exists, moribund, all the life fled from it – but do you mean to say that it was brought into being by that psychopath?
So it comes about that history does not record the names of these heroes. One may search in vain in records of events one has experienced on a day-to-day basis, knowing exactly what went on, and nowhere appear the names of the wonder-workers without whom these events would never have taken place.
Incent, like the others of his sort, will not appear in the history books. Meanwhile, everyone is talking about him.
‘Yes, he was here last week. He had us up all night listening to him. He’s sincere, isn’t he?’
‘Oh, yes, you could say that, he’s sincere, all right.’
‘It was the most moving occasion I can remember,’ someone else may say thoughtfully. ‘Yes …
When I returned to my lodgings, in the early morning, I found that Incent had already gone out. He had kept the woman of the house up listening to him nearly all night, so that she had a flattened and drained look.
‘He is a very feeling young one,’ she said, or murmured, out of semi-sleep. ‘Yes. Not like those Sirians. You and he come from the same place, he said. Is that so?’
And that is what I have to contend with.
When he returned at midday he was so intoxicated with himself he did not know me. He had visited Krolgul and Calder, and paid a flying visit to a near town which ‘is ready for the truth,’ and when he came striding into the little room at the top of the house where I sat waiting for him, it was with a clenched-fist salute and fixed, glazed eyes.
‘With me, against me,’ he chanted, and went striding about the room, unable to check the momentum which had been carrying him for days.
‘Incent,’ I said, ‘do sit down.’
‘Wi’ me, ‘gainst me!’
‘Incent, this is Klorathy.’
“me, ‘nst me.’
‘Klorathy!’
‘Oh, Klorathy, greetings, servus, all power to the … Klorathy, I didn’t recognize you there, oh, wonderful, I have to tell you …’And he passed out on my bed, smiling.
I then went out. I had arranged with Calder and his friends that our ‘confrontation’ should take place in one of the miners’ clubs or meeting places; but on the insinuation of Krolgul, Incent had, not consulting Calder but simply informing him, booked one of the trial rooms of the legislature for the occasion. This is where, usually, the natives are tried and sentenced by Volyens for various minor acts of insubordination. He had distributed all kinds of pamphlets and leaflets everywhere around the town announcing ‘A Challenge to Tyranny.’
I myself went to Calder, and found him with a group of men in his house. He was angry, and formidable.
I said to him that in my view the ‘confrontation’ should be cancelled, and that we – he, I, Incent and Krolgul, and perhaps ten or so of the miners’ representatives – should meet informally in his house or in a café.
But since I had seen him, he had been immersed in Rhetoric. Furious that ‘the powers that be’ had ‘tricked’ him by substituting for one of their clubs a venue associated by them with the Volyen hegemony, furious with himself for being swayed by Incent, whom, when he was out of his company, Calder distrusted, angry because of Krolgul, who had sent him a message saying he had nothing to do with Incent’s recent manoeuvrings, he now saw me as an accomplice of Incent.
‘You and he come from the same place,’ he said to me, as I sat there faced with a dozen or so steady, cold, angry pairs of Volyenadnan eyes.
‘Yes, we do. But that doesn’t mean to say I support what he does.’
‘You are telling us that you and he come from that place, very far away it is too, and you don’t see eye to eye with him on what he is doing here?’
‘Calder,’ I said, ‘I want you to believe me, I have had nothing to do with these new arrangements. I think they are a mistake.’
But it was no good: he, they all, had been subjected to burning sincerity from Incent for some hours.
‘We’ll meet you in that Volyen place. Yes. We’ll meet you there, and let truth prevail,’ shouted Calder, bringing a great fist down on the table in an obvious ritual for putting an end to discussion.
And so that is what is about to happen.
Krolgul is keeping modestly out of sight. Incent is still asleep, but tossing and starting up, smiling and emitting fragmented oratory, and falling back, smiling, to dream of the ‘confrontation’ – which I am afraid is hardly likely to go well.
And this is what happened.
Towards the end of Incent’s long sleep, its quality changed and he became inert and heavy. He woke slowly, and was dazed for some minutes. Clearly, he could not remember at once what had happened. Where was the ‘dynamic,’ vibrant, passionate conspirator? At last he pulled himself up off the bed and muttered, ‘Krolgul, I must get to Krolgul.’
‘Why?’
He looked at me in amazement. ‘Why?’
‘Yes, why? There is no need for you ever to have anything to do with Krolgul.’
He subsided again on the bed, staring.
‘In a few minutes we have to make our way to the Hall of Justice, room number three, in order to talk to Calder and his mates,’ I said.
He shook his head, as if trying to dislodge buzzing thoughts.
‘Arranged by you,’ I said.
‘Klorathy,’ he asked from his old self, tentative, stubborn honest, ‘I have been a bit crazy, I think?’
‘Yes, you have. But please try to hold on to what you are now, for we must go to this so-called trial or confrontation.’
‘What are you going to do with me?’ he asked.
‘Well, if you can maintain yourself as you are now – nothing. Otherwise, I’m afraid you must undergo Total Immersion.’
‘But that’s terrible, isn’t it?’
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’
The council chamber or judgment room of the Volyen administration is arranged to demonstrate the principles of justice: right and wrong; good and bad; punisher and punished. On one side of the circular chamber, which is panelled with some shiny brown stone so that the movements of the individuals inside the chamber are reflected in the gleams of dull colour, stands the apparatus of judgment itself: an imposing chair or throne, subsidiary but similar thronelike chairs, boxes for the accusers and witnesses – most of them bound to be hostile to the pitiful representatives of the natives on the other side of the court, where a dozen bare benches are ranged.
Two
