Jack Vance: Big Planet

Nancy started to speak, but Glystra anticipated her. “Yes, we might have organized Big Planet and given it System law. But—in the first place—it is beyond the established boundaries of the System. Secondly, we would thereby have been defeating the purpose of those people who sacrificed their place on the civilized worlds for independence—a perfectly legitimate aim in itself. Thirdly, we would be denying refuge to other restless souls, with the effect of sending them out seeking other worlds, almost inevitably less propitious. So we let Big Planet become the System’s Miscellaneous File. We established Earth Enclave, with the university and trade school, for those who wish to return to Earth. But very few apply.”

“Of course not,” said Nancy scornfully. “It’s forbidden. A place of maniacs.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It is well known. Once a Bajarnum of Beaujolais went to the Enclave, he attended the school, and he came back a different man. He freed all the slaves, and stopped all the punishment ordeals. When he declared the land-hold system void, the College of Dukes rose up and killed him, because clearly he was mad.”

Glystra smiled wanly. “He was the sanest man on the planet…”

She sniffed.

“Yes,” said Glystra. “Very few apply to the Enclave. Big Planet is home. It’s free—open—limitless. A man can find any kind of life he wants, even if he may be killed almost any minute. Anyone with Big Planet in his blood never feels loose on the civilized worlds. On Earth and the other planets of the System we have a rigid society with precise conventions. It’s smooth and easy now; most of the misfits have gone to Big Planet.”

“Dull,” said Nancy. “Stupid and dull.”

“Not entirely,” said Glystra. “After all, there are five billion people on Earth, and no two of them are identical.”

Nancy was silent a moment, then, almost as a taunt: “What of the Bajarnum of Beaujolais? He plans to conquer the planet. He’s already expanded Beajolais threefold.”

Glystra looked straight ahead, down through the infinite Big Planet night. “If the Bajarnum of Beaujolais or the Nomarch of Skene or the Gaypride Baron or the Nine Wizards or anyone else dominates Big Planet, then the inhabitants of Big Planet have lost their freedom and flexibility even more certainly than if the System organized a federal government. Because then they would be obliged to adapt their lives to aberrations different from their own, and not merely to a few rules and regulations essentially rational.”

She was not convinced. “I’m surprised that the System considered the Bajarnum important enough to worry about.”

Glystra smiled thinly. “Just the fact of our being here tells you something about the Bajarnum. He’s got spies and agents everywhere—including Earth. He regularly violates our number one law—the embargo on weapons and metal to Big Planet.”

“A man is killed just as surely with a birkwood sword as with a shaft of light.”

Glystra shook his head. “You are considering only one aspect of the subject. Where do these weapons come from? The System prohibits unlicensed manufacture of weapons. It’s very difficult establishing a modern factory in secret, and therefore most of the Bajarnum’s weapons are stolen or pirated. Ships and depots are ripped open, men killed or herded into slave-bins, bound out for the One-man Heavens.”

“One-man Heavens? What are they?”

“Among these five billion I mentioned a minute ago are some very strange people,” said Glystra thoughtfully. “Not all the odd ones have migrated to Big Planet. We have over-rich over-ripe creatures on Earth with too much self-indulgence and not enough conscience. Many of them have found a little world somewhere off in the cluster and set themselves up as gods. The pirates sell them slaves and out on their little domains there’s no kind of indulgence or whimsicality they can’t allow themselves. After two or three months they return to the System and function as respectable citizens for a period. Then they tire of the cosmopolis, and it’s back to their One-man Heaven out in the star-stream.”

Nancy remained silent. “What’s that got to do with Charley Lysidder?”

Glystra looked at her sidewise, and she saw his face as a white mask in the darkness. “How does the Bajarnum pay for his smuggled weapons? They’re expensive. Lots of blood and pain is spent on every ion-shine.”

“I don’t know… I never thought of it.”

“There’s no metal on Big Planet, few jewels. But there’s trade-goods more valuable.”

Nancy said nothing.

“Girls and boys.”

“Oh” in a remote voice.

“Charley Lysidder is like a carrier of the plague and he infects half the universe.”

“But—what can you do?”

“I don’t know—now. Events have not gone according to plan.”

“You are only eight men. Futile against the Beaujolais army.”

Glystra smiled. “We never intended to fight.”

“You have no weapons, no plans, no documents—”

“Just brains.”

Nancy subsided into a silence of a quality which caused Glystra to peer at her quizzically. “You’re not impressed?”

“I don’t know. I’m—very inexperienced.”

Glystra once more sought her face through the darkness, this time to make sure she was serious. “We form a team. Each man is a specialist. Pianza here—” he nodded to the gray shape at his left “—is an organizer and administrator. Ketch records our findings on his camera and sonographs. Darrot is an ecologist—”

“What’s that?”

Glystra looked ahead to where Cloyville and Darrot walked, and the sound of their footsteps came as a regular double thud-crackle. They were now entering a country clumped with great trees, and ahead loomed the Tsalom-bar Woods, a line of black heavier than the sky. “Ecology,” said Glystra, “is ultimately concerned with keeping people fed. Hungry people are angry and dangerous.”

In a subdued voice Nancy said, “The gypsies are always hungry… They killed my father…”

“Cloyville is our mineralogist. I’m coordinator and propagandist.” Anticipating her question, he asked, “Why is the Bajarnum able to conquer his neighbors?”

“Because he has a stronger army… He’s very crafty.”

“Suppose his army no longer obeyed him. Suppose no one on Big Planet paid any attention to his orders. What could he do?”

“Nothing. He’d be powerless.”

“Propaganda at its maximum effectiveness accomplishes just that. I work with Bishop. Bishop is a student of culture—human society. He can look at an arrowhead and tell you whether the man who made it had six wives or shared a wife with six men. He can study the background of people and discover their racial aberrations, their push-buttons—the ideas that make them react like herds of—” he was about to say “sheep” but remembered that Big Planet harbored no sheep—“herds of pechavies.”

She looked at him half-smiling. “And you can make people behave like pechavies?”

Glystra shook his head. “Not exactly. Or I should say, not all the time.”

They marched onward down the slope. The trees loomed in closer and they entered Tsalombar Forest. Around him marched eight dark shapes. There were forty thousand miles to travel—and one of these shapes wished him evil. He said under his breath to Nancy, “Someone here—I don’t know who—is my enemy. Somehow, I’ve got to learn who he is”

She had stopped breathing. “Are you sure?” she asked in a hushed voice.

“Yes.”

“What will he do?”

“If I knew, I’d watch for it.”

“The Magic Fountain at Myrtleseee could tell you who he is. He knows everything.”