Читать книгу The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire - Doris Lessing - Страница 10

I went at once to see poor Incent. It had not been easy to find the right place for his recovery. What he needed was an absence of stimulation. But on present-day Volyen, where even the most secluded rural retreat will at any moment begin to vibrate to the din of machines or of recorded or transmitted noise? One of our friends runs a hotel in the centre of Vatun. Yes, it was in the capital itself that I was able to arrange what I was looking for. A large room in the heart of the building, well insulated, and above all without apertures into the outside world. As you will remember, Vatun is full of parks and gardens, though they are perhaps not as well kept as they were at the height of Volyen’s power, and I wanted above all to protect Incent from the debilitating thoughts inevitably aroused by the processes of nature. The cycles of birth, growth, decay, and death, the transmutation of one element into another, the restlessness of it all – no, these were not for Incent, not in his condition. The slightest stimulation of any unhealthy kind was contraindicated.

I told our friend the proprietor, in the letter I sent by Incent, that of course no force of any kind was to be used, but that Incent would probably be only too ready to accept bland and unstimulating surroundings.

And so I found him. Leaving behind the crash and the grind, the shouting and singing and screaming of Vatun’s streets, and the disturbing thoughts inevitably aroused by Vatun’s gardens, I entered – perfect silence. I approached a tall white door at the end of a thickly carpeted corridor, opened it, found a tall white room, and Incent, lolling in a deep chair, gazing at the blank ceiling. In this haven of a room there was not one natural object, not so much as a thread of plant fibre in a carpet or the bed coverings, not a reminder of the animal world in the form of skins or parts of them, not so much as a flower or a leaf. What perfect peace. I myself was much in need of a rest after adjusting my inner balances, which had been, I must confess, disturbed by the philosophical torments of Ormarin, and I sank into a recliner near Incent and gazed with him at the whiteness all around, and listened with him to – nothing.

‘I shall never leave here!’ said Incent. ‘Never! I shall live out my life within these four walls, tranquil, alone, and doing no harm to anyone.’

I did not bother to reply.

‘When I think of the horrors I have seen and been part of – when I …’ And tears flooded from his great dark eyes.

‘Now, Incent,’ I said, and offered a selection of the soothing and useful phrases I had so recently offered Ormarin.

‘No. I’ve learned what I am capable of. I’ve decided I’m going to apply to go home. But first I have two things I must do. One is, I must apologize to Governor Grice.’

‘Ah.’

‘And second, I want to find Krolgul and … and …

‘And what, Incent?’

‘I thought – I would like to have a try at reforming him.’

‘Ah.’

A long silence.

‘Well, as you know,’ I said, ‘you can do whatever you feel you have to. That is the law. Freedom. Of choice. If you feel it is your destiny to reform Shammat, not to mention Puttiora, then …

‘And now you are laughing at me! It isn’t kind!’

‘Ah, well,’ I said, ‘perhaps it is too soon. In my view you should stay here a bit longer and have a nice rest. I wish I could do the same. But if you want to leave, then of course you may.’

I left then myself, noting with relief that Incent stayed where he was. If a reclining position, feet on the same level as the head, can be called heroic, then Incent’s approached the heroic: arms folded defiantly, chin confronting the ceiling, feet at attention.

After I left the hotel, through a lobby all excitement and noise – a trade delegation from the Sirian HQ on their planet Motz were just leaving, looking pleased with themselves – I walked straight into the park opposite. Some freely wandering gazelles came to greet me. They originate, as it happens, from Shikasta, stolen by Sirius and presented as part of a state gift. They licked my hands and nuzzled them, and I knew my emotional apparatus was nearly at Overload. Plant life in every stage of growth. The songs of birds. In short, the usual assault on one’s stabilizing mechanisms. So hard did I find it to keep my emotional balance that I nearly went back into the hotel to join Incent.

Oh, the glamour of the natural life! The deceptions of the instinctual! The beguilements of all that pulses and oscillates! How I do yearn for Canopus and for its … but enough of that. Forgive my weakness.

I was, of course, on my way to Krolgul, and in fact had nearly gone to him first, before Incent.

Shammat has set up on Volyen a School of Rhetoric. This is along the lines of the very successful School of Rhetoric that flourished for so long under Tafta on Shikasta during its latter days, positioned there to take advantage of the emanations from the Religions and Politics. But when Tafta made his miscalculation and backed the wrong junta on Shammat, the school on Shikasta was neglected and became useless. It was Krolgul who studied the history of that school, and who applied to the new Lords of Shammat to try to make one work on Volyen. It has been in operation since just after your visit here, fattening on the effluvia from the turbulences of Sirius.

I do not remember your mentioning Tafta’s school on Shikasta. It had two main branches, one disguised as a theological seminary, one as a school of politics. The first building was ornate, grandiose, providing every kind of gratification for the senses; the second was unadorned and functional. In the first, students used robes and accoutrements of great richness and variety; in the second, clothing was austere. But the kinds and types of speech used in the two apparently so different seminaries were almost identical, so that students could, and indeed were encouraged to, translate the religious into the political and vice versa, a process that usually needed no more than the substitution of a few words in a passage of declamation.

It was not possible to copy this exactly on Volyen, because Volyen’s ‘aspirations for higher things’ have always been identical with its political aspirations. But there are two main branches of Rhetoric, and the buildings that express them are quite different, one being severe in style and the other using all the aids of a sensuous kind you can imagine, from the artifices of lighting and colour to indoor plant-growing and culture. Sound is of course fully exploited. Thus a visit to the branch of Rhetoric described by them vulgarly as ‘with-all-the-tricks’ has the effect of reminding you of the Religious Seminary on Shikasta; while the one housed in a spare, undecorated building, full of students in plain clothing, induces comparisons with Shikasta of a different kind. If you remember, it was enough for a politician of the most crassly power-seeking sort to wear simple clothes and employ the speech of the common people to impress the muddleheads with ‘honesty’ and ‘sincerity.’

But since politics has accommodated, and still does, all Volyen yearnings for the better, it really is ‘as rich as life itself,’ to quote the slogan painted over the entrance to Krolgul’s School. Volyen has been a subject planet several times in the past: its thoughts and beliefs are full of the vestiges of the Rhetoric of slaves. It has been an independent planet, using minimum contact with its planetary neighbours: the language of proud and self-sufficient isolation is still in use, even though self-sufficiency is long past. It has been a rapidly growing and ruthless Empire: songs, poems, heightened and emphatic speech of all kinds, still in use, remain as evidence of this phase. It is an Empire falling apart and disconsolate in its present state: but its language has not caught up with its condition. It is soon to be a Sirian colony: well, it will not have to invent new means of expression, for the commonplaces of its epochs of servitude will only have to come forward again and find new life.

But the recital of this cycle, I see, is beginning to induce in me symptoms of Ormarin’s complaint, and I shall desist.

It turned out that I arrived at the school at a good time, for examinations were being held. I found Krolgul with some fellow examiners sitting behind a table at the end of a large hall, while students came forward one after another to show what they could do.

The examination hall is a simple rectangle, white, with no means of exciting the emotions by form, colour, scent, or any type of sound. In order accurately to test the effects of speech on the subjects, any other stimulus has been ruled out.

As I entered, I passed through a lobby crowded with the anxious examinees. They were from Volyen, Volyenadna, Volyendesta, and the two outside planets Maken and Slovin. Among them were several of our agents, notably 23 and 73 – but you will already have had my reports on them. Since they were so young in the Service when they were captured by Shammat, they never had time to become fully Linked, and therefore are of no use to Shammat. Krolgul does not understand at all why his attentions to these two, who are just as enthusiastic as Incent, have no results. Because, the conflict in them being less, they seem to be so much more stable and consistent, he expects from them more than he does from poor Incent … There is luckily so much Krolgol does not understand!

I greeted our two (temporarily) lost members and received their embarrassed greetings. For in their hearts they know themselves to be of Canopus, and in some devious way believe that their service with Shammat is still service with Us. The other agents did not recognize me.

As I entered, a young examinee had just failed. Krolgul and his associates had signalled to have her disconnected from the apparatus when he saw me; he jumped off the platform and came to greet me.

Beaming. Krolgul is always pleased to see me! Surprised? I was, and had to think it out. For one thing, our presence seems to him a guarantee of the importance of what he, what Shammat, is doing. On planets where they have been at work sometimes for millenniums without our – apparently – knowing it, they get quite downcast and wonder whether their efforts are worth it. No, my arrival in the Volyen ‘Empire’ gave them all a great boost.

And the other thing is that they know quite well how partial their information is, and that our plans for any planet are based on blueprints that are far beyond them. Krolgul, working with considerable skill for a mass uprising ‘all over the Volyens, all at the same moment – and that’s all and that’s enough,’ to quote from a recent speech, knows in his heart of hearts that my expectations are almost certain to be quite different, because of what we know.

He hurried towards me with his hand out, grinning a welcome, looking rather apelike, and this pleasure was genuine.

He was wearing another semi-uniform. These are not uniforms of or for anything in particular, but most young people throughout the Volyen ‘Empire’ wear self-invented uniforms. This is because they have been conditioned by recent wars and colonial uprisings, which were all fought in uniform. Every army, even if no more than a guerrilla group, used uniforms, imposing uniformity down to the last fastening and belt and neck opening, and any infringement, even the slightest, earned penalties, sometimes death. In fact, it is no longer possible for them to think of war except in terms of uniforms. This mental set now infects every aspect of their lives. There is a certain type of covering for the lower limbs, in thick, unyielding cloth, always of the same colour, and very tight, emphasizing the buttocks and the genitals. It is not only worn in every corner of the ‘Empire,’ but has spread to the near planets of Sirius as well. A young person who for some reason or another does not own this garment will regard himself or herself as an outcast, and will be so regarded by others.

This particular uniform of Krolgul’s is original in that the lower part consists of a skirt, similar to that worn by unskilled labourers – usually foreigners – on Volyen. On them it is hitched up between the legs into a waistband, but Shammat legs are too hairy and knotted to be displayed, so it is left to hang free. Also, it is coloured; the real reason is that Shammat loves strong colours, but the excuse is that ‘to wear black, the colour of the working clothes of the working masses, is a false identification.’ Over scarlet, blue, green, yellow flimsy cotton skirts are worn crisp brown tailored tunics whose main feature is that they are crammed with buttoned pockets all over the front and at the lower back. This gives the impression of a person who needs two free hands, probably to hold a gun of some sort.

Krolgul wore a bright-blue skirt, and his tunic was bulging with papers and writing instruments and various electronic devices.

‘Servus,’ he said, shaking my hand. ‘You are welcome. Do you want to listen?’

‘Do you think I have much to learn?’ I teased him.

‘Who knows?’ he said, pleased. ‘We flatter ourselves that … but you will see for yourself.’ He signalled for the entrance of the next candidate, but stood beside me, giving me quick, almost pleading glances, of which he seemed to be unconscious.

‘You are wanting to ask me about Incent?’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, all eagerness, but trying to sound offhand.

‘He is by no means recovered,’ I said. Krolgul brightened. Extraordinary, when his own personality is not being governed by some impersonation or other, how transparent he becomes, how easy to read. ‘Nor, to my mind, will he recover soon. It is a very great strain on him, as of course you know, when you use him as a conduit as you do.’ Here there were a variety of flickering glances at me, doubtful, triumphant, apologetic, even embarrassed. For Krolgul seemed to believe that we did not know of Incent’s importance to them in the battle between us, between Canopus and Shammat, though all our actions, both Shammat’s and mine, since my visit here began, proclaimed it. ‘You risk making him very ill,’ I said. ‘At this moment he is undergoing treatment.’

‘Well, he is just one of your agents, as far as we are concerned,’ said Krolgul, in a bluff liar’s style which even he knew was hardly convincing. And he took out a pipe and lit it.

‘Krolgul,’ I said, I hope temperately, and with the ‘humour’ without which one cannot survive a day in this place, ‘you are giving us an awful lot of trouble.’ At this he brightened, flattered again, jerking and writhing a little with pleased laughter. ‘But you really are on the wrong track, you know.’ I said this to observe how discouragement took possession of his whole person, and how suddenly, so that there stood this visibly dismayed person who, without any outward feature’s betraying it, reminded me so often of the ape, the animal; a blinking, open-mouthed Krolgul, Shammatian Overlord for the Volyen Empire, stood drooping beside me, and his eyes a single craving plea: Tell me, tell me, tell me.

But the attendants had wired up the examinee, and Krolgul had to return to his place on the platform. I refused to go with him, but stood near the wall by myself.

It was a young male from Volyenadna, a stocky grey-green stolid creature, who showed no sign of nervousness, but began at once, raising his hand carefully so as not to disturb the wiring of the monitors.

‘Comrades! Friends. I know I may call you friends, because of what we are going to undertake together.’

The graphs and print-outs showing his emotional responses to what he was saying were displayed, not where he could see them and perhaps become influenced by them, but behind him, on a large, high screen. I, and the examiners on the platform, could watch him and, at the same time, note the precise condition of his emotional apparatus.

It was already evident that this one could not last for long, despite his apparent heaviness and stolidity: at the word friends every part of his organism had responded, and undertake together had lifted him almost to the limit.

‘… No, you are not asking yourself, “And what is that?”, for you already know. We already know …

But the young man had already failed. On this we his voice had cracked with feeling; and the Failed buzzer went.

He was replaced by a strong, handsome young woman, from Volyendesta, full of assurance and calm smiles for us all.

She survived the first passage, with that dangerous and deliberately planted friends, very well; she went past that we while the machines registered hardly a flicker of response. But then it began to build up in her ‘… If we do not agree on the reasons for what has come to pass, then we shall on the cure. We stand together here united in one thing, that the situation cannot go on like this. Why are we surrounded by gross inequalities, by appalling injustice, by dreadful poverty and cynical wealth …’ Her voice had acquired a timbre that meant tears were in her throat, and she could not last long. But she persisted, although we could see by the impatience and irritation with herself on her face, that she knew she was defeated ‘… Why are we afflicted as we are by the bumbling stupidities of a bureaucracy groaning under the weight of its incompetence? Why in one street do we see the faces of young people who have never known what it is to open their own pay packet for their own honest work …

Her voice cracked on work; the buzzer went. She strode off, bravely, but in tears of disappointment.

The next was one of the frail, pale citizens of Slovin, who always have so much difficulty in getting the solid, stolid, robust denizens of the other planets to believe in their strength. Tough and enduring and with a nervous system much less susceptible to emotional inflammation than most, they are in fact, once one has experienced them, much prized. The platform expected great things of this apparently fragile revolutionary; and in fact she went easily past all the trigger words that had undone the others. ‘ … honest work, and in the next sicken at the sight of the overindulged and the purposeless. Why? Why?’ These two whys caused all her recordings to rise almost to danger level, but she recovered herself. ‘Why? We all know why! But what is to be done? We know. Again we know. Do we not? Our situation is bad. It is dreadful. But it is not hopeless. What we need, what we must have, is sacrifice.’ And she was over the top. But so sudden was the swoop upwards of the recording needles that the platform conferred, and said to her that she could go off, rest, and come back for another try. (In fact, she then succeeded easily.)

The nest was a Volyen indigenous worker. They are not the most attractive breed, being a dingy putty colour, and built heavily and on the whole without much grace. But they are known for their lack of emotional volatility. The needles flickered badly at friend, work, sacrifice, but recovered. ‘Yes. Sacrifice. And what is being asked of us is not only a tightened belt, though that is being asked; not only that we should work eighteen hours a day, even twenty-four hours a day, but also that we should agree to sink our separate and pitiful little individual wills and thoughts in the great whole, the great Will, the great purpose, the great Decision … that we must agree once and for all that things cannot be allowed to go on like this. Yes, once and for all, comrades … brothers … sisters … friends …’ Up swept the needles. The examinee himself put up a hand and begged for a later rehearing. It was granted.

The next was another Volyen. ‘And where shall we begin? Where? Why, with ourselves! How can we build a new world with old hearts and old wills? We need new, clean, young hearts …’ Hearts is where that unfortunate was lost. But all those who survived that far were granted a second chance.

There followed several who failed very early on, at the first testing words. Then, at last, one survived the whole course. It was another of the silvery, fragile, apparently so vulnerable Slovins. ‘We are surrounded by the heights of colossal events, in the light of which future generations will view their own fate. There cries out in the merged thunder of the times the present fate of planets. We need clear eyes and an unflinching purpose. We shall begin and complete our work to the sound of workers’ hymns and songs. Your work is not slave labour, but high service to the fatherland of all the decent people. Sacrifice! A united will! Only on this road shall we find the way out, to salvation, warmth, contentment. Sacrifice. And clean hearts. Clean hands. Love …’

This first wholly successful candidate retired, full of the shy modesty that is the convention here for people who have succeeded, and then the platform conferred. I could see that there was going to be a break. And I knew it was because Krolgul had been sitting up there biting his fingers and crouching in his seat, leaving the actual work of attending to the prowess of the examinees to his associates, while he brooded about what I had said. He wanted to come back to me and to press and to wheedle, until I told him what I knew. Until he knew what the plans of Canopus were, what the information of Canopus was …

But at this moment something unexpected happened. Into the examination hall walked – quietly enough, dressed unremarkably in a variation of local administrative-class dress – Incent. He saw me sitting there and made a gesture to me: Do not worry.

He did not meet my eyes, though. A bad sign; this meant that nothing I could say would affect him. I settled back so that what must happen, could …

Krolgul had leaped up at the sight of him, all renewed energy and purpose. Then, having cried out, ‘Incent …,’ he remembered my presence and glanced towards me, but in the same way as Incent, not allowing his eyes to meet mine.

Incent’s manner with Krolgul was – there is only one word for it – lordly. He stood in the examinee’s place and signalled to the attendants to wire him up.

‘I intend to pass this examination,’ he said, in the calm, almost indifferent way of his illness; for of course he was ill, though this need not be obvious to the examiners. He was depleted of emotion still; he was empty, after such an excess of it. No one recovers from Total Immersion in a few days, or even many. His emotional reservoirs were low; therefore he seemed calm; therefore did he give this appearance of benign urbanity.

When he was standing upright there, all the wires and leads in place, he smiled confidently at me.

‘I am ready,’ he said.

Well, it was very bad.

‘Comrades. Friends …’ I think Krolgul expected him to be lost at that very first trip-word, but what happened was much more alarming. Behind Incent, on the monitors, we could see that the needles, far from registering alarming peaks and jags and heights of emotion, were often out of sight at the bottom of the scale. So low was Incent that his whole system had gone into reverse. The word friends, which of course he spoke at the right interval after comrades, so that the nerves of the auditors had to vibrate in expectation, only caused what little emotion that was left in him to drain suddenly away. The needles flickered back into sight again at the bottom of the graphs. He was speaking in a flat, almost amiable way, though he got all the tones and intervals perfectly. He went through the gross inequalities and the injustice and so on very well, though there was literally no fuel left in him at all. I could see the examiners stirring and whispering. Krolgul was frightened out of his wits, looking at me the whole time: he had never seen anything like this, and had not known the condition existed. He was afraid I was going to punish him.

But Krolgul, of all the creatures in our galaxy, is not likely to understand free will. Not yet, at least; not for a long time.

Incent was droning on. ‘Sacrifice. Yes, sacrifice …’ And suddenly he fell, the wires pulling free.

I went over to him and brought him to himself.

He did not inquire where he was, for he knew at once, and stood up, weak but himself.

He looked at me with such shame, and said: ‘You had better take me back to the hotel, Klorathy. I’ve made a real fool of myself.’

And to Krolgul: ‘All right. But I haven’t done with you all yet. I was going to show you that I could pass your test and then reason with you on the basis of being immune to …’ And he wept, but the tears of weakness and emptiness, small, weak, painful tears.

Krolgul was running round us as we went to the door, panting and exclaiming: ‘But … but … I hope you aren’t going to hold us to account; I knew nothing about Incent’s coming here, I absolutely absolve myself of any responsibility.’

Incent was too weak to leave the building at once. We sat in an antechamber for a while, watching the examinees prepare themselves for the Examination in Rhetoric, which they did by using one another as sounding boards and checks on themselves in a piece which, for emotive words and general tone, was more taxing than the set piece in the actual examination hall.

‘What, then, is it that we are aiming at? What? Why, nothing less than the whole, perfect, radiant future of us all and our children! What is there to prevent this paradise? We all know there is nothing! In our soil lies the wealth of harvests and of minerals. In our seas and in the air, food. In our own hearts, love and the need to live happily in a happy world where sorrow is forgotten! What is it in the past that has given birth to sorrow, has bred unkindness? Why, only the lack of the will to abolish these things. And now everything has changed, for we have the will, and we have the means. Forward, and let us lay our hands on our rightful heritage – happiness. Happiness and love.’

Incent listened to this not totally without emotion: which I was pleased to see was scorn.

‘What horrible drivel,’ he was muttering.

‘I’m glad to hear you say it. I hope you will continue to think so.’

‘Well, I would have got through the test piece if I hadn’t passed out, wouldn’t I?’

‘Yes, but Shammat has words-of-power they didn’t use there at all.’

‘Have they? What? No, don’t tell me, or I suppose I’ll succumb. I really do feel so awfully ill, Klorathy. I’m giddy. I must lie down.’

He lay face down on a bench, his hands over his ears, and I continued to watch the lively scene. Not – as you can imagine, Johor – without mixed emotions! What an attractive lot they were, these chosen ones from all over the Volyen ‘Empire.’ Chosen, first of all, because they were for the most part from the privileged: the poor and deprived seldom have the energy to will for themselves positions of power. Chosen because they had natural ability. Chosen because natural abilities are matched with opportunity; plentiful opportunities now, with the ‘Empire’ falling apart. Young, for the most part; educated as far as such backward corners of the Galaxy understand the word; lively; full of the determination to succeed. Of the candidates I watched, while Incent lay there trying to recover his inner and outer balances, few succeeded in getting to the end of the difficult piece they set themselves. Fewer would pass the examination itself. But all would return to enrol for further sessions of study in Krolgul’s school: they believe in themselves, and the future that Krolgul promises them.

Shammat prowls through ‘the Volyens’ – to use the colloquialism – watching every public gathering for signs of talent. Some young person, who has perhaps leaped up to orate because of a genuine anguish over the lot of the unfortunate, because of a real vision of radiant futures, finds at his side this personage who understands him and his innermost thoughts, dreams, aspirations. ‘How wonderful you are,’ say the eloquent, compassionate eyes of this new friend. ‘How your beautiful ideas do you credit! Please go on …

This chosen one, chosen now by Shammat, finds efforts encouraged, speeches applauded, above all in every word the implication that these two, these new comrades, these friends, understand where others do not; finds that he is considered to be of finer, nobler, braver substance than most. Oh, how cleverly Shammat uses the instincts for evolution towards the better that are implanted in every creature in the Galaxy! But while a generous and imaginative understanding supports this neophyte, there is also judicious and intelligent criticism. ‘You might have phrased that a little better,’ breathes Krolgul, if it is indeed he, and it often is, for his energy is superb. ‘Perhaps if I might suggest …’ Only too happy is this aspiring one to find a genuine friendship, which is able to teach as well as to support. And so a career develops that has no future in the existing order, but relates only to an idea; the aspiring one, as he or she looks about at the chaos, the ugliness, the disorder of a time of disintegration, sees beyond it some infinitely noble society ruled by himself. But Shammat has never said, in any of these competent criticisms, ‘You aspire to power over your fellows.’ Only ‘You yearn to serve.’ With Shammat at their side, these young people learn the business of arousal by Rhetoric to the point where, judged ripe, they are offered a course of training …

‘You are very good at this,’ says Krolgul, with that modest and comradely complicity in which Shammat specializes, and which indicates in every look, smile, touch of the hand, You and I together against those others out there, the others without understanding. ‘Would you like to be even better? We can teach you, you know. We? Let us say, friends. But you have a handicap – do you mind my mentioning it? It is a wonderful thing, it is great, it is truly inspirational to watch you carry others away, watch you being carried away to such heights of fervour, to watch you becoming drunk on your own visions. But if you want to ascend to the control of real professionalism, that is a stage you must leave behind!’ And here Shammat cushions the shock, cradles in understanding the neophyte’s moment of disillusion. For throughout ‘the Volyens’ – Volyen itself and its colonies – thanks to the influence of Volyen, emotion is much prized. It stems from the hypocrisies of Empire, from the predominant emotion of the ruling class of that ruling planet. (Though from our point of view this rule has been so short, it has been long enough to infect a group of planets with the malady.) This emotion: ‘We are sacrificing ourselves, we Volyens, to bring to you, our children, the infinite advantages of our guidance in your development.’ Unreal emotions breed others: to weep, to emote, to show that you are weeping and emoting, these monstrous perversions are prized. Even by the lively and rebellious young people who see through the hypocrisies of ‘guidance’ and wish only to free themselves ‘for ever’ from Volyen. To hear that they must learn to separate in themselves their yearnings for a perfect world, and their verbal expression of it, from their cool and observant minds … no, it is hard to take, and Shammat knows it. ‘No, no,’ murmurs Krolgul, all sympathy, ‘I do not ask you to feel less for the sufferings of others. Can you believe that of me, now that you have come to know me so well? Perish the thought! Never! But to be effective, to become an instrument of the upward strivings of the Galaxy, to address the infinite and legitimate hungers of the poor, the suffering, the unfree – then you must learn to use words but not be used by them.’

Oh yes, it is with the wriest of thoughts that I have heard – so very often, for I have been present when Shammat is at its work, though Shammat has had no suspicion of it – this caricature of Canopus, this shabby mimicry.

And it is because Shammat can use words that sound so similar to Ours that so many of our own were among those aspirants for a degree from Krolgul’s School of Rhetoric that day. I noted them. I spoke to the two who knew me, using our own quiet words that might remind them, that will remind them, when the time comes that they are not Shammat’s, that their future is not to become one of the power-hungry of the Galaxy.

What Shammat does, in short, is to allow ‘life itself’ to throw up its material, encourage ‘life itself’ to develop it, and then, when these people are already well accustomed to assaults of Rhetoric both from others and as used by themselves, they are taken into Krolgul’s school, where they have to learn to become immune to it, so that they may control crowds by the most passionate, violent, emotional language possible, without ever being affected by it.

And never, during the preparations ‘in life itself’ or in the school, does Shammat say to its disciples: ‘This is a school for the use of power over others, for the crude manipulation of the lowest instincts.’

How easy it is for the unprepared, for the innocent, to lose their way: when Incent at last rolled over from his prone position on the bench beside me, he said, ‘Klorathy, I have been thinking, why not enrol me in Krolgul’s school? He need never know that I am here simply to learn what I need.’

‘And what do you need?’

‘How not to be manipulated by words. What else?’

‘And you really cannot see any difference in the methods we use to harden you against Rhetoric, and Shammat’s?’ He was lying there, our Incent, moodily elongated, arms behind his head, legs straight, black eyes brooding, very pale because of his condition. Meanwhile a young Slovin orated, ‘What, then, is it that we are aiming at? What? Why, nothing less than …

‘They certainly seem to have a much more enjoyable time of it than we do,’ he grumbled.

‘Indeed they do. Enjoyable, that’s the word. What is more enjoyable than power or the promise of it? When do we ever flatter you, Incent?’

A short, bitter laugh. ‘No, you can’t be accused of that, Klorathy. Well, perhaps I choose to learn what I need in Krolgul’s school and not with you! At least Krolgul won’t make me feel as if I’m a contemptible worm without a redeeming feature.’

‘No, but you will be a contemptible worm without a redeeming feature. If you go through Krolgul’s school, Incent, you’ll come out a first-class little tyrant, I promise you, able to stand on any plinth or platform anywhere, reducing crowds to tears or arousing them to murder, having them under your will, and not feel a flicker of remorse or compunction. Oh, Krolgul’s school is very efficient, and I was certainly planning for you to see it in operation so that you could make certain comparisons, but only when you were internally strong enough to be able to make the comparisons.’

Incent lay there, looking at me: dark eyes, the blankness behind than showing that his degree of exhaustion, though improved, was still severe.

‘Some of our people are there, with Krolgul. One of them is reciting now. Agent 73, I know her.’

‘Yes, and when they’ve come to understand, through life itself, what they have become, do you imagine it will be an easy task to build them up inwardly, to restore to them what has been stolen? Incent, you are at risk. More than, perhaps, some of the others. Your temperament, your physical tendencies, your capacity for self-projection –’

‘Thanks,’ said he, histrionically. ‘What equipment I’ve got, then!’

‘Well, who chose it, Incent? No, I don’t want to hear any complaints that you think free will is a mistake. What do you suppose the difference is between them and us? It is that you choose.’

A long silence, while some youth chanted: ‘And what is there to prevent this paradise? We all know there is nothing! In our soil lies the wealth of harvests and of minerals …

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But you’d better keep me under your eye for the time being, hadn’t you?’

I took him back to the hotel, and I do not need to say with what relief we entered the wonderful, all-artificial, cool, stimulus-free white room.

And there we have been resting. Side by side on the recliners. I, on my back, he prone and staring at the dull black of the flooring through the lattices of the chair, we recovered together. It was as silent as in a cave deep under the earth, as silent as if we floated in the black spaces between galaxies. The tall slim room reached up into the building, and at its top was a place of quiet light.

At first you are allowed only glimpses of circles, triangles, squares, all a luminous white on flat white, and the shapes darken, turn grey and then duller grey on a white that begins to shine, though softly. These statements of order remain, so that the eye may travel, but resting, soothed, reassured; soon, however, the mind begins to protest against changelessness, longs for relief, and as you understand that this is your thought – a hunger transmuted from a sharp need into the passionless stuff of the mind – the eye is in movement again because up there, at the very tip of the dim shaft, it is not polygons but polyhedrons you are trying to encompass with your gaze. They stand there, as it were waiting in the air, but their solidity is not yet defined and heavy, and you still believe it is a hexagon or an octagon that is enticing your gaze up into itself. But no, there is mass, and there is weight on the faintly gleaming white. Silence and stillness, no movement at all, for a long time, a long … And then again, when the restless eye begins to demand change, movement there is, tetrahedrons are changing into octahedrons, and then – dazzlingly! – into those charmers icosahedrons, which transform themselves into icosi-dodecahedrons, and it seems as if high above you in the tapering dimnesses of your own mind roll spheres that have within them all the luminaries, solid and plane, so that dodecagons tease star polygons, and a decagon may merge into a dodecahedron which resolves into a pentagon which opts, modestly, for the condition of being a cube. Though not for long …

Infinitely refreshed, I suggested to Incent that he might turn over and look. He did so, but at once groaned out, ‘Snowflakes!’ and flipped back again, to lie face down.

I continued to amuse myself with the mathematical game, and altered the controlling mechanisms from Automatic to Manual, so that I could at will move from the plane into the multi-dimensional and back again, for no sooner had I decided that I could never be seduced from the fascination of the dance of the polyhedrons, than I knew that I could contemplate for ever a ceiling that had become flat and decorated luminously with the patternings and intricacies of the interlacing polygons.

While I was returning to myself, Incent was also recovering, or at least showing signs of wanting to. ‘I have been thinking about Governor Grice,’ he said.

‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘Do you have to? You really do have no sense at all of your boundaries, Incent!’

‘Oh. Is that it? Is that what’s wrong with me?’ At the idea that there was some hope of a diagnosis he brightened: it is quite extraordinary how these children of Rhetoric are comforted by the word.

When I did not say anything, he said, ‘Oh, Klorathy, when I think of how unjust I was. After all, Grice was only doing what he had to do. And yet I was wanting to punish him as an individual.’

‘Incent,’ I said, ‘if you’d only do your homework – Do you do it? Do you in fact study what has been set for you? Because there are no indications in your speech or behaviour that you do anything of the sort! If you did, you’d know that when individuals or groups or associations of groups are made exemplar for the populace, they are always blackened and vilified before the ritual sacrifice. After all, you could even look at it as a sign of decency, or of the embryonic beginnings of justice, that it is so hard to get people to kill – even in hot blood – other people who they think are only doing their duty, though misguidedly. No, they have to be told that Grice is Greasy, and that Klorathy is Cruel, and that Incent is –’

‘There is something very stale and boring about that,’ said he, turning over suddenly and lying with his forearm across his eyes, ready to shield them, but gazing into the intricate patternings above us.

‘You mean the words are stale,’ I said. ‘You have heard them a thousand times in our schools. But they do not seem to affect the behaviour, certainly have had little effect on yours, so the idea isn’t. When you enthusiasts and revolutionaries can withstand Krolgul and refuse to allow yourselves to be whipped into lathers of self-righteousness at slogans like Grice the Greasy, then you can use words like stale –’

‘I wish I could go and apologize to him.’

‘There is nothing stopping you.’

‘Why do you put this terrible burden on us?’

‘Why is this burden placed upon us all?

‘You too, of course. I forgot.’

‘All of us.’

‘Why, it is too much. We are not fit. I am not fit. Oh, no …’ And he shut his eyes, away from a vision in the cool shade above of how a pattern of star octagons shifted from the flat into the three-dimensional, and back, lines and planes of dark grey on light grey, then a slight, fine black on shadow that was white only because a sharper white did not lie close enough to contrast with it and contradict. White upon white, or white that was as if a subtle warmth had been withdrawn, a world of strict and formal shapes lived in the spaces beneath the ceiling, which was itself unbounded, seemed to dissolve into nothing.

‘Oh, yes, we are,’ I said. ‘Everyone of us has felt exactly like you.’

‘You too?’

‘Of course.’

‘And Johor too – and everyone?’

His incredulity echoed mine. For of course I find it hard to believe that you, Johor, were ever so feeble, as Incent does of me.

‘And then?’

‘You’ll learn, Incent. But in the meantime –’

‘You do rather despair of me?’ And his giggle was quite consoling, being full of vitality.

‘Oh, you’ll do all right. But in the meantime –’

‘You’d rather I didn’t go running after Governor Grice?’

‘If that’s what you have to do, it’s what you have to do.’

‘Hmm … I can hear that there is something about him I don’t know. What is it?’

‘If I were to tell you that in some quarters he is regarded as a Sirian agent, what would you say?’

He exploded into laughter, a good coarse crude bray of scornful laughter. I felt an increase of optimism about him.

‘I suppose I can take it that you are planning to bump him off, or get someone else to, and that you have to blacken him first.’

‘Logical thinking,’ I said. ‘Congratulations.’

‘Oh, don’t laugh at me. They used to tell me at school that I always had to worry any proposition through into its own opposite before I could let it go … Well, is he a Sirian agent?’

‘That is one of the things I am here to find out. You, Incent – though I can tell by the sudden change in the set of your shoulders you find the news a disappointment – are not my only responsibility down here. Though I can assure you, there are times when you are quite enough for me … Do you think you can get along for a while by yourself in here, if I go out and do some fact-finding? Johor is waiting for a report.’ He watched me, soberly enough, as I prepared myself to leave. ‘Do you want the ceiling show left switched on?’

‘Yes. It makes me think of Canopus.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you trust me to stay here alone, after having made a fool of myself so often?’

‘I have no alternative, Incent,’ I said.