“On Earth, Nancy, ever since our first archaic histories, the race has graduated into levels. Some people have lived in complete harmony with their times, others have in their core a non-conformist independence—an apparently built-in trait, a basic emotion like hunger, fear, affection. These people are unhappy and insecure in a rigid society; through all the ages they have been the unclassifiables: the pioneers, explorers, flagpole-sitters; the philosophers, the criminals, the prophets of doom, and the progenitors of new cultural complexes. Akhnaton—Brigham Young— Wang Tsi-po—John D’Arcy. . . .”

  They walked on through the dark. The matted bracken crackled underfoot, muffled voices sounded ahead and behind them.

  The air was cool and warm at once—balmy, soothing, smelling of a peppery lavender from the bracken.

  Nancy, still watching Old Sun, said, “But these people whoever they were, they have nothing to do with Big Planet.”

  “Jubilith,” said Glystra, “was founded by a ballet troupe who apparently desired solitude and peace to perfect their art. Perhaps they only intended to come out for a year or two, but they stayed. The first settlers, almost six hundred years ago, were nudists—people who dislike the wearing of clothes. Convention on Earth forbids nudity. So they bought a ship and went exploring past the edge of the System. They found Big Planet. At first they thought it too big to be habitable—”

  “Why should that be?”

  “Gravity,” said Glystra. “The larger a planet is, the stronger the pull of its gravity. But Big Planet is made of light materials with a specific gravity only a third of Earth’s. Earth is a very dense planet, with abundant metals and heavy elements, and so the gravity works out about the same—although there’s thirty times the volume here . . . The nudists liked Big Planet. It was paradise— sunny, bright, with a mild climate, and—most essential it had an organic complex similar to that of Earth. In other words Big Planet proteins were not incompatible with Earth protoplasm. They settled here, and sent back to Earth for their friends.

  “There was room for other minorities—endless room. Out they migrated—all the cults, misanthropic societies, primitivists, communists, religious monasteries, just people in general. Sometimes they built towns, sometimes they lived by themselves—a thousand, two thousand, five thousand miles from their nearest neighbor. Useful ore deposits are non-existent on Big Planet; technical civilization never had a chance to get started, and Earth refused to allow the export of modern weapons to Big Planet. So Big Planet evolved into a clutter of tiny states and cities, with stretches of open country in between.”

  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.”

  4. Eight Against an Army

  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.”

  Glystra searched his mind. Myrtlesee—a word on a map. “Where’s Myrtlesee?”

  She gestured. “Far to the east. I’ve never been there; it’s a dangerous journey unless you ride the monoline, and that costs much metal. My father told me of the oracle at the Fountain. He babbles in a frenzy and answers any questions asked and then he dies whereupon the Dongmans select a new oracle.”

  Glystra was skeptical. “There have been similar oracles on Earth. They are drugged and their ravings are interpreted as prophecy.”

  “It’s rather strange. . . .”

  Ahead of them Cloyville and Darrot stopped short. “Quiet!” hissed Darrot. “There’s a camp ahead. Fires.”

  The sighing branches of Tsalombar Forest shut off the sky and the darkness was near-complete. Ahead a tiny spark of red flickered past the ranked tree trunks.

  “Would it be the Tree-men?” Glystra asked Nancy.

  She said doubtfully, “No . . . They never come down from the trees. And they never build fires; they’re deathly afraid of fire ...”

  “Then,” said Glystra, “it is probably a party sent out to capture us.”

  “Or gypsies,” said Nancy.

  Glystra said, “Everybody come here, close.” Dark shapes stepped forward.

  Glystra said in a low hurried voice, “I’m going ahead to reconnoiter. I want everyone to stay together. This is emphatic. No one is to move from this group or make a sound until I return. Nancy, you stand at the center; the rest of you stand with your elbows touching. Make sure who is on either side of you, make sure he doesn’t move.”

  He circled the group. “Everybody touching two others? Good. Count off.” The names came softly across the darkness.

  “I’ll be back as soon as possible,” said Glystra. “If I need help—I’ll yell. So keep your ears open.”

  The matted bracken crackled under his feet as he stole down the slope.

  It was a large fire, a roaring blaze fed by logs, in the center of a clearing. Fifty or sixty men sprawled around the fire, completely at their ease. They wore a loose blue uniform of baggy breeches triced below the knee, smocks gathered at the waist by a black sash. On their chest they wore a red insignia, a triangle apex-down. They carried knives and catapults in their sash; squat baskets heavy with darts hung at their backs. Some of the men wore hats of black felt, bent, twisted, creased in flamboyant flaps and bellies; others went bare-headed with their hats laid nearby on the ground.

  They were a rough crew—short and stocky with flat brown faces, little spade beards, narrow-lidded eyes, hooked noses. They had eaten and now were drinking from black kidney-shaped leather sacks. Discipline at the moment was lax.

  A little apart, back turned to the noise, stood a man in a black uniform. Glystra saw with unreasonable surprise that it was Abbigens. He conversed with a man evidently the officer-in-charge, apparently instructing him, emphasizing points with motions of his big pale hands. The officer listened, nodded.

  Not far from Glystra a train of odd-looking beasts waited restlessly, swinging their long necks, snapping at the air, mumbling and moaning. They were narrow-shouldered, high in the back with six powerful legs and a narrow trustworthy-looking head, a composite of camel, horse, goat, dog, lizard. The driver had not bothered to remove their packs. With sudden interest, Glystra examined the loads they bore.

  One carried three metal cylinders, another a squat barrel and a bundle of metal rods. Glystra recognized the mechanism: a knock-down ion-blast, a field-piece capable of smashing Jubilith flat. It was of Earth manufacture, captured in a merciless little skirmish on an outer world, bought in blood, sold for young flesh . . . Glystra looked behind, through the trees, suddenly uneasy. Strange that no sentries had been posted.

  A flurry of activity at one side of the clearing caught his attention. A dozen soldiers stood with craned necks, looking up, pointing, talking excitedly. Glystra followed their gaze. A hundred feet overhead was a village—a network of rude trestles, walkways swung on vines, pendant huts swaying like oriole nests. No light showed, the huts were dark, but over the side of the trestles peered several dozen white faces framed in a tousle of brown hair. They made no sound, moved but little, and then like squirrels, quickly, abruptly. Apparently the Beaujolais soldiers had not previously noticed the village. Glystra peered up again. They had found a girl—whey-faced, bleary-eyed, but still a girl. They shouted up taunts and jocularities, to which the tree-men made no response.

  Glystra eyed the pack-animals with interest, estimating the chances of leading them into the forest while attention was diverted by the girl in the tree-village. He decided they were scant. Perhaps when they bedded down for the night . . . For the night? Why should they bed down for the night? Jubilith was three or four hours up-slope. More likely they had camped here to await nightfall before venturing out on the moors where they could be seen from the village.

  Where the soldiers were baiting the tree-men there was further activity. A young swaggerer with a spike mustache was climbing a rude ladder toward the hut from which hung the head of the slatternly girl. The way was easy; where a branch angled up, steps were cut into the wood. The soldier, spurred by the approving hoots of his comrades, ran up the trunk, paused on a rude platform. Here he was partly veiled by the branches, camouflaged by the flickering firelight shadows. There was a motion, a swishing sound, a thud, a sound of disturbed branches. A sprawling twisting body plunged down from the shadows, landed with a heavy thump.

  Glystra jerked back, startled. The event had taken him unaware. He looked up; there was no motion from the tree-village. The faces stared down as before. Apparently the soldier had sprung a trap. A poised weight had swept down, struck him from the platform. Now he lay moaning, writhing. His fellows stood around him, watching dispassionately. There were glances turned up at the tree-men, but without apparent animus or hostility. There was no clamor for revenge, no threats, no fury. The event had occurred; it was fate. . . .

  Abbigens and the officer strode over, stood looking down at the fallen man. He choked back his groans, lay silent, staring up white-faced. The officer spoke; Glystra could hear the tone of his voice but could not distinguish the words. The soldier on the ground made a reply, tried to rise to his feet, an anguished effort. But his leg lay out at a curious angle; tilting his chin, gritting his teeth, he lay back.

  The officer spoke to Abbigens; Abbigens looked up at the tree-men. They watched from the walkways with wary interest. Abbigens spoke, gesturing up at the tree-village. The officer shrugged, turned aside, made a motion to one of the soldiers, turned away.

  The soldier looked down at his comrade on the ground, muttered resentfully. He drew his sword from the sheath, stabbed the fallen man through the chest, the neck, finally up through the eye socket.

  Behind the tree Glystra swallowed the lump in his throat. After a moment he was once more able to see the clearing.