Araminta Station Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter I

  Chapter I, Preliminary

  Chapter I, Part 1

  Chapter I, Part 2

  Chapter I, Part 3

  Chapter I, Part 4

  Chapter I, Part 5

  Chapter I, Part 6

  Chapter I, Part 7

  Chapter I, Part 8

  Chapter I, Part 9

  Chapter I, Part 10

  Chapter II

  Chapter II, Part 1

  Chapter II, Part 2

  Chapter II, Part 3

  Chapter II, Part 4

  Chapter II, Part 5

  Chapter II, Part 6

  Chapter II, Part 7

  Chapter II, Part 8

  Chapter II, Part 9

  Chapter II, Part 10

  Chapter II, Part 11

  Chapter II, Part 12

  Chapter III

  Chapter III, Part 1

  Chapter III, Part 2

  Chapter III, Part 3

  Chapter III, Part 4

  Chapter III, Part 5

  Chapter III, Part 6

  Chapter III, Part 7

  Chapter III, Part 8

  Chapter III, Part 9

  Chapter IV

  Chapter IV, Part 1

  Chapter IV, Part 2

  Chapter IV, Part 3

  Chapter IV, Part 4

  Chapter IV, Part 5

  Chapter IV, Part 6

  Chapter IV, Part 7

  Chapter V

  Chapter V, Part 1

  Chapter V, Part 2

  Chapter V, Part 3

  Chapter V, Part 4

  Chapter V, Part 5

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VI, Part 1

  Chapter VI, Part 2

  Chapter VI, Part 3

  Chapter VI, Part 4

  Chapter VI, Part 5

  Chapter VI, Part 6

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VII, Part 1

  Chapter VII, Part 2

  Chapter VII, Part 3

  Chapter VII, Part 4

  Chapter VII, Part 5

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter VIII, Part 1

  Chapter VIII, Part 2

  Chapter VIII, Part 3

  Chapter VIII, Part 4

  Chapter VIII, Part 5

  Chapter VIII, Part 6

  Chapter VIII, Part 7

  Chapter IX

  Chapter IX, Part 1

  Chapter IX, Part 2

  Chapter IX, Part 3

  Chapter IX, Part 4

  Chapter IX, Part 5

  Chapter IX, Part 6

  Chapter IX, Part 7

  Chapter IX, Part 8

  Chapter IX, Part 9

  Footnotes

  Chapter I Footnotes

  Chapter II Footnotes

  Chapter III Footnotes

  Chapter IV Footnotes

  Chapter V Footnotes

  Chapter VII Footnotes

  Araminta Station

  The Cadwall Chronicles [1]

  Jack Vance

  (2012)

  Tags: Science Fiction

  Science Fictionttt

  * * *

  * * *

  The planet "Cadwal" is forever set aside as a natural perserve, owned and administered by the Naturalist Society of Earth, and inhabited by a very limited number of skilled human scientists and their families. But this system has been complicated by the passing centuries, and has become a byzantine culture where every place in the Houses of Cadwal is the object of savage competition.

  In "Araminta Station", the first volume of "The Cadwal Chronicles", Jack Vance has constructed a brilliant, complex tale of revenge and murder, of love and alien intrigue, and set it glittering among the stars of the Purple Rose System.

  Introduction

  ODDMENTS AND NOTES, TO BE READ IF ONE IS SO INCLINED

  These are excerpts from the Introduction to The Worlds of Man, by Fellows of the Fidelius Institute, and will assist in bridging the gap between now and then, here and there:

  . . . In this work, now thirty years in preparation, we attempt neither exhaustive detail nor analytical profundity, but, rather, a pastiche of a million parts, which, so it is hoped, will coalesce into a focused picture.

  . . . Order, logic, symmetry: these are fine words but any pretense that we have crammed our material into molds so strict would be obvious sham. Each settled world is sui generis, presenting to the inquiring cosmologist a unique quantum of information. All these quanta are mutually immiscible, so that efforts to generalize become a muddle. We are yielded a single certainty: no event has occurred twice; every case is unique.

  . . . In our journeys from one end of the Gaean Reach to the other and, on occasion, Beyond, we discover nothing to indicate that the human race is everywhere and inevitably becoming more generous, tolerant, kindly and enlightened. Nothing whatever.

  On the other hand, and this is the good news, it doesn’t seem to be getting any worse.

  . . . Parochialism derives, apparently, from an innocent egotism, which, if verbalized, would express itself thus: “Since I choose to live in this place, it therefore and perforce must be excellent in all its aspects.”

  Still and yet, the preferred destination of first-time travelers is almost always old Earth. Latent in all exiles, so it would seem, is the yearning to breathe the native air, to taste the water, to work the mother soil through the fingers.

  Further, spaceships arriving at the ports of Earth each day discharge two or three hundred coffins of those who, with their last breaths, chose to return their substance to the dank brown mold of Earth.

  . . . When men arrive on a new world the process of interaction begins. The men attempt to alter the world to suit their needs; at the same time the world, far more subtly, works to alter the men.

  Thus the battle is joined, of man versus environment. Sometimes the men overcome the resistance of the planet. Terrestrial or otherwise alien flora is introduced and adapted to the chemical and ecological environment; noxious indigenes are repelled, destroyed or circumvented, and the world slowly takes on the semblance of Old Earth.

  But sometimes the planet is strong, and forces adaptation upon the intruders. At first from expedience, then from custom and finally from innate tendency, the colonists obey the dictates of the environment and in the end become almost indistinguishable from true indigenes.

  * * *

  Chapter I

  * * *

  Chapter I, Preliminary

  1. The Purple Rose System of Mircea’s Wisp

  (Excerpted from The Worlds of Man, by Fellows of the Fidelius lnstitute.)

  Halfway along the Perseid Arm a capricious swirl of galactic gravitation has caught up ten thousand stars and sent them streaming away at an angle, with a curl and a flourish at the end. This is Mircea’s Wisp.

  To the side of the curl, at seeming risk of wandering away into the void, is the Purple Rose System, comprising three stars: Lorca, Sing and Syrene. Lorca, a white dwarf, and Sing, a red giant, swing close together around their mutual center of gravity: a portly pink-faced old gentleman waltzing with a dainty little maiden dressed in white. Syrene, a yellow-white star of ordinary size and luminosity, orbits the gallivanting pair at a discreet distance.

  Syrene controls three planets, including Cadwal, the single inhabited world of the system.

  Cadwal is an Earthlike planet seven thousand miles in diameter, with close to Earth-normal gravity.

  (A list and analysis of physical indices is here omitted.)

  2. The World Cadwal

  Cadwal was first explored by the locator Rudel Neirmann, a member of the Naturalist Society of Earth. His report prompted the dispatch of an expedition which, upon its return to Earth, recommended that Cadwal b
e protected forever as a natural preserve, secure from human exploitation.

  To this end, the Society asserted formal possession of Cadwal, and issued a decree of Conservancy: the Charter.

  The three continents of Cadwal were named Ecce, Deucas and Throy,1 each differing markedly from the other two. Ecce, straddling the equator, palpitated with heat, stench, color and ravenous vitality. Even the vegetation of Ecce used techniques of combat in the effort to survive. Three volcanoes, two active, the third dormant, were the only protrusions above a flat terrain of jungle, swamp and morass. Sluggish rivers coiled across the landscape, eventually emptying into the sea. The air reeked with a thousand odd fetors; ferocious creatures hunted each other, bellowing in triumph or screaming in mortal fright, as dictated by their roles in the event. The early explorers gave Ecce only cursory attention, and across the years others generally followed their example.

  Deucas, on the opposite side of the world and four times as large as Ecce, sprawled across the north temperate zone. The fauna, at times both savage and formidable, included several semi-intelligent species; the flora in many cases resembled that of Earth - so closely that the early agronomists were able to introduce useful terrestrial species, such as bamboo, coconut palms, wine grapes and fruit trees, without fear of an ecological disaster.2

  Throy, to the south of Deucas, extended from under the polar ice well into the south temperate zone. Throy was a land of dramatic topography. Crags leaned over chasms; the sea dashed against cliffs; forests roared in the wind.

  Elsewhere were oceans: great empty expanses of deep water barren of islands save for a few trifling exceptions: Lutwen Atoll, Thurben Island and Ocean Island off the east coast of Deucas, a few rocky islets off Cape Journal in the far south.

  3. Araminta Station

  At Araminta Station, an enclave of a hundred square miles on the east coast of Deucas, the Society established an administrative agency to enforce the terms of the Charter. Six bureaus were organized to perform the necessary work:

  Bureau A: Records and statistics

  B: Patrols and surveys: police and security services

  C: Taxonomy, cartography, natural sciences

  D: Domestic services

  E: Fiscal affairs: exports and imports

  F: Visitors’ accommodations

  The original superintendents were Deamus Wook, Shirry Clattuc, Saul Diffin, Claude Offaw, Marvell Veder and Condit Laverty. Each was allowed a staff of forty persons. A tendency to recruit this staff from family and guild kinships brought to the early administration a cohesion which otherwise might have been lacking.

  Six temporary dormitories, each associated with one of the bureaus, housed the agency personnel. As soon as funds became available, six fine residences were constructed, each outdoing the others in grandeur and richness of appointment; these became known as Wook House, Clattuc House, Veder House, Diffin House, Laverty House and Offaw House.

  Centuries passed; work never ended at any of the six houses. Each was continually enlarged, remodeled and refined in its details with carved and polished wood, tiles and panels of local semiprecious stone, and furnishings imported from Earth or Alphanor or Mossambey. The grandes dames of each house were determined that their own house excel all the others in style and palatial luxury.

  Each house developed its own distinctive personality, which its residents shared, so that the wise Wooks differed from the flippant Diffins, as did the cautious Offaws from the reckless Clattucs. Likewise, the imperturbable Veders disdained the emotional excesses of the Lavertys.

  At Riverview House on the Leur River, a mile south of the agency, lived the Conservator, the Head Superintendent of Araminta Station. By order of the Charter he was an active member of the Naturalist Society, a native of Stroma, the small Naturalist settlement on Throy.

  Araminta Station early acquired a hotel to house its visitors, an airport, a hospital, schools and a theater: the Orpheum. In order to earn foreign exchange, vineyards began to produce fine wines for export, and tourists were encouraged to visit any or all of a dozen wilderness lodges, established at special sites and carefully managed to avoid interference with the environment.

  With the new amenities came problems of principle. How could so many enterprises be staffed by a complement of only two hundred and forty persons? Elasticity of some sort was necessary, and “collaterals,” in the guise of “temporary labor,” began to serve in many managerial capacities.

  The collaterals were a class which almost imperceptibly had come into being. A person born into one of the houses, but denied full “Agency status” by reason of the numerical limit, became a collateral, with diminished status. Many collaterals emigrated; others found more or less congenial employment at the station.

  The Charter exempted children, retired persons, domestic servants and “temporary labor not in permanent residence” from the count. The term “temporary labor” was extended to include farm labor, hotel staff, airport mechanics - indeed, labor of every description - and the Conservator looked the other way so long as this work force was allowed no permanent residence.

  A source of cheap, plentiful and docile labor, conveniently close at hand, was needed. What could be more convenient than the population of Lutwen Atoll, three hundred miles northeast of Araminta Station? These were the Yips, descendants of runaway servants, illegal immigrants and others.

  In such a manner the Yips became part of the scene at Araminta Station. They lived in dormitories near the airport and were allowed work permits of only six months duration. Thus far strict conservationists were willing to bend, but no farther; any new concessions, they argued, would formalize the Yips presence, and gradually lead to Yip settlements on Deucas continent, which could not be tolerated.

  As time passed, the population of Lutwen Atoll increased to an unreasonable figure. The Conservator notified the headquarters of the Naturalist Society on Earth, and urged that drastic steps be taken, but the Society had fallen on hard times and offered no help.

  Yipton became a tourist attraction in its own right. Ferries from Araminta Station conveyed tourists to the Arkady lnn at Yipton: a structure built entirely of bamboo poles and palm fronds. On the terrace beautiful Yip girls served rum punches, gin slings, sundowners, Trelawny sloshes, malt beer and coconut toddy, all mixed liquors brewed or distilled at Yipton. Other more intimate services were readily available at Pussycat Palace, famous up and down Mircea’s Wisp and beyond, for the affable versatility of the attendants - though nothing was free. At Yipton, if one requested an after-lunch toothpick, he found the reckoning on his bill.

  The tourist traffic increased even further when the Oomphaw (the title of the Yip ruler) introduced a startling new set of entertainments.

  4. Stroma

  Another problem involving the Charter had been settled to a more definite effect. During the first few years, Society members, when they visited Cadwal, were lodged at Riverview House. The Conservator finally rebelled and refused to cope any further with the constant comings and goings. He proposed that a second small enclave be established thirty miles to the south, with guesthouses reserved for the use of visiting Naturalists. The plan, when presented at the Society’s annual conclave (held on Earth), found a mixed reception. Strict Conservationists complained that the Charter was being gnawed to shreds by first one trick, then another. Others replied: “Well and good, but when we go to Cadwal, either to undertake research or to take pleasure in the surroundings, are we to live in a tent?”

  The conclave adopted a compromise plan, which pleased no one. A new settlement was authorized, but only on the condition that it be built at a specific location overlooking Stroma Fjord on Throy. This was a site almost comically unsuitable, and obviously intended as a ploy to discourage proponents of the plan from taking action.

  The challenge, however, was accepted. Stroma came into being: a town of tall narrow houses, crabbed and quaint, black or dark lumber, with doors and window trim painted white, blue and red. The hous
es were built on eight levels with majestic views down Stroma Fjord.

  On Earth the Naturalist Society fell prey to weak leadership and a general lack of purpose. At a final conclave, the records and documents were assigned to the Library of Archives, and the presiding officer struck the gong of adjournment for the last time.

  On Cadwal the folk of Stroma took no official notice of the event, though now the sole income of Stroma was the yield from their private off-world investment, which had more or less been the case for many years. Young folk ever more frequently departed to seek their fortunes. Some were seen no more; others succeeded and returned with influxes of new income. By one means or another Stroma survived and even enjoyed a modest prosperity.

  5. Glawen Clattuc

  Something over nine hundred years had passed since Rudel Neirmann’s first landing on Cadwal. At Araminta Station summer was verging into autumn, and Glawen Clattuc’s sixteenth birthday, formalizing his transition from “childhood” to “provisional staff,” was upon him. On this occasion he learned his official “Status Index,” or SI: a number calculated by a computer, after it digested masses of genealogical data.

  The number seldom surprised anyone, least of all the person most directly concerned; he would long have been counting on his fingers and casting projections.

  Since the habitancy of each house was established at forty persons, half male, half female, any SI of 20 or under was excellent, from 21 or 22 good, 23 or 24 fair; anything over was ambiguous, depending upon conditions within the House. A number beyond 26 was discouraging and prompted mournful speculations in regard to the future.

  Glawen’s place on the genealogical chart was not exalted. His mother, now dead, had been born off-world; his father, Scharde, an official at Bureau B, was the third son of a second son. Glawen, a sober and realistic youth, hoped for a 24, which would still allow him a chance at Agency status.