The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (21 page)

‘In a few words,' said Grice. ‘It is perfectly possible to do so. This is not a recondite or abstruse subject … Shall I continue? Very well. The human animal, so recently evolved from a condition of living in groups, groups within herds, packs, flocks, troops, and clans, cannot exist now without them, and can be observed seeking out and joining groups of every conceivable kind because he –'

‘And she,' enjoined the Chief Peer.

‘ – and she have to be in a group. When the young animal – sorry, person – leaves the family group, he, she, has to seek another. But has not been told that this is what he, she, will do. She has not been informed, “You will thrash about looking for a group, because without one you will be uncomfortable, because you are denying millions of V-years of evolution. You will do this blindly, and you will not have been informed that once in the group, you can no more refuse the ideas that the group will spin to make a whole than a fish can refuse to obey the movements of its shoal or a bird the patterns made by the flock it is part of.” This person is completely unarmoured, without protection against being swallowed whole by some set of ideas that
need have no relevance to any real information that moves or drives the society. This person –'

Arithamea inquired, making it clear that she was only in search of exactness: ‘Just a minute, dear, but are you saying that young people like company of their own age?'

‘Yes, if you want to put it like that,' said Grice, for his part showing he thought that she was falling below an expected level.

‘But everyone knows that, don't they, love?' said she, and started to knit.

‘If
everyone
knows it, then
everyone
does not take it the necessary step further,' said Grice firmly to her, raising his eyebrows at the flashing needles and directing urgent glances to the Judge. Spascock leaned forward, in turn raised his eyebrows, and remarked:

‘Leader of the Peers, you really must not knit in this court; I am sorry.'

‘If you say so, Judge,' said she equably, packing away vast quantities of wool, needles, and so forth in a hold-all, a process that engaged the eyes and attention of everyone in the court. ‘But it helps to keep my mind comfortable.'

‘But not ours,' said Spascock. ‘Do you mind my remarking that this is a serious occasion?'

‘Since you're Judge, you can say what you like, I suppose,' she said. ‘But what I want to know is this – I mean, to put it in your kind of language, what I need is some clarification. And I am sure I speak for all of us –' Here she looked around and found that at least four of her Peers had dropped off, and others looked somnolent. ‘Wake up,' she said.

‘Yes, wake up,' said Spascock, and the Peers roused themselves.

Incent came close to them to say, ‘Do you realize how important this is? This particular point? Do you
understand
how
vital?'

Said the Chief Peer, ‘When I left home my mother said to
me, “Now, take care, and don't get into bad company.” Is that what all those tomes of yours are saying? Excuse me asking like that, I don't want to upset you at all,' said she to Grice.

‘Well, it's the gist of it, but the point is, were you told that you were a group animal and would have to absorb, whether you liked it or not, all the ideas of your group?'

‘In so many words?' she inquired. ‘As it happened, I did meet up with some boys and girls, particularly boys of course' – here she offered and accepted tolerant smiles from everyone on the Peers' dais – ‘but I didn't go along with their ideas for long. They weren't up to much.'

‘Madam, how fortunate you are,' remarked Spascock sombrely, and his tones made everyone in the court look up at him, where he sat isolated on his throne.

There was a long silence, into which was hissed, or breathed, the syllable
spies
 … But when we all looked towards Krolgul, the ventriloquist, he was standing there leaning sardonically against a wall, the folds of his black court dress hanging like limp wings.
Spies
 … everyone was murmuring or thinking, and the hiss of it was in the air.

Spies are the subject of every other article, broadcast, broadsheet, popular song. Suddenly, the populations (not only of Volyen, but of the two ‘limbs' still remaining) look at Volyen's administrators and wonder what can have been the nature of that psychological epidemic that suborned, so it sometimes seems, a whole ruling class.

Arithamea, tactfully
not
looking at the Judge, remarked: ‘I am sure a lot of people in this country are wondering how they came to do the things they did …

‘Precisely,' said Grice sharply, causing everyone to look at him. ‘Exactly.
Why?
But if we, and others like us, had been told when we were at school, as part of our education, that our need to find acceptance within a group would make us helpless against its ideas – 
'

‘Helpless, is it?' inquired another Peer, a solid young man dressed in a variety of red-and-green sportsgear and a funny hat. ‘Helpless? Some are and some are not.'

‘It's a question of people's characters,' said the young woman. ‘People with some basic decency and common sense can stand firm against wrong notions.'

And both Grice and Spascock let out at the same moment a groan, so desperate, so sad, that everyone again turned to look.

On reflex, Spascock hastily pulled out a pipe and lit it. So did Grice. The good citizens of Volyen do not know that their publicity experts (usually Krolgul) advised so many to smoke pipes as a sign of integrity and moral balance, and most people in the court looked amazed. Particularly since not merely the Judge and the Chief Accuser, but others were pulling out pipes. Among the public on their benches, among the court officials in their gloomy robes, and even among the Peers everywhere could be seen anxious and even trembling lips closing around the stems of pipes, and clouds of sweet moist smoke dimmed the air. Spascock and Grice both leaned forward to examine these unknown accomplices of theirs. On their faces could be read, Don't tell me that
you
are another …

‘If you can smoke a pipe, then I shall knit,' said the Chief Peer, and pulled out her bundle again.

‘No, no, certainly not. You are quite right. Smoking absolutely forbidden!' And in a moment pipes were vanishing, hastily extinguished, all over the court.

Meanwhile, Stil, who had been sitting near Grice, correctly upright, arms folded, every inch of him under control, his face expressing first incredulity, then shock, now remarked:

‘If the courts on Volyen are so undisciplined, then what may we expect of ordinary people?'

‘And who are you, dear?' inquired the Chief Peer, who had not put away her knitting, which lay on her lap.

‘This is the Prosecution's Chief Witness for Indictment Two,' said Spascock.

‘Yes, I know that, but who is he?'

‘I am from Motz.'

‘And where's that? Yes we've heard of it, but it would be nice to know –'

He's a Sirian spy
was in the air – but of course Krolgul maintained a smiling correctness.

‘Are you a Sirian, love?' inquired the woman amiably, just as if there were not talk of lynchings from one end of Volyen to the other.

‘Yes, I am proud to call myself a Sirian.'

‘He is a Sirian as someone from Volyenadna is a Volyen,' said Grice.

‘Or someone from Maken and Slovin,' said Incent passionately, not intending to evoke the sardonic laugh that swept the court. Everyone looked at the despoiled walls and the ceiling. A gale of laughter.

Stil said, ‘I am unable to see what is so humorous about the successful patriotic and revolutionary uprisings of downtrodden colonies.'

‘No, no, you are quite right, love,' said the Chief Peer soothingly. ‘Don't mind us.'

‘Look, are you going to conduct this Trial properly or are you not, Spascock?' inquired Grice.

‘If you can call it a Trial,' said Spascock. ‘Right. Well, go on, then.'

‘I have already made my point.'

‘Not to my noticing,' said Arithamea, and her associates agreed in chorus. ‘Just run over it again, will you? I don't seem to have got the point.'

‘Of course you've got the point,' said Grice. ‘It's obvious, isn't it? We now know a great deal about the mechanisms that govern us, that make us dance like puppets. Some of the most powerful mechanisms are those that we can roughly describe as comprising the functioning of groups.'
Here he indicated the piles of red, green, blue, yellow books on the trolley below his little plinth. ‘There is no disagreement, not real disagreement, about these mechanisms. We know, within a certain group, the percentage of those who will not be able to disagree or dissent from the majority opinion of the group; we know the percentage of those who will carry out the orders of the leaders of the group, no matter how savage and how brutal; we know that such groups will fall into such-and-such patterns; we know they will divide and subdivide in certain ways. We know they have lives that are organic.'

‘Like Empires, for instance,' Incent could not stop himself from adding helpfully, and Krolgul again caused the word
spy
to appear in the minds of everyone.

‘And who are you?' asked Arithamea. ‘No, I mean, where are you from?'

‘He's a Sirian spy, of course,' remarked one of the Peers. ‘They all are. They are everywhere.'

‘Oh come on, get on with it,' said someone loudly from the public benches.

‘Well, then, this is the point,' Grice went on, trying to recover his momentum. ‘If we are governed by mechanisms, and we are, then we should be taught them. In school. At the age when one is taught how the body functions or how the state is run. We should be taught to understand these mechanisms so that we are not controlled by them.'

‘Just a minute, love,' said Arithamea. ‘I know you mean well; I really do see what you are getting at. But don't tell me you believe that if you say to some young thing, all ready to take off for independence, and of course knowing much better than her elders –'

‘Or
his
elders; fair's fair,' said the colourful Peer beside her.

‘His or her elders … you can't say to such as them, Keep a cool head and watch the mechanisms. That's the one thing they aren't capable of.'

‘That's right, she's right,' from the public benches.

‘I'll clear the court,' threatened Spascock.

Silence.

Spascock: ‘Is your point made, then, Grice?'

‘I don't agree with her. She's negative. She's pessimistic. Volyen can't jettison its responsibilities like that! Besides, Volyen has promised in the Constitution to –'

‘Have you read Tatz and Palooza on Group Mechanisms?' inquired Krolgul.

‘No, should I have?'

‘They are in total disagreement with Quinck and Swaller,' said Krolgul. ‘For instance, in the percentages of possible resistance to authority.'

‘Well,' said Grice hotly, ‘I'm handicapped, aren't I? I've been in captivity on Motz, and I was in no position even to know if all the relevant literature was there. But it seems to me that this is evidence enough …' indicating the tomes.

‘I'm just pointing out that the consensus is not a hundred percent,' said Krolgul.

‘Look, Judge,' said Arithamea, ‘are you going to run this Trial, or are you not? This one here having his say as far as I can see is only an usher.'

‘Yes, yes, sorry,' said Spascock. And to Grice: ‘Would you be kind enough to frame your request in adequate words?'

‘Yes. I want this court to condemn Volyen utterly, root and branch, for failing to instruct its young in the rules that its own psychologists and anthropologists have extracted from research and study; for failing to arm its youth with information that would enable it – the youth – to resist being swept away into any system of ideas that happens to be available. I want this court to say, clearly and loudly, that at least three generations of Volyen youth, and may I say at this point that I am one of the victims' – boos, cheers, hisses – ‘have been left unprotected because of the failure to provide knowledge that is readily available to any specialist
in the field of group function. That Volyen has allowed, nay, connived at, a situation whereby its specialists acquire more and more expertise about groups, the primary unit of society, but where this information is never allowed to affect the actual institutions of society, which continue to be archaic, clumsy if not lethal, ridiculously inappropriate machineries. Our left hand does not know what our right hand does. On the one hand, ever-increasing facts, information, discovery. On the other, the lumbering stupidities of our culture. I want Volyen condemned.'

A long silence. The citizens were, in fact, impressed. But the trouble was, in every mind was just one thought: It does look as if Sirius is about to invade – not that we shall let them get away with it – and we've got other things on our minds …

Spascock turned to the Peers. ‘Well, do you want to retire?'

Arithamea consulted with her associates, those that were awake.

‘No, Judge.'

‘Well, then, do you agree to call Volyen guilty, or not?'

Again she consulted – for no longer than it is taking me to write this sentence.

‘Fair enough, Judge. Guilty. Of course, I'm taking Governor Grice's word for it that those books are what he says.'

‘Tatz and Palooza,' murmured Krolgul.

‘Oh, you keep out of it,' she said. ‘I don't like the look of you at all. Volyen's guilty. Of course it is. We should have been told all that kind of thing. I'll be doing a bit of reading on my own account, now that I've had my attention drawn to it all. Yes. Guilty.'