The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

EXTRACTS FROM A REPORT FROM AM 5.

Oh, these poor Embodiments! They cannot get to grips with Grice! Sometimes they think they'll drop him back into Volyen and be rid of him. They long to be able to bump him off, but it seems that, when expressing his admiration for them, he accidentally used some verbal formula that is sacred and makes him immune – he is a guest now. But he is not finally classed as a guest, because they might find him useful after all as a hostage. I encourage them in these rare moments of flexibility, ambiguity, in my (I sometimes feel vain) attempts to evolve these mono-minded heroes.

But Grice admonishes them. 'You are being illogical,' he says sternly – their manner is now his, for at least most of the time. 'Either I am a guest, or I am a hostage. I can't be both.'

'That is true,' they reply, but continue to treat him as both.

As a guest, he asked to see more of Motz, and I was deputed to take him.

We went by air, back and forth and around this little planet, and Governor Grice – for it was the Governor, the administrator, who was with me, not Grice the Groaner -was ecstatic, and sobered, incredulous and admiring, at what we saw.

Flying over a steep and rocky mountain, looking down, you see that on every possible slope, in every miniscule valley, has been built a field. The mountain is black and barren; but it holds a hundred pockets of earth, each grain of which has been carried in a basket to be made fruitful by these exiles from a fertile planet. You descend, to be met by a group of strong, muscled, spare people who take you to see fields, gardens, orchards, tramping up and down impossible slopes and escarpments; and as they stand proudly beside some minute patch of glistening green, they will smile with such a passion of protective pride that there is no need for them to say: 'There was nothing here before we came.'

You fly over a plain patched with healthy crops, and they tell you: 'This was a marsh; we drained it.'

You see beneath you a desert, but around its edges are belts of dark green. 'This is a desert now, but in a short time it will be a forest.'

I do not remember seeing anywhere a bleaker planet than this one, as nature made it; I have never seen anywhere such accomplishments, achievement.

They have done it all with their own strength, their own dedication, their austerity, their self-discipline. They possess total confidence: they know they can do anything they decide to do. They fear no deprivation, for they can live on a handful of grain a day, despising those who want more. They wear clothes whose simplicity makes them a uniform. What magnificent creatures they are! And how pitiful, for they despise, utterly, everyone else.

'Oh,' cried Grice, as we descended to yet another settlement surrounded by desert or scree, 'oh, look what we could have done on Volyenadna, if we had tried.'

'Nonsense,' I kept saying. 'You could have done nothing of the kind. You can't impose this on a people. It has to be voluntary.' You will remember that as far as Grice is concerned, I am an Embodiment, so I must speak in character. But, after all, it is true enough.

'When I think of poor Volyenadna. Oh, poor, poor Volyenadna! We could have done something like this.'

'So what is that planet like?'

'It is all tundra and rubble and permafrost.'

'You've never, perhaps, heard of a plant called Rocknosh? I believe it thrives in such conditions.'

He was in a state of violent agitation and conflict. 'Oh, I believe I did. Some type mentioned it, but he was just a – ' He had been going to say 'just a Sirian spy,' but stopped himself. His face, at such moments, as it were disintegrates, crumbles, then convulses in a spasm, as his organism strives to achieve some sort of balance or wholeness.

'A Sirian spy,' I've heard him muttering, 'but I was so young, I didn't know better...' And, at other times, 'A Sirian spy? The words sound bad, but after all, if this Motz is Sirius, then...'

I sometimes attempt to talk to him of the Sirian Empire, as it really has been. It is no use talking of the long perspectives, the long millenniums of such Empires, to a mind that has called 'Empire' the few V-years of the Volyen ascendancy. But I try to describe something of its changing histories, its fragmentation now. I remind him of the forthcoming overrunning of Volyen. He frowns, he sighs, he grimaces...

But he has found a solution to his emotional predicaments. Bizarre! But – you'll agree, I am sure, Klorathy – of a psychological ingenuity that...

Grice has decided to sue Volyen for having defaulted on promises and guarantees made to every Volyen citizen in its Constitution.

The problems facing Grice have included: that he had only an approximate memory of the relevant clause in the Constitution; that there was no copy of the Volyen Constitution on Motz; that he has to get back to Volyen to instigate this case; that he could not think of any sort of precedent.

Krolgul heard about Grice's scheme from a baffled Motzan, and at once visited Grice. He entered the library with a sharp triple knock, stood in the entrance silently, stern-faced, till he knew Grice had seen him, and then advanced the length of the room, unsmiling. The grey uniform (a version of the Motzan one), the sombre responsible mien, the tread like a soldier's... Grice involuntarily got to his feet, like one guilty, but before he could speak Krolgul shot out his hand with a bark of 'Servus!' And then, 'I have heard of your plans. I have come to congratulate you! Magnificent! In scope, in courage, in daring. This is true revolutionary creativeness.'

After a few hours of Krolgul, Grice was ready for anything, including the task of making the Motzans understand.

Imagine it, Klorathy! Twenty Embodiments, and I, all fresh from our hard labours, with difficulty giving up an evening to this embarrassing request of Grice's, sitting in a half-circle in a hut in the middle of a desert they have decided to reclaim. On a shelf, a jug of water, some chunks of vegetable, a lamp. Grice seated in front of us, but whether as guest or prisoner, no one has said.

'You say you are going to publicly criticize your own people?'

'Not my people, Volyen.'

'What's the difference? How can Volyen be distinguished from Volyens?'

'If it cannot, how is it possible for it to promise and guarantee its people certain rights?'

'But you speak as if you are wanting to publicly criticize an abstraction?'

'How can it be an abstraction if it can guarantee and promise, if it speaks like a parent? And besides, I am not criticizing it, I am bringing it to court.'

'What, the Constitution?'

'No, those who represent Volyen at this time.'

Gloomy silence; hostile looks; impatience.

'And what will you achieve by this?'

'Achieve? I shall expose Volyen for the fraud it is.'

'Volyen?'

'I mean our ridiculous Constitution. Lies. Lies!'

'But when we impose our Virtue on Volyen, then genuine justice and genuine liberty and real freedom will be theirs.'

'Yes, but that won't be yet awhile, will it? And anyway...' Governor Grice is quite unable to believe in what he has spent so much of his life dreaming about: the actual advent of revolution, the actual arrival of Sirius in his land. 'And besides,' he said triumphantly, 'if I expose them in the courts, as they richly deserve, then your task will be so much easier, won't it? The hypocritical mask of false justice will be ripped off the face of tyranny and – '

'We don't understand how you, as an official of this tyranny, or even as a citizen, are in a position to take it to court. Which certainly sounds to us like a criticism. And how can you criticize a tyranny?'

'Ah, but you see, we have a democracy, haven't we? Of course, only because of historical anomalies and so forth,' muttered Grice.

And so it went on, nearly all night. From time to time I chipped in with something designed to remind the warriors of reality; or, as you and our other tutors in the Colonial Service Schools kept describing it, 'life itself.' For instance:

Myself: 'But if I may remind you, you don't actually have a copy of the Constitution...'

In the end, it was decided to send down a team of two to Volyen, disguised as Volyens, to get hold of a copy of the Constitution for Grice.

'And while you are about it,' he shouted as they left, 'you might as well get me the second volume of Peace's Laws Governing the Behaviour of Groups. It was out on loan when you liberated the library, and I need it for my case.'

He wrote it all down for them. The Motzans don't read. Or, rather, they read only histories of their home planet, of their eviction from it, of their struggle to develop Motz, of their fight to keep Motz out of the hands of fellow Sirian colonies. They read books of practical instruction, technical books, and – recently – books descriptive of Volyen and its 'Empire,' but entirely from the Sirian point of view. Never do they read anything that might suggest they and their history, their passion, their dedication, could be seen from any viewpoint but their own. They are not even tempted to do so: they have been so thoroughly conditioned to see other people's ideas as heresy. 'That's all, and that's enough,' to quote their invariable response if actually faced with some book that might even indirecdy criticize them. And 'What we have is what we need.'

Making the case against Volyen has required the efforts of Grice, myself, Krolgul, and a Motzan introduced to Grice by Krolgul, who felt that this new associate could only do Grice good – from Krolgul's point of view. This Motzan is a young male named Stil. His characteristic is the number of handicaps he has had to overcome. He was born on one of the new settlements, where a marshy estuary was being drained. It was cold, dank, dismal. His mother died giving birth to a third child. The father was working as hard as Motzans do. The children were reared haphazardly. Stil was helping rear the two younger ones, going to school, and working to earn money when he was a child. Then his father died in an accident. Stil's history continues like this; and he matured early into a physically and mentally strong individual, able to do any work or cope with any event. This paragon spends his time with Grice, who is crushed even further into self-deprecation and a sense of inadequacy. As for Stil, he is naturally fascinated by Grice, whose life seems to him pathologically indulged and selfish. At every criticism, Grice agrees and cries out: 'I'll get them for it, see if I don't' – meaning, of course, 'all of Volyen.'

The 'indictment' already runs into several volumes, and there seems no reason why it should ever be concluded; but Krolgul is urging haste. Rumours! Rumours! Mostly about an imminent Sirian invasion. Motz's army is, in theory, mobilized. Since these soldiers are also farmers and miners, essential workers, Motz cannot afford this situation. Protests have gone into 'Sirius itself.' Where, of course, there ire nothing but squabbles. Debates. Disagreements. Changes of policy. No reply from 'Sirius itself,' so Motz has its army on standby, but tells itself, truthfully, that the self-discipline of its soldiers is such that they can be assembled again in a day. Krolgul says to Grice, 'If you don't act now, you never will. There won't be any Volyen to sue.'

'Oh, Krolgul,' says Grice, 'aren't you exaggerating?'

'Do you or do you not want the Virtue of Sirius?'

'I didn't hear anything from you of the Virtue of Sirius on Volyenadna. Why was that?'

'You weren't mature enough then to hear the truth.'

'It wasn't me who had to hear it. How about Calder and his mates?'

'How do you know what I used to talk to them about? You weren't always listening at the keyhole, Governor Grice!'

To such a level of vulgarity has Krolgul sunk with Grice, who is uneasy, but can always cure moments of doubt about Krolgul simply by looking at him: That upright soldierly form! That heroic profile! That air of solitary self-sufficiency! Everything Grice longs to have been, to be, seems embodied in Krolgul when he looks at him. And if his doubts about Krolgul get acute, there nearby is Stil, who either has just come from or is about to leave for a long day's physical labour on a diet of powdered fishheads and some marsh water.

There is also, of course, myself, but Grice simply cannot come to terms with me. Sometimes he feels relieved that a Motzan can be capable of ordinary irreverence, even flippancy; that a Motzan can criticize Motz. At other times he feels that there's something a bit off about me. 'Are you sure you aren't a spy?' he snapped once. 'Of course I am,' said I. 'How clever of you to spot me. But it takes one to know one, doesn't it, Governor Grice?'