Free The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire by Doris Lessing

death or freedom.’
    I laughed. Oh, yes, it was a laugh as calculated as anything Krolgul went in for.
    Through the mutters, then the shouts of indignation, I said to Calder, who alone of the miners was still sufficiently his own master to keep a connection with me, ‘Shall I tell you the last time I heard that cry, freedom or death? Calder, would you like to hear?’
    Still those stony grey eyes refused actually to engage with mine, went past me again, and I said, ‘Calder, do I have the right to speak?’
    With the same dislike he at last looked at me and nodded.
    â€˜Go ahead, then,’ he said.
    And while Incent chanted, ‘Liberty or death!’ I said, ‘It was on another planet. The people of a certain country were impoverished and the economic conditions chaotic. They wished to rid themselves of a variety of parasites who lived off them, one of these being a something called a church,which at least you have never heard of here. While they debated and conspired and conferred, always at great risk, certain professional revolutionaries took charge, using words like Liberty or Death, We can be reborn only through blood –’
    â€˜Reborn through blood …’ chanted Incent, and it was as if the words were feeding strength into him. He seemed positively to float there on the power of the words he was using, or which used him.
    â€˜The King and the Queen, who were in fact quite well meaning and responsible people, were used as scapegoats, and the revolutionaries directed popular rage and resentment against them. The lies and the calumnies created a picture of monstrous personal self-indulgence that was strong enough to last centuries. The revolutionaries murdered the King and the Queen and the people around them as representatives, and then as the populace became more and more inflamed with words, words, words, the murdering became indiscriminate and soon the revolutionaries were killing one another. An orgy of killing went on, as the degenerates and criminals who always flourish at such times became powerful and could do as they liked. In the frenzies of killing and revenge, and the orgies of words, words, words, that everyone took part in, the reason for the revolution, which had been to change the economic conditions and to make the country strong and wealthy, became forgotten. Because in every one of us lies, only just in control, the brute, the brute that in this planet here was so recently one that ate raw flesh and drank raw blood and who had to murder to live at all. The energies of the poor country had gone into killing for killing’s sake, into the enjoyment of words –’
    Incent was chanting: ‘Kill, kill, kill …
    â€˜And soon there was chaos. Into this chaos came a tyrant, using inflammatory words, uniting the disunited people by words, and he took control, reinstated the class that hadfattened on the poor and even added to it, and then set about conquering all the neighbouring countries. He too, having risen by the power of words –
lies
– fell again, having murdered and plundered and destroyed. And the country where the words Liberty or Death had seemed so noble and so fine was in the hands again of a hereditary ruling caste that controlled wealth. All that suffering, killing, heroism, all those words, words, words, for nothing.’
    Calder and the miners now had their attention fully on me. They were taking no notice of the unfortunate Incent, who still stood there chanting. They did not look at Krolgul, who was inwardly conceding victory to me and quietly working out plans for another day. A modest figure, with his chin in his hand, he was watching the scene with an ironic smile: the best he could do.
    â€˜Calder,’ I said, ‘there are those who exist on words. Words are their fuel and their food. They live by words. They make groups of people, armies of people, nations, countries,
planets
their subjects,