know why! But what is to be done? We know. Again we know. Do we not? Our situation is bad. It is dreadful. But it is not hopeless. What we need, what we must have, is sacrifice.' And she was over the top. But so sudden was the swoop upwards of
the recording needles that the platform conferred, and said to her that she could go off, rest, and come back for another try. (In fact, she then succeeded easily.)

The nest was a Volyen indigenous worker. They are not the most attractive breed, being a dingy putty colour, and built heavily and on the whole without much grace. But they are known for their lack of emotional volatility. The needles flickered badly at
friend, work, sacrifice,
but recovered. ‘Yes. Sacrifice. And what is being asked of us is not only a tightened belt, though that
is
being asked; not only that we should work eighteen hours a day, even twenty-four hours a day, but also that we should agree to sink our separate and pitiful little individual wills and thoughts in the great whole, the great Will, the great purpose, the great
Decision
 … that we must agree once and for all that things cannot be allowed to go on like this. Yes, once and for all, comrades … brothers … sisters …
friends
 …' Up swept the needles. The examinee himself put up a hand and begged for a later rehearing. It was granted.

The next was another Volyen. ‘And where shall we begin? Where? Why, with ourselves! How can we build a new world with old hearts and old wills? We need new, clean, young hearts …'
Hearts
is where that unfortunate was lost. But all those who survived that far were granted a second chance.

There followed several who failed very early on, at the first testing words. Then, at last, one survived the whole course. It was another of the silvery, fragile, apparently so vulnerable Slovins. ‘We are surrounded by the heights of colossal events, in the light of which future generations will view their own fate. There cries out in the merged thunder of the times the present fate of planets. We need clear eyes and an unflinching purpose. We shall begin and complete our work to the sound of workers' hymns and songs. Your work is not slave labour, but high service to the fatherland of all the decent people. Sacrifice! A united will! Only on
this road shall we find the way out, to salvation, warmth, contentment. Sacrifice. And clean hearts. Clean hands.
Love …'

This first wholly successful candidate retired, full of the shy modesty that is the convention here for people who have succeeded, and then the platform conferred. I could see that there was going to be a break. And I knew it was because Krolgul had been sitting up there biting his fingers and crouching in his seat, leaving the actual work of attending to the prowess of the examinees to his associates, while he brooded about what I had said. He wanted to come back to me and to press and to wheedle, until I told him what I knew. Until he knew what the plans of Canopus were, what the information of Canopus was …

But at this moment something unexpected happened. Into the examination hall walked – quietly enough, dressed unremarkably in a variation of local administrative-class dress – Incent. He saw me sitting there and made a gesture to me: Do not worry.

He did not meet my eyes, though. A bad sign; this meant that nothing I could say would affect him. I settled back so that what must happen, could …

Krolgul had leaped up at the sight of him, all renewed energy and purpose. Then, having cried out, ‘Incent …,' he remembered my presence and glanced towards me, but in the same way as Incent, not allowing his eyes to meet mine.

Incent's manner with Krolgul was – there is only one word for it – lordly. He stood in the examinee's place and signalled to the attendants to wire him up.

‘I intend to pass this examination,' he said, in the calm, almost indifferent way of his illness; for of course he was ill, though this need not be obvious to the examiners. He was depleted of emotion still; he was empty, after such an excess of it. No one recovers from Total Immersion in a few days, or even many. His emotional reservoirs were low; therefore
he seemed calm; therefore did he give this appearance of benign urbanity.

When he was standing upright there, all the wires and leads in place, he smiled confidently at me.

‘I am ready,' he said.

Well, it was very bad.

‘Comrades.
Friends …
' I think Krolgul expected him to be lost at that very first trip-word, but what happened was much more alarming. Behind Incent, on the monitors, we could see that the needles, far from registering alarming peaks and jags and heights of emotion, were often out of sight at the bottom of the scale. So low was Incent that his whole system had gone into reverse. The word
friends
, which of course he spoke at the right interval after
comrades,
so that the nerves of the auditors had to vibrate in expectation, only caused what little emotion that was left in him to drain suddenly away. The needles flickered back into sight again at the bottom of the graphs. He was speaking in a flat, almost amiable way, though he got all the tones and intervals perfectly. He went through the gross inequalities and the injustice and so on very well, though there was literally no fuel left in him at all. I could see the examiners stirring and whispering. Krolgul was frightened out of his wits, looking at me the whole time: he had never seen anything like this, and had not known the condition existed. He was afraid I was going to punish him.

But Krolgul, of all the creatures in our galaxy, is not likely to understand free will. Not yet, at least; not for a long time.

Incent was droning on. ‘Sacrifice. Yes, sacrifice …' And suddenly he fell, the wires pulling free.

I went over to him and brought him to himself.

He did not inquire where he was, for he knew at once, and stood up, weak but himself.

He looked at me with such shame, and said: ‘You had better take me back to the hotel, Klorathy. I've made a real fool of myself.'

And to Krolgul: ‘All right. But I haven't done with you all yet. I was going to show you that I could pass your test and
then
reason with you on the basis of being immune to …' And he wept, but the tears of weakness and emptiness, small, weak, painful tears.

Krolgul was running round us as we went to the door, panting and exclaiming: ‘But … but … I hope you aren't going to hold us to account; I knew nothing about Incent's coming here, I absolutely absolve myself of any responsibility.'

Incent was too weak to leave the building at once. We sat in an antechamber for a while, watching the examinees prepare themselves for the Examination in Rhetoric, which they did by using one another as sounding boards and checks on themselves in a piece which, for emotive words and general tone, was more taxing than the set piece in the actual examination hall.

‘What, then, is it that we are aiming at? What? Why, nothing less than the whole, perfect, radiant future of us all and our children! What is there to prevent this paradise? We all know there is nothing! In our soil lies the wealth of harvests and of minerals. In our seas and in the air, food. In our own hearts, love and the need to live happily in a happy world where sorrow is forgotten! What is it in the past that has given birth to sorrow, has bred unkindness? Why, only the lack of the will to abolish these things. And now everything has changed, for we have the will, and we have the means. Forward, and let us lay our hands on our rightful heritage – happiness. Happiness and love.'

Incent listened to this not totally without emotion: which I was pleased to see was scorn.

‘What horrible drivel,' he was muttering.

‘I'm glad to hear you say it. I hope you will continue to think so.'

‘Well, I would have got through the test piece if I hadn't passed out, wouldn't I?'

‘Yes, but Shammat has words-of-power they didn't use there at all.'

‘Have they? What? No, don't tell me, or I suppose I'll succumb. I really do feel so awfully ill, Klorathy. I'm giddy. I must lie down.'

He lay face down on a bench, his hands over his ears, and I continued to watch the lively scene. Not – as you can imagine, Johor – without mixed emotions! What an attractive lot they were, these chosen ones from all over the Volyen ‘Empire.' Chosen, first of all, because they were for the most part from the privileged: the poor and deprived seldom have the energy to will for themselves positions of power. Chosen because they had natural ability. Chosen because natural abilities are matched with opportunity; plentiful opportunities now, with the ‘Empire' falling apart. Young, for the most part; educated as far as such backward corners of the Galaxy understand the word; lively; full of the determination to succeed. Of the candidates I watched, while Incent lay there trying to recover his inner and outer balances, few succeeded in getting to the end of the difficult piece they set themselves. Fewer would pass the examination itself. But all would return to enrol for further sessions of study in Krolgul's school: they believe in themselves, and the future that Krolgul promises them.

Shammat prowls through ‘the Volyens' – to use the colloquialism – watching every public gathering for signs of talent. Some young person, who has perhaps leaped up to orate because of a genuine anguish over the lot of the unfortunate, because of a real vision of radiant futures, finds at his side this personage who understands him and his innermost thoughts, dreams, aspirations. ‘How wonderful you are,' say the eloquent, compassionate eyes of this new friend. ‘How your beautiful ideas do you credit! Please go on …

This chosen one, chosen now by Shammat, finds efforts encouraged, speeches applauded, above all in every word
the implication that these two, these new comrades, these
friends
, understand where others do not; finds that he is considered to be of finer, nobler,
braver
substance than most. Oh, how cleverly Shammat uses the instincts for evolution towards the better that are implanted in every creature in the Galaxy! But while a generous and imaginative understanding supports this neophyte, there is also judicious and intelligent criticism. ‘You might have phrased that a little better,' breathes Krolgul, if it is indeed he, and it often is, for his energy is superb. ‘Perhaps if I might suggest …' Only too happy is this aspiring one to find a genuine friendship, which is able to teach as well as to support. And so a career develops that has no future in the existing order, but relates only to an idea; the aspiring one, as he or she looks about at the chaos, the ugliness, the disorder of a time of disintegration, sees beyond it some infinitely noble society ruled by himself. But Shammat has never said, in any of these competent criticisms, ‘You aspire to power over your fellows.' Only ‘You yearn to serve.' With Shammat at their side, these young people learn the business of arousal by Rhetoric to the point where, judged ripe, they are offered a course of training …

‘You are very good at this,' says Krolgul, with that modest and comradely complicity in which Shammat specializes, and which indicates in every look, smile, touch of the hand,
You and I together against those others out there, the others without understanding.
‘Would you like to be even better? We can teach you, you know. We? Let us say,
friends.
But you have a handicap – do you mind my mentioning it? It is a wonderful thing, it is great, it is truly inspirational to watch you carry others away, watch you being carried away to such heights of fervour, to watch you becoming drunk on your own visions. But if you want to ascend to the control of real professionalism, that is a stage you must leave behind!' And here Shammat cushions the shock, cradles in understanding the neophyte's moment of
disillusion. For throughout ‘the Volyens' – Volyen itself and its colonies – thanks to the influence of Volyen, emotion is much prized. It stems from the hypocrisies of Empire, from the predominant emotion of the ruling class of that ruling planet. (Though from our point of view this rule has been so short, it has been long enough to infect a group of planets with the malady.) This emotion: ‘We are sacrificing ourselves, we Volyens, to bring to you, our children, the infinite advantages of our guidance in your development.' Unreal emotions breed others: to weep, to emote, to show that you are weeping and emoting, these monstrous perversions are prized. Even by the lively and rebellious young people who see through the hypocrisies of ‘guidance' and wish only to free themselves ‘for ever' from Volyen. To hear that they must learn to separate in themselves their yearnings for a perfect world, and their verbal expression of it, from their cool and observant minds … no, it is hard to take, and Shammat knows it. ‘No, no,' murmurs Krolgul, all sympathy, ‘I do not ask you to feel less for the sufferings of others. Can you believe that of me, now that you have come to know me so well? Perish the thought! Never! But to be effective, to become an instrument of the upward strivings of the Galaxy, to address the infinite and legitimate hungers of the poor, the suffering, the unfree – then you must learn to use words but not be used by them.'