lurulu?” Maloof smiled. “Not exactly; in fact, not even close.” He surveyed Myron. “Now that you understand the program, do you still care to participate?”
“Certainly! But I have a question or two. First, how do you plan to proceed?”
Maloof shrugged. “I wish I had a clever strategy, but I expect that I will do as before, which means trudging around, asking questions until someone decides to answer. The clerk at Vital Statistics may now be back from the houseboat.”
“We have at least one advantage,” said Myron. “Tremaine will not know that we are looking for him.”
“True.”
“And if we find him — what then?”
“Much depends upon circumstances.”
Myron rose to his feet. “I’m ready when you are.”
Maloof also stood erect. “Wear a dark jacket. We are anthropologists from Aetna University on Sansevere. And don’t forget your hat.”
Chapter II
Excerpt from Handbook To The Planets :
FLUTER: T HE T ERRIBLE T IMES
Visitors to this most beautiful of worlds are ordinarily ignorant of a dark episode in Fluter’s past. When they learn the facts, more often than not the information is received with polite incredulity, or more intelligently, as just another scar on the body of Gaean history. Nevertheless, here is an outline of the events which occurred on Fluter at that time.
The original settlers came in reaction to the insufferable overcrowding of their native world-city, Coreon on Ergard. They made population control the first and most stringent law of the land. As the centuries passed the strictures gradually relaxed and memory of Coreon became dim. The spectre of overcrowding once again cast a dreary shadow over the land and fervor for reviving the old statutes increased — rather hysterically, so it seems now. At the first Conclave for Population Readjustment, the old laws were emphatically renewed. Zealots ruled the day; proposals for gradual retrenchment were shouted down in favor of immediacy. Each village was assigned an index indicating by how far its population must be reduced to stay within the norms; killing became an ordinary affair. First to go were the aged and the infirm, along with the feeble-minded or anyone considered deficient in some regard. Family feuded with family; the elderly and even the middle-aged walked abroad at their peril. Ambush became a fine art, but the elderly suffered most until they organized themselves into fearsome gangs: the ‘Silver Ghosts’, who skulked through shadows seeking children and wailing babies, whose brains they dashed out against a rock. When at last the roster of the village declined below the index, and the need for slaughter was gone, furtive killing persisted, from habit and from engendered hatred.
Eventually equilibrium returned. Population control was everywhere rigidly enforced through regulation of procreation, fertility, elimination of abnormal children, and abortion, producing more or less the same conditions we find in the Flaut villages today.
The question is often asked: where was the IPCC during these bad times? It has been asserted that the IPCC was indifferent; such was not the case. In sheer point of fact the IPCC could function effectively only if it occupied each of the Flaut villages and Coro-Coro. A force of at least fifty thousand field agents would have been needed for the operation, resulting in a program so complex as to be unacceptable. When the Flauts became surfeited with killing, they would stop of their own accord. And so it happened.
1
The IPCC at Coro-Coro kept a low profile. In the main there was little need for a strong presence. All manifestations of local control aroused resentment in the Civil Agents, who exerted a soft but implacable influence by which order and discipline were imposed upon the folk of Fluter, in a manner adequate to the needs of a civilized society. On several occasions the Civil Agent demanded that the IPCC remove its office from Coro-Coro: requests to which the
“Certainly! But I have a question or two. First, how do you plan to proceed?”
Maloof shrugged. “I wish I had a clever strategy, but I expect that I will do as before, which means trudging around, asking questions until someone decides to answer. The clerk at Vital Statistics may now be back from the houseboat.”
“We have at least one advantage,” said Myron. “Tremaine will not know that we are looking for him.”
“True.”
“And if we find him — what then?”
“Much depends upon circumstances.”
Myron rose to his feet. “I’m ready when you are.”
Maloof also stood erect. “Wear a dark jacket. We are anthropologists from Aetna University on Sansevere. And don’t forget your hat.”
Chapter II
Excerpt from Handbook To The Planets :
FLUTER: T HE T ERRIBLE T IMES
Visitors to this most beautiful of worlds are ordinarily ignorant of a dark episode in Fluter’s past. When they learn the facts, more often than not the information is received with polite incredulity, or more intelligently, as just another scar on the body of Gaean history. Nevertheless, here is an outline of the events which occurred on Fluter at that time.
The original settlers came in reaction to the insufferable overcrowding of their native world-city, Coreon on Ergard. They made population control the first and most stringent law of the land. As the centuries passed the strictures gradually relaxed and memory of Coreon became dim. The spectre of overcrowding once again cast a dreary shadow over the land and fervor for reviving the old statutes increased — rather hysterically, so it seems now. At the first Conclave for Population Readjustment, the old laws were emphatically renewed. Zealots ruled the day; proposals for gradual retrenchment were shouted down in favor of immediacy. Each village was assigned an index indicating by how far its population must be reduced to stay within the norms; killing became an ordinary affair. First to go were the aged and the infirm, along with the feeble-minded or anyone considered deficient in some regard. Family feuded with family; the elderly and even the middle-aged walked abroad at their peril. Ambush became a fine art, but the elderly suffered most until they organized themselves into fearsome gangs: the ‘Silver Ghosts’, who skulked through shadows seeking children and wailing babies, whose brains they dashed out against a rock. When at last the roster of the village declined below the index, and the need for slaughter was gone, furtive killing persisted, from habit and from engendered hatred.
Eventually equilibrium returned. Population control was everywhere rigidly enforced through regulation of procreation, fertility, elimination of abnormal children, and abortion, producing more or less the same conditions we find in the Flaut villages today.
The question is often asked: where was the IPCC during these bad times? It has been asserted that the IPCC was indifferent; such was not the case. In sheer point of fact the IPCC could function effectively only if it occupied each of the Flaut villages and Coro-Coro. A force of at least fifty thousand field agents would have been needed for the operation, resulting in a program so complex as to be unacceptable. When the Flauts became surfeited with killing, they would stop of their own accord. And so it happened.
1
The IPCC at Coro-Coro kept a low profile. In the main there was little need for a strong presence. All manifestations of local control aroused resentment in the Civil Agents, who exerted a soft but implacable influence by which order and discipline were imposed upon the folk of Fluter, in a manner adequate to the needs of a civilized society. On several occasions the Civil Agent demanded that the IPCC remove its office from Coro-Coro: requests to which the
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