-copied from Unusual Heavenly Bodies.
The alien Ardazirho have occupied the human colony planet, Vixen. An earlier post, Wolves On Vixen, summarized information about the invaders but did not do them justice so let's try again.
Thousands of kilometers of inhospitable northern Vixen make the Ardazirho headquarters impregnable to ground attack by human beings. Burrowing deep protects it from spaceships. Approaching (as a prisoner), Flandry sees:
unconcealed warships;
missile emplacements;
detector stations;
lookout towers;
outer walls patrolled by Ardazirho unperturbed by heat, glare or ultraviolet.
Inside:
long vaulted tunnels;
clashing boots;
echoing voices;
fused rock;
a layout acceptable to beings whose ancestors had laired in caves and hunted in packs;
endless booming halls;
brilliant blue fluorescence painful to human eyes;
a warrior driving an ammunition truck insanely fast, cursing pedestrians;
Ardazirho crowded, naked, red-furred, sprawling, snarling, quarreling, gambling with tetrahedral dice, risking a year of slavery, wrestling with teeth and nails, throwing axes at one against a wall or bolting raw meat while howling in unison;
one wallowing in pungent leaves before a large burning wheel;
a gloomy, straw-strewn "office" where, when Flandry asks for a drink, he is invited to sip from a stream running down a wall.
Sounds like Hell? All in a day's work for Flandry who, prisoner or no prisoner, has gone there to observe and learn as much as he can.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The EXTREME climate of the northern hemisphere of Vixen during the summer reminded me of the even more extreme summer climate of Talwin.
And those unconcealed warships were "insolently" parked in the open. Flandry would soon find that bit of Ardazirho bravado very useful!
And that bit about the warrior wallowing prostrate before a burning wheel indicates the Ardazirho had some kind of religion. But we are not told anything more, such as whether they were monotheists or polytheists.
Sean
Sean,
The proverb about the Powers hunting at night suggests polytheism.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, that does suggest polytheism. Altho we see mention of Svantozik himself being agnostic.
Sean
The Ardazirho were another example in the Technic history of a culture given a sudden massive technological boost, without themselves going through the social-economic evolution needed to -produce- the technology.
Similar things have happened on Earth -- Japan after Meiji, for example. The Japanese went from an extended post-medieval period in the 1860's to more or less full technological parity with the West by the 1920's, barely two generations.
Oddly, this is probably easier in Poul's future history, because the technology is self-handling to a large extent, so cultures less suited to modernization than Meiji Japan could handle it.
(For example, when the Meiji era started in the 1860's, Japan already had a higher literacy rate than France or several other European countries.)
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I basically agree with what you wrote here, except I think the Ardazirho deserve a bit more credit than is being given them. We do see mention of how the most advanced "orbekhs," such as Urdahu, had independently achieved interplanetary space travel by the time Aycharaych and the Merseians pretended to be agents of Ymir about 20 years before WE CLAIM THESE STARS. Which is better than what STILL have not managed to achieve as of now.
And Scotha was still a truly barbaric world when Merseins agents may had meddled there a century before "Tiger by the Tail."
Sean
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