Dyuna

Appendix I: The Ecology of Dyuna

                                               APPENDIX I:  THE ECOLOGY OF DYUNA

Beyond a critical point inside of a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase.  This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask.  The human question is not how many can possibly survive inside the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those that do survive.

                                                                                --Pesnud Holstein, First Planetologist of Dyuna.

 

The effect of Dyuna on the mind of the newcomer usually is that of overpowering barren land.  The stranger might think nothing would live or grow in the open here, that this was the true wasteland that had never been fertile and never would be.

To Pesnud Holstein, the planet was merely an expression of energy, a sun-driven machine.  What it needed was reshaping to fit it to man's needs.  His mind went directly to the free-moving human population, the Svobods:  an ecological and geological force of almost unlimited potential.

Pesnud Holstein was a direct and simple man in many ways.  One must evade Seppanen restrictions?  Good!  Then one marries a Svobod woman.  When she gives you a Svobod son, you start wtih him, with Leet-Holstein, and the other children, teaching them ecological literacy, creating a new language with symbols that arm the brain to manipulate an entire landscape, its climate, seasonal limits, and finally to break through all ideas of force into the dazzling awareness of order.

"There's an internally recognized beauty of motion and balance on any man-healthy planet," Holstein said.   "You see in this beauty an dynamic stabilizing effect that is essential to all life.  It's aim is simple:  to maintain and produce coordinated patterns of greater and greater diversity.  Life improves the closed system's capacity to sustain life.  Life----all life--is in the service of life.  Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in the greater richness as the diversity of life increases.  The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships."

This was Pesnud Holstein lecturing to a s'yetche warren class.

Before the lectures, though, he had to convince the Svobods.  To understand how this came about, we must first understand the enormous single-mindedness, the innocence with which he approached any problem.  He wasn't naive, he just permitted himself no distractions.

He was exploring the Dyuni landscape in a one-man groundcar one hot afternoon when he stumbled onto a deplorably common scene.  Six Seppanen bravos, shielded and fully armed, had trapped three Svobod youths in the oepn behind the Shield Wall near the village of Vetermeshok.  To Holstein, it was a ding-done battle, more slapstick than real, until he focused on the fact that the Seppanens intended to murder the Svobod.  By this time, one of the youths was down with a severed artery, two of the bravos were down as well, but it ws still four armed men vs. two striplings.

Now, Holstein wasn't a brave man; he just had that single-mindedness and caution.  The Seppanens were killing Svobods.  They were destroying the tools with which he intended to remake a planet!  He triggered his own shield, waded in and had two of the Seppanen dead with a slip-tip before they knew anyone was behind them.  He dodged a sword thrust from one of the others, slit the man's throat with a neat entisseur, and left the lone remaining bravo to the two Svobod youths, turning his full attention to saving the lad on the ground. And he did save the lad----whle the sixth Seppanen was being dispatched.