Table Of ContentDORIS LESSING
CANOPUS IN ARGOS: ARCHIVES
Documents relating to
THE SENTIMENTAL
AGENTS IN THE
VOLYEN EMPIRE
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
KLORATHY, FROM INDEPENDENT PLANET VOLYEN, TO
JOHOR ON CANOPUS.
KLORATHY TO JOHOR, FROM MOON II OF VOLYEN,
VOLYENDESTA.
KLORATHY TO JOHOR, FROM MOON I OF VOLYEN,
VOLYENADNA.
KLORATHY TO JOHOR, FROM VOLYENDESTA.
FROM KLORATHY, IN VATUN ON VOLYEN, TO JOHOR.
KLORATHY IN VATUN TO JOHOR.
KLORATHY ON VOLYEN, TO JOHOR.
KLORATHY ON VOLYENADNA, TO JOHOR.
KLORATHY TO JOHOR. FROM VOLYEN.
REPORT FROM AM 5.
KLORATHY, ON SLOVIN, TO JOHOR.
AM 5 ON MOTZ, TO KLORATHY.
KLORATHY ON VOLYEN TO JOHOR.
EXTRACTS FROM A REPORT FROM AM 5.
KLORATHY TO JOHOR FROM VOLYEN.
AM 5 TO KLORATHY.
KLORATHY TO JOHOR, FROM VATUN.
GRICE VS. VOLYEN
KLORATHY TO JOHOR. FROM VOLYEN DESTA.
ORMARIN TO KLORATHY.
KLORATHY TO JOHOR, ENCLOSING THE ABOVE.
KLORATHY TO JOHOR, FROM HIS SPACE TRAVELLER, EN
ROUTE TO SHAMMAT.
About the Author
By the same author
Read On
The Grass is Singing
The Golden Notebook
The Good Terrorist
Love, Again
The Fifth Child
Copyright
About the Publisher
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.
NOTE BY ARCHIVIST. Klorathy arrived in the Volyen ‘Empire’ when its two
