Jack Vance - Big Planet

One by one they passed Corbus, who extracted three daggers, the sodden ion-shines, and a deadly little poison slap-sack from the group.

“Back in the car, gentlemen,” said Glystra, “as far back as possible.”

The Bajarnum said in a voice soft as the hiss of silk, “There shall be requiting, if I must live two hundred years to see it.”

Glystra laughed. “Now you spit nonsense, like an angry cat. Any requiting to be done will be for the hundred thousand children you’ve sold into space.”

The Bajarnum blinked. “There has been no such number.”

“Well—no matter. A hundred or a hundred thousand—the crime is the same.”

Glystra climbed up into the seat beside Corbus, sat looking down into the five faces. Charley Lysidder’s emotions were clear enough: serpent-spite and fury behind the mask of the small features in the too-big head. The three noblemen were uniformly glum and apprehensive. And Nancy? Her face was rapt, her thoughts were clearly far away. But Glystra saw neither fear, anger, nor doubt. Her brow was clear, the line of her mouth was natural, almost happy; her eyes flickered with the passage of her thoughts like the flash of silver fish in dark water.

Here, thought Glystra in sudden insight, is the conflict of multiple personalities resolved; she has been at war with herself; she has been caught in a flow too strong to resist; she submits with relief. She feels guilt; she knows she will be punished; she awaits punishment with joy.

They were all settled. He turned to Corbus. “Let’s go. Think you can find the Enclave?”

“Hope so.” He rapped his knuckles on a black cabinet. “We can find our way along the radio-beam after we get around the planet.”

“Good.”

The air-car rose into the air, flew west. The lake vanished astern.

Charley Lysidder wrung water from the hem of his cloak. He had recovered something of his suavity and spoke in a thoughtful voice. “I think you wrong me, Claude Glystra. So indeed I have sold starving waifs, but as a means to an end. Admittedly the means was uncomfortable, but did not people die before Earth became federated?”

“Then your ambition is to federate Big Planet?”

“Exactly.”

“To what purpose?”

The Bajarnum stared. “Why—would not there then be peace and order?”

“No, of course not—as you must know very well. Big Planet could never be unified by conquest—certainly not by the Beaujolain army mounted on zipangotes, and not in your lifetime. I doubt if you care for peace and order. You have used your army to invade and occupy Wale and Glaythree, both quiet farm-countries, but the gypsies and the Rebbirs roam, ravage, murder at will.”

Nancy turned, eyed the Bajarnum dubiously. The three nobles glared truculently. Charley Lysidder preened a ring in his mustache.

“No,” said Glystra, “your conquests are motivated by vanity and egotism. You are merely Heinzelman the Hell-horse in better-looking clothes.”

“Talk, talk, talk,” sneered Charley Lysidder. “Earth commissions come and go, Big Planet swallows them all; they drown like gnats in Batzimarjian Ocean.”

Glystra grinned. “This commission is different—what there’s left of it. I insisted on complete power before I took the job. I do not recommend; I command.”

The Bajarnum’s tight features squeezed even closer together, as if he were tasting something bitter. “Assuming all this were true—what would you do?”

Glystra shrugged. “I don’t know. I have ideas, but no program. One thing is certain: the slaughter, the slaving, the cannibalism must stop.”

“Hah!” The Bajarnum laughed spitefully. “So you’ll call down Earth warboats, kill the gypsies, the rebbirs, the nomads, the steppe-men, all the wandering tribes across Big Planet—you’ll build an Earth Empire where I would build a Beaujolain Realm.”

“No,” said Glystra. “Clearly you do not grasp the crux of the problem. Unity can never be imposed on the peoples of Big Planet, any more than a state could be formed from a population of ants, cats, fish, monkeys, elephants. A thousand years may pass before Big Planet knows a single government. An Earth-dominated Big Planet would be unwieldly, expensive, arbitrary—almost as bad as a Beaujolain Empire.”

“Then what do you plan?”

Glystra shrugged. “Regional organization, small regional guard-corps…”

The Bajarnum sniffed. “The whole decrepit paraphernalia of Earth. In five years your regional commanders become petty tyrants, your regional judges are soliciting bribes, your regional policy-makers are enforcing uniformity on the disparate communities.”

“That indeed,” said Glystra, “is where we must tread warily…”

He looked out the window across the sun-drenched Big Planet landscape. An endless vista, forested mountains, green valleys, winding rivers, hot plains.

He heard a muffled nervous cry. He twisted to find two of the men in red tunics on their feet, crouching to leap. He twitched the ion-shine; the men in the damp red tunics sank back.

Charley Lysidder hissed a word Glystra could not hear; Nancy shrank to the side of the boat.

There was ten minutes of acrid silence. Finally the Bajarnum said in a crackling self-conscious voice, “And, may I ask, what you plan with us?”

Glystra looked out the window again. “I’ll tell you in another couple of hours.”

They flew across an island-dappled sea, a gray desert, a range of mountains with white peaks reaching angrily up into dark blue sky. Over a pleasant rolling country dotted with vineyards, Glystra said to Corbus, “This is far enough, I think. We’ll set down here.”

The air-boat touched ground.

Charley Lysidder hung back, his delicate features working. “What are you going to do?”

“Nothing. I’m turning you loose. You’re on your own. You can try to get back to Grosgarth if you like. I doubt if you’ll make it. If you stay here, you’ll probably have to work for a living—the worst punishment I could devise.”

Charley Lysidder, the three noblemen, sullenly stepped out into the afternoon sunlight. Nancy hung back. Lysidder gestured angrily. “I have much to say to you.”

Nancy looked desperately at Glystra. “Won’t you let me out elsewhere”

Glystra shut the door. “Take ’er up, Corbus.” He turned to Nancy. “I’m not setting you down anywhere,” he said shortly.

Charley Lysidder and his three companions became minute shapes, mannikins in rich-colored clothes; rigid, motionless, they watched the air-car swing across the sky. Charley Lysidder raised his fist, shook it in a frenzy of hate. Glystra turned away, grinning. “Now there’s no more Bajarnum of Beaujolais. Vacancy, Corbus; need a job?”

“I believe I’d make a medium-to-good king… Come to think of it,” Corbus ruminated, “I’ve always wanted a nice little feudal domain in a good wine country… Fancy uniforms, operettas, beautiful women…” his voice trailed off. “Anyway, put my name down for the job.”

“It’s yours, if I’ve anything to say about it—and I have.”

“Thanks. My first official act will be to clean out that den of fakers, Myrtlesee Fountain. Or does my empire run that far?”

“If you want Myrtlesee Fountain you’ve got to take the Palari Desert and the Rebbirs along with it.”

“Draw the boundary along the River Oust,” said Corbus. “I know when I’m well off.”

Big Planet landscape, swimming in the halcyon light of late afternoon, slipped astern. Glystra finally found it impossible to ignore the quiet figure in the rear of the car. He stepped down from the control platform, settled upon the seat beside her. “As far as I’m concerned,” he said gruffly, “I’m willing to believe that you were an unwilling accessory, and I’ll see that—”