The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire - Doris Lessing

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Party of Real Virtue, the Party for the Support of Sirian Virtue, the Party of Opposition to Sirian Virtue, the Friends of Alput (the Sirian CP 93), the Enemies of Alput, the Friends of Motz (the Sirian CP 104). These groups, every one of which is devoted to the future well-being and good government of Volyen, spend all their time quarrelling viciously among themselves.

      When I arrived at Grice’s hotel room, he thought I was the last of a long stream of young revolutionaries, and simply went on with a speech that he had been delivering for hours.

      Striding up and down the room, his lank, pale hair flopping over a face inflamed with emotion, his pale eyes gleaming, gesticulating wildly, he was painting a picture (accurate) of the sufferings of the Volyenadnans, and (inaccurate) of the successes of ‘dedicated experts on colonial revolutions from Sirius.’ Meaning Incent.

      ‘Grice,’ I kept having to say. ‘Grice, come down to earth. I am Klorathy. We saw each other there, don’t you remember?’

      He did and he didn’t. He came stooping towards me, blinking and peering, literally vibrating all over from the effects of having to stop in the middle of his verbal self-stimulation. Then he sank into a supine position.

      I talked and talked, more or less at random, until he was able to listen, and then I put to him that:

      We, Canopus, could cause to arrive in Volyenadna everything necessary to start a new agriculture. In a very short time that poor planet would be enabled to feed itself adequately and be able to export as well. This would have all kinds of important consequences. He, Governor Grice, could cause the Volyen rule to be associated with this beneficial development, but he would have to be quick about getting the approval of his superiors.

      He came, minimally, to life – ‘Them? You’re joking!’ – and slumped back into enjoyable gloom. ‘Rotten, hopeless, decadent …

      I let him run on for a while, and said, ‘Very well, but do you want these improvements – which would amount to a revolution of a kind – to be associated with a Sirian influence?’

      This caused him to stiffen all over, in fright and shock; then to lift his head cautiously and give me a swift glance, and then lie rigid again.

      He said nothing. But he was searching for a suitable formulation.

      I had been hoping the shock would bring out of him some news of his exact involvement with Sirius, but it did not.

      At last he said: ‘Well, there’d be plenty of people glad enough if that happened …’ And he burst into shrill laughter, then tears. For his conflict over Sirius was profound, even worse than I had feared ‘… You have no idea how many people – I’ve been meeting them all day and every day since I came. It’s strange, isn’t it, we know exactly what Sirius is capable of now, but all the same it’s as if they don’t want to know.’ And again the reaction of mixed laughter and tears. ‘Oh, I know what you are thinking, I was taken in by it all long enough, but at least I …

      What I want to know, of course, is exactly the hold Sirius has over him. Is he held by blackmail? I think not. It seems to me the ruling class of Volyen, when it discovered the extent of its servants’ subordination by Sirius, and how many were being blackmailed, simply took the power out of that threat by telling the same servants: Very well, you come clean about what you’ve promised Sirius, what hold they have over you, and we will stand by you – that will dish them, in ways they’ve never even imagined! For they are not the sort to stand by their own in similar circumstances, not at all; more likely that any hapless employee of theirs would get a knife in the back some dark night, or a dose of poison. An ‘accident’ … No, I can see that Sirius, after so long and so skilled a process of involving hundreds of key Volyens in their plots, and then finding that Volyen had foiled them in this way, must have been at least temporarily nonplussed. Probably admiring too. Yes, I think I can imagine Sirius admiring their opponents’ cheek in this game. For what tricks and traps and toils and snares were revealed then! And what nets and snares were left unrevealed! For some agents would have confessed all to Volyen; some part; some not at all; some falsely. Probably some highly placed ones would also have believed that, once they had confessed to youthful folly – ‘Please, I didn’t know what I was doing’ – and been forgiven, there was an end to it, only to discover later on that it was not an end at all! Sirius might say, ‘Yes, but you didn’t confess that to them, did you? What will they think now if you say you simply forgot? You plan to say you didn’t know anything about it? How naive you are! Or how culpably careless!’ Sirius might say, ‘Yes, but now that we are poised to invade, now that we are all around you, what do you feel about having betrayed us, who represent your real allegiances, to them, who are due only a sentimental loyalty? Shortsighted, wouldn’t you say? No, no, we go in for the long perspective, the historical view. We’ll give you another chance, if you will agree to …’ Sirius might say, ‘You thought we’d forgotten all about you! But Sirius never forgets! Very well, but you know all we can do in the ways of punishments, don’t you? And you’ll feel the full weight of them unless you …

      And where was Grice in this spectrum of loyalties, or disloyalties, according to how you look at it?

      ‘Grice,’ I said, ‘if I told you that Sirius would be invading Volyen very soon, what would you do?’

      ‘Do? I’d throw myself off the nearest high building.’ But this was said with such painful relish that I waited awhile. ‘What difference would it make to a Volyenadnan – or a Volyendestan, for that matter, from what I hear of the place? Would the Sirian rule be worse than ours?’

      ‘You could of course improve yours. Is there any chance of your colleagues’ listening to you?’

      ‘Them? They don’t give a damn for their colonized planets!’

      And suddenly he sat straight up and looked at me tragically, lips quivering.

      ‘And they don’t give a damn for me. Not one of them. And neither do the others.’

      By this he meant the young groups. They had rebuffed him.

      You will note that their not giving a damn for him was what really reached him.

      ‘Yes, but do any of them care about Volyenadna?’

      ‘If you told some of them to go out there and join the revolution, they might listen to that.’

      ‘You are referring to Incent, I suppose? To Krolgul?’

      ‘If they would have me, I’d go like a shot and throw in my lot with them, with Calder! But they don’t want me! No one does. It’s always been like that, Klorathy! Ever since I was small. I’ve never really fitted in. I’ve never been wanted. I’ve never been …

      And he flung himself down and wept, loudly and painfully.

      I could see we can expect nothing from him, so I told the hotel to send medical assistance, and came back here to Vatun.

      It is my belief that I myself should, as Canopus, try what I can do with Calder. I put this forward as an official request.

      I had hoped to meet Calder with his colleagues. He sent a message that he would come alone, to a place that turned out to be a settlement of a few clans in a cold valley far from the capital. Grey stone houses, or huts, and a grey tundra rising all around us to a grey sky.

      It was a miners’ club, but at an hour when they were at work. A woman served us the thin, sour beverage of Volyenadna and went out saying she had to prepare a meal for her children.

      This is the conversation that took place.

      He was in that condition of irritable gloominess that indicates, in this species, an extreme of suspicion. ‘Calder, would you describe this tyranny you live under as an efficient one?’

      He

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