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September 25, 2025 • 16 mins
In a world where extraordinary individuals emerge only once in a generation, Brion Brandd possesses a remarkable gift an enhanced sense of empathy. This unique ability propels him to victory in the Twenties, a prestigious competition showcasing the most brilliant minds on Anvhar. However, his triumph is short-lived as he is thrust into the chaotic realm of Dis, a planet on the brink of nuclear devastation. To save both worlds, Brandd must navigate treacherous negotiations with a menacing blockade, delve into the dark underbelly of Dis, and unravel the enigma of the merciless magter. Summary by Great Plains
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter twelve of Planet of the Damned. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by November eight Echo Victor Victor, Planet of the
Damned by Harry Harrison, Chapter twelve. On Brion's desk when

(00:25):
he came in were two neat piles of paper. As
he sat down and reached for them, he was conscious
of an arctic coldness in the air, a frigid blast.
It was coming from the air conditioner grill, which was
now covered by welded steel bars. The control unit was
sealed shut. Someone was either being very funny or very efficient.

(00:47):
Either way, it was cold. Brion kicked at the cover
plate until it buckled, then bent it aside. After a
careful look into the interior, he disconnected one wire and
shorted it to another. He was rewarded by a number
of sputtering cracks and a quantity of smoke. The compressor
moaned and expired. Fossil was standing in the door with

(01:10):
more papers, a shocked expression on his face. What do
you have there, Brion asked. Fossil managed to straighten out
his face, and brought the papers to the desk, arranging
them on the piles. Already there, these are the progress
reports you asked for from all units. Details to date, conclusions, suggestions,

(01:31):
et cetera, and the other pile. Brion pointed off Planet Correspondence, Commissary,
in voices, Requisitions. He straightened the edges of the stack
while he answered daily Reports, Hospital log. His voice died
away and stopped as Brion carefully pushed the stack off
the edge of the desk into the waste basket. In

(01:53):
other words, red tape. Brion said, well, it's all filed.
One by one. The progress reports followed the first stack
into the basket until the desk was clear nothing. It
was just what he had expected, but there had always
been the off chance that one of the specialists could
come up with a new approach. They hadn't. They were

(02:15):
all too busy specializing outside. The sky was darkening. The
front entrance guard had been told to let in anyone
who came asking for the director. There was nothing else
Brion could do until the Nyord rebels made contact. Irritation
bit at him. At least lea was doing something constructive.

(02:36):
He could look in on her. He opened the door
to the lab with a feeling of pleasant anticipation. It
frozen shattered instantly. Her microscope was hooded and she was gone.
She's having dinner, he thought. Or she's in the hospital.
The hospital was on the floor below, and he went
there first. Of course she's here, doctor said, Dye grumbled.

(03:01):
Where else should a girl in her condition be? She
was out of bed long enough. Today tomorrow's the last day,
and if you want to get any more work out
of her before the deadline, you had better let her
rest tonight. Better let the whole staff rest. I've been
handing out tranquilizers like aspirin all day. They're falling apart,

(03:23):
The world's falling apart. How is Lea doing? Considering her shape?
She's fine. Go in and see for yourself. If you
won't take my word for it, I have other patients
to look at. Are you that worried, doctor? Of course
I am. I'm just as prone to the weakness of
the flesh as the rest of you. We're sitting on

(03:45):
a ticking bomb, and I don't like it. I'll do
my job as long as necessary, but I'll also be
damned glad to see the ship's land to pull us out.
The only skin that I really feel emotionally concerned about
right now is my And if you want to be
let in on a public secret, the rest of your
staff feels the same way. So don't look forward to

(04:09):
too much efficiency. I never did, Brion said to the
retreating back. Lea's room was dark, illuminated only by the
light of Diss's moon slanting in through the window. Brion
let himself in and closed the door behind him. Walking quietly,
he went over to the bed. Leah was sleeping soundly,

(04:30):
her breathing gentle and regular. A night's sleep now would
do as much good as all the medication. He should
have gone then, Instead, he sat down in the chair
placed next to the head of the bed. The guards
knew where he was. He could wait here just as
well as any place else. It was a stolen moment

(04:50):
of peace on a world at the brink of destruction.
He was grateful for it. Everything looked less harsh in
the moonlight, and he rubbed some of the tension from
his eyes. Lea's face was ironed smooth by the light,
beautiful and young, a direct contrast to everything else on
this poisonous world. Her hand was outside of the covers,

(05:13):
and he took it in his own, obeying a sudden impulse.
Looking out of the window at the desert in the distance,
he let the peace wash over him, forcing himself to
forget for the moment that in one more day, life
would be stripped from this planet. Later, when he looked
back at Lea, he saw that her eyes were open,
though she hadn't moved. How long had she been awake?

(05:37):
He jerked his hand away from hers, feeling suddenly guilty.
Is the boss man looking after the serfs to see
if they are fit for the treadmills in the morning,
she asked. It was the kind of remark she had
used with such frequency in the ship, though it didn't
sound quite as harsh now, and she was smiling. Yet

(05:58):
it reminded him too well of her superior attitude toward
Rubes from the stellar sticks. Here he might be the director,
but on ancient Earth he would be only one more gaping,
lead footed yokel. How do you feel, he asked, realizing
and hating the triteness of the words even as he
said them. Terrible, I'll be dead by morning. Reach me

(06:23):
a piece of fruit from that bowl? Will you my
mouth tastes like an old boot heel. I wonder how
fresh fruit ever got here? Probably a gift to the
working classes from the smiling planetary murderers on Nijord. She
took the apple Brion gave her and bit into it.
Did you ever think of going to Earth? Brion was startled.

(06:45):
This was too close to his own thoughts about planetary backgrounds.
There couldn't possibly be a connection, though never, he told her,
up until a few months ago, I never even considered
leaving anvar. The twenties are such a big thing at
home that it is hard to imagine that anything else
exists while you are still taking part in them. Spare

(07:09):
me the twenties, she pleaded, after listening to you, and
I I know far more about them than I shall
ever care to know. But what about Anvhar itself? Do
you have big city states as Earth does? Nothing like that?
For its size, It has a very small population, no

(07:30):
big cities at all. I guess the largest center of
population are around the schools, packing plants, things like that.
Any exobiologists there, Leah asked, with a woman's eternal ability
to make any general topic personal at the universities, I suppose,
though I wouldn't know for sure, and you must realize

(07:53):
that when I say no big cities, I also mean
no little cities. We aren't organized that way at all.
I imagine the basic physical unit is the family and
the circle of friends. Friends get important quickly since the
family breaks up when children are still relatively young. Something

(08:13):
in the genes. I suppose we all enjoy being alone.
I suppose you might call it an inbred survival trait
up to a point, she said biting delicately into the apple.
Carry that sort of thing too far and you end
up with no population at all. A certain amount of
proximity is necessary for that, of course it is, and

(08:37):
there must be some form of recognized relationship or control
that or complete promiscuity. On anvhar, the emphasis is on
personal responsibility, and that seems to take care of the problem.
If we didn't have an adult way of looking at things,
our kind of life would be impossible. Individuals are brought together,

(08:59):
either by accident or design, and with this proximity must
be some certainty of relations You're losing me Lea protested
either I'm still foggy from the dope or you are
suddenly unable to speak a word of less than four syllables.
You know. Whenever this happens with you, I get the

(09:19):
distinct impression that you were trying to cover up something.
For Accham's sake, be specific, Bring me together two of
these hypothetical individuals and tell me what happens. Brion took
a deep breath. He was in over his head and
far from shore. Well take a bachelor like myself. Since

(09:41):
I like cross country skiing, I make my home in
this big house our family has right at the edge
of the broken hills. In summer I looked after a
drumdum herd, But after slaughtering, my time was my own.
All winter I did a lot of skiing and used
to work for the twenties. Sometimes tis I would go visiting.
Then again people would drop in on me. Houses are

(10:04):
few and far between. On anvar we don't even have
locks on our doors. You accept and give hospitality without
qualification whoever comes male, female, in groups or just traveling alone.
I get the drift. Life must be dull for a
single girl on your iceberg planet. She must surely have

(10:27):
to stay home a lot only if she wants to
otherwise she can go wherever she wishes and be welcomed
as another individual. I suppose it is out of fashion
in the rest of the galaxy and would probably raise
a big laugh on Earth. But a platonic disinterested friendship
between a man and woman is an accepted thing on

(10:48):
anvar sounds exceedingly dull. If you are all such cool
and distant friends, how do babies get made? Brion felt
his ears reddening, not sure if he was being teased
or not. The same damn way they get made any
place else. But it's not just a reflexive process, like

(11:09):
a couple of rabbits that happen to meet under the
same bush. It's the woman's choice to indicate if she
is interested in marriage. Is marriage the only thing? Your
women are interested in? Marriage? Or anything else? That's up
to the girl. We have a special problem on Anvhar.

(11:29):
Probably the same thing occurs on every planet where the
human race has made a massive adaptation. Not all unions
are fertile, and there is always a large percentage of miscarriages.
A large number of births are conceived by artificial insemination,
which is all right when you can't have babies normally,

(11:50):
but most women have an emotional bias toward having their
husband's children, and there is only one way to find
out if this is possible. Leah's eyes widened. Are you
suggesting that your girls see if a man can father
children before considering marriage? Of course, otherwise Anvar would have

(12:13):
been depopulated centuries ago. Therefore, the woman does the choosing.
If she is interested in a man, she says so.
If she is not interested, the man would never think
of suggesting anything. It's a lot different from other planets,
but so is our planet, Anvar. It works well for us,

(12:33):
which is the only test that applies. Just about the
opposite of Earth, Lea told him, dropping the apple core
into a dish and carefully licking the tips of her fingers.
I guess you Anvarians would describe Earth as a planetary
hot bed of sexuality, the reverse of your system and

(12:54):
going full blast all the time. There are far too
many people there for comfort. Control came late and is
still being fought. If you can possibly imagine that, there
are just too many of the archaic religions still around,
as well as crack brained ideas that have long entrenched
in custom. The world's overcrowded men, women, children, a boiling

(13:19):
mob wherever you look, and all of the physically mature
ones seem to be involved in the great game of love.
The male is always the aggressor not physically, at least
not often, and women take the most outrageous kinds of
flattery for granted. At parties, there are always a couple
of hot breadths of passion fanning your neck. A girl

(13:42):
has to keep her spike heels filed sharp. She has
to what a figure of speech, Brion, meaning you fight
back all the time if you don't want to be
washed under by the flood sounds rather. Brion weighed the
word before he said it, but he could find none
other suitable repellent. From your point of view, it would

(14:05):
be I'm afraid we get so used to it that
we even take it for granted sociologically speaking. She stopped
and looked at Brion's straight back and almost rigid posture.
Her eyes widened and her mouth opened in an unspoken
oh of sudden realization. I'm being a fool, she said.

(14:30):
You weren't speaking generally at all. You had a very
specific subject in mind, namely me, Please lea. You must understand,
but I do, she laughed. All the time I thought
you were being a frigid and hard hearted lump of ice,
you were really being very sweet, just playing the game

(14:53):
in good old and Varian style, waiting for a sign
from me. We'd still be playing by different rules if
you hadn't had more sense than I and finally realized
that somewhere along the line we must have got our
signals mixed, and I thought you were some kind of frosty,
off world celibate. She let her hand go out and

(15:16):
her fingers rustled through his hair, something she had been
wanting to do for a long time. I had to,
he said, trying to ignore the light touch of her fingers.
Because I thought so much of you, I couldn't have
done anything to insult you, such as forcing my attentions
on you, until I began to worry where the insult

(15:38):
would lie, since I knew nothing about your planet's mores.
Well you know now, she said, very softly, the men aggress.
Now that I understand, I think I like your way better,
but I'm still not sure of all the rules. Do
I explain that? Yes, breathe, and I like you so

(16:01):
very much. You are more man in one great, big,
wide shouldered lump than I have ever met before. It's
not quite the time or place to discuss marriage, but
I would certainly like his arms were around her, holding
her to him. Her hands clasped him, and their lips

(16:23):
sought each other in the darkness. Gently, she whispered eyebruise easily.
End of Chapter twelve.
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