Jack Vance - Big Planet

They set off, close-hauled, sailing so near into the eye of the wind that the leach of the sail flapped constantly. The line ran from tree-top to tree-top, and sometimes black-green foliage brushed Glystra’s feet… Clodleberg had doused his sail, was beckoning him urgently.

“What’s the trouble?”

Silence, signalled Clodleberg. He pointed ahead. Glystra trundled his trolley forward, up against Clodleberg’s. “What’s wrong?”

Clodleberg was fixedly watching something on the ground, through a gap in the foliage. “This is a dangerous part of the line… Bands of soldiers, starving forest people, bandits… Sometimes they wait till a trolley is over a high space, then cut the line, killing the traveller…”

Glystra saw movement through the leaves, a shifting of white and gray. Clodleberg climbed from the trolley into the branches of the tree, let himself cautiously down a few feet. Glystra watched him quietly. Behind came the quiver of the next trolley. Glystra signalled it to a halt.

Clodleberg was motioning to him. Glystra left his trolley, climbed to the crotch where Clodleberg stood. Through a gap in the leaves he could see the floor of the forest. Behind a low orange bush crouched three boys about ten years old. Bows and arrows ready, they watched the line like cats at a mousehole.

“Here’s where they get their early training,” whispered Clodleberg. “When they grow larger they go to raiding the towns of the March and all the Galatudanian Valley.” He quietly nocked a quarrel into his cross-bow.

“What are you going to do?” asked Glystra.

“Kill the biggest… I’ll be saving the lives of many innocent people.”

Glystra struck up his arm; the bolt shattered a branch over the head of the would-be assassins. Glystra saw their white faces, big dark eyes, open frightened mouths; then they were off, scurrying like rabbits.

“Why did you do that?” asked Clodleberg heatedly. “Those same skulkers may murder me on my way back to Swamp City.”

Glystra could find no words at first. Then he muttered, “Sorry… I suppose you’re right. But if this were Earth, or any of the System planets, they’d be at their schooling.”

A shaft of pure brilliance plunged down through the sky— Big Planet sunlight. The rain-washed colors of the forest shone with a glowing clarity never seen on Earth: black-greens, reds, yellows, ochers, buffs, the lime-green of low hangworts, the russet of bundle-bush. The wind blew high, blew low, the clouds flew back across the mountains; they sailed in a fresh sunny breeze.

The monoline dropped down out of the forest, stretched across a river-valley, over a swift river which Clodleberg named the Thelma. They made a fifty foot portage up the opposite bank, and set off once more across a land of peaceful farms and stone houses, undistinguished except for the fact that each house carried on its gable an intricate tangle of brambles and spiny leaves.

Glystra called to Clodleberg. “What on earth are those bristling thorn-patches?”

“Those are the ghost-catchers,” said Clodleberg easily. “This section of country abounds with ghosts; there’s a ghost for every house, sometimes more; and since they always give a quick jump which takes them to the roof where they can walk back and forth, the traps discourage them sadly… The very home of ghosts is this Mankelly Parish, and witches too”

Glystra thought that no matter how ordinary and uneventful a Big Planet landscape might appear, it was still—Big Planet.

The monoline paralleled a rutted earthen road, and three times the caravan, swinging along briskly with the breeze on the beam, passed big red farm-wains with six-foot wooden wheels, squeaking and groaning like scalded pigs. They were loaded with red melon-bulbs, bundles of orange vine, baskets of green okra. The lads who walked barefoot alongside goading the longnecked zipangotes wore tall conical hats with veils of white cloth about their faces.

“To fool the ghosts?” Glystra asked Clodleberg.

“To fool the ghosts.”

Afternoon wore on; the country became verdant and the ground supported every kind of pleasant growth. The farming region fell behind; they seemed to be traversing a great parkland.

Clodleberg pointed ahead. “See there, that white aquafer? There is your first glimpse of Kirstendale, the finest city of the Galatudanian Valley…”

For several minutes little enough of Kirstendale could be seen: splashes of white through the trees, a pair of stone causeways. The trolleys sailed across a pasture of red-green grass, the trees parted, and there was the city, rising from a grassy plain with blue mountains in the background.

It was the largest and most elaborate settlement the Earthmen had seen on Big Planet, but it was never a city which might have existed on Earth. It reminded Glystra of the cloud-borne castles in fairy-story illustrations.

The line took a sudden turn and they came upon a scene of gay activity, carnival color.

A game was in progress. On the field were fifty men and women in garments of remarkable complexity and elegance: silks, satins, velvets, coarse tasselled weaves— tucked, flared, gored, bedecked, be-ribboned, covered with tinsel and lace. The field was laid off into squares by lines of colored grasses, cropped and tended with the nicest precision, and each player occupied a single square. Sheets of silk hung at each side from a row of moored balloons. Each sheet glowed a different color: peach-tan, orange-russet, blue, sea-green, rippling, shining in the breeze. A myriad of small colored balls were in use, balls which half-floated, almost as light as air. The players caught balls in a manner which seemed to depend on the color of the ball, the color of the player’s head-ribbon and the square where the player stood. Balls filled the air, little sunlit jewels, and sometimes a player would catch three balls at once and toss them away with great dexterity. When a ball landed in one of the silken curtains, a score was counted to the great jubilation of certain players and spectators who cried, “Ohe, ohe, ohe!”

Several hundred men and women watched the game from the sidelines. They were dressed in the same extravagant fashion, and in addition wore headgear of fantastic complexity, confections most ingeniously designed and assembled. One young man displayed a shell like an overturned boat, striped in bright green and scarlet. Balls of fluorescent blue clung here and there to the fabric, and tapes of golden taupe fluttered below. A great puff of bright purple veil rose from the top, and imbedded in this veil were globes of red, green, blue, yellow, shining like Christmas tree ornaments… A young woman—very beautiful, Glystra thought, supple as a kitten, with sleek yellow hair and long yellow eyes—wore first a cloche-helmet of soft leather from which rose a tall antenna, and this antenna radiated prongs tipped with spangles of live fire—vermilion, scintillant green, molten gold… Another—another—another: baroque, unique, incredible.

The monoline circled the field. The players and spectators glanced up casually, returned to their game with interest for nothing but the multiple flight of the colored balls.

Glystra noticed an attendant rolling a cart arrayed with pink and white pastries. “Pianza—look what he’s wearing…”

Pianza snorted in surprise and amusement. “It’s a tuxedo. Dinner jacket. Black tie. Stripe down the trousers, patent leather shoes. Wonderful.”

Out on the field a ball fell into the billowing russet-gold curtain, rolled softly to the ground. There was joyous applause from the spectators.

Glystra slacked his sails, his trolley coasted quietly along the line. The freight-flat behind, with Pianza and Bishop, overtook him. Glystra spoke over his shoulder, “Bishop, what does the Almanac say about Kirstendale? Anything interesting?”