The Green Odyssey

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The Green Odyssey
Philip Jose Farmer
1957
Copyright expired, not renewed.
_Make friends fast._ -- Handbook For The Shipwrecked
To Nan Gerding
1
FOR TWO YEARS Alan Green had lived without hope. From the day the spaceship had
crashed on this unknown planet he had resigned himself to the destiny created for him by
accident and mathematics. Chances against another ship landing within the next hundred
years were a million to one. Therefore it would do no good to sit around waiting for
rescue. Much as he loathed the idea, he must live the rest of his life here, and he must
squeeze as much blood as he could out of this planet-sized turnip. There wasn't much to
squeeze. In fact, it seemed to him that he was the one losing the blood. Shortly after he'd
been cast away he'd been made a slave.
Now, suddenly, he had hope.
Hope came to him a month after he'd been made foreman of the kitchen slaves of the
Duke of Tropat. It came to him as he was standing behind the Duchess during a meal and
directing those who were waiting upon her.
It was the Duchess Zuni who had not so subtly maneuvered him from the labor pens to
his coveted, if dangerous, position. Why dangerous? Because she was very jealous and
possessive, and the slightest hint of lack of attention from him could mean he'd lose his
life or one limb or another. The knowledge of what had happened to his two predecessors
kept him extremely sensitive to her every gesture, her every wish.
That fateful morning he was standing behind her as she sat at one end of the long
breakfast table. In one hand he held his foreman's wand, a little white baton topped by a
large red ball. With it he gestured at the slaves who served food, who poured wine and
beer, who fanned away the flies, who carried in the household god and sat it on the god
chair, who played something like music. Now and then he bent over the Duchess Zuni's
long black hair and whispered phrases from this or that love poem, praising her beauty,
her supposed unattainability, and his burning, if seemingly hopeless, passion for her. Zuni
would smile, or repeat the formula of thanks-- the short one-- or else giggle at his funny

accent.
The Duke sat at the other end of the table. He ignored the by-play, just as he ignored the
so-called secret passage inside the walls of the castle, which Green used to get to the
Duchess's apartments. Custom demanded this, just as custom demanded that he should
play the outraged husband if she got tired of Green or angry at him and accused him
publicly of amorous advances. This was enough to make Green jittery, but he had more
than the Duke to consider. There was Alzo.
Alzo was the Duchess's watchdog, a mastiff-like monster with shaggy red-gold hair. The
dog hated Green with a vindictiveness that Green could only account for by supposing
that the animal knew, perhaps from his body-odor, that he was not a native of this planet,
Alzo rumbled a warning deep in his chest every time Green bent over the Duchess or
made a too-sudden movement. Occasionally he rose to his four feet and nuzzled the
man's leg. When that happened Green could not keep from breaking out into a sweat, for
the dog had twice bitten him, playfully, so to speak, and severely lacerated his calf. As if
that weren't bad enough, Green had to worry that the natives might notice that his scars
healed abnormally fast, almost overnight. He'd been forced to wear bandages on his legs
long after the new skin had come in.
Even now, the nauseating canine was sniffing around Green's quivering hide in the hope
of putting the fear of the devil in him. At that moment the Earthman resolved that, come
the headsman's ax, rack, wheel, or other hellish tortures, he was going to kill that hound.
It was just after he made that vow that the Duchess caused him to forget altogether the
beast.
"Dear," said Zuni, interrupting the Duke in the midst of his conversation with a
merchant-captain, "what is this I hear about two men who have fallen from the sky in a
great ship of iron?"
Green quivered, and he held his breath as be waited for the Duke's reply.
The Duke, a short, dark many-chinned man with white hair and very thick bristly
salt-and-pepper eyebrows, frowned.
"Men? Demons, rather! Can men fly in an iron ship through the air? These two claimed
to have come from the stars, and you know what that means. Remember Oixrotl's
prophecy: