Читать книгу Enemies of the System - Brian Aldiss - Страница 7

They were sitting talking in the last bus. Three buses moved ahead of them, gradually drawing apart as they gathered speed down the embanked road. The great structure of Unity, which had dominated everything, dwindled behind them, swallowed by the everlasting landscape of Lysenka. Occasionally, as the road rose with the land, they could glimpse the shoulders of a distant plateau, riding above the warm obscurities of the plain.

Kordan clutched Sygiek’s hand, but she soon withdrew it.

The hostess in her neat red uniform with the Outourist insignia had exchanged a word with everyone individually. She reached the front of the LDB, where she took up a microphone and addressed the passengers, smiling as she did so.

‘Hello, friends of the System, my name is Rubyna Constanza 868, and I have the pleasure of being your guide for today. Welcome to the journey. We shall be away from Unity for two days, and shall spend tonight in comfortable quarters in the Dunderzee Gorge, which I feel sure you will enjoy. We shall view some of the wonders of this planet, and also some of its instructive blemishes. Refreshments will be served when we stop at midday. I am continually at your service. There are service bells by your fingertips.’

‘She’s very pretty,’ Takeido whispered. Regentop frowned for silence.

‘First I would like to remind you of a few facts concerning this planet. You will be familiar with some of them, but facts take life from their substitutes in reality.

‘This planet is large by the standards of the System Inner Planets, having an equatorial diameter of approximately 20,000 kilometres. Fortunately its mass is relatively light, so we do not suffer from oppressive gravity. Lysenka II revolves on its axis once every 33.52 E-hours, which makes for an inconveniently long day. You will be able to rest at refreshment-break, since your seats recline fully.

‘As we can observe, it is cloudy overhead. The sun rarely shines through in these latitudes, though cloud may clear at evening. Lysenka is rather a warm and drowsy planet at this period of its history.’

She indicated the world rolling past their windows. ‘There is a grove of cage trees to our left. Otherwise, vegetation is sparse. Most of the planet is semi-desert, owing to soil paucity and lack of micro-bacterial activity.

‘Although the planet has been discovered for more than a million years, we established a base on it only ten years ago. The planet awaits development. The problem is an ideological one – what to do with the fauna. The World State is still considering this vital matter. Owing to the low energy life systems here, the fauna has not been able to establish itself over much of the globe. It would be possible to extirpate all the animals. That is a neat and attractive solution. On the other hand, they may prove invaluable for studies in behaviour, and as a source for laboratory animals, etcetera.’

Constanza had slightly hastened this part of her talk. She slowed her delivery again to add, ‘However, such problems need not enter our heads on your vacation, since the decisions rest with others. At this time, we need only enjoy the strange sights. On your right, you can see now a flock of kangaroo-like creatures. I assure you there is no danger, since we are in constant radio contact with surveillance satellites. Well, that is, just today we are out of touch because of the technical difficulties of the strike; we are out of touch, but in any case we are perfectly safe in the bus. Notice that the creatures are regarding us with respect.’

The animals now bounding along beside the road had no tails. Their resemblance to kangaroos began and ended with their small pointed heads and their way of leaping over the ground. For the rest, they were more man-like, and waved their fists with oddly human gestures at the bus as it flashed past.

‘These animals eat vegetation and also flesh,’ said Constanza. ‘Their turn of speed is mainly to deliver them from those things that desire to eat them.’

The bus curved away from the flat and proceeded down a long, well-cambered curve. Ahead loomed a gigantic wall of rock, crowned with fringes of the sappy white-stemmed horsetails. It was growing difficult to understand how the bus could avoid smashing into the rock face when a curve was turned and the vehicle plunged into a tunnel.

The sides of the tunnel were lasered smooth. On the walls, inspiring slogans had been incised, slogans which contributed much to the moral tone of society. For the first time since leaving Unity, all the passengers sat up and paid attention out of the windows, sometimes reading aloud with pleasure words they had known since childhood.

Resolution is the Foe of Deviation

Unity Breeds Immunity

Never Think What Cannot Be Said

Eternal Vigilance Grants Eternal Security:

Without It Is Eternal Anarchy

There Are No Free Launches

The slogans glowed in enticing colours, smouldering into darkness again as soon as the bus had passed.

Suddenly, they were propelled back into daylight. As the rock fell away and the road ceased to curve, the tourists found themselves travelling over a tremendous plain. Its extent was emphasised by the cliff now falling behind them, and the still-distant plateau in the mists. The floor of the plain – ugly, barren and broken – was dotted with rocky debris which rose in mounds. Now and then, a sluggish river could be glimpsed.

‘We have entered the Great Rift Valley,’ Constanza said. ‘The Gorge is far ahead of us. In this area, and all the way to the Starinek Ocean away to the west, are contained most of the creatures populating Lysenka II. The rest of the planet is almost entirely empty, except for indigenous spiders and a few winged insects. Don’t forget that solar physicists and geognosticians tell us that this world is a very long way behind our worlds in development. Which is no doubt why it is the last refuge of capitalism.’

There was some laughter at this sally. Although most of the tourists had no way of knowing what exactly capitalism was, the word had retained smutty connotations over the ages.

‘That’s the River Dunder we can see occasionally over to your left. It is not large as rivers on this planet go. On the other hemisphere is a river surveyed from the air which is almost twice as long as River Amasonia on Earth. The Dunder flows over the ancient rift valley in which we now find ourselves. It is a river with many fish in the equivalent of an early Carboniferous Age development. The experts tell us that it is some 3,130 million years since Lysenka II became cool enough to allow the steam in the atmosphere to condense as rain. Now over to your right you can see if you just turn your heads another grove of horsetails. Trees very like them once flourished on Earth.’

‘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