Throy
Table of Contents
| Throy | |
| The Cadwall Chronicles [3] | |
| Jack Vance | |
| Tor Books (1992) | |
| Rating: | ★★★☆☆ |
| Tags: | Science Fiction Science Fictionttt |
In the reaches of Mircea's Whips the convoluted plots and politics that have swirled around the House of Clattuc and the Conservancy of Cadwal are beginning to unravel. But what remains for Glawen Clattuc to discover could bring down a dozen powerful families on as many worlds. Throy concludes the Cadwal Chronicles, which began with Araminta Station and continued in Ecce and Old Earth.
From Publishers Weekly
Continuing his tales of Cadwal, governed for generations by the Conservancy, which is dedicated to preserving the planet's natural beauty, Vance posits a scenario in which the Conservancy is now rent by factional conflict between the radical Life, Peace and Freedom Party and the conservative Chartists. LPFers ostensibly champion the cause of the Yips, happy-go-lucky descendants of runaway servants, illegal immigrants and petty criminals who are restricted to a region called Lutwen Atoll except when serving as cheap labor at Araminta Station, which is the administrative center and home to the Chartists, who uphold the original plan to restrict the spread of humanity across Cadwal. When a new, stricter Charter arrives, the inhabitants of Stroma, the only other settlement on the planet and the LPF center, are ordered to move to Araminta Station. Sinister undercurrents presage a full-scale conspiracy involving the Yips and longtime enemies of Cadwal. The popular Vance ( Ecce and Old Earth ) pens an often lively tale with some colorful moments and acerbic observations on politics and mores, although his mannered language and strained descriptions may put off the discriminating reader.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Vengeance and unrequited love are the motivating factors behind an insidious plot to destroy the Cadwal Conservancy as agents Glawen Clattuc and Eustace Chilke track an elusive enemy across several worlds only to return home at last to find a revolution in the making. Vance's polished and formal style creates an emotional gap that is difficult to bridge; consequently, his characters lack real depth. Still, this follow-up to Araminta Station (Tor, 1989) and Ecce and Old Earth (Underwood/Miller, 1991) demonstrates the author's talent for imagining worlds and environments. Purchase where the author has a following.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Precursory
I. The Purple Rose System
(Excerpted from:
The Worlds of Man
, 48th edition.)
Halfway along the Perseid Arm near the edge of the Gaean Reach, a capricious swirl of galactic gravitation has caught up ten thousand stars and sent them streaming off at a veer, with a curl and a flourish at the tip. This strand of stars 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, orbit close around each other: 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, circles the gallivanting pair at a discrete distance.
Syrene controls three planets, including Cadwal, an Earth-like world seven thousand miles in diameter, with close to Earth-normal gravity.
(A list and analysis of physical indices is here omitted.)
II. The Naturalist System
Cadwal was first explored by the locator R. J. Neirmann, a member of the Naturalist Society of Earth. His report prompted the Society to dispatch an official expedition to Cadwal, which corroborated Neirmann’s lyrical descriptions: Cadwal indeed was a magnificent world, of beautiful landscapes, congenial climate and - not the least - a flora and fauna of fascinating diversity. The Society registered Cadwal in its own name, was awarded a grant-in-perpetuity and immediately declared the wonderful new world a Conservancy, protected forever against wanton depredation, vulgarity, and commercial exploitation.
A Great Charter defined the administration of the new Conservancy and specified the tolerable limits of interference in the ecology.
The three continents Ecce, Deucas and Throy, were distinctly different. Araminta Station, the administrative node of the planet, occupied a block of a hundred square miles on the east coast of Deucas, most hospitable of the continents. The Charter additionally authorized a chain of wilderness lodges, disposed at especially scenic or interesting sites, for the convenience of administrative personnel, Naturalist Society members, scientists, and tourists.
III. The World Cadwal
The three continents Ecce, Deucas and Throy, were separated one from the other by expanses of empty ocean, unbroken by islands, with three trifling exceptions: Lutwen Atoll, Thurben Island and Ocean Island, all volcanic in origin and all in the Eastern Ocean off the coast of Deucas.
Ecce, long and narrow, lay along the equator: a flat tract of swamp and jungle, netted by sluggish rivers. Ecce palpitated with heat, stench, color and ravenous vitality. Ferocious creatures everywhere preyed upon one another, and any human being rash enough to venture within reach.
Three volcanos reared above the flat landscape. Two of these, Rikke and Imfer, were active; Shattorak was dormant.
The early explorers gave Ecce little serious attention; no more did the later scholars, and Ecce, after the first flurry of biological and topographical surveys, remained a land abandoned and unknown.
Deucas, five times as large as Ecce, occupied most of the north temperate zone on the opposite side of the planet, with Cape Journal, the continent’s southernmost extremity, at the end of a long triangular peninsula which thrust a thousand miles below the equator.
The fauna of Deucas, while neither as grotesque nor as monstrous as that of Ecce, was yet, in many cases, savage and formidable, and included several semi-intelligent species. The flora tended to resemble that of Old Earth, to such effect that the early agronomists were able to introduce useful terrestrial species at Araminta Station, such as bamboo, coconut palms, wine-grapes and fruit trees without fear of an ecological disaster.
1
Throy, to the south of Deucas and about equal in area to Ecce, extended from the polar ice well into the south temperate zone. The terrain of Throy was the most dramatic of Cadwal. Crags leaned over chasms; dark forests roared in the wind. When storms blew across the great ocean, waves a hundred feet, or sometimes two hundred feet, from trough to crest struck into the cliffs of Peter Bullis Land, creating awesome sounds and jarring the landscape.
IV. Araminta Station
At Araminta Station a resident staff of (nominally) two hundred and forty persons monitored the Conservancy and enforced the terms of the Charter. Superficially the administrative structure was simple. A Conservator coordinated the work of six bureaus.
2
The original six superintendents were Deamus Wook, Shirry Clattuc, Saul Diffin, Claude Offaw, Marvell Veder, and Condit Laverty. Each had been required to assemble a staff not to exceed forty in number. Nepotism had been the rule rather than the exception; each Bureau Superintendent recruited extensively from his kinship and guild associates. The practice, if nothing else, brought to the early administration a cohesion which otherwise might have been lacking.
After many centuries, much had changed. The original rude encampment had become a settlement dominated by six palatial edifices, where lived the descendants of the Wooks, Offaws, Clattucs, Diffins, Veders and Lavertys. Each House had developed a 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.
The station early acquired a hotel to house its visitors; also an airport, a hospital, schools and a theater: the ‘Orpheum’.
When subsidies from society headquarters on Old Earth dwindled and presently stopped altogether, the need for foreign exchange became urgent. Vineyards planted at the back of the enclave began to produce fine wines for export, and tourists were encouraged to visit the wilderness lodges.
Over the centuries, certain problems became acute. How could so many enterprises be staffed by a complement of only two hundred and forty persons? Elasticity was necessarily the answer. First, collaterals
3
were allowed to accept middle-status positions at the station. By a loose reading of the Charter, children, retired persons, domestic servants and ‘temporary labor not in permanent residence’ were exempted from the forty-person-per-house limit. The term ‘temporary labor’ was extended to include farm labor, hotel staff, airport mechanics – indeed, workers of every description - and the Conservator looked the other way so long as the work-force was allowed no permanent residence.