The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

KLORATHY TO JOHOR, FROM MOON I OF VOLYEN, VOLYENADNA.

This is not the most attractive of planets. The ice sheets which until recently covered it have retreated to the poles, leaving behind a characteristic landscape. This is harsh and dry, scarred by the violent movements of ice and of wind. The vegetation is meagre and dull. The rivers are savage, still carrying melting snow and ice, hard to navigate, offering little in the way of pleasure and relaxation.

The original inhabitants, evolved from creatures of the ice, were heavy, thick, slow, and strong. The great hands that Ormarin is so proud of built walls of ice blocks and hauled animals from half-frozen water, strangled, hammered, wrenched, broke, tore, made tools from antlers and bones. Invasions of less hardy peoples (unlike Moon II, this planet was conquered and settled more than once by Planets S-PE 70 and S-PE 71) did not weaken the stock, because the conditions continued harsh, and those who did not adapt died.

The history of this planet, then, not so unlike that of Volyendesta, exemplifies the power of the natural environment. This is a dour and melancholy people, slow to move, but with terrible rages and fits of madness, and even now, in the wary turn of a head, the glare of eyes that seem to listen as much as to look, you can see how their ancestors waited for sounds that could never be anything but warnings and threats – the whining howl of the wind, the creak of straining ice, the thud of snow massing on snow.

The latest conquest, by Volyen, has worsened conditions. Because of the planet’s abundant minerals, everywhere you look are factories, mines, whole cities that exist only to extract and process minerals for the use of Volyen. The natives who work these mines live in slave conditions, and die young of diseases caused mostly by poverty or dusts and radiations resulting from the processing of the minerals. The ruling class of the planet lives either on Volyen or in the few more favoured areas of this moon supported and maintained by Volyen; its members do their best not to know about the terrible lives of their compatriots.

So extreme are the conditions on Volyenadna that I think it is permissible to call it a slave planet, and this, as I am sure you are not surprised to hear, is how Krolgul apostrophizes it: ‘O slave planet, how long will you bear your chains?’

I arrived on a grim and grey day near a grim and grey city, walked into the central square and found Krolgul addressing a grey, grim, and silent crowd: ‘O slave planet, O Volyenadna, how long will you bear your chains?’

There was a long groan from the crowd, but then it fell silent again. Listening.

Krolgul was standing on a plinth, that supported an imposing statue of a miner holding up clenched fists and glaring over the heads of the crowd; he was deliberately copying this pose – a famous one, for the statue is used as a symbol for the workers’ movements. Near Krolgul, his nervous, agitated stance in sharp contrast to Krolgul’s, stood Incent, sometimes smiling, sometimes scowling, for he was not able to find or maintain a satisfactory public pose. Krolgul saw me, as I intended. In this crowd of heavy, slow people, there were three who stood out: me, basic Canopean, but here seen as ‘Volyen,’ as anything alien has to be; Incent, so slight and lithe and nervous; and Krolgul, though he does everything to look Volyenadnan.

You may remember Krolgul as a large, not to say fleshy, easygoing, affable goodfellow, all eagerness to please: his adaptation on this planet is quite a triumph of self-discipline, for he has created a dedicated, brooding, heroic personal known to live in a bare room on less than a worker’s wage, he has a smile so rare that it has inspired ballads.

… Volyen’s minions fired.

Our dead lay on the ground.

Krolgul frowned.

‘We shall march,’ we cried,

In accents stern and wild.

And Krolgul smiled.

The trouble here is that these people are so slow to move, and Krolgul has been given little occasion for smiling. What he wants them to do is ‘rise all at once, once and for all’ and take over everything.

What is preventing this is the basic common sense of the Volyenadnans, who know from the bitterest experience that the Volyen armies are efficient and ruthless.

So Krolgul started to build up a head of hate, at first directed towards ‘all Volyen,’ and then, this proving too general a target to be effective, at Lord Grice, the Volyen Governor, whose name has acquired, like additional titles, epithets such as Greasy, Gross, Greatfat, Greenguts. To such a point that a citizen may be heard saying something like ‘Lord Grice Greatfat visited so-and-so yesterday,’ but so much a matter of habit has this become that he himself might not be aware of it. And even Lord Grice, so the rumour has it, was once heard to introduce himself on a ceremonial visit to a local governor, ‘I’m Grice the Greasy, don’t you know……’

As a matter of fact, he is a tall, dry, rather weedy fellow, of a natural melancholy much enhanced by the rigours of this planet, and full of doubts as to his role as Governor.

This genuine representative of Volyen was at a window of the Residency that stands on the square, listening to Krolgul and making no attempt at all to conceal himself.

He was a threat to Krolgul’s oratory, because the people in the square had only to turn their heads to see this criminal …

‘And what are we to say about that arch-charlatan Grice the Greedy! In one person we see embodied the whole villainy of the Volyen tyranny! Sucking the blood of the …’ And so on.

The crowd had begun to growl and stir. These lethargic, stolid people were at last showing signs of action.

Krolgul, however, did not want them actually to storm the Residency. He intended to use Grice as a means for a good while yet. Therefore, he skilfully swung them into song. We will march, We will march, We will overthrow … and the mass roared into song.

A few youths at the back of the crowd, longing for action, turned towards the Residency, saw in a window on the first floor a solitary figure, swarmed up onto the balcony, and confronted this observer with shouts of ‘We’ve come to get him! Don’t try to hide him. Where’s Grice the Guts?’

‘Here,’ said Grice, coming forward with modest alacrity.

At which the louts spat at him, aimed a kick or two in his direction, and told him to warn Grice-Guts they were ‘coming to do him.’ They then jumped back into the crowd and joined in the singing.

The singing was less fervent, however, than Krolgul wanted. The faces I looked at, while entranced by the singing, were still patient, even thoughtful.

I went into a little eating place on the square and watched the crowds disperse.

Down from the plinth came Krolgul, smiling and acknowledging homage (comradely greetings) from the crowd. With him Incent, eyes flashing, aroused, palpitating, but doing his best to present the stern and dedicated seriousness appropriate to the military look he aspired to. Like two soldiers they came towards the café, followed by the usual adoring females and some younger males.

They had seated themselves before Incent saw me. Far from showing guilt, he seemed delighted. He came, first running, and then, remembering his new role, striding across. ‘Wasn’t that just the most moving thing you have ever seen?’ he demanded, and sat down opposite me, beaming.

Newspapers were brought in. Headlines: ‘Inspiring … Moving … Inspirational …’ Incent seized one, and although he had for the past several hours been involved in this meeting, sat poring over an account of it.

Krolgul, who had seen me, met my eyes with a sardonic, almost cynical smile, which he instantly abolished in favour of his revolutionary sternness. There he sat, in the corner, positioned so that he could watch through the windows how the crowd dispersed, and at the same time survey the interior of the café. Into which now came a group of the miners’ leaders, headed by Calder, who sat down in a corner, having nodded at Krolgul, but no more.

Incent did not notice this. He was gazing at the men with such passionate admiration that Krolgul directed towards him a cold, warning stare.

‘They are such marvellous, wonderful people,’ said Incent, trying to attract the attention of Calder, who at last gave him a friendly nod.

‘Incent,’ I said.

‘Oh, I know, you are going to punish me. You are going to send me back to that dreadful hospital!’

‘You seemed to me to be rather enjoying it.’

‘Ah, but that was different. Now I am in the thick of the real thing.’

The café was packed. Everyone in it was a miner; Volyenadnans every one, except for three – me, Incent, Krolgul. All foreigners are assumed to be of the Volyen administration, or spies from either Volyen or – but these suspicions were recent – Sirius. The miners, fifty or so of them, here after the rally to discuss their situation, to feel their plight, were obviously wondering how they came to be represented by Krolgul and by his shadow, Incent.

Krolgul, sensing how people were looking at him, occupied himself in earnest, frowning discussion with a young woman from this town, a native, and in moving papers about, the image of efficiency.

But it was easy to see that Calder was not satisfied. He exchanged a few words with his associates and stood up.

‘Krolgul,’ he said. It was not a large place, and by standing and speaking, he unified it.

Krolgul acknowledged him with a modification of the fist-high salute: he lifted a loose fist from the table to half shoulder height, and opened it and shut it once or twice like a mouth.

‘I and the mates here are not altogether happy with the way things are going,’ Calder said.

‘But we concretized the agreed objectives,’ said Krolgul.

‘That is for us to say, isn’t it?’

Given this confrontation, for it was one, Krolgul could only agree; but Incent was half up, holding on to his chair, his face dimmed by disappointment. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘but that was the most moving … the most … the most moving …’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Calder. ‘But I don’t think it was entirely on the lines we agreed.’

‘But in our analysis of the situation we decided –’ began Krolgul, and was stopped by Calder’s, ‘This one here, is he a friend of yours?’

Meaning, of course, me. Fifty pairs of eyes focused on me – hard, grey, distrustful eyes.

‘Well, I think I could say that,’ said Krolgul, with a heaving of silent laughter that could have been taken various ways, but which Calder took badly.

‘Speak for yourself,’ said he to me.

‘No, I am not a friend of Krolgul’s,’ I said.

‘Visiting here, perhaps?’

‘He’s a friend of mine, a friend of mine,’ shouted Incent, and then wondered if he had done right; with a gasp and a half smile, he subsided back into his seat.

‘Yes, I am visiting.’

‘From Volyen, perhaps?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘A friend of this lad here, who is a friend of Krolgul, but not a friend of Krolgul,’ said someone sardonically, and everyone laughed.

‘You are here to write a travel book?’ Laughter. ‘An analysis of our situation?’ Laughter. ‘A report for –’

‘For Canopus,’ I said, knowing that the word would sound to them like an old song, a fable.

Silence.

Krolgul could not hide his shock: he knew then, for the first time, that my being here was serious, that we account his activities at this time serious. It is a strange thing that people engaged in his kind of half-mocking, half-experimental, wholly theatrical intrigues often lose the capacity for seeing themselves and their situation. Enjoyment of manipulation, of power, of watching themselves in a role, dims judgment.

I looked round slowly from face to face. Strong, grey faces that showed all the exhaustion of their lives. Faces like stones. In their eyes, grey, slow eyes, I saw that they were remembering, trying to remember.

Calder, still on his feet, his great hand on his chair-back, the miners leader whose desperation had allowed him to become subject to the manipulations of Krolgul, looked hard and long at me and said, ‘You can tell them, where you come from, that we are very unfortunate people.’

And at this there was a long involuntary groan, and then silence.

This, what was happening now, was of a different kind and quality from anything that had happened in the square, or anything that emanated from Krolgul. I was looking at Incent, since, after all, he was the key to the situation, and saw him impressed and silent, even thoughtful.

And Krolgul too knew the moment was crucial. He slowly, deliberately got to his feet. He held out both clenched fists in front of him. And now the eyes of everyone had turned to him.

‘Unfortunate!’ he said in a low, only just audible voice, so that people had to strain to listen. ‘Yes, that is a word we may say and say again …’ His voice was rising, and slowly his fists were rising too. ‘Misfortune was the inheritance of your fathers, misfortune is what you eat and drink, and misfortune will be the lot of your children!’ He had ended on a shout, and his fists had fallen to his sides. He stood there, appealing to them with the brave set of his body, his pale face, with eyes that actually managed to look sunken and hungry.

But he had miscalculated: he had not taken them with him.

‘Yes, I think we are all aware of it,’ said Calder, and turned to me. ‘You, from – where did you say it was? but never mind – what do you have to say?’ This was a half-jeer, but let us say a hopeful jeer, and now all the eyes had shifted back to me, and they leaned forward waiting.

‘I would say that you could begin by describing your actual situation, as it is.’

This chilled them, and Incent’s face, turned towards me suddenly, looked as if I had hit him deliberately, meaning to hurt. Johor: it is not going to be easy for Incent. It is the hardest thing in the Galaxy, if you have been the plaything of words, words, words, to become independent of their ability to intoxicate.

‘I think we are all able to,’ said Calder dryly, sitting down again and half turning away from me, back to his mates. But not entirely. He still kept half an eye on me, and so did all the others.

Krolgul was seated again, staring hard at Incent. Incent, feeling this gaze, was shifting about, uneasy and in terrible conflict. I was sensing him as a vacuum from which the powers of Canopus were being drained and sucked out by Krolgul. Incent might be sitting there with me, at my table, my ‘friend,’ but he was in the power of Krolgul. Now that Krolgul could see how he had lost the allegiance – though, he hoped, temporarily – of the Volyenadnans, Incent was what he had left. It was like watching blood being emptied from a victim as he gasps and shrinks, but it wasn’t blood that Incent fed, is feeding, Krolgul.

Calder was my only hope.

I stood up, so that everyone could see me.

‘You’re leaving?’ asked Calder, and he was disappointed.

But I had hoped for what then happened. Calder said, ‘Perhaps we could have the benefit of an outside view, an objective opinion?’

‘I have a suggestion,’ I said. ‘You get together as many of you as you can, and we will meet, with Krolgul here, and talk it all out.’

They didn’t agree at once, but in the end they did. Krolgul had no alternative, though he hated it.

Of course, we could have done it all where we were, in the café, but I was concerned with Incent.

I did not order him to follow me as I left the café, but he came with me. Physically, he came with me.

I took him to my lodgings in a poor part of the town. A miner’s widow, with children to support, let out rooms. Almost the first thing she had said to me was, ‘We are unfortunate people,’ and it was with a calm sense and dignity that could be, I hope, what would save them all from Krolgul.

She agreed to give us some supper in my room.

It wasn’t much; they are indeed poor people.

Over bread and some fruit, Incent and I sat opposite each other.

‘Incent?’ I said to him. ‘What am I going to do with you?’ And it was far from rhetorical.

‘You’re going to punish me, you’re going to punish me,’ he kept groaning, but with the enjoyment he has learned from Krolgul.

‘Yes, of course you will be punished. Not by me, not even by Canopus, but by the inherent laws of action and interaction.’

‘Cruel, cruel,’ he sobbed, and fell asleep, all his emotional apparatus in disarray, his intellectual machineries in subjection to this disorder. But he is strong enough physically; that is something.

Leaving him asleep, and asking the woman of the house to keep an eye on him, I spent the night in the bars of the town and its suburbs. Everywhere unrest, even a sense of impending upheaval. Hard to determine whether this was mainly because of worsening conditions on the planet, or because of the efforts of Krolgul … who, interestingly, was talked of much less than Incent. No wonder Incent is exhausted. He seems to have travelled to all the main centres of Volyenadna, and to most of the smaller ones as well. To extract the essence of what people have found in him: it is that he is noticed. He has impressed himself. In city after city he has moved from one meeting place to another: cafés, miners’ clubs, women’s clubs, and his right to be everywhere has been his conviction that his cause must make him welcome. He brings no credentials. On the rare occasions he is challenged, he impatiently, even contemptuously, rejects the need for it, as if his interlocuters are showing pettiness and worse, and after a few hours of earnest exhortation – which clearly exhaust his hearers, who betray, even after several days’ interval, all the signs of nervous strain – he leaves for the next appointment with destiny.

Can I say he is not trusted? It is more interesting than that …

There is a type of revolutionary always to be seen at times when there is potential for change. At first tentative, even timid, then amazed that this burning conviction of his can convince others, he soon becomes filled with contempt for them. He can hardly believe that he, that small unit, and an unworthy one (for, at least at the beginning, he may possess some view of himself as a fallible individual), can be taken seriously by those older than he, more experienced – persons sometimes of worth, who may be representatives of masses of people. Yet he, this torch of righteous conviction, armed with no more than his own qualities, is able to come close to them, persuades, convinces, has them in his power. He asks for trust – that first of all – for money, for the use of their influence. In no time he has nests of people in every place doing his bidding, embroiled with one another, willing to listen. To listen, that’s the thing. One may observe him, this burning-eyed, coiled spring of a youth, leaning forward at a café table, in the corner of a house, anywhere, fixing his prey with his eyes in a conviction of shared purpose, of conspiracy, of – always – being united in some small purpose against enormous odds. Yet almost at once this small purpose has burgeoned so remarkably. Finding it so easy to talk in terms of limited ends, the creation of a local institution perhaps, a meeting place, a modest petition, suddenly he – no less than others – is surprised to find that what is being talked about is citywide, then planetary, even interplanetary movements. ‘We shall sweep the stars for our support!’ Incent cried from a platform in one town, and when someone called out from the body of the hall, ‘Hold on, lad, let’s start with something more modest,’ the laughter was no more than friendly. Of course! If you have been able to rise so far and so fast from such a humble base – in this case, on this planet, that the people generally are very worn down, tired, drained, and they wish for better – then why not ‘sweep the stars’ and ‘transform everything’?

‘Is not the present moment dynamic?’ cried Incent from platform after platform, his whole person radiating dynamism, so that the poor tired people listening to him felt dynamic too; though not for long, for it is odd how they feel even more tired, more drained, when he has moved on to the next place that he has decided to stir into action.

‘The new forms of life will become dynamically dramatic,’ he has shouted, though only a moment before he was dealing with a question from the floor about raising wages by means of a petition to Volyen (through Greasy-guts Grice).

Well, such a person does not, as we know, ‘sweep the stars,’ but he does set in motion a great many people who even while under his spell feel uneasy. And yet feel uneasy that they do. How dull they have become! How enfeebled by life! How far they are from the flaming days of their youth, which they see before them again in the shape of this noble, inspirational youth, who seems, when he leans forward to hold their eyes with his own, to gather their whole life and pose it before them in the shape of a question.

‘What have you become?’ those dramatic, those languishing, those shameless eyes demand. For, of course, this young hero, without even knowing it, will use all the means he has to unlock the various forms of resistance he faces, including sex, maternal and paternal love: Oh, if only my son were like this, this very flame of promise and action, if only I had chosen such a one as a husband.

But uneasy they are. It might be for a good cause, but how they are being manipulated! And how is it possible that not only one’s unworthy (of course) self is being played on by this man – this youth, not much more than a child, really – but also one’s respected and revered colleagues?

This operator has understood from the first, and by instinct (it is nearly all instinct, this, not calculation: our hero is working on a wavelength of pure guess-and-feel, he has never sat down to say, ‘How can I get this poor sucker under my thumb?’), that of course one must use one ‘name’ to impress another. ‘I saw Hadder today,’ he lets fall confidentially and, as it were, by the way, ‘and he said to me he would talk to Sev, and when I dropped in on Bolli yesterday she said she knew how to lay her hands on …’ Some large, almost incredible sum seems to materialize; both the inspired youth and the hypnotized victim contemplate it, in silence. ‘Ye-e-es …’ murmurs the victim at last, ‘I see, yes …’ And on both faces there appears fleetingly a small self-conscious smile that acknowledges absurdity.