The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire. Doris Lessing

so far no one else had noticed it.

      I said, loudly and firmly, ‘I will now make a short summary of what I think you might do –’

      But Krolgul was on his feet, in the posture of the worker’s emblem, and he was shouting: ‘Death to the tyrant, death to Grice, death to …’ And Incent had come to life again, and was standing there beside me smiling. ‘Death,’ he was stuttering, but his voice was gathering force, ‘death to the Volyen bully, death …

      Is it possible, Johor, that we sometimes tend – I put it no stronger than that – to overestimate the forces of reason? I emphasize here that Calder is a solid, sensible man, whose life is spent in exact assessments, judgments, in measure.

      And certainly, as Incent stood there, swaying a little, still deadly pale but strengthening fast, Calder was smiling in a half-pitying embarrassment.

      I asked, in a low, calm voice, ‘Calder, am I to have my say?’

      ‘If they will let you,’ said Calder, with a half-derisive, half-admiring laugh, and nodded at the two, Incent and Krolgul, in their heroic stances, chanting, ‘Death to …

      ‘Only you can stop them,’ I remarked.

      Calder said, ‘Let him speak …

      Krolgul at once stopped, with a sardonic, contemptuous shrug, and sat down again in his familiar posture that managed to suggest a modest and unassuming personal worth and at the same time an ineffable superiority.

      Incent chanted on, until Calder half stood up and said to him, ‘Sit down, lad; let the opposition have its say.’ And Incent, gasping, sat, giving me appalled, apologetic looks, and then Krolgul looks of apology and of complicity.

      I said: ‘What you have to do is diversify your economy.’

      I knew this would be inflammatory, because of its simplicity and because it was unexpected.

      Volyenadna was a mining planet. That was what it was. That was what it had been, for as long as the history allowed by Volyen recorded.

      A silence. And then Krolgul allowed himself, first of all a long, silent heave of laughter, and then a burst of laughter. Now laughter from the Volyenadnans. From Incent, a blank, heavy look and a loose jaw. I was particularly concerned for him: after all, if I could not save him, return him to himself again, then …

      ‘Let him speak,’ said Calder, but on his face was a heavy sneer.

      I said: ‘You are a slave planet, as Krolgul says you are. A rich planet, whose wealth goes elsewhere.’

      ‘To Greasy-guts,’ remarked Krolgul, in a low, as it were meditative voice.

      ‘No,’ I said. ‘For generations the results of your labours have been taken from you. But it was not always thus. Have you forgotten that before you were the subjects of Volyen, you were the subjects of the planet Maken, and before that of planet Slovin, and both took from you the minerals you mined? But before that you were the conquerors. There was a time when you dominated Volyendesta and Volyen itself –’

      ‘With what?’ inquired Krolgul. ‘Ice and snow?’

      ‘As the ice retreated, and you spread over the tundra, you multiplied, and did not find enough to eat or to keep you warm. You stole spaceships from Slovin, who landed here on a foraging trip, and you used them to travel to Maken and to Volyen, and you made others, and you terrorized four planets and took from them, just as now everything is taken from you …

      Calder listened to this with some derision. ‘You are saying that we were blood-sucking imperialists, just as Volyen is now?’

      ‘I am saying that you have not always been slaves and the providers of riches for other people.’

      ‘And you are suggesting that …

      ‘You are a rich prize for Volyen, and you will be for whoever succeeds Volyen, since empires rise and fall, fall and rise. Volyen will disappear from this planet, just as Maken and Slovin grew weak and disappeared, and just as you grew weak and were overthrown from the planets you had conquered. But whoever succeeds Volyen’ – I could not, of course, even hint at Sirius here, for that was a word that could be breathed only to Ormarin, he was as yet the only one strong enough to hear it, and Krolgul himself does not know how soon Volyen will collapse in on itself and become a subject – ‘whoever will come after Volyen will use you in the same way, if you don’t make sure they won’t. But you could make yourselves stronger. You could become farmers as well as miners and –’

      Krolgul was laughing, sobbing with laughter. ‘Farmers,’ he cried, while Calder’s followers laughed. ‘Farmers – on this ice lump of a place.’ But his contempt for the planet suddenly showed too plainly, and Calder did not like it.

      ‘Farm what?’ he asked me, directly.

      ‘If you will listen to me, you and your people, I will show you. Yours is not the only planet with these conditions.’

      ‘And what makes you think that Volyen will allow us? She wants to keep us as we are; she’s interested in our minerals, and nothing more.’

      ‘But,’ I said, ‘you have a Governor-General who in my view would listen to you.’

      And at this Krolgul was shouting, ‘Grice the Greasy-guts, Governor-General Guts, Greenguts …

      And suddenly Incent was on his feet, once again alive and alert and Krolgul’s creature.

      ‘Down with Grice,’ he was shouting. ‘Get rid of Grice and …

      I, across the din, looked hard at Calder and said, ‘Remember, Calder, I can help you. Remember I said this.’

      Calder did not allow his eyes to meet mine: always a sign that you have ceased to be real for these people. And, indeed, for a few minutes I felt as if I had suddenly become invisible, for all those hard, antagonistic grey eyes from the workers’ benches, and of course Incent’s passionate black eyes, avoided me, were directed at one another. As for Krolgul, he lowered his head as if gazing thoughtfully at the floor, while in fact keeping a heavy-lidded, hypnotic pressure on Incent, now again his subject.

      ‘It is quite evident,’ Incent was saying, or chanting, in a low voice that gathered power, ‘that we are here at the fulcrum of a dynamic! What perspectives stretch before us as we stand with one foot in the shameful and turgid past and the other in the future where the forms of life will become ever more vibrant and luminous and where, grasping opportunities in hands that have lost timidity, we build happiness where nothing is now but sullen misery …

      Calder’s group began to emit angry noises, and Calder shouted, ‘Come on, lad, let’s hear your concrete proposals.’

      Incent, brought up short, stood smiling vaguely, his Rhetoric jumping and jolting through him so that his hands twitched, and so did his mouth.

      Krolgul said in a low voice: ‘A concrete proposal! You ask for an action, an act! I’ll tell you what act waits for you to –’

      ‘– to fill it with the inevitability of history …’ said Incent, almost tentatively, for his impetus had been checked and he could not regain it.

      ‘Yes,’ said Krolgul, more loudly. ‘An act which will speak for you to the tyrants who –’

      ‘– fatten on your anguish!’ shouted Incent.

      Krolgul: ‘Grice the Guts, Volyen’s minion, Volyen’s symbol, he stands here among you as Volyen; seize him and –’

      ‘Grab Grice!’ shouted Incent, jumping up and down. ‘Drag him before the … before the …

      ‘Bar of History,’ prompted Krolgul. And, with an almost unnoticeable gesture of his hand, he made Incent keep quiet, so that Incent stood with his mouth loose, his eyes half closed: the image of a sleeper, or of someone in a trance.