A Planet of Your Own

by John Brunner

Genres: Science Fiction; Hard Science Fiction; Space Opera

Synopsis

Kynance Foy was young, beautiful, intelligent an highly trained in both qua-space physics and business law when she left Earth to seek her fortune in the interstellar outworlds. But she found that the further she got from Earth, the tougher became the competition from the environment-hardened populations of these young worlds . . . and by the time she reached the planet Nefertiti, she was facing poverty. Then, unexpectedly, a wonderful opportunity opened up for her: the job of Planetary Supervisor of the fabulously wealthy world called Zygra, where exotic pelts costing a million credits each were grown. The salary was huge, and at the end of the year's tour of duty she would be transported free of charge back to Earth, where she would be a very wealthy young woman. There had to be a catch to it, she thought as she signed the contract. And, of course, there was. (First published 1966)

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 80

Sample

THERE WAS one item on display in the enormous window: a zygra pelt. Kynance Foy stood and looked at it. There were a lot of other women doing the same thing.

But she was the only one who was gritting her teeth.

It wasn’t the first time in her life she’d been the odd one out, so that figured. For example—and the most glaring example—she hadn’t had to leave Earth, which marked her off immediately even on a comparatively highly populated out-world like Nefertiti. The massive “encouraged emigration” of the Dictatrix period had lowered the premium on wander-lust at home; it was a full generation since Nefertiti had declared itself independent and set quotas for Earthside Immigrants, and then found them superfluous because the demand wasn’t there.

For the umpteenth time Kynance read the discreet hand-lettered price tag attached to one corner of the stand on which the zygra pelt was draped. It read: One million credits. No other price had ever been asked for the pelts.

Okay, Kynance told herself sourly. I was naïve….

She had never confessed it even to her closest friends, but one of the things she had planned to bring back when she returned to astonish those who had mocked was—a zygra pelt. She had pictured herself emerging from the exit of the starship wearing it: not elegantly, but casually, tossed around her, her body molded by it into unsurpassable perfection, yet her pose implying that she had had it so long she was becoming faintly bored with the attention she attracted.

And at this moment she did not even possess the price of a square meal.

Other plans, other ambitions, had been shed one by one as she had doggedly worked her way towards Nefertiti, reasoning that the closer one came to the source the cheaper the pelts might become. Not so; only the cost of interstellar freight shrank, while the asking price remained steady at one million.

She stood watching the pelt’s shifts of sheen and texture, wondering what exotic perfumes it had been trained to secrete—what, for instance, matched that liquid rainbow phase when the pelt seemed to run in endless streams of pure color?—and cursing her own stupidity.

Yet…

Could I have known better?

Oh, maybe. Her brash confidence, though, hadn’t lacked evidence to support it. She had been fresh out of college with a brilliant record; she had deliberately changed her major to qua-space physics and her minor to interstellar commerce when she had made up her mind, but before that she had been well grounded in the unfeminine combination of business law and practical engineering—the latter by accident, merely to get even with a sneering boyfriend who had once offered to fix her skycar.

This, moreover, was not her only equipment. She was exactly five and a half feet tall; she was exotically gorgeous, having inherited dark eyes and sinuous grace from a Dutch ancestor who had fallen from grace in Java in the company of a temple dancer, and hair of a curious iron-gray shade traceable only to a colony of Cornish tin-miners totaling some five hundred persons in a multi-billion galactic population, against which her tanned skin burned like new copper.

There had been no risk—so she had argued—of her ever being stranded. If the worst came to the worst, and neither qua-space physics nor her encyclopedic knowledge of interstellar commerce could secure her employment, she could always.

Well, she had never phrased the idea clearly to herself, but it had involved some romantically handsome young starship officer willing to hazard his career for the sake of her company on a trip to some more promising planet, a crotchety captain won over by her dazzling personality, and delivery with unsolicited testimonials to an entrepreneur in need of a private secretary when they arrived.

She had begun to suspect she had made the wrong decision on the first stop out from Earth, when she had still had the cash to go home. What she had overlooked was that during the miserable regime of the Dictatrix incredible numbers of non-pioneer types had been—in the official terminology of the day—“encouraged” to emigrate, chief among them intractable intellectuals doubtful of the universal benefits Her Magnificence had supposedly been bestowing. Consequently the outworlds had been colonized, forcibly, by a swarm of brilliant and very angry men and women. Having nothing left but the desire to get even, they had buckled down and made the best of what they had. Not for this breed of colonist was the broad axe or the draft-ox or the log-cabin; they were used to lasers, vidding and mutable furniture, they knew the necessary techniques, and with the determination of fanatics they had set out not merely to provide such luxuries for themselves but to ensure that if the same fate overtook their children or their children’s children the youngsters would be able to repeat the process.

Which was not to imply that there were absolutely no openings on such old-settled worlds as Ge and New Medina for moderately talented young women; had this been the case she would have turned around despite the scorn she would have faced from her friends on retreating to Earth. Instead, she found temporary work; saved up; moved on, convincing herself that things would be different further out.

They were. By her third or fourth stopover, she had been encountering sea-harvesters supervised by ten-year-olds, each responsible for two thousand tons of protein-rich food a week and a mainstay of the planetary economy, and reading bulletin boards at spaceports bearing blanket warnings—to save the labor of writing the words on every single advertisement—that no one lacking a Scholar degree in the relevant subjects need bother to apply.

And even her asset of last resort, her appearance, had failed her. What she hadn’t reckoned with—or had omitted to find out—was that once they had been clear of Earth, and the traditional association of appearance with regional origins, the emigrants whether forced or voluntary had become satisfied to be human beings rather than Europeans or Africans or Asians. By the time a couple of generations had slipped away, the mixing of the gene-pool had already been producing types which made the concept “exotic” seem irrelevant: Swedish and Quechua, Chukchi and Matabele, the wildest extremes of physique met in a mad succession of paradoxes. Then, released from Earthside attachment to local types, the more prosperous girls had started to experiment, drawing on some of the finest talents in biology and surgery. Within ten yards of where Kynance was standing, there were: a Negress with silver hair and blood-red irises, a miniaturized Celtic redhead no higher than her elbow and very nicely stacked, and a shimmering golden girl with slanted eyes and the quiet hypnotic movements of a trained geisha. Any of the three would have monopolized a roomful of sophisticated Earth-men.

On Druid, somebody had asked Kynance to marry him. On Quetzal someone else had asked her to act as hostess for him and be his acknowledged mistress. On Loki a third man had suggested, in a rather bored manner, that she become his son’s mistress, the son being aged sixteen and due to submit his scholar’s thesis in cybernetics.

And on Nefertiti she would have been grateful for even that much attention.

Confronted with the symbol of her empty ambitions, she admitted the truth to herself at last. She was scared.

Well, gawking it the zygra pelt wasn’t solving the problem of hunger. She started to move away.

At that moment, a soft voice emanated from the air’. It came over a biaxial interference speaker, so for practical purposes the statement was exact. She stopped dead.

“The Zygra Company draws your attention to a vacancy occurring shortly in its staff. Limited service contract, generous remuneration, comfortable working conditions, previous experience not necessary, standard repatriation clause. Apply at this office, inquiring for Executive Shuster.”

The message was repeated twice. Kynance stood in a daze, waiting for the rush to begin. There was no rush. The only reaction was the sound of an occasional sarcastic laugh as people who had been gazing at the pelt were disturbed and decided to wander on.

No. Ridiculous. Impossible. She must have dreamed it. Not enough food and too much worry had conspired to make her mind play a trick.

Nonetheless she was on her way to the entrance of the Zygra Building.. . .