Читать книгу The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire - Doris Lessing - Страница 5

I requested leave from service on Shikasta; I find myself on a planet whose dominant feature is the same as Shikasta’s. Very well! I will stick it out for this term of duty. But I hereby give notice, formally, that I am applying to be sent, when I’m finished here, to a planet as backward as you like, as challenging as you like, but not one whose populations seem permanently afflicted by self-destructive dementia.

Now for my initial report. I have been here five V-years, and can confirm recent reports that our agent Incent did succumb to an attack of Rhetoric – not, after all, unknown, and not, as I may remind you, always unwelcome if regarded as an inoculation against worse – but unfortunately he did not recover, and suffers still from a stubborn condition of Undulant Rhetoric.

It was ten V-years ago that he fell to the wiles of Shammat, reporting his reactions in a letter which I attach herewith. Please see that it reaches the Archives.

Klorathy, I am taking the liberty of writing to you direct, instead of to the Colonial Office, because of our meeting when I came home to Canopus on leave last year and you said you had been assigned my supervision. I feel that what I want to ask is so important it goes beyond my little personal problems, but on the other hand I have no actual administrative problems as such to report.

To come to the point, I met someone on this planet’s second planet, Volyendesta, when I was there because of the riots, which necessitated the withdrawal of Volyen’s Imperial Forces. I do not have to tell you that all through my training as Colonial Servant, and during my briefing session, the dangers of Shammat were drummed into me – and everyone else! But imagine my surprise after the most inspiring evening of my whole life when I found that my companion was from Shammat! When he said he was Krolgul of Shammat I thought he was joking. I was awake all night in torment, Klorathy; I can’t remember ever spending such an awful night. Then I met him again by chance in the courts as the rebels were being sentenced, and I saw a man of such compassion, such warmth of heart, such sensitivity to others’ sufferings. This was the terrible Shammat! This wonderful being who wept as the rebels were led out to execution! I spent the next weeks with him. I was given a view of, first, Volyen, and then of the Volyen ‘Empire.’ I put it in inverted commas as is our Canopean way – but does this not show arrogance on our part? The Volyen Empire, consisting of the two moons, Volyenadna and Volyendesta, and two neighbouring planets, Maken and Slovin in Volyen terminology (the Sirian planets PE 70 and PE 71), hardly stands comparison with our Rule, or that of the Sirian Empire, but from their point of view it is something, an achievement. I was quite ashamed to see Krolgul’s ironic but kind smile when I spoke of the Volyen Empire with what I am afraid I now see as something not far from contempt.

And it was not only of Volyen affairs but of Sirius and ourselves as well that I was introduced to a very different view.

So different there was a point when I realized, and with what shock and distress I hardly dare to say, that my attitude was no longer consistent with that of a loyal servant of Canopus.

I am prepared to offer my resignation. What shall I do?

Your always grateful pupil,

Incent.

I did not reply to this, though, of course, had he resigned I would have asked him to reconsider. But he did not. I heard he was sufficiently involved with the rebel forces on Volyendesta, to the point where he was wounded in the arm and had to be hospitalized. Since I was due in the Volyen system, I decided to wait till I had seen him.

Volyen itself seethes with emotions of all kinds, its four colonies no less – to the extent that there is nowhere I could place Incent hoping he would be free from the stimulus of words long enough to recover his balance. No, I had either to send him home to Canopus with the recommendation that he was unfit for Colonial Service, and this I was reluctant to do – as you know, I am always unwilling to waste such experiences in young officials who might be strengthened by them in the long run – or to regard it as a case where we must decide to exercise patience.

Of course we can decide to submit him to the Total Immersion Cure, but that does seem rather a last resort. Meanwhile, he is still in hospital.