"Modern police and intelligence methodology - even military science - didn't exist on Unan Besar. Poor damned Nias Warouw, a born detective forced to re-invent the whole art of detection!
"But he had done a surprisingly good job of it." (X, p. 91)
What did I say in the previous post about Nias Warouw? He knew that Flandry would find a way to survive and had to find out whether there was already an extraplanetary network on Unan Besar so he followed up what leads he had, helped by some clumsiness on the part of Flandry's ally, Luang.
But why does Warouw stay with what he knows is a comic opera regime? As Flandry points out, he would be able to gain all that he has and more in Technic civilization. That is not how Warouw sees it:
"'What would I be there, another little politician making dirty little compromises - or Nias Warouw whom all man fear?'" (XI, p. 105)
So Warouw has a definite choice - and makes the wrong one.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, Nias Warouw made the wrong choice. A regime as viciously corrupt and laughably incompetent as Biocontrol did not deserve to survive.
What Nias craved was being feared and regarded with awe by all on Unan Besar. That appealed far more to him than being a politician of the kind seen on normal planets, wheeling and dealing and making compromises.
Ad astra! Sean
Bear in mind that everyone on Unan Besar is a -product- of Unan Besar. The situation appears normal to them, particularly if they're not on the bottom rung.
Warouw's problem is that his superiors are incompetents and dimwits.
This is because the setup allows them to be -- and in any human institution, sloth and incompetence will prevail (and prevail increasingly) if it's not pruned by some form of competition.
The end-product for Unan Besar if Flandry hadn't shown up would be for Biocontrol to become so thumb-fingered that it wrecked the pill-production plant.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree with your comments. I would add that some of Warouw's superiors were not only incompetents and dimwits, but also fanatics. So, not only incompetence might wreck production of the antitoxin pills, but a fanatic believing Biocontrol's "holy mission" was threatened, might wreck everything to "save" his people.
Ad astra! Sean
BTW, even for Baen, that was a gawdawful cover.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Too infuriatingly true! It makes me wonder if someone who hated Anderson picked those covers.
Merry Christmas! Sean
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