The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire. Doris Lessing

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