The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire Read Free

Shikastan years with the utmost heroism and devotion to duty and in the most vile and brutal conditions, for aims that are to be judged as stupid, self-deluding, and greedy by their own immediate descendants a generation later, urged on by
words
used to inflame violent rival nationalism, each nation convinced, hypnotized by
words
to believe that it is in the right. Millions die, weakening both nations irreparably.
    â€˜Incent,’ said I, ‘you are not taking your medicine!’
    â€˜No,’ he cried, and he started up and clutched a pillar of the balcony with both hands, gazing with streaming eyes into the crashing and booming waters that flung spray up as high as the hospital windows. ‘No, I can’t stand it. I can’t and I won’t! I cannot endure the horror of this universe! And as for sitting here hour after hour and watching this record of tragic loss and waste –’
    â€˜Well,’ I remarked, ‘you are not actually throwing yourself into the sea, are you?’
    This was a mistake, Johor. I had underestimated his demoralization, for I was just in time to catch him by the arm as he flung himself over.
    â€˜Really,’ I heard myself scolding him, ‘how irresponsible can you get? You know quite well you would only have to come back and do it again! You know how much it costs, having to refit you with a new outfit, getting you into theright place at the right time …’ I record this little tirade to show you how quickly I was affected by the general atmosphere; are you sure I am really suitable for this work? But he at once collapsed into self-pity and self-accusation, said he was fit for nothing (yes, I have seen the echo here –
thanks!),
not up to it, and unworthy of Canopus. Yes, he was prepared to agree, if I insisted, because he knew I could not be wrong, that Shammat was evil; but it was merely an intellectual assent, his emotions were at odds with his thoughts, he could not believe that he would ever be a whole person again … All this to the accompaniment of Tchaikovsky and Wagner.
    I switched on a particularly therapeutic programme illustrated by newsreels of a recent disturbance on a planet situated on the very edge of the Sirian Empire where it borders the Puttioran Empire. Constantly invaded by one or the other of the two Great Powers, sometimes described as Sirian and sometimes as Puttioran, the inhabitants of Polshi, because of these continual strains and tensions and persecutions, because of the efforts they have always had to make to preserve their planetary identity and their sense of being Polshan, have evolved a dashing, heroic, audacious planetary character for which they have long been famous. Throughout two vast Empires (I do not mention our own) the Polshans are known for this peculiarly dramatic and even self-immolating nature. Their more prudent neighbours criticize them for it, notably those most firmly under the heel of (forgive me) Puttiora or Sirius; but they are admired by other, less pressured, planets, usually in inverse proportion to their distance from centres of power and oppression. Thus, ‘the Polshan cause’ tends to be celebrated most passionately in planets like Volyen, which has not itself been recently invaded.
    The wars and massacres that have always afflicted Polshi have recently been absent, long enough for a generation to grow up with no personal experience of anything but theverbal stimulations of Sirian Rhetoric, the ideas generated by Sirian Virtue. And these most admirably brave people announced to Sirius that, by definition, Sirian Virtue and the custodians of it must admire planetary self-determination, justice, freedom, democracy (and so on and so forth). Therefore, Polshi intended forthwith to take control of its own affairs. At the same time, these intrepid ones invited all the neighbouring Sirian colonies to follow the roads of self-determination, democracy, justice, Virtue (and so on