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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: Peponi, a distant world rich in wildlife and populated by a people without a high degree of technology, is "discovered" by mankind. Men arrive on the planet, then reap its riches. After years of subjugation, the natives finally begin to push for independence. While armed rebellion is put down, from its ashes a native leader, Bukon Pepon, is able to forge the various tribes together and gain independence from the Human government. Upon independence, most Men leave the planet for distant shores and dream their dreams of the paradise that Peponi once was. Other Men stay to create a new dream. But both Men and Pepons watch their economy and resources dwindle away as overpopulation, hunting, tribal factionalism, and the introduction of non-native species take their toll.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: 1989
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2002

This eBook is part of the following series:

• Mike Resnick's A Chronicle of a Distant World Series

50 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [955 KB], eReader (PDB) [294 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [304 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [268 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [239 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [294 KB], hiebook (KML) [707 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [294 KB], iSilo (PDB) [249 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [317 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [406 KB]
Words: 93415
Reading time: 266-373 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
Microsoft Reader ISBN: 1-59062-451-3

"An aspiring biographer chronicles the rise and fall of the planet Peponi from its discovery and exploration by pioneers and big game hunters through its colonization and exploitation by humans and the bloody war of liberation that brings about its emergence as a struggling, independent world ruled by native dictators. Reminiscent of Western civilization's own cultural clash with Africa and India, Paradise attempts to understand the complex motives that underlie humanity's desire to impose its image on the universe. Recommended."--JC, Library Journal

"There were men on Peponi back in those days," said Hardwycke, drawing on his pipe and straightening the blanket that covered his legs. "There was Dunnegan, who brought down seventeen Landships in a single day, and Bocci, who used to go out after Bush Devils armed with nothing but a wooden spear. And of course there was Fuentes, who was the greatest hunter of them all. I remember a little fellow, tough as nails, named Hakira, who lived in a cave with a Demoncat for the better part of five years." Hardwycke grinned. "Before the first year was over the Demoncat was scared to death of him. There was Catamount Greene, who went alone among the Bogoda and became their king, and there was Ramirez, who went into the Great Western Desert a pauper and came out a millionaire. Jesus!" he added, a look of surprise on his weathered, wrinkled face. "I haven't thought of Ramirez in half a century." He paused, and then sighed. "And now they're all gone, every last one of them."

"All except you," I replied.

"I haven't got that much longer, either," he said with a shrug. "113 is pretty damned old, even with all the replacement innards I've got. I've overstayed my welcome by a good twenty years or more." He took another puff from his pipe and watched as the sun filtered through the smoke. "My legs don't work anymore, my eyes don't focus, and as quick as they cure one cancer I get another." He sighed. "Still, I'm lucky to be here at all. Not many men have been mauled by a Bush Devil and lived to tell about it." He paused, staring back across the years. "Did you know that I was the first man to walk through the Impenetrable Forest, and the first to cross the Jupiter Range? They even named one of the mountains after me."

"I know," I said. "Mount Hardwycke."

He nodded thoughtfully. "Of course, it's Mount Pekana now, but it's still Mount Hardwycke on some of the old maps. Had an animal named after me, too."

"I didn't know that," I said. His voice was weakening somewhat, and I leaned forward slightly to hear him more clearly.

"Hardwycke's wildbuck. They're extinct now, but they've got a couple of 'em on display in the museum on Lodin XI, and a whole herd on Deluros VIII." An expression of distaste crossed his face. "Ugly-looking beasts. Terrible eating, too." His pipe went out, but he kept puffing away absently at it. "Well, I suppose I could have done worse. I went out there without a credit to my name, and came away with a mountain and a wildbuck named after me. Maybe it's not much to show for half a century, but it's more than a lot of 'em came back with."

"I think they were splendid accomplishments, sir," I said.

"I always wondered what happened to Catamount Greene," he said. "He was a tough little bastard. Always looking for a fight, he was. I remember one night at one of the local taverns, it must have been ten years after he left the Bogoda, he took on five Navy cadets, each of them damned near twice his size, and came close to killing 'em all." Hardwycke shook his head. "Strange man, Greene. He'd give you the shirt off his back, and then pick your pocket when you returned it." Suddenly he sat erect. "And here I am rambling on again. You wanted to know about the Landships, didn't you, Mr. Breen?"

"I'm interested in all of your experiences on Peponi," I said tactfully.

He smiled. "But they're not paying you for any of the others, are they? It's the Landships that everyone wants to hear about."

"They're not paying me at all," I explained again. "I'm gathering material for my thesis."

"That's right," he said, nodding his head slowly. "I keep forgetting and thinking you're a journalist. But they've never been to Peponi, and you have."

"No I haven't, sir."

He stared at me curiously. "Why the hell not? You're writing about Landships, aren't you?"

"There aren't any left," I pointed out.

"Are they really all gone?" he asked, honestly surprised.

"The last one died 17 years ago."

He sighed. "If you could have seen them when I did, you'd have sworn they'd go on forever." He shifted in his chair and seemed to be staring back across the decades. "There were herds that took a full day to pass by, and you could feel the ground shake three miles away. There must have been ten or twelve million of them on Peponi when I first got there."

"The official estimates are closer to fifteen million," I noted, suddenly wondering how he adjusted to the sterile confines of his room after a lifetime of exploring endless vistas.

He shook his head sadly. "How does something that big and that widespread disappear in one man's lifetime?" he mused.

"You hunted them to extinction," I suggested.

"The hell we did!" he shot back heatedly. "All the Men who ever set foot on Peponi barely made a dent in them!" He paused. "Those damned Bluegills have a lot to answer for."

"Bluegills?" I repeated. "What are Bluegills?"

"The natives," he said. "Couldn't call 'em apes or monkeymen once we found out they were sentient, even though that's what they looked like, so we came up with Bluegills."

"Why?" I asked. "The word gill implies some kind of fish, yet I know that the natives breathe oxygen."

Hardwycke nodded. "Right. But they've got a blueish band of muscle on the side of their necks, breaking up all that red fur. Looks just like the gills on a fish. They were calling 'em Bluegills before I got there, and the name stuck. Until they complained, anyway." He paused thoughtfully. "Pretty useless lot, by and large." He paused again. "Except for the one who's running the show now," he added with a touch of grudging admiration. He's smarter than most of the Men I've known."

"You're referring to Buko Pepon?" I asked.

"That's the one," he agreed. "It sure as hell isn't his real name, though."

"Did you ever meet him?" I asked.

He shook his head. "No. He came along after I'd left."

He fell silent then, and I asked no more questions for fear that I had tired him. For a moment I thought he was sleeping, and then I decided maybe he had fainted from his exertions. I was about to summon his nurse when he opened his eyes and looked out the window with a wistful expression on his weathered, wrinkled face.

"You should have seen it back then," he said at last. "The second you set foot on the planet, it was like you were rediscovering Eden. Everything was so green, and there was such a wealth of life! Avians beyond number, herds of migrating Silvercoats literally a million strong, the coolest, clearest water. Fortunes to be made farming or hunting Landships. A whole world for the taking." He paused, collecting his thoughts. "There were thousands of worlds, I know--but this one was something special."

"Did you go there expressly to hunt Landships?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I didn't even know what a Landship was. I went there because I was young and full of dreams and I wanted to see places that no Man had ever seen before."

"And so you did," I said.

"No," he corrected me. "I was about fifteen years too late. There were a couple of hundred Men there already." He peered off into the past. "It must have been something when the first of them landed there." He looked up at me. "I had a good run of it, but I got there just a little bit late."

"Two hundred Men on an entire planet hardly constitutes overcrowding," I noted.

"I know," he said. "But some of the animals were already starting to avoid any sign of Man, and the biggest of the Landships were already gone. And the Bluegills..." He shook his head. "By the time I got there, some of them were even wearing clothes, and they sure as hell knew what a credit was worth. Not bad for a bunch of monkeymen that had never even heard of money twenty years earlier."

"How had they lived?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Who knows? Some of them farmed. I suppose others hunted and fished."

"Had they ever hunted Landships?"

He smiled. "They'd never even seen a wheel, let alone a spaceship. How could they know what a Landship was worth back in the Republic?" He paused. "They learned soon enough. Learned what a Sabrehorn was worth, too. Finally learned enough to throw us out. Still," he added, "I'm glad I was there. It was really something to see back then."

"Tell me about it," I urged him.

We knew from the start (said Hardwycke) that our time was limited. A planet operates on a timetable, just like a factory. You've got to open it up, see what it's got and what you can use, look into all the nooks and crannies--but if it's worth a damn, pretty soon the explorers and pioneers and hunters have to make way for the settlers and farmers. It's just the nature of things. Wanderlust, and a craving to see what lies beyond the next hill, may be what gets Man to where he's going, but it takes other virtues to keep him there.

Peponi was different, though. No matter where you came from, no matter what demon was driving you from world to world, you'd set down on Peponi and immediately you'd feel like you were finally home, like God had just been practicing with all the other worlds He'd made, and that He'd finally done the job right with this one.

When I decided to go there, I had no idea what I wanted to do. Farming didn't much appeal to me, and I didn't know anything about mining, so I decided the first thing to do was to learn the terrain. I'd done a little sport hunting on my home world, so I hired on as a meat hunter for old Ephraim Oxblood, who was trading the rivers of the Great Eastern Continent. His real name was Jones, but he was one of those men who went around naming everything he saw after himself, and he didn't think Jones was a distinctive enough name, which is how Peponi came to have Oxblood River and Oxblood Mountain and Lake Oxblood and all the rest of that stuff you can find on the map--or that you could find before they changed all the names.

Anyway, Oxblood had been, I think, the third Man to set down on Peponi, or maybe the fourth. He had no use for farming or anything else that would keep him tied down to one place, so he walked off into the wilderness, started learning the local languages, and spent a whole year living with the Siboni, who were the most warlike tribe of Bluegills. He even went on some raids with them when they made war against the Bogoda and the Kia. Rumor had it that he'd taken a Siboni wife for a couple of years, but I never paid any attention to that: even if there was a way for a Man to take a Siboni to bed, I never met any Man who wouldn't sooner have his fingernails pulled out than have sex with an alien.

After he'd lived with the Siboni for a time, Oxblood had a pretty good notion of what the Bluegills would fancy, and he began trading up and down the rivers that ran through the countryside. Before long he got bored though, and decided that he wanted to see more of Peponi, so he began trading with the Kia as well, and then with some of the other tribes, and as he got older and his operation got bigger, he found that he needed a hunter, both to supply trading material to meat-starved natives and to keep his own Bluegills happy and well-fed. He took out an ad, I answered it, and he hired me on the spot. Credentials never meant much to Oxblood, or any of the other men who opened up Peponi; if you could do the job, you didn't need credentials, and if you couldn't--well, they found out quick enough, and after they buried you they'd just advertise for a replacement.

Oxblood wasn't at the spaceport to meet me. He sent a couple of his Siboni trackers, and let me tell you, everyone else just stepped aside while these two Bluegills, wearing nothing but armbands and ankle bracelets and armed with their distinctive hook-shaped spears (which were always attached to their wrists by grass ropes), walked right up to the reception area, ignoring all the other Men and Bluegills. They couldn't speak a word of Terran, and nobody there understood Siboni, but they held up a crumpled sheet of paper with my name written on it, so I hoisted my single piece of luggage on my back, slung my projectile rifle over a shoulder, held my sonic rifle across my chest, and went off with them. The last thing I remember about the spaceport was a missionary who had flown out with me from Barringer IV, staring at me with a worried expression and crossing himself as I followed the two barbaric-looking Bluegills out into the hot, humid air of Peponi.

We passed through some sun-bleached countryside that was teeming with exotic-looking animals. There were huge herds of shimmering silver herbivores, and smaller groups of long-necked creatures that watched us curiously as we passed by. Off in the distance I could see some enormous brown shapes, but they were too far away for me to make out any details. Now and then we'd pass a catlike carnivore laying in the shade, but although I kept my sonic rifle at the ready, none of them paid the slightest attention to us.

I found it extremely frustrating not to be able to speak with my guides. I was hot and tired and thirsty, and I wanted to know why the hell Oxblood hadn't met me himself, or at least sent a landcar for me. In fact, I was on the verge of turning around and marching back to the spaceport when we came to a large camp set in a wooded glade. There were a number of grass huts that had been constructed in a large semi-circle, plus two geodesic bubbles carefully located under the shade of some overhanging trees. A few primate-like animals sat on one of the branches, listening to the noises that were emanating from a landcar that was parked about thirty feet away from them. I could hear the sounds of metal hitting against metal, and I saw two legs sticking out from beneath the vehicle.

"Hello?" I said, and a moment later a large, weathered, gray-haired man pulled himself out from under the landcar.

"You Hardwycke?" he asked, wiping some grease off his face.

I nodded.

"Well, you seem to have got here without any trouble." He extended his hand. "I'm Ephraim Oxblood. I meant to pick you up myself in the landcar, but we broke an axle." He spat on the ground. "I tell them and I tell them and I tell them, and they still think that the faster you go over the potholes, the less damage it'll do to the damned car." He spat again, and I saw that he was chewing a reddish tobacco. "Well, can I offer you something to drink?"

"Anything cold will do," I said, dropping my backpack on the ground and balancing the two rifles atop it.

"You look tired," he said after barking an order to one of his Siboni, who brought me a container of lukewarm beer.

"I am," I said. "That was a long, hot walk."

I took a sip of the beer, decided that I liked the distinctive taste, and then took a long swallow.

"You'll walk a lot longer than that before you're through with this job," he chuckled. "Still," he added, "you should have had the Bluegills carry your gear. That's why I sent two of 'em."

"I didn't know how to ask them," I replied.

"You don't ask 'em, son," he said. "You tell 'em." He barked out a few more commands in Siboni, and immediately the camp came to life, with Bluegills scurrying about, lighting a campfire, taking my gear to the bubble that Oxblood has designated as mine, cleaning off the tool kit. The activity caused the primatelike animals to retreat, chattering noisily, to the higher branches, and a number of small, colorful avians fluttered away.

Oxblood turned back to me. "I'll translate for you for two weeks," he said.

"And then?" I asked, lighting up a small cigar and offering one to him, which he refused.

"Then you'd better learn Siboni, or teach 'em Terran." He paused and slapped at a small insect that was crawling up the side of his neck. "It'll be easier for you to learn Siboni."

"How long did it take you to learn Siboni?" I asked.

"Oh, four or five months. Not much to it. Simple language, really."

"But you're only giving me two weeks," I pointed out.

"You don't have to learn the whole damned language," he replied and I couldn't tell if he was irritated or amused. "The only thing you have to learn is what to tell 'em when you're out hunting, or you want something done in camp." He got to his feet. "Ready for dinner?"

"I thought I'd bathe first," I replied. "I'm pretty grubby."

"Take a Dryshower," he said. I must have looked my disappointment, because he stared at me and added: "Water's in short supply around here."

"I passed a river less than half a mile in that direction," I said, pointing back toward where I had come from.

"It's loaded with killer snakes," replied Oxblood. "Besides, that stuff takes three days to purify--and we're not going to be here that long." He paused. "Son, I imagine you're used to soaking in a tub, but you're on Peponi now. We'll be going places where you'll be grateful for three swallows of water a day, and we won't have any to waste on anything frivolous like bathing."

"I understand, Mr. Oxblood," I said.

"I'm not sure you do," he replied seriously. "But you will. And call me Ephraim."