The Vindication of Man

by John C. Wright

  HR7703—Gilgamesh and Enkidu

  Two tide-locked egg-shaped binary planets with very severe tides and floodplains, worlds of rocky atolls rising sheer from stormy seas. The orbital period of the Twins is three days. The planets share a neck of stratosphere, allowing spaceplanes to cross the interplanetary interval. A permanent storm system sits at the near pole of both worlds. HR 7703 has the oddity that, for reasons unknown, the Hyades deracination ships never plundered it. It has no daughter colonies.

  Gilgamesh, is a world of archipelagoes and floating islands, and enjoys a stable government and sophisticated aquacultural ecology run by the planetary Noösphere.

  In contrast, Enkidu, which languishes at the sub-posthuman stage of development, suffers periodic convulsions and tumults, brought on by anarchistic philosophy, addiction to artificial brain-pleasure signals, or outbursts of religious zealotry: the locals worship devils perceived through ingestions of numerous hallucinogenic plants.

  82 Eridani—Cyan

  Low in iron and heavy elements, the Cyanese specialized in mental and theoretical disciplines and bred a race of intellectuals. The world is monobiotic, one species of bluish grass having adapted to all floral niches in the badly botched terraforming sequence. Planet has lower than Earth gravity; their grassboats are unique in the Empyrean, panels held up by the pressure of grass stems, coated with a frictionless substance. The first colony worlds to create a Jupiter Brain (known as Cerulean).

  The population is divided into masters and muddles, depending on whether they wear a finger-ring appliance which gives them access to the local system-wide Noösphere. The Very Large Array radio communicates with local Dominion and Collaboration outposts. Cyan enjoys more radio contact with the Hyades than other Earth worlds and is known to have exchanged four or five messages. Cyan orbits at 0.8 AU and has a year of 275 Earth days.

  Delta Pavonis—Splendor.

  A cold and mountainous world occupying the same orbit as an asteroid belt, subject to continuous meteoritic bombardment. Splendor has a year 400 Earth days long. One ocean surrounds the equatorial region like a belt: the Splendids inhabit islands and peninsula of the north and south shore, avoiding the glaciers that dominate the nonequatorial areas. The Houses of Splendor still are centered on the seven competing ecological stations of the original terraforming. With seventeen large and close moons and countless lesser moons, the study of tides is both complex and necessary to navigate Splendor’s icy seas. The Splendids are the least modified of the colonial races, having achieved tremendous breakthroughs, and having been very patient during the terraforming. It is a point of pride with the Splendids not to meddle with their own gene plasm.

  SECOND SWEEP 25th Millennium

  107 Piscium—Eurotas

  Society is highly militarized, based on a fusion of Iatrocrat, Chimerical-Myrmidon, and murk-Giant biotechnologies to form a rational and stable command hierarchy.

  61 Ursae Majoris—Cat Sin

  Famed for its several intergenerational world wars, fought by armies preserved in cryonic suspension. Suffers heavy meteorite and cometary bombardment. Sinners follow a Hibernal body type with Hormagaunt modifications.

  61 Virginis—Saint Mary’s World

  Colonized by unknown world, likely Tellus. On this world, the Supreme Pontiff of the Sacerdotal Order has his See.

  Alula Australis [a.k.a. Xi Ursae Majoris]—Taprobane

  Early Witch biotechnicians stocked the world with beasts based on sacred and heraldic animals.

  88 G. Monocerotis—Unicorn

  Famed for its gigantic biota and endless prairies.

  Wolf 25 in Pisces—We Sing Paeans

  Despite the name, the Sacerdotal order is outlawed on this world, and each family is required to invent its own private mythology and pantheon.

  Gliese 884 in Aquarius—We See a Strange Dawn

  Entirely inhabited by agoraphobics, the Seers have trained the local flora to surround them as they walk, blocking out any dizzying vistas of distant objects.

  Chi-1 Orionis—We Cower Beneath Odd Skies

  The Cowards retain the ancient Vampire-based form of government from Venus.

  66 G. Centauri—Pure Abode of Unreturning Souls also called Suddhavasa-Anagamin

  A famed world of aesthetes, who experiment with new sense organs and neural interpretation systems. Ghosts are illegal here, but exist in an underworld.

  HR 4458 in Hydra—Felicity of the Silent Soul

  Colonized from Rosycross of Proxima Centauri. The base psychology is non-orthogonal.

  HR 753 in Cetus—Waiting to Die

  Draconis-type variable: variability due to stellar rotation in which sunspots blotting most of the stellar hemisphere rotate in and out of the field of view. Several continents of the planet cloaked with poisoned gas or venomous water table, due to nanotechnological errors, terraforming disasters, and malign ghosts.

  p Eridani—Open Airlocks

  An error in early pantropy causes the dominant population to have no imagination—that is, no ability to visualize shapes or remember faces. Oddly, they possess unerring directional sense.

  HR 8832 in Cassiopeia—Masochists’ Delight

  Immortalist world. Near twin of Tellus. Originally called Mnemosyne’s Delight, a reference to resemblance to the memories of Earth. Name changed after Earth-like viruses and predatory animals flourished in the environment, but unwise terraforming laws prevented any self-defense.

  Zeta Tucanae—Cursed Earth

  A world of very limited pantropy, extensive terraforming. Unbroken cloud cover was needed to heat the world to human toleration limits. Famed for its mile-high towers and lighter-than-air cities.

  Zeta Reticuli—Venture Prospect

  All real property owned by one family corporation, the Land Clan, which exploits the jovian world and the debris ring.

  284 G. Eridani—Lingering Malice

  High-gravity world rich in rare elements. Famed for the harshness of it terrain, the ugliness of its women. An illegal pantropy removed all ability to see beauty from the Malicious neural coding, in an attempt to combat the suicide rate.

  Tabit [a.k.a. Pi 3 Orionis]—Fifteen Masks of Uncaring Fate

  Ruled by cabal of Fox ghosts who inspire dreams and visions.

  41 Arae—Nepenthe for Woe

  Pantropic adaptation gives the population seasonal metamorphosis of radical degree, a spherical shape in winter, a batlike shape in summer.

  Xi Boötis—Euphrasy

  The right of parents and orphanages to experiment on their children is uncontested here. This is the only world known to have successfully overthrown their Myrmidon overlords and reduced them to slavery. Home world of the Reticent Order.

  Chara [a.k.a. Beta Canum Venaticorum]—Joyous

  Famed near twin of Tellus. Called Joyous Way when it was under the rule of a cabal of shape-changers. Unable to trust faces, the population engages in an extensive and intrusive unhindered neurotelepathy, has fought several nerve wars to become the foremost expert at the grisly art of brain-deception, and disdains to use any physical weapons. Dominant population is Joys.

  MLO 4 in Scorpius [a.k.a. HR 6426]—Horrific Vision of Nagual

  A hybrid of Scholar, Fox, and Myrmidons called Nagual rule the world, able to plunder both mental information and biological outward forms from each other, are kept in check only by submission to a horrific and remorseless caste of robotic peacekeepers called the Taloi, who, because they can neither kill nor imprison the fluid population of Nagual, enforce discipline by tortures inflicted without warning, trial, or appeal.

  HR 7722 in Capricorn—Preceptor Joachim Voor’s World

  Indulges in a fanatical aversion to cliometry. Early on, the Voorishmen believed selecting the committee of Voivodes by lottery would render predictions impossible. Unfortunately, the Voivode terraforming and patropic authorities, selected at random, were riven by rivalry: in consequence, the fauna of Voor’s World is famed for its sickly appearance and comical
ungainliness. There is said to be no fair and wholesome thing on the globe, except for Nymphs and she-Sylphs the Voivodes import for their display harems.

  HR 511 in Cassiopeia—New Seed

  Ecological errors allowed semi-intelligent edible fungi variant to replace all plant life and fill all possible plant life niches, including orchid forms that root in the human and animal hair of all mammals. Making a pastime of necessity, gardeners coif and crossbreed their hair infections to ever more alluring and provocative designs.

  12 Ophiuchi—Dust

  Anarcho-Contractual world governed by Swan posterity called Anarchs, ruling over a more cohesive race, descended from Hormagaunts, called Aberrants. All buildings are temporary, towers constructed into fantastic and eerie shapes by electrostatic cohesion, made out of the ubiquitous surface dust. The local flora are airborne spoors and high-altitude clouds of photosynthesizing plant-animals that drip manna.

  Variable star.

  Gamma Leporis—Broceliande

  A low-gravity world famed for the height and beauty of its trees. By ancient law, all tree breeds must be based on terrestrial precedent. Weather control is placed strictly under the control of the forest-mind, regardless of human concerns.

  This is the sole world where the human and Myrmidon colonists continued in the Feudalism of the Golden Lords long after the rest of the Empyrean had fallen into disunion and darkness. The Inquisition successfully prevented any Foxes or Patricians from abolishing the Golden hierarchy.

  Fomalhaut—Plenary Triumph

  Surrounded by a circumstellar disk. Fomalhaut, K-type star TW Piscis Austrini, and M-type star LP 876-10 constitute a trinary system.

  The world is a featureless ice ball, eight times the size of Earth and twice the mass, whose ice contains traces of a previous nonhuman civilization from Theta Tauri in Hyades. Note that Lares in the 38th Millennium hails from here.

  Plenary Triumph was terraformed into a globe holding twelve pentagonal continents of Earth life surrounded by twenty hexagonal continents of native ice, each pentagon holding a circular crater sea of precisely the same size and volume as all other seas. In the gnomons between the seashore and the rigidly perfect lines of ice wall severing native from Earth-like life, grow the gardens, self-aware farming zones, and treasure cities of the Triumphants.

  The Triumphants are famed for their dueling custom, which allows for single combat but not warfare. Hence, to fight their wars, one champion would be outfitted with cybernetic power armor of absurd splendor, larger than a battleship, and go trample the houses and towers, groves and gardens of the enemy, until met and halted by a champion in panoply of like weight and power.

  THIRD SWEEP 37th Millennium

  58 Eridani—Neodamode

  A highly militarized and organized society known for its peaceful, disciplined, and highly industrious populations.

  Rho Cancri [a.k.a. 55 Cancri]—Sciritaea

  A highly militarized and organized society riven by continual tumults, intrigues, and civil wars.

  47 Ursae Majoris—Vital Delectation

  The Delectables maintain a vicious custom of dueling, assassination, small-scale warfare, and ghost worship. The rumor that their women are raised as beasts and not taught language until captured and tamed during courtship is absurd and false.

  83 Leonis—Uttaranchal

  The society is variegated into extremely fine nuances of a biotechnological caste system so that each family and each individual within the family knows his exact degree of rank. Ruled by the ghosts of the original two surviving settlers, from whom all populations are descended. Immigrants not adopted into the family are enslaved.

  Alpha Mensae—Land of Hungry Needle-Necked Wraiths

  Despite the name, a pleasant world of perfumed glades, cheerful lakes, and mountains carved into cathedrals and ziggurats. Famed for its hanging gardens.

  18 Scorpii—Unsuit

  Ruled by the descendants of the original terraformers, who keep the landscape so delicately tuned, that all houses with walls are outlawed.

  Epsilon Reticuli—Determined Endpoint Project

  Ruled by a ruthless caste called Fiduciaries. Children are born in debt and must earn manumission from their parents.

  44 Boötis—Schattenreich and Rime

  Schattenreich is a hemisphere of erosion-flattened hills opposite a hemisphere of deep and tideless waters. It is famed for its ghost population, which far outnumbers its living and are malign.

  Rime is a cold and light-gravity world, adorned with natural ice towers. Flocculent Man, descended from the Hibernals of Yule, have ousted all other races, except that the Reticents from Xi Boötis who occupy spires and mountains through nerve-war praxis have imposed a set of geas rather than laws. The geas forbids no deeds nor acts, but instead certain mental states, as vulgarity, waggish familiarity, and peevishness. The Reticents are Hierophants famed for their obsessive self-reliance and myriad tradesman personalities crowding their psyches, giving them competence at every art, science, and profession.

  Arcturus [a.k.a. Alpha Boötis]—Nightspore

  A rare case of double colonization: populations were deracinated from Euphrasy of Xi Boötis and from Joyous of Beta Canum Venaticorum.

  Torn during its early days in civil war between Shapingmen (Joys who favored pantropy dwell in the south) and Crystalmen (Reticent terraformers dwell in the north) the Nightsporeans have created two equal and opposed biospheres (Muspel-life and Niffle-life), no creature nor plant of which consumes nor is consumed by the other. Summer Kings rose to power here and have since attempted to quell the ferocious earthquakes and vast, malign tempests and tornadoes, but with limited success. Cities and towns are particularly vulnerable to weather-control sieges and retaliations, and so have been outlawed. The system of semi-independent multiple specialized mental functions called internals was developed here.

  51 Pegasi—Chrysaor

  A utopian world of fertile fields, small cottages, hedges, canals, eight-sided windmills. Vegetarianism and strict ahimsa, absolute nonviolence to all living things, remain from the harsh terraforming regime of the early Myrmidon settlers.

  85 Pegasi—Geryon

  A hell-world of boiling oceans, volcanoes, rocky archipelagos. Originally ruled by shape-takers whose women were lobotomized at birth and used only as breeding livestock, the repugnance of these customs persuaded the Starfarers Guild to assign assassins to destroy their leadership. The assassins learned the art of shape-taking and blended so well with the natives that no one was aware when the last native was killed and replaced. The endless and anarchic war of all against all has achieved a cliometric halt-state and cannot foreseeably be resolved.

  Rasalhague—Penance

  A planet famous for its abundance of gems and geodes, many of which are unobtainable elsewhere in human space. The Penitent adopted a rigorous system of asceticism to prevent their wealth from corrupting them.

  Gamma Pavonis—To Prevail

  Colonized by Splendor of Delta Pavonis. The Prevalent retain the strict hierarchic culture of the ancient Splendids.

  FOURTH SWEEP 53rd Millennium

  Regulus [a.k.a. Alpha Leonis]—Here Be Monsters

  A vegetarian world with no fauna at all. Cannibalism frequent among the aristocracy. An odd custom is that all boy children are raised blind until a mate is selected for him so that the first sight he sees is his bride. Dominant race is Anthropovores.

  Zeta Leporis—Svartalfheim

  Atmosphere entirely black and opaque. Famed for its thick and dense asteroid belts, remnants of several exploded gas giants.

  Hamal [a.k.a. Alpha Arietis]—Mystery of the Second Creation

  Predominant race is Seers from We See a Strange Dawn.

  HR 2622 in Monoceros—Qailertetang

  The most ambitious project of terraforming known: a molten world cooled by terraforming to pleasant subarctic conditions. Ruled by a cabal of weather-control architects called Winter Queens.

  Gliese 31.5 in
Tucana—Shumisen, also called Mountain of the Lovely Peach Trees

  This world has never known war or murder. All children are subdued by a program of addiction to soothing drugs and electronic signals. The population is preoccupied with intrigues revolving around a set of worldwide cybernetic dreamscapes. Roughly one-fourth of the population eventually succumbs to some form of assisted suicide due to associative disorders. Cliometry indicates this is a halt-state.

  Pi Mensae—Onwardness

  A world where human emotion had been outlawed except on Sabbath days. The local gas giant planet interrupts the habitable zone, producing alarming tides and quakes.

  Zubenelgenubi [a.k.a. Alpha Librae]—Aaru, also called the Field of Reeds

  Terraformed eccentrically, with a single river reaching from pole to pole. The northern hemisphere is the debris of an interplanetary collision and has not yet settled into spherical shape. The sole source of oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere comes from river plankton, and so the airs outside the single long river valley are inhospitable. Inhabited by Giants, Nicors, Foxes, ruled by the ghosts of the original colonists.

  Xi Scorpius—Bloody Water Poisoned Air

  As the name implies, terraformed poorly. The gravity is high, and the Bloods have been modified to withstand it: they spend their afternoons in highly salted baths.

  HIP 12961—Land of the Young

  Dreaded Immortalist colony. It is rumored that any traveler departing from the local Forever Village is treated against his will and cannot thereafter die.

  FIFTH or PETTY SWEEP 66th Millennium

  HIP 10301 in Eridanus—Perioecium

  A highly militarized and disciplined population. Known for their living garments, symbiosis of Myrmidon material to specially adapted skin cells in the Timocrat caste.

  Epsilon Virginis [a.k.a. Vindemiatrix]—Feast of Stephen

  Saint Agnes and Saint Wenceslaus are remnants of the same shattered gas giant which formed Feast of Stephen. All three worlds are in an unusual equilateral triangle orbit. Whether this is a primary with two giant moons or a triple planet body is a matter of semantics. The two moons were terraformed. Predominant race is Loricates.