Big Planet

20 Vacancy in Beaujolais

Some two hours after dawn a white speck of sail came drifting across the desert from the green smudge that was Myrtlesee Fountain.

“Here comes the Bajarnum,” said Glystra, with evident satisfaction.

The trolley drew closer, swinging and swaying with the changing force of the wind. It was a long pack-car, equipped with two long lateen booms, and flew down the line gracefully as a white swan.

With a hum and spin of great wheels the contrivance of wood and canvas slid under them, whirled on into the west. Four men and one woman rode the platform: Charley Lysidder, three Beaujolain nobles in scarlet tunics, elaborate black felt hats and black boots—and Nancy.

Glystra looked after the diminishing sail-car. “None of them wore pleasant expressions.”

“But they all wore ion-shines,” Corbus pointed out. “It’ll be a risky business going near them.”

“I don’t intend to go near them.” Glystra rose to his feet, started back toward the air-car.

Corbus said with mild testiness, “I don’t mind chasing after you if I know what you’ve got on your mind; but if you ask me you’re carrying this superman business a little too far.”

Glystra stopped short. “Do I really give that impression?” He looked reflectively across the sandy wastes toward the green paradise of Myrtlesee. “Perhaps it’s the normal state of the psyche after such a traumatic shock.”

“What’s the normal state?”

“Introversion. Egocentricity.” He sighed. “I’ll try to adjust myself.”

“Maybe I’ll take a dose of that poison too.”

“I’ve been thinking along the same lines. But now— let’s catch Charley Lysidder.” He slid into the air-car.

They flew west, over the tortured hills of obsidian, the mounds of white sand, the rock flat, over the verge of the great cliff. They slanted down, skimmed low over the tumble of rock and scrub, already shimmering in the morning heat.

The monoline rising to the lip of the cliff etched a vast flat curve, a spiderweb line against the sky. Glystra veered west, flew a mile past the bottom platform, landed under one of the stanchions. “Here we violate the first of Clodleberg’s commandments: we cut the line. In fact we excise a hundred feet—the length between two of the stanchions should be enough.”

He climbed one pole, slashed the line; Corbus did the same at the second.

“Now,” said Glystra, “we double the line, tie the bight to the under-frame.”

“Here’s a swingle-bar; that suit you?”

“Fine. Two round turns and a couple half-hitches should do the trick—” he watched while Corbus made the line fast. “—and now we go back to the bottom anchor.”

They returned to the platform from which the monoline rose to the lip of the cliff. Glystra landed the air-car in the shadow of the platform, jumped to the landing. “Pass up one of those ends from under the boat.”

Corbus pulled one of the trailing lengths clear, tossed it up.

“Now,” said Glystra, “we make fast to the monoline with a couple of rolling hitches.”

“Ah,” said Corbus. “I begin to catch on. The Bajarnum won’t like it.”

“The Bajarnum is not being consulted… You get into the car, in case the weight of the monoline starts to drag… Ready?”

“Ready.”

Glystra cut the monoline at a point four feet past the first of his hitches. The line sang apart, the connection to the air-car took hold, and a long wave swerved up the line and out of sight. The air-car now served as the bottom anchor to the monoline.

Glystra joined Corbus. “I give them about an hour. A little less if the wind is good.”

Time passed. Phaedra shouldered huge and dazzling into the dark blue Big Planet sky. Off into the brush a few albino savages lurked and peered. Insects like eels with a dozen dragonfly wings slid easily into the air, threading the harsh gray branches. Round pink toads with eyes on antennae hopped among the rocks. At the top of the cliff appeared a spot of white.

“Here they come,” said Corbus.

Glystra nodded. “The ride of their life coming up.”

The white spot at the top of the cliff dipped over the edge, started down the long curve. Glystra chuckled. “I’d like to watch the Bajarnum’s face.”

He pushed down the power-arm. The car lifted from behind the platform, climbed into the air—up, up, as high as the lip of the cliff. The trolley rolled down into the lowest section of the loop, slowed, hung suspended, helpless. Five black dots were the passengers—agitated, outraged, uncertain.

Glystra flew above the trolley to the monoline landing at the top of the cliff, settled on the platform. The second length of line under the air-car he made fast to that section of the monoline which led over the cliff. He cut it, and now the trolley with its five occupants hung entirely suspended from the air car.

Glystra peered over the brink. “There he is, the Bajarnum of Beaujolais, trapped fair and square, and not a hand laid on him.”

“They’ve still got their guns,” said Corbus. “No matter where we set ’em down, they still can shoot at us—even if we take them as far as the Enclave.”

“I’ve considered that. Dousing them in a lake will cool Charley Lysidder’s temper as well as short out his ion-shines.”

The Bajarnum’s face, as he stood dripping on the sand beach, was pinched and white. His eyes glinted like puddles of hot quicksilver; he looked neither left nor right. His three noble companions somehow contrived to maintain their dignity even while water sucked squashily in their boots. Nancy’s hair clung dankly to her cheeks. Her face was blank as a marble mask. She sat shivering, teeth chattering audibly.

Glystra tossed her his cloak. Draping it over her shoulders and turning away, she slipped out of her sodden garments.

Glystra stood holding the ion-shine. “Now one at a time into the car. Corbus will search you for knives and hooks and like unpleasantness on the way.” He nodded to the Bajarnum. “You first.”

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—”

She interrupted him in a low and passionate voice. “I’ll never be able to make you believe that we were working for the same things.”

Glystra grinned a wry sad smile, remembering the journey east out of Jubilith. Darrot, Ketch, Pianza, Bishop: all dead, and if not by her direct action, at least with her connivance. An angel with bloody hands. In order to win his confidence she had feigned love, prostituted herself.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, “but let me speak—and then you may drop me anywhere, in the middle of the ocean if you like.

“The gypsies burnt my home with all inside,” she added in a dull voice. “I told you so; it is true. I wandered to Grosgarth, Charley Lysidder saw me at the Midsummer Festival. He was crying crusade against all the outside world, and here, so I thought, was how Big Planet might be made safe and evil beings like the gypsies exterminated. He called me to his chambers; I did not refuse. What girl refuses an emperor? He took me to Earth; on the way back we learned of your plans. Apparently you projected nothing more than the persecution of Charley Lysidder. I was bitter against Earth and all its people. They lived in wealth and security, while on Big Planet the great-grandchildren of Earth were murdered and tormented. Why could they not help us?”

Glystra started to speak; she made a weary gesture. “I know what you will say: ‘Earth can only wield authority over a finite volume of space. Anyone who passes through the boundaries forfeits the protection of those within.’ That might have been valid for the first ones to come out from Earth, but it seems cruel to punish the children of these thoughtless ones forever and ever… And it seemed that while you would do nothing to help us, you wanted to thwart the only man on Big Planet with vision and power: Charley Lysidder. And much as it hurt me, because—” she darted him a brief look—“I had come to love you, I had to fight you.”

“Why didn’t you?” asked Glystra.

She shuddered. “I couldn’t. And I’ve lived in misery… I can’t understand how you failed to suspect me.”

“When I think back,” said Glystra, his eyes on the past, “it seems as if I knew all the time, but could not make myself believe it. There were a hundred indications. Morwatz’ troopers had us bound and helpless; you refused to cut us loose until it was clear that the Beaujolains were dead and the gypsies were coming. You thought the Fountain insects sounded like birds. There are no birds on Big Planet. And when Bishop was killed—”

“I had nothing to do with that. I tried to slip off to the dome. He came after me and the priests killed him and took his head.”

“And Pianza?”

She shook her head. “The traders had already killed Pianza. I kept them from killing everyone else. But I let them take the trolleys, because I thought that if you would only return to Kirstendale we could live together safe and happy…” She looked at him and her mouth drooped. “You don’t believe anything of what I’m saying.”

“No, on the contrary, I believe everything… I wish I had your courage.”

Corbus’ voice came raucously down from the control platform. “You two are beginning to embarrass me. Clinch and get it over with.”

Glystra and Nancy sat in silence. After a moment Glystra said, “There’s a lot of unfinished business behind us… On our way back we’ll drop in at Kirstendale and hire Cloyville to pull us around the streets in a big carriage.”

“Count me in,” said Corbus. “I’ll bring a long whip.”