travels five parsecs from Brae to Nyanza in a high-speed flitter;
lands at a spaceport of grav-grid, field and buildings with forest to west and south, a small ancient city to the east and a cloudless sky above blue ocean to the north;
is flown to the resident's mansion in an aircar by the Portmaster;
from the air, sees steep narrow streets of native stone with many pedestrians but few vehicles and busy modern docks where -
- a majority of sailing ships implies a leisurely, aesthetic life-style;
but their hydrodynamic design implies appreciation of efficiency;
sea-water processors, factories and sea weed delivered to a plastics plant imply that most Nyanzans harvest the ocean and trade with this one island for industrial products and technology.
The widow of the murdered resident is an Ayres of Antarctica. Thus, that Terrestrial continent is occupied in the Imperial period. I seem to remember something about the urbanization of Antarctica in the Psychotechnic History?
2 comments:
Hi, Paul!
Perhaps, instead, you had in mind Charles Reymont, one of the major characters we see in TAU ZERO. Chapter 1 of that book says Reymont was born in Antarctica, but not in one of it's more successful settlements: "...the sublevels of Polyugorsk offered only poverty and turbulence to a boy whose father had died early." Rather like what Aaron Snelund endured in his childhood on Venus.
Sean
Sean,
Yes, that sounds right.
Paul.
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