The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (16 page)

‘No, no,' cried Grice, ‘not so. Volyen at this present moment of historical time enjoys a situation of comparative democracy and tolerance for varied viewpoints, though this is, of course, due entirely to the contradictions of historical anomalies and uneven historical evolvement …' (I
hasten
to remind you that I am quoting.) ‘In short, Volyen itself is the pleasantest place imaginable to live in for the vast majority of its citizens,' insisted Grice, quite courageously really, seeing that the Embodiments were getting more and more restless and uneasy as their mentations jammed under the strain of it all.

But it was no use. For Motz, like all of the surrounding planets, is in a war-fever, ready to invade ‘the Volyens.' This war-fever is, of course, equated with the Virtue, and it is too much to ask of these poor bigots that they must invade the ‘pleasantest planet imaginable' in order to impose Sirian Virtue, even at the behest of ‘irresistible historical imperatives' (a phrase much used at this ‘present moment of historical time' here).

No, it is all too much for the unfortunate Embodiments; and so they have simply shelved the problem of Grice. They have locked him up in the sociological wing of their main library, because it happens to have only one, easily guarded, entrance. There Grice is left alone, with nothing to do but read.

I have described
their
state of mind.

I shall now describe Grice's.
He
has been conditioned to believe (by the unavoidable historical accident aforementioned) that to keep an open mind, and to see several points of view simultaneously, and to accommodate ‘contradictions,' is a sign of maturity. This exercise has cost him nothing but discomfort because he has never been informed that he is an animal, recently (historically speaking) evolved
from a condition of being in groups, small or large, inside which everything that will conduce to the survival of the group is an imperative, and where individuals can expect to receive what they need; while outside are enemies, who are
bad
, to be ignored if possible, threatened if they intrude themselves, destroyed if necessary. The minds of Volyens, in this brief period of theirs when a calm and dispassionate and disinterested inspection of possibilities is the highest they aim for, are being asked for something that challenges millions of their years of development. No, it is the passionate bigotry of the Embodiments which is what come easily; ‘seeing one another's point of view' is a stage upward in evolution to be made, and then kept, only with difficulty … And there sits Grice, in daily contact with people whom he must by upbringing regard as comparatively simpleminded, and even pitiable; but longing with every fibre of his emotional self to
join.
The Embodiments love one another, cherish one another, look after the weak, reward the strong, watch one another's every thought and impulse. For the only ideas they ever permit themselves are related to how they have been dispossessed of their rights, and of how they will regain these rights on ‘their own place,' how they will turn this Motz into a paradise, ‘just to show the Galaxy.' The Embodiments are people who have barred from their minds all the richness, the variety, the evolutionary possibilities in the Galaxy. Grice watches them, and yearns to be of them, while through his tormented mind pass feebly protesting thoughts. ‘No, it isn't like that,' he keeps planning to say to them ‘when the opportunity is ripe.' ‘No, but that isn't true. How can you say that? I've been to that planet; it's not at all as you describe it … but look, it's a question of
facts …'

Bad news about Incent, I am afraid. I left him with revision material, but as a result of remorse over his misuse of the ‘mathematicals,' he overdid things. The information was not properly absorbed into his emotional and mental machineries, but overflowed into a compulsion to instruct. He left me a message and departed for Slovin, commandeering my Space Traveller.

He had reasoned thus: Slovin, having been subjugated so long by Volyen, and having just thrown off its chains (sorry!), must be in a certain easily foreseeable and easily diagnosed condition. Part of the material left with him to study had to do with the Shikastan Northwest fringes. If you remember, that area of Shikasta was subjected for nearly two thousand Shikasta-years to one of the most savage and long-lasting tyrannies ever known even on that unfortunate planet, that of the Christian religion, which allowed no opposition of any kind, and kept power by killing, burning, torturing its opponents, when not able to do so by the simpler and even more effective methods of indoctrination and brainwashing. In the early twentieth S-century this religion lost its hold, largely as a result – because of new technologies – of the opening up of Shikasta to travel by the masses. It was no longer possible for the tyrants of the Northwest fringes to maintain in their subjects the belief that Christianity was the only religion, that their God was the only God. And the truth slowly came home to these recently enslaved ones that the Northwest fringes were in fact provincial and backward, compared with other parts of Shikasta that had older and more sophisticated civilizations.

There followed a period when the peoples of that area (a small area geographically) had the opportunity to enjoy
freedom of thought, of speculation; freedom to explore possibilities that had been denied them for many hundreds of S-years. But because they had been conditioned by the various sects of that religion to need domination, ‘priests,' creeds, dogmas, ukases, they sought these things again, in the same forms but under other names, notably in ‘politics.' New ‘religions' arose, but without ‘God,' which were identical in every way with the sects of the ‘God'-orientated religions of the past. Each was equipped with priests with whom it was not possible to disagree, whose orders had to be obeyed, and with ‘creeds' that had to be recited and quoted; and the slightest infringement of the ‘line' earned savage punishments, from ostracism and loss of employment to death, just as had happened with ‘Holy Writ' in the recent past. Each new secular religion maintained itself by the use of the techniques of brainwashing and indoctrination, learned from their great exemplars, the priests, who had perfected them through two thousand S-years; techniques continually refined and augmented with the increasing sophistication of psychology.

In short, freedom is not possible to people who have been conditioned to need tyrannies.

This was the message that our poor Incent was impelled to take to Slovin.

The planet has been for several V-centuries a sullenly uniform place,
poor,
deprived of its own wealth, administered by a Volyen Colonial Service, kept in order by Volyen police, prisons, torturers. Suddenly it has ‘thrown off the yoke.' The small class that was used by Volyen fled or were killed or became patriots. All Slovin seethes with new parties based on military groups that freed Slovin. Each of these has – of course – leaders, an army, and a creed, which it defends against all the other groups, often with bloodshed. One party stands for a united Slovin, another for a regionalized federated Slovin, and so on. The air is thick with the Rhetorics of liberty, for they know they are free.

Groups, armies, sects, parties, factions: Slovin, just like every other ‘liberated' planet, is full of them.

Incent went straight to the capital, asked for the largest and most influential party, found that every Slovin gave him a different answer; so he caused an announcement to be made that he, ‘a dispassionate, disinterested well-wisher from a distant star system,' would be addressing the liberated peoples of Slovin on such-and-such a day in the public square, this address to be heard by all of Slovin.

Now, the very language he was using had to attract attention, because words like
disinterested
and
dispassionate
had fallen out of use: the qualities they described had been eroded by the corruption and ugliness of Volyen rule, finally destroyed by the violent partisan passions of the period of ‘liberation.' ‘
Disinterested:
what can that possibly mean?' Slovins were heard asking. And, having looked up the meanings of that and similar words, they scoffed: ‘What nonsense, what idealistic rubbish!' But wistfully. They felt that they might have lost something.

These tall, fragile, silvery creatures always arouse in foreigners the strongest feelings of protectiveness and compassion, because of their apparent vulnerability; and our Incent was moving around the planet, almost beside himself with emotion as he watched them approach one another with a new tentativeness and uncertainty, probing and asking. Like those exquisite shining insects that live for a night and then, losing their wings, die, so did the Slovins seem to Incent, who
knew
he could save them from themselves, if only he could make them listen. Oh, poor, poor Slovins, mourned Incent, as he mentally worked on the phrases of the address, on the perfect, above all
appropriate,
words that would magically do away with the results of centuries of Volyen oppression and uniformity.

Meanwhile, the Slovins did not know how much they had been attracted by the ‘otherness' and ‘difference' of the amazing message. What did
impartiality
mean? What:
magnanimity?
What:
unenvious, detached, honourable, chivalrous?
Somewhere or other, somewhere else, perhaps even once on Slovin, had there been a people for whom these words were everyday words, and had they been able to use them by right?

On the great day, Incent, beside himself with exaltation and the need to persuade, stood on a plinth in the central square of the capital, surrounded by many thousands of whispering, silvery, tenuous, delicate Slovins, who were gathered not in a single mass, but in companies and bands, all armed, all owing allegiance to different leaders, all staring upwards with their great many-faceted glittering eyes, waiting to hear some truth that would once and for ever enlighten them. This was because they unconsciously yearned for unity, because they had known Volyen unity for so long. Also, something had happened in the last few days that was very fortunate for Incent: fighting had broken out all over Slovin between guerrilla groups and armies, and the planet was afraid of civil war.

Imagine the scene, Johor! That vast but infinitely divided crowd, all yearning for inspiring, dedicated, and uplifting words, for they felt that what had already been reported to them of Incent's message was a promise from a star whose existence they had known nothing of, but whose sovereignty they might very well have to acknowledge. Though of course they would have killed any one of their number who suggested such a thing.

Incent began by asking their permission to tell them a sad and sorry story. They would have permitted him anything, and anything he said would have seemed to them exactly what they had been longing for, their expectations from him were so vast. He told them the story of Shikasta, of its Northwest fringes, when its worst and oldest and longest-lasting tyranny dissolved, and all its people fought to re-enslave themselves. And succeeded. He told the tale well enough, making these unfortunates shudder and shiver at
how easy it is to fall under the spell of the need to submit, when submission is what you have been taught.

‘You people,' said Incent, after a long silence, which he held by the sheer force of his difference, and of his astonishing words, which seemed to come from some distant and wonderful sun.

‘You people,' said or sang Incent, arms outstretched as if to embrace their future, their still-unfulfilled potentialities, ‘you people are in the greatest danger imaginable, and you seem not to know it. You are in danger of submitting yourselves to a new tyrant, because the patterns of tyranny are in your minds. But this danger has another face: a road to a beautiful future, of a kind you have never even envisioned. It is that you will all remain truly free people, refusing allegiance to leaders and to tyrants, to priests, to dogmas. You will keep your minds open and at liberty, examining possibilities, analyzing your own past conditioning, learning to observe yourselves as you might observe another species on a near planet – as you all observe and criticize, for instance, Maken.' (Here there was a groan of dislike, for this area of the Galaxy conforms to the general law that planets loathe and distrust one another according to how close they are.) ‘Yes, that could be your future! You could say to yourselves, "We will never again submit to a leader, because we don't need leaders; we understand that we have been taught we must have them.” Long ago, in your animal and semi-animal past, you were groups and bands and packs, and on these genetic inclinations tyrants have built, to keep you in groups and bands and packs; but now you can free yourselves, because you understand yourselves …

And the conglomeration of separate groups dissolved in an ocean of emotion, into one soul, everyone embracing and entwining in a susurration of dry, papery flesh, so that Incent seemed enclosed in a storm of rustling kisses. And then, in one motion, they swept together around him and
bore him into the air, crying, ‘Our leader, you have come to save us!' And ‘Incent for ever!' And ‘Stay with us, O Great One, tell us your Noble Thoughts, so that we may write them down and study and recite them for ever.' ‘O Incent the Great …

Incent struggled and cried, protested, ‘No, no, no, don't you see, that isn't the point. O Slovins, don't, please, oh dear … what can I say that will make you …

These pleas and plaints were of course not heard in the typhoon of enthusiasm. At last he managed to creep away from under heaps of Slovins struggling with one another, even killing one another to pay him honour. He ran weeping to the Space Traveller and returned to Volyen, where he skulked into the safety of the tall white room.

Luckily, Shammat has been otherwise engaged, and was not on Slovin.

I have withdrawn all study material from Incent. He did not need me to explain that it was too inflammatory for him in his present enfeebled condition.

Well, I am sorry to have to say so, but Grice has suffered a conversion. He demands ‘once and for all' to be one of them. ‘It is not possible,' insist these earnest ones in the severe manner that they strive to perfect; ‘you are a Volyen.' ‘How can you say such a thing?' he cries. ‘You are contradicting your own best selves. The Sirian Virtue is something that must overtake everything and everyone everywhere! You say that yourselves. How, then, can you exclude me by saying
You are a Volyen
– and at the moment when you plan to take the Sirian Virtue to all of Volyen? You are illogical!'

This jams the Embodiments' mental machinery: it seems
to them
logically
to be true. But, on the other hand, he is demonstrably not remotely like them, not physically, not mentally. He may wear their uniform – he has asked for one. He may try to use their conventions of speech. But, as one of them remarked to me (you will remember that I myself am considerad to be an Embodiment): ‘Just take a look at him, will you!
He
one of us?'

I shall now make an abstract of a very long Report from Agent AM 5.

It is a V-year since Grice was kidnapped by the Motzans, who have now come to regret the act. Every attempt to provoke Volyen into publicity for their cause fails. They hint at torture, and worse – no reaction. Above all, Motzans understand loyalty to their own, for everyone on Motz is ‘of us.' That the rulers of Volyen seem to have forgotten one of their officials: Motzans have given up trying to think about such an incomprehensibility. Grice is still a ‘prisoner'; the library is his prison, but he is there because he wants to be. This collection of books was pirated from a provincial town on Volyen by the Motzans some time ago – again, to earn publicity. They succeeded. Outrage! Everyone on Volyen talked of nothing but the stolen library, and then forgot about it. How is it possible, wonder the Motzans, that the Volyens can care about books more than about an official? It happens that this library contains the results of research done on Volyens as a species by Volyens. In the high imperial days of Volyen, the subject planets were much studied, and the researchers got into the useful habit of seeing species and races of peoples as they would types of animal, studying them with the same – or almost – dispassion we use on similar studies of genera and species. It
occurred to them at some point that although they observed others dispassionately, they had not made the attempt to do the same for their own patterns of living, but saw themselves always from within their own subjectivity. They turned their tools of research in on themselves, trying – though this is always hard enough – to see themselves as others see them. This provincial library was full of the results.

Grice has spent his time reading. His prior education was largely designed to equip him for ruling, particularly to inculcate the conviction of superiority that in one way or another the administrators of Empire must have. He has had no idea at all of the richness of information available about his own species. You may ask how it is that, once equipped with so much information, the Volyens have not hastened to put it into useful practice, have not taught it to their young – just as Grice is asking. Probably when the historians get to work on this particular epoch, the time before the Volyen ‘Empire' falls to Sirius, this will be the fact they will single out as the most remarkable: with so much knowledge about the mechanisms that govern them as individuals, groups, conglomerates, why did they never use it? Well, they are a lethargic lot. With much-compartmented minds.