Shikasta

Through a series of chances, it had become impossible for this youngster to identify himself with national myths and self-flatteries. He literally could not understand how others did. He believed that they must be pretending, or were being wilfully cowardly. He was of that generation - part of a generation - who could not see a newspaper except as a screen for lies, automatically translated any television newscast or documentary into what the truth probably was, reminded himself all the time, as a religious person might remind himself of the wiles of the Devil, that what was being fed to the world or nation about any event was by definition bound to be only a small part of real information, knew that at no time, anywhere, was the population of a country told the truth: facts about events trickled into general consciousness much later, if ever.

All this was good, was a step towards freedom from the miasmas of Shikasta.

But it was useless to him, for he had no kindness.

He was intolerable to his parents. The mother, still only a middle-aged woman by ordinary reckoning, seemed old to herself, became ill, had a heart attack. The father remonstrated, pleaded, even used words like: Spare her, spare us.

The stern avenging angel of righteousness remained in the meagre rooms that held the family, his eyes fixed in unbelieving dislike on his parents: How is it possible that you are like this!

At last his father said to him that if he could not treat his mother - "Yes, and me too! I admit it!" - more gently, then he must leave home.

The boy was sixteen. They are throwing me out! he exulted, for everything he knew was being confirmed.

He found himself a room in the home of a school friend, and thereafter did not see his parents.

At school he set himself to be an unsettling presence. It was an ordinary small-town school, providing nothing remarkable for its pupils in the way of teachers and teachings. He sat at the back of a class and emanated a punishing dislike, arms folded, legs stretched to one side, maintaining a steady unblinking stare first at one target, and then at another. He would rise to his feet, first having most correctly held his hand up to ask permission: "Is it not a fact that...? Are you perhaps unaware...? You are of course familiar with Government Report No. XYZ...? I take it that such and such a book will be part of the curriculum for this subject? No? But how can that be possible?"

He was feared by the staff, and by most of the pupils, but some of these admired him. At this time, when every kind of extreme political group tormented the authorities, and "the youth" was by definition a threat, he had not reached his seventeenth year when his name was known to the police, for the headmaster had mentioned him to them with the air of one covering himself against future probabilities.

He drifted towards various groups first right-wing and unaffiliated to a political party, then fell in with a left-wing revolutionary group. But this had very specific allegiances: this country was good, that bad, this creed abhorrent, this one "correct." Again he was saying; "But surely you must be aware...? Have you not read...? Don't you know that...?" It was clear that he would have to form his own group, but he was in no hurry. To keep himself he pilfered, and took part in various petty crimes. He was indifferent about how he came by a couple of months in a flat somewhere, or free meals for a week, or a girlfriend. He was completely, even amiably, amoral. Accused of some lie or theft he might allow himself a smile that commented unfavourably on everything around him. His reputation among the political groups was still unformed, but on the whole he was seen as clever, as skillful at surviving in ways respected by them, but careless.

When his group of a dozen young men and women crystallised out finally it was not on the basis of any particular political creed. Everyone had been formed by experiences of emotional or physical deprivation, had been directly affected by war. None could do anything but fix the world with a cold, hating eye: This is what you are like. They did not dream of Utopias in the future: their imaginations were not tuned to the future at all, unlike those of previous revolutionaries or religionists: it was not that "next year, or in the next decade, or next century, we create paradise on earth..." only, "This is what you are like." When this hypocritical, lying, miserably stupid system was done away with, then everyone would be able to see...

It was their task to expose the system for what it was.

But they had a faith, and no programme. They had the truth - but what to do with it? They had a vocabulary, but no language.

They watched the exploits of guerrilla groups, the deeds of the terrorists.

They saw that what was needed was to highlight situations, events.

They staged the kidnapping of a certain politician who had been involved in some transaction they disapproved of, demanding the release of a man in prison who seemed to them i

The murder had not been pla

Our Individual Six listened to them, with his characteristic careless smile, but his black eyes deadly. "Of course, what else can be expected from people like you?" he was communicating.

Two of the protesting individuals met with "accidents" in the next few days, and he now commanded a group that did not think of him as "careless" - or not as they had done previously.

There were nine of them, three women.

One of the women thought of herself as "his," but he refused to accept this view of the situation. They had group sex, in every sort of combination. It was violent, ingenious, employing drugs and weapons of various kinds. Sticks of gelignite, for instance. Four of the group blew themselves up in an orgy. He did not recruit others.

It was observed by the four remaining that he had enjoyed the publicity. He insisted on staging a "funeral service" which, although police did not know which group had been responsible for this minor massacre, was asking for notice and arrest. Elegies for the dead, poems, drawings of a heroic nature were left in the warehouse where the "socialist requiem" was held.

By then it had occurred to them that he was mad, but it was too late for any of them to leave the group.

They staged another kidnapping. The carelessness of it amounted to contempt, and they were caught and put on trial. It was a trial that undermined the country, because of their contempt for the law, for legal processes.

At that time, throughout the Northwest fringes, almost every person regarded the processes of the law as a frail - the frailest possible - barrier between themselves and a total brutal anarchy.

Everyone knew that "civilisation" depended on the most fragile supports. The view of the older people of what was happening in the world was no less fearful, in its way, than that of the young ones like Individual Six and his group, or of the other terrorists, but it was opposite in effect. They knew that the slightest pressure, even an accident or something unintended, could bring down the entire fabric... and here were these madmen, these young idiots, prepared to risk everything - more, intending to bring it down, wanting to destroy and waste. If people like Individual Six "could not believe it," then ordinary citizens "could not believe it" either: they never did understand each other.