The Master Of Deceptions

(I might order Multiverse and NESFA Vol 2 soon but meanwhile have been enjoying the current extended time journey back through the Technic History.)

"The Plague of Masters" ends with another of Dominic Flandry's elaborate deceptions, so complicated that it is impossible to remember the details except by rereading the story.

(i) Nias Warouw, director of the Guard Corps, is enticed to fly to Ranau, accompanied by four armed Guards, to arrest Flandry in the house where the latter has been living high in one of the Trees. (It makes sense that the local Biocontrol dispenser, with direct access to Warouw, is loyal to his own people, not to the planetary oligarchs.)

(ii) Flandry must distract the five Corps men while his confederates climb from neighboring Trees to the back of the house instead of approaching it by the ladder at the front. At this stage, Flandry must speak gibberish and move his limbs and body to feign insanity and could certainly have been shot dead.

(iii) Unfortunately, there is a gun fight. Wiarouw, who must be taken alive, is not easily subdued and two good men die as a result.

(iv) However, once Warouw is secured, everything proceeds smoothly. He can die in a cage deprived of the antitoxin (appropriate, because this is what he has done to others) or start afresh on another planet with a cash stake.

(v) Now controlled by Flandry, Warouw radios his aircar crew of armed men hidden nearby to land on the airstrip where they are killed by vengeful Ranauns.

(vi) He will tell Biocontrol that he and some of his men will take Flandry in the latter's space flitter accompanied by another ship to Spica, will let Flandry's flitter crash with him in it, will tell the Imperial authorities that they are returning Flandry's courtesy call and are shocked to hear of his death.

(vii) However, the "Guards" traveling to Spica will be Ranau men in uniforms taken from the aircar crew and will guard Warouw, not Flandry. Biocontrol will be easily deceived because, as already established, they are so incompetent.

(viii) Imperial entrepreneurs will bring cheap synthesized antitoxin for all the dispensaries while the Biocontrol fanatics, deprived of their power, destroy their now redundant vats. Flandry had earlier speculated about a big commission for himself. The spirit of Polesotechnarch Van Rijn lives on.

Brilliance And Incompetence

By brilliant detective work, Nias Warouw, chief of police, official title "director of the Guard Corps," on Unan Besar, has tracked Dominic Flandry and Luang to another city. Armed Guards led by Warouw have bound Luang and her companion, Kemul, in their hotel room and await Flandry's return. So they should soon have all three in custody, right? Wrong.

Because Planetary Biocontrol dispenses the antitoxin that keeps everyone alive, their police force, the Guard Corps, has encountered no resistance for centuries and has become inefficient. When Flandry enters the hotel room and assesses the situation, he fights his way free and has to be chased through the city. He is soon apprehended but his brief escape has been enough.

All of the Guards chase Flandry. None stay to guard those already arrested. Djuanda, whose life Flandry has just saved, has accompanied him to the hotel, is behind him when he enters the room, enters it when the Guards are chasing Flandry and frees the unguarded prisoners! Then he persuades them to rescue Flandry from Biocontrol Headquarters which, because of the Guard Corps' incompetence, is nowhere near as difficult as it should be. So this part of the plot, unlike Flandry's luck, is entirely plausible.

Warouw continues to work as well as he can despite his subordinates' incompetence. While Flandry is his prisoner, he does not let him know that the others have escaped. He wants Flandry's advice on how to modernize the Guards. Flandry is rescued before he has to give his answer but would surely have sabotaged Biocontrol from within if he had accepted appointment as Warouw's special assistant.

In The Trees

A Tree-dweller on the colony planet Unan Besar tells Flandry why his ancestors began to live on the branches of the giant trees. (See here.) Early in planetary history, competition from the large plantations drove free yeomen into subsistence farming with the high price of antitoxins preventing improvements. One bad year meant selling land to the plantation owner. Yeomen owing money became tenants or slaves.

Some peasants sold what was left to them and moved to the Trees of Ranau where they were:

safe from the greed of the great land-owners;
removed not only from urban corruption and violence but also from rural ignorance and poverty;
able to help each other.

Interstellar free trade will change their way of life but this change is not to be feared because their lives have been restricted by isolation and the cost of antitoxins. Flandry reflects:

"...revolutions don't originate with slaves or starveling proletarians, but with men who have enough liberty and material well-being to realize how much more they ought to have."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 125.

Yes. Or with a population that has grown used to a good standard of living but then sees it threatened. The deprived and oppressed might Rise Up In Their Wrath but are more likely to be atomized and demoralized with no idea either that they have anything to fight for or that they are able to fight for it. Flandry makes a revolution with the people of Ranau.