He was hardly listening. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said to her, in the kindly, fatherly way they use with their females when the females are playing their allotted role, which is to work even harder than their men.
‘I suppose you haven’t had any news, Comrade Calder, of the next Volyen food consignment?’
‘No, but it’s late. My wife was grumbling about it.’
‘Strange, I wonder why she’d do that?’ She went out slowly. To stand just outside the door, while I watched Calder inwardly writhing in the toils of his suspicion of me.
I said, ‘In a very short time you will be overrun by Sirius. Yes, whether you fight or not. And then, almost at once, there will be no Sirians, because their Empire is at its peak and is about to collapse.’
‘How do you know all this? Oh, yes, you say Canopus, Canopus, as if that’s an answer to it all.’
‘From your point of view it is … Shall I go on? The Sirian conquest of Volyen will be brutal and inefficient, as I have been using the word, for Sirius itself is riven with debate, conflict, indecision. There have been times in Sirian history when a conquest of a planet was efficient. I mean, Calder, organized with certain aims in view, and carried out in accordance with a plan. This will not happen as Volyen is overrun. Because first one, then another group comes to the top on the Sirian senior planet itself, and on all the planets of the Sirian Empire. There is no consistent plan now. The conquest of Volyen will take place almost by accident, because of a temporary ascendancy of a certain viewpoint within the current – temporary – alignment of some planets. And you will be overrun, not by Sirian Mother Planet soldiers, but a mix of armies who will quarrel among themselves, who will never agree about anything, and who will not carry out orders.’
‘Oh, this poor Volyenadna,’ Calder brought out heavily. Tears stood in his eyes, in accordance with this convention in ‘the Volyens’ that tears are a sign of superior sensibility, and even of superior thought. They will make sure you have noticed that they are evidencing these signs of sensibility to a situation, and therefore Calder turned his head slightly so that I could see water glistening in his eyes. ‘How long will it all last?’
‘Not long at all,’ I said, ‘because the armies that overrun you will bring hardly enough food for themselves. And will not bring food for you. When they notice that you are starving, they will appeal to the Sirian HQ on Volyen for supplies, but inadequate supplies will arrive, and then none …
‘How do you know all this, sitting there so calmly, announcing this, that, and the other thing as if you can see it?’
‘Why should we have to see it? It is enough to know the nature of the Species, the races, the individuals involved. The armies that will overrun this little planet – this very little, unimportant planet, Calder – will be in a blind panic, because they will have understood that the Sirian Empire is collapsing around them and that they may find themselves marooned here, forgotten, on a planet that – forgive me – is not the most inviting in the Galaxy.’
‘O unfortunate planet, planet doomed to misery, to hardship, to …
‘Rubbish, Calder. It is not doomed at all. You could have your own food supplies long before then. You could bribe the rabble of soldiery to leave, with food, for there won’t be much of it anywhere, I promise you, not even on Volyen, given the mess the Sirians will be making of everything. In fact, if you plan intelligently, you will be able to use your supplies of Rocknosh to buy yourselves not only independence from the Sirians, but real independence for yourselves. You will be able to govern yourselves, use your minerals yourselves, export what you choose to whom you choose.’
‘There is just one little thing you have overlooked,’ brought up Calder triumphantly. ‘It is this. What makes you think that Volyen will let us get away with it? What? You tell me that, now!’ And he subsided, chuckling, shaking his head from side to side over my foolishness, and sending glances at that audience of his for whom he had been performing all his life.
‘Did I not begin by saying they wouldn’t even notice it? You could cover the rocks of half the planet with a dull-reddish furry plant, and they wouldn’t know it.’
‘Oh, that’s what you say!’
‘Anticipating that you have become such slaves by habit, I had planned to get hold of Governor Grice so that he could obtain official permission for the introduction of this food. There are plenty of people in the Colonial Administration of Volyen who sympathize with you about your treatment. And Governor Grice is exactly the right man to do it, but …
‘And now you’ve gone completely off the rails, as far as I am concerned.’
‘It would have been almost the simplest way – for the simplest and easiest would have been for you to agree and to do it yourselves. But Grice is not himself at the moment, I am afraid.’
‘And another thing: I’m not sitting here to listen to you call me a slave.’
And he got up, conscious of a hundred pairs of eyes for whom his demeanour, enduring modestly heroic, was intended. Without looking at me, he shouted out: ‘The Sirian gentleman will pay.’ As the woman came in, he grinned at her, like a child who has won a point over another, made a grimace towards me that categorized me as a hopeless lunatic, slapped her across her large buttocks as a way of re-establishing his balance, and went out.
The woman stood looking at me. Like all their females, she is a rock and a stone, all strength and ability to withstand. She came slowly across and stood by Calder’s empty chair.
The following is a full record of the conversation I had with this female of Volyenadna.
‘You say there is this food?’
‘Yes. I have spores of it here.’
‘When I plant it, how do I look after it?’
‘You don’t. It will grow on any rock. Here is a list of the methods you can use for preparing it.’
‘Thank you.’
KLORATHY TO JOHOR. FROM VOLYEN.
The first thing I heard on my return was that Grice had been kidnapped by Motz. No ransom has been demanded. Questions include: Why Grice? Is Motz aware that Grice in his youth became a Sirian agent? If so, is it important? Is this kidnapping designed to frighten all the other ex- or ‘sleeping’ Sirian agents on Volyen? In other words, was this kidnapping inspired by some Sirian faction? Does the other nearby Sirian planet, Alput, know of this situation?
I hear that Alput and Motz are in serious disagreement over the invasion of Volyen.
Motz represents an almost pre-Ambien attitude to the effect that a Sirian takeover is by definition an advantage to the taken-over. Might is right. Sirius is good, other planets are all in need of her superior wisdom.
The faction on Alput currently in ascendance debates endlessly about the Virtue.
Waiting for further information about Grice, I paid a visit to Incent. On my way in, our friend the hotelkeeper stopped me to say that he believed, on the basis of sounds coming from the inner room of Incent’s convalescence, that Incent was ‘off again.’ And so it proved. He was lying on his back in the recliner, and contemplating with giggles, shouts of delight, groans, ecstasies of all kinds, the patterns of the upper part of the room, which he had set into violent motion. Revolving rhombohedrons, tripping tetrahedrons whirled in a dance with oscillating octoids, while Luminosity was set at Full and the Sound Gauge was on Singing of the Spheres, also at Full.
I switched off the apparatus and waited for him to stop writhing and gasping out cries and groans of ‘Wow! Cool! Neat! Right on! Sensational! I am so moved!’
He lay on his back staring at the now empty space at the top of the room.
‘All right,’ he said at last, ‘there’s no need to say it.’
‘What are we going to do with you, Incent, what!’
‘The thing is, I really do feel I have it in me to get well again; I really do believe that, Klorathy.’
‘Very well, then. Do you want to stay here – only I might be gone quite a while, because poor Grice is giving us a lot of trouble – or do you
want to come with me?’
‘Oh, no, I don’t think I could trust myself outside yet. It is wonderful in here. I really was feeling that I was coming to myself again. No, I’ll be careful with the mathematicals.’
And so I left him.
Our agent on Motz (AM 5) is trusted by Grice’s captors; ironically he was a foundation member of the revolutionary group that now runs Motz, being at that time in a sentimental condition. He rapidly recovered, and found himself advantageously placed, from our point of view. I am waiting for a report from him.
REPORT FROM AM 5.
Salud! Servus, as Krolgul would say – and does say, since here he is, stirring it up. Mind you, he is not having it as easy as he likes, because the situation here is pretty clear-cut, and what the Father of Lies likes is already muddied waters he can muddy even worse. The situation? Onto a barren planet unpopulated by higher animals came a population fleeing from another planet, their own, but taken over forcibly by a species evicted from their planet by … but the account of this invasion was sent to the Archivists. Meanwhile, the deserts and marshes of Motz have been made fruitful. They are a clever, industrious people, full of the energy that results from single-mindedness. What are their minds and efforts directed towards? One thing only, to return to their home planet. For Motz, which they have created, have made, is not their home: so their minds have been set. While levelling a mountain or draining a swamp, they are singing: One day we shall go home. Yet the usurpers on their own planet have of course no intention of leaving, unless forcibly ejected. For a long time Motz was not strong enough; recently it has become strong enough. Yet while they talk – dramatically enough – of war, they do nothing about it. The truth is, they have become Motzan, of Motz; they do not really want to ‘go home.’ But they can’t admit it, at least not publicly. Speeches and ceremonies of all kinds allow them to dream – briefly – of ‘our home.’ They decided that their grievance, their just cause, had been forgotten by the Galaxy, and kidnapped Grice to publicize their cause, counting on Volyen making efforts to recover one who is, after all, a senior colonial official. But Volyen, as you know, has made no more than routine protests; and this is because Grice’s past as a Sirian agent (admittedly an ambiguous one) makes it hard for them to know what to do. As for Motzans, that he was, is, an agent serves only for them as a guarantee of worthiness, of Virtue.
Krolgul has told them that Grice was a ‘blood-sucking tyrant, on Volyenadna, and, unable to reconcile these two states of mind, after long and tortuous thought they have concluded that his tyrannical behaviour as Governor was the result of a necessary concealment of his (intrinsically) virtuous nature, so as to make his association with Sirius seem improbable. Because these revolutionaries, who call themselves the Embodiments of Sirian Virtue, believe that, ‘overall and in the long term and looking at the essential situation,’ Good equals Sirius, and if anything that opposes Sirius shows any signs of decency, then this can only mean (a) the phenomenon in question is showing, but of course only briefly, Sirian qualities, or (b) it isn’t really good and decent at all, ‘looked at from an objective point of view.’ This, despite the fact that it was under the aegis of Sirius that their planet was filched from them by conquerors whose own home had been stolen; and that everywhere you look in these Sirian outlying colonies is nothing but confusion, incompetence, lying, and those particularly brutal types of tyranny that result from indecision and conflict at the source: the Mother Planet of Sirius.
These are people who cannot accommodate more than one point of view at a time because of their history, which as I’ve said is a single-minded concentration on one thing, to return ‘home.’ Faced with a fact that does not fit their current view, they attempt to turn it on its head, and, if they fail, simply push it out of sight. Krolgul inadvertently let slip that he has enjoyed perfect freedom on Volyen to run his School of Rhetoric, and since he is currently informing them that Volyen is a total tyranny, they have decided that if there is such a school, then he, Krolgul, must be in the pay of the Volyens.
‘No, no,’ cried Grice, ‘not so. Volyen at this present moment of historical time enjoys a situation of comparative democracy and tolerance for varied viewpoints, though this is, of course, due entirely to the contradictions of historical anomalies and uneven historical evolvement …’ (I hasten to remind you that I am quoting.) ‘In short, Volyen itself is the pleasantest place imaginable to live in for the vast majority of its citizens,’ insisted Grice, quite courageously really, seeing that the Embodiments were getting more and more restless and uneasy as their mentations jammed under the strain of it all.
But it was no use. For Motz, like all of the surrounding planets, is in a war-fever, ready to invade ‘the Volyens.’ This war-fever is, of course, equated with the Virtue, and it is too much to ask of these poor bigots that they must invade the ‘pleasantest planet imaginable’ in order to impose Sirian Virtue, even at the behest of ‘irresistible historical imperatives’ (a phrase much used at this ‘present moment of historical time’ here).
No, it is all too much for the unfortunate Embodiments; and so they have simply shelved the problem of Grice. They have locked him up in the sociological wing of their main library, because it happens to have only one, easily guarded, entrance. There Grice is left alone, with nothing to do but read.
I have described their state of mind.
I shall now describe Grice’s. He has been conditioned to believe (by the unavoidable historical accident aforementioned) that to keep an open mind, and to see several points of view simultaneously, and to accommodate ‘contradictions,’ is a sign of maturity. This exercise has cost him nothing but discomfort because he has never been informed that he is an animal, recently (historically speaking) evolved from a condition of being in groups, small or large, inside which everything that will conduce to the survival of the group is an imperative, and where individuals can expect to receive what they need; while outside are enemies, who are bad, to be ignored if possible, threatened if they intrude themselves, destroyed if necessary. The minds of Volyens, in this brief period of theirs when a calm and dispassionate and disinterested inspection of possibilities is the highest they aim for, are being asked for something that challenges millions of their years of development. No, it is the passionate bigotry of the Embodiments which is what come easily; ‘seeing one another’s point of view’ is a stage upward in evolution to be made, and then kept, only with difficulty … And there sits Grice, in daily contact with people whom he must by upbringing regard as comparatively simpleminded, and even pitiable; but longing with every fibre of his emotional self to join. The Embodiments love one another, cherish one another, look after the weak, reward the strong, watch one another’s every thought and impulse. For the only ideas they ever permit themselves are related to how they have been dispossessed of their rights, and of how they will regain these rights on ‘their own place,’ how they will turn this Motz into a paradise, ‘just to show the Galaxy.’ The Embodiments are people who have barred from their minds all the richness, the variety, the evolutionary possibilities in the Galaxy. Grice watches them, and yearns to be of them, while through his tormented mind pass feebly protesting thoughts. ‘No, it isn’t like that,’ he keeps planning to say to them ‘when the opportunity is ripe.’ ‘No, but that isn’t true. How can you say that? I’ve been to that planet; it’s not at all as you describe it … but look, it’s a question of facts …’
KLORATHY, ON SLOVIN, TO JOHOR.
Bad news about Incent, I am afraid. I left him with revision material, but as a result of remorse over his misuse of the ‘mathematicals,’ he overdid things. The information was not properly absorbed into his emotional and mental machineries, but overflowed into a compulsion to instruct. He left me a message and departed for Slovin, commandeering my Space Traveller.
He had reasoned thus: Slovin, having been subjugated so long by Volyen, and having just thrown off its chains (sorry!), must be in a certain easily foreseeable and easily diagnosed
condition. Part of the material left with him to study had to do with the Shikastan Northwest fringes. If you remember, that area of Shikasta was subjected for nearly two thousand Shikasta-years to one of the most savage and long-lasting tyrannies ever known even on that unfortunate planet, that of the Christian religion, which allowed no opposition of any kind, and kept power by killing, burning, torturing its opponents, when not able to do so by the simpler and even more effective methods of indoctrination and brainwashing. In the early twentieth S-century this religion lost its hold, largely as a result – because of new technologies – of the opening up of Shikasta to travel by the masses. It was no longer possible for the tyrants of the Northwest fringes to maintain in their subjects the belief that Christianity was the only religion, that their God was the only God. And the truth slowly came home to these recently enslaved ones that the Northwest fringes were in fact provincial and backward, compared with other parts of Shikasta that had older and more sophisticated civilizations.
There followed a period when the peoples of that area (a small area geographically) had the opportunity to enjoy freedom of thought, of speculation; freedom to explore possibilities that had been denied them for many hundreds of S-years. But because they had been conditioned by the various sects of that religion to need domination, ‘priests,’ creeds, dogmas, ukases, they sought these things again, in the same forms but under other names, notably in ‘politics.’ New ‘religions’ arose, but without ‘God,’ which were identical in every way with the sects of the ‘God’-orientated religions of the past. Each was equipped with priests with whom it was not possible to disagree, whose orders had to be obeyed, and with ‘creeds’ that had to be recited and quoted; and the slightest infringement of the ‘line’ earned savage punishments, from ostracism and loss of employment to death, just as had happened with ‘Holy Writ’ in the recent past. Each new secular religion maintained itself by the use of the techniques of brainwashing and indoctrination, learned from their great exemplars, the priests, who had perfected them through two thousand S-years; techniques continually refined and augmented with the increasing sophistication of psychology.