Brian Aldiss - Enemies of the System

‘I think she plans to send us to sleep,’ Kordan said in a low voice to Sygiek.

‘We can sleep at refreshment-time. Isn’t this a fine road our people have built? We could conquer any planet in the galaxy.’

‘I have never entirely understood why we have not expanded our sphere of influence in space.’

‘ “Utopia is an attitude, not a dimension,” if I may quote.’

‘All the same… Of course, I don’t question…’

The superb road unwound before them, hour after hour. When it ran beside the River Dunder, more game was sighted, most of it fleeing for cover. The other three buses had disappeared into a tan distance which quivered in the noon heat.

Rubyna Constanza had taken a break from her commentary. Now she was back again, smiling prettily as before.

‘You will have noticed many more animals beside the river. Mostly they catch fish, or they prey on those who catch fish. They are very clever at concealment. The brave System workers who built this road have tales to tell of their viciousness. Those workers and the soldiers who defended them were the only members of our people ever to be allowed weapons on Lysenka II – with the exception of the garrison that permanently defends Peace City, of course.

‘As I expect you all understand,’ and she gave them a beautiful smile as reward for that understanding, ‘perhaps the most remarkable event in the entire history of Lysenka, from the point of view of homo uniformis , was the arrival here of a colony ship from Earth, 1.09 million years ago in the past, in bitter pre-utopian times on our home planet. In those far-off days, before our culture was established worldwide, and before the science of cratobatics was developed, fifty light years was a challengingly long distance. The colony ship was not heading for the Lysenkan system but for another system even farther away. However, something went wrong with the primitive drive, and the ship came down on this planet.’ She extended her hand forwards, pointing through the front window. ‘It made a forced landing somewhere ahead there, not so many kilometres from the Dunderzee Gorge. That colony ship belonged to the now defunct homo

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