The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire by Doris Lessing

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.
    â€˜Yes, he was here last week. He had us up all night listening to him. He’s sincere, isn’t he?’
    â€˜Oh, yes, you could say that, he’s sincere, all right.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜With me, against me,’ he chanted, and went striding about the room, unable to check the momentum which had been carrying him for days.
    â€˜Incent,’ I said, ‘do sit down.’
    â€˜Wi’ me, ‘gainst me!’
    â€˜Incent, this is Klorathy.’
    â€œme, ‘nst me.’
    â€˜Klorathy!’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Yes, we do. But that doesn’t mean to say I support what he does.’
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜Calder,’ I said, ‘I want you to believe me, I have had nothing to do with