Well, we have answered Susana’s worry about disturbing a society of willful primitivism. We met with the local Lord Whitevale, and when we mentioned that we were travelers from the sky, he immediately asked us whether we came on a star-boat. I answered in the affirmative, and he summoned forth scholars and they began to talk (communication is still somewhat difficult) about a golden age of times gone past, when their fore-fathers walked among the stars, and their boats of metal obeyed their spells and carried them great distances. Of artifacts that let one fly through the air, and of medicines that could cure any disease.
I had to explain that while their forefathers came on a vast ‘star-boat’—easily the size of this city and the surrounding area, and staffed by thousands—that we came on a very small ‘star-boat’, with almost none of those wonders, and a crew of only one more than already present. The Lord was disappointed, of course, but Doctor Tanaka was so kind as to note that while we did not have magical artifacts, we knew of them, and, moreover, we did have medical knowledge that could help save many lives.
After that, we split up – Doctor Tanaka talked with the local medical people, Susana and Maria went with the scholars to continue their discussion, and I was spared the company of my First Mate by being invited to have lunch with the lord himself.
On this planet, the people use personal names, and then the name of their land. Thus the local lord is Harrison Whitevale. Harrison is the third son of the previous Lord Whitevale, and is quite insistent on being the rightful ruler. According to Harrison, it is traditional for belongings to pass on to the oldest male child, thus when Harrison’s father died, it all passed on to the oldest of the four siblings, Harrison’s older brother. However, it was uncovered that said older brother had actually poisoned his own father (!) and thus he was forced to flee, giving up his claim on Whitevale. Thus, instead, Whitevale passed on to Harrison (skipping both his older sisters, again due to tradition) and thus he is the rightful ruler of Whitevale.
Harrison took great pains to explain on that, and make sure I understood that he was the rightful lord of Whitevale. To be honest, it doesn’t matter that much to me – I was more focused on the history of the planet.
As Harrison tells it, when men walked among the stars, there were three great lords in space, three brothers, each in charge of their own spaceship (or star-boat, as the translation software put it). The three brothers loved each other very much, but as they grew old and died, their children did not love each other as much, though they were cousins, and their children even less so, and son on for each generation. But there was one son, who hated his cousins more than the others, and he used a mighty spell to destroy one of the star-boats. The other ruler, the lord of the Vancouver, was able to defend himself, and eventually cast his own spell, merely to erase all the books on the other star-boat, as to deny them the full power of their spellcraft (this sounds like a computer virus to delete memory-banks). But erasing all the books wasn’t enough, and the other lord, the lord of the Calgary, had his men mimic the same spell, and cursed the Vancouver. (Harrison is a pure-blooded descendant of the lords of the Vancouver, incidentally.)
So it seems that the computers on both ships got wiped, and over the course of the ensuing generations, a lack of education caused them to regress to the point where using the technology became a matter of incantation, rather than using voice commands. A terrifying thought, but, in the end, still better than everyone being killed by out-of-control plants.
Once FTL technology becomes common-place, I wonder what will happen to this planet? It wouldn’t be too hard to help them regain the technology that they had lost, I don’t think, and they will no doubt take it with both hands. But then… that would also destroy their idyllic, unique (okay, other planets may have become like this) lifestyle, and leave them just the same as any other Linked World.
It suppose it is inevitable.
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