him. I settled back so that what must happen, could …
Krolgul had leaped up at the sight of him, all renewed energy and purpose. Then, having cried out, ‘Incent …,’ he remembered my presence and glanced towards me, but in the same way as Incent, not allowing his eyes to meet mine.
Incent’s manner with Krolgul was – there is only one word for it – lordly. He stood in the examinee’s place and signalled to the attendants to wire him up.
‘I intend to pass this examination,’ he said, in the calm, almost indifferent way of his illness; for of course he was ill, though this need not be obvious to the examiners. He was depleted of emotion still; he was empty, after such an excess of it. No one recovers from Total Immersion in a few days, or even many. His emotional reservoirs were low; therefore he seemed calm; therefore did he give this appearance of benign urbanity.
When he was standing upright there, all the wires and leads in place, he smiled confidently at me.
‘I am ready,’ he said.
Well, it was very bad.
‘Comrades. Friends …’ I think Krolgul expected him to be lost at that very first trip-word, but what happened was much more alarming. Behind Incent, on the monitors, we could see that the needles, far from registering alarming peaks and jags and heights of emotion, were often out of sight at the bottom of the scale. So low was Incent that his whole system had gone into reverse. The word friends, which of course he spoke at the right interval after comrades, so that the nerves of the auditors had to vibrate in expectation, only caused what little emotion that was left in him to drain suddenly away. The needles flickered back into sight again at the bottom of the graphs. He was speaking in a flat, almost amiable way, though he got all the tones and intervals perfectly. He went through the gross inequalities and the injustice and so on very well, though there was literally no fuel left in him at all. I could see the examiners stirring and whispering. Krolgul was frightened out of his wits, looking at me the whole time: he had never seen anything like this, and had not known the condition existed. He was afraid I was going to punish him.
But Krolgul, of all the creatures in our galaxy, is not likely to understand free will. Not yet, at least; not for a long time.
Incent was droning on. ‘Sacrifice. Yes, sacrifice …’ And suddenly he fell, the wires pulling free.
I went over to him and brought him to himself.
He did not inquire where he was, for he knew at once, and stood up, weak but himself.
He looked at me with such shame, and said: ‘You had better take me back to the hotel, Klorathy. I’ve made a real fool of myself.’
And to Krolgul: ‘All right. But I haven’t done with you all yet. I was going to show you that I could pass your test and then reason with you on the basis of being immune to …’ And he wept, but the tears of weakness and emptiness, small, weak, painful tears.
Krolgul was running round us as we went to the door, panting and exclaiming: ‘But … but … I hope you aren’t going to hold us to account; I knew nothing about Incent’s coming here, I absolutely absolve myself of any responsibility.’
Incent was too weak to leave the building at once. We sat in an antechamber for a while, watching the examinees prepare themselves for the Examination in Rhetoric, which they did by using one another as sounding boards and checks on themselves in a piece which, for emotive words and general tone, was more taxing than the set piece in the actual examination hall.
‘What, then, is it that we are aiming at? What? Why, nothing less than the whole, perfect, radiant future of us all and our children! What is there to prevent this paradise? We all know there is nothing! In our soil lies the wealth of harvests and of minerals. In our seas and in the air, food. In our own hearts, love and the need to live happily in a happy world where sorrow is forgotten! What is it in the past that has given birth to sorrow, has bred unkindness? Why, only the lack of the will to abolish these things. And now everything has changed, for we have the will, and we have the means. Forward, and let us lay our hands on our rightful heritage – happiness. Happiness and love.’
Incent listened to this not totally without emotion: which I was pleased to see was scorn.
‘What horrible drivel,’ he was muttering.
‘I’m glad to hear you say it. I hope you will continue to think so.’
‘Well, I would have got through the test piece if I hadn’t passed out, wouldn’t I?’
‘Yes, but Shammat has words-of-power they didn’t use there at all.’
‘Have they? What? No, don’t tell me, or I suppose I’ll succumb. I really do feel so awfully ill, Klorathy. I’m giddy. I must lie down.’
He lay face down on a bench, his hands over his ears, and I continued to watch the lively scene. Not – as you can imagine, Johor – without mixed emotions! What an attractive lot they were, these chosen ones from all over the Volyen ‘Empire.’ Chosen, first of all, because they were for the most part from the privileged: the poor and deprived seldom have the energy to will for themselves positions of power. Chosen because they had natural ability. Chosen because natural abilities are matched with opportunity; plentiful opportunities now, with the ‘Empire’ falling apart. Young, for the most part; educated as far as such backward corners of the Galaxy understand the word; lively; full of the determination to succeed. Of the candidates I watched, while Incent lay there trying to recover his inner and outer balances, few succeeded in getting to the end of the difficult piece they set themselves. Fewer would pass the examination itself. But all would return to enrol for further sessions of study in Krolgul’s school: they believe in themselves, and the future that Krolgul promises them.
Shammat prowls through ‘the Volyens’ – to use the colloquialism – watching every public gathering for signs of talent. Some young person, who has perhaps leaped up to orate because of a genuine anguish over the lot of the unfortunate, because of a real vision of radiant futures, finds at his side this personage who understands him and his innermost thoughts, dreams, aspirations. ‘How wonderful you are,’ say the eloquent, compassionate eyes of this new friend. ‘How your beautiful ideas do you credit! Please go on …
This chosen one, chosen now by Shammat, finds efforts encouraged, speeches applauded, above all in every word the implication that these two, these new comrades, these friends, understand where others do not; finds that he is considered to be of finer, nobler, braver substance than most. Oh, how cleverly Shammat uses the instincts for evolution towards the better that are implanted in every creature in the Galaxy! But while a generous and imaginative understanding supports this neophyte, there is also judicious and intelligent criticism. ‘You might have phrased that a little better,’ breathes Krolgul, if it is indeed he, and it often is, for his energy is superb. ‘Perhaps if I might suggest …’ Only too happy is this aspiring one to find a genuine friendship, which is able to teach as well as to support. And so a career develops that has no future in the existing order, but relates only to an idea; the aspiring one, as he or she looks about at the chaos, the ugliness, the disorder of a time of disintegration, sees beyond it some infinitely noble society ruled by himself. But Shammat has never said, in any of these competent criticisms, ‘You aspire to power over your fellows.’ Only ‘You yearn to serve.’ With Shammat at their side, these young people learn the business of arousal by Rhetoric to the point where, judged ripe, they are offered a course of training …
‘You are very good at this,’ says Krolgul,
