Forbidden Planets (30 page)
“It was a full-scale security alert. Full-scale alert. We thought you’d been kidnapped. We honestly thought you’d been kidnapped. Everyone thought that, everyone was praying for you. You’ll write them, of course. Proper apologies, handwritten. Why did you turn your palmer off? One call, one simple call, and it would have been all right, we wouldn’t have minded. Lucky we can track them even when they’re switched off. Salim’s in big trouble too. You know, this is a major incident, it’s in all the papers, and not just here in Cantonment. It’s even made SKYIndia News. You’ve embarrassed us all, made us look very, very stupid. Sledgehammer to crack a nut. Salim’s father has had to resign. Yes, he’s that ashamed.”
But Kyle knew his dad was burning with joy and relief to have him back.
Mom was different. Mom was the torturer.
“It’s obvious we can’t trust you. Well, of course you’re grounded, but really, I thought you knew what it was like here. I thought you understood that this is not like anywhere else, that if we can’t trust each other, we can really put one another in danger. Well, I can’t trust you here, and your dad, well, he’ll have to give it up. We’ll have to quit and go back home, and the Lord knows, he won’t get a job anything close to what we have here. We’ll have to move to a smaller house in a less good area, I’ll have to go out to work again. And you can forget about that Salim boy, yes, forget all about him. You won’t be seeing him again.”
Kyle cried himself out that night in bed, cried himself into great shivering, shuddering sobs empty of everything except the end of the world. Way, way later he heard the door open.
“Kyle?” Mom’s voice. He froze in his bed. “I’m sorry. I was upset. I said things I shouldn’t have said. You did bad, but all the same, your dad and I think you should have this.”
A something was laid beside his cheek. When the door had closed, Kyle put on the light. The world could turn again. It would get better. He tore open the plastic bubblecase. Coiled inside, like a beckoning finger, like an Arabic letter, was a lighthoek. And in the morning, before school, before breakfast, before anything but the pilgrims going to the river, he went up onto the roof at Guy’s Place, slipped the ’hoek behind his ear, pulled his palmer-glove over his fingers, and went soaring up through the solar farm and the water tanks, the cranes and the construction helicopters and the clouds, up toward Salim’s world.
Forbearing Planet
Michael Moorcock
P
rospero Pidgeon had seen too many intelligent planets in his time not to recognize this new one. He was, after all, the leading expert. When he arrived, accompanied by his mechanical sidekick Robert Robot, one sniff was enough to tell him what was going on. Not only was Temptation II a sentient biosphere roughly the size of Earth, it enjoyed a certain mild malevolence toward its human population that at any time might flare into outright hatred, which, of course, would be the end of them. By the time he had landed, employing Robert’s analytic processors, Professor Pidgeon had already determined the existence of three previous intelligent species that had died in various dramatic ways after Temptation II had taken against them.
rospero Pidgeon had seen too many intelligent planets in his time not to recognize this new one. He was, after all, the leading expert. When he arrived, accompanied by his mechanical sidekick Robert Robot, one sniff was enough to tell him what was going on. Not only was Temptation II a sentient biosphere roughly the size of Earth, it enjoyed a certain mild malevolence toward its human population that at any time might flare into outright hatred, which, of course, would be the end of them. By the time he had landed, employing Robert’s analytic processors, Professor Pidgeon had already determined the existence of three previous intelligent species that had died in various dramatic ways after Temptation II had taken against them.
“You can’t just keep trashing and abandoning planets,” Prospero pointed out to President Pushof, the charming elected head of Temptation II’s legislative assembly. And before Mrs. Pushof could interject, he raised a restraining hand. “Honestly, a few green wheelies and a rather reluctantly implemented recycling program are little more than a gesture. I’ve seen altogether too much of this, Mrs. President. The fact is that your aerocars alone, not to mention your rocket services, are adding more greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere than all the trucks and SUVs of our ancient and much mourned home planet. Then there are your refineries . . .”
“The source of our wealth,” reiterated the president. “Our very livelihood.”
“And, ironically, the likely cause of your ultimate destruction.” Pidgeon pursed his kindly lips. “After all, it’s not as if history hasn’t shown . . .”
“Bunk!” exclaimed the Leader of the World. “Inconvenient bunk. If we sat around all day discussing precedents and past mistakes, there would be no progress at all. Now listen, professor, we’re not unreasonable people, and we know you guys mean well. I, too, am a lover of the wilderness. Indeed, it’s fair to say I’ve created a few in my time. But we have to offset a love of nature against the needs of a world that must expand economically to survive. We have less than five percent unemployment on Temptation II unless you count the native population already on welfare, who are notoriously workshy and live entirely thanks to the beneficence of the good-natured taxpayer. Bring in the protocols you propose, and the planet would be plunged into fiscal chaos. Everyone knows that the moment unemployment rises above twenty percent, radical socialism gets into the air, and any chance of a decent conservative party keeping power goes down the drain. Don’t blame me for that, professor. Blame populist democracy. I didn’t invent populist democracy now, did I?”
And with the air of a woman who had scored an unanswerable point in the great debate of life, she sat back in her massive presidential chair and lit a manly stogie.
“Well, ma’am,” replied Prospero Pidgeon. “I have offered you my advice. Unlike our dearly mourned home world, Temptation II is unlikely to let herself die, I would guess, without at least a little resistance.”
“We know what to do with resistance, radicals, and revolutionary councils,” President Pushof assured him. “We drill ’em full of holes.” And she grinned the grin that had won her votes but failed to impress Professor Pidgeon, who was, if anything, overfamiliar with the joke and the expression. He sighed.
Wrong answer
, said his robot sidekick in his warm but still evidently artificial voice.
Eliminate. Eliminate
.
, said his robot sidekick in his warm but still evidently artificial voice.
Eliminate. Eliminate
.
“Do what?” The president’s jaw dropped.
“He’s referring to the elimination of greenhouse gasses,” explained Pidgeon “As a being producing no poisons, nor requiring any energy but sunlight, Robert is a little pious about such things.”
“No doubt he supports abortion and teen pregnancy, “ murmured Pushof in disgust. “It’s people like your assistant, professor, who are taking jobs away from honest Temptationonians. On our planet, we have a name for clones and metallic contraptions pretending to be human.” She frowned, evidently forgetting what that name was.
“Well, ma’am,” said Professor Pidgeon, putting on his hat, “I’m sorry you see fit not to be persuaded, but if you decide not to take my warning about the course you have plotted towards total disaster . . .”
“We are destroying nothing but pessimism and poverty,” declared President Pushof with a cold, condescending grin. She smoothed back her blue-rinsed perm. “You can take that message back to your United Planets, and if they don’t like it, tell them to shove it up their collective commie craters. Good afternoon.”
“I didn’t quite mean that you were going to be doing the destroying,” declared Pidgeon. “I was referring to two possibilities. Gaia, of course, is one. The other is popularly known as the Beast from the Id. My own adopted planet . . .”
“All our beasts are alive and well and indeed happy with their situation, even in hunting season.”
“Indeed, ma’am.” Prospero Pidgeon gave a sign to Robert Robot and the two beings left the presidential office.
And so Professor Pidgeon returned to his office at the United Planets HQ on New Peoria, saddened but helpless to take any further action, since his brief was only to advise, and he had no powers to enforce. Besides, there were so many planets in their sector of the galaxy that it would not make a serious dent in anyone’s economy should Temptation II disappear from the star chart tomorrow. But, as he saw it, one by one and little by little, it was a shame to see such massive intelligence wasted on bloody revenge, the creation of aggressive illusions, and the general psyching out of people who, while not exactly thoughtful or respectful about their environment, could easily have learned, in his opinion, to accommodate their sentient world so that both might benefit.
He made a note to revisit Temptation II if the opportunity arose and the planet survived and then turned his attention to the pressing matter of Disneyworld IX, which had built a roller coaster so high that it was in danger of knocking the planet’s small moon out of orbit. The Disneyworlders were justifiably very proud of their engineering achievement, the first to dip in and out of the surrounding void, and needed advice on how to incorporate the satellite into the ride itself. No killjoy, Professor Pidgeon was able to make some useful suggestions, and he and Robert were both offered free lifetime memberships by a grateful corporation, which, of course, they were forced to turn down, though Robert did accept a small Buzz Lightyear commemorative rocket, which he placed in a specially made showcase in his chest. Professor Pidgeon wondered at the process that made most people in the entertainment business more tolerant and liberal than those who chose other means of earning their livings.
So time passed, and no fresh news was heard from Temptation II.
Eventually, Professor Pidgeon, leafing through his records one day, began to wonder how the planet had fared since his last visit. As far as he could tell, it was still there, though he couldn’t speak for the population. Since he would be passing by that sector on his way to help in the psychological rehabilitation of a sentient world that had inexplicably developed some anxiety attacks, coupled with a delusion that it was the Last of the Ononos, a spherical people of savage, cannibalistic tendencies who had once been the sworn enemies of the late Lord Greystoke, more popularly known as Tarzan of the Apes. He sent a voicemail to the government of Temptation II informing them that he planned a visit, but he received no reply.
Naturally, Professor Pidgeon feared the worst. The human population and what remained of the earlier inhabitants had no doubt been savagely destroyed by a planet that could stand no further abuse of its resources. Through violent delusions and their own anger turned back on them they had doubtless been destroyed. As he climbed into his ethermobile and conscientiously fixed his safety belt, he sighed with regret at the anticipated scenes of horror he would doubtless have to log as part of his job.
The appointment with the deluded would-be Onono was concluded not without difficulty. Professor Pidgeon provided the necessary psychiatric attention together with a mixture of carefully injected antianxiety gasses into the planet’s atmosphere, combined with some expert therapy in which he was able to convince the planet that merely because it was spherical did not make it savage and fond of human flesh. It was touch and go for a while, since the planet had already ingested several thousand inhabitants of its northern hemisophere. However, not being entirely sure what cannibal sentient spheres did with their victims, the planet had taken them into a large underground cave system near its equator, where they were found shaken but unharmed, having lived for some months on a kind of edible moss, both nutritious and tasty, resembling a deep green popcorn. They realized they could successfully cultivate it and sell it to their nearest neighbors on the planet Vega, whose principles forbade them from eating any kind of flesh or fleshly products. The Onono planet also began to enjoy some much-needed self-esteem, having been convinced that its natural excrusions were contributing not only to the well-being of its inhabitants, who were rapidly developing a taste for the moss themselves, but that its fresh optimism and amiability were allowing it to get on better with a number of sentient shrubs and small trees that hitherto had been something of an embarrassment to it. Meanwhile, the Onanists, as they began to call themselves, were willingly being converted into Vegans by their neighbors. The planet in fact began to experiment with producing different flavors and varieties of the moss, while the Ononists in turn devoted a good-sized proportion of their income to importing special nutrients that their host world found especially delectable. This happy conclusion to the problem took the best part of a year to establish so that it was rather later than he had expected before Professor Pidgeon stopped by on Temptation II.
He found not the wasteland he had feared, but rather a thriving, busy community, still using aerocars and other vehicles, admittedly of more recent design, while the planet was no longer giving off the threatening signals Professor Pidgeon had detected earlier. There was a busy volume of traffic entering the planet’s stations from all over this sector of the galaxy. Instead of filthy factories belching out pollutants threatening the health of the planet and her inhabitants, now all of Temptation II’s cities were filled with colorful transparent neon-glowing temples, so it seemed, to a new religion. Nowhere were there to be seen the signs of disease and destruction Pidgeon and Robert had initially detected. Seeking out the former President Pushof, who now bore the rather mysterious title of Producer Pushof, he requested an explanation for the phenomenon.
“I have to admit to you, Mrs. Pushof, that I had fully expected to discover this planet undergoing its fourth period of complete devastation. Instead, though I am no enthusiast for this essentially urban environment you have developed, I discover not only a rather cheerful population, but a planet that is clearly at one with itself and its inhabitants.”
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