The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire is the fifth in a series of novels with the overall title ‘Canopus in Argos: Archives’; the first is Shikasta (1979); the second The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980); the third The Sirian Experiments (1981); and the fourth The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1982).

KLORATHY, FROM INDEPENDENT PLANET VOLYEN, TO JOHOR ON CANOPUS.

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.

THE HISTORY OF THE VOLYEN EMPIRE. SUMMARY CHAPTER. (EXCERPTS.)

This is the largest planet of a Class 18 Star situated on the remotest verges of the Galaxy, on the outside edge of its outer spiral arm. It is in a very poor position for Harmonic Cosmic Development; and for this reason it has never been part of the Canopean Empire. We did not do more than maintain Basic Surveillance for thirty thousand Canopean years. At the beginning of this period an evolutionary leap had taken the population from Type 11 to Type 4 (that is to say, Galactian Basic), and a predominantly gathering-and-hunting type soon developed agriculture, trade, and the beginnings of metallurgy, and built towns. There was little contact between Volyen and near planets. Then, because of a cosmic disturbance resulting from the violent ‘soul-searchings’ of the neighbouring Sirian Empire, the population increased rapidly, material development accelerated, and a ruling caste came to dominate the entire planet, making slaves of nine-tenths of the population. All the planets in that sector were similarly affected, and there began a period of history during which they have been invading and settling one another, as short-lived and unstable ‘Empires,’ for twenty-one C-years.

Volyen has several times been dominant, and several times a subject.

The Sirian Empire, like us, had never made any attempt to absorb Volyen. During Volyen’s stable period, Sirius was more or less stable and had made a decision not to expand. When Sirian influences upset the balances of Volyen, it was because of the turmoil, from end to end of the Sirian Empire, attendant upon the conflict between the two parties known as the Conservers and the Questioners, a conflict that split even the governing oligarchy of Sirius, the Five. Some of their outlying planets rebelled, and were instantly punished. Some asked to be permitted to secede and become self-governing. There were reprisals. These energetic, not to say savage, measures caused the Questioners to redouble their protests and demands that Sirius should be studying its own nature and potentialities from points of view not exploitative. For a short period the Conservers were dominant, and the Questioners were also punished. While all this upheaval went on, the fact that Volyen, in a dominant phase again, had developed its armies and sent them out to conquer its two moons, or planet’s planets, went virtually unnoticed. When Volyen dubbed itself the Volyen Empire, Sirius, like us, merely noted the fact, as we had done before. But when Volyen expanded beyond its own planets and sent armies into the two other planets of its solar system, Sirius did take notice. For these two planets had been for S-millenniums subjects of sharp debate and disagreement. When the Sirian Empire, long before this time, had made a decision not to expand further, it was these two planets (Maken and Slovin) that had been next on the list for conquest and colonization. Neither we nor Sirius had named these planets; in their system they were designated PE 70 and PE 71 (Possible Expansion). The Questioners volubly, not to say violently, objected to having any attention whatsoever paid to this ‘Empire,’ which from their point of view was useless because of its backwardness, but they were overruled. The decision of the Sirian governing body, the Four, to ‘punish’ Volyen, and to claim PE 70 and PE 71, marked the beginning of a renewed Sirian expansion, which was nothing like the planned and controlled developments of Sirian expansion under the Five but was the result of internal convulsions. The Sirian Empire made a wild surge outwards, intensifying its own instability, and leading inevitably to its collapse.

1 2 3 4 Вперед

Дорис Лессинг – The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (страница 1)

CONTENTS

KLORATHY, FROM INDEPENDENT PLANET VOLYEN, TO JOHOR ON CANOPUS.

THE HISTORY OF THE VOLYEN EMPIRE. SUMMARY CHAPTER. (EXCERPTS.)