The World Wreckers - Marion Zimmer Bradley, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 2
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The World Wreckers
A Darkover Novel
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Worldwreckers, Inc., an underground organization that will, for a fee, infiltrate an uncooperative world
and make it necessary for outside investors to take over the planet… in order to repair the damage that
had been done to its ecology. Darkover is its new assignment and Andrea Closson, the ruler of this
intersteller power, is taking on the job personally. She has never failed. Before long, the wild untamed
beauty of Darkover will be no more.
The Darkovans' only hope of salvation lies in the hands of the chieri, the almost legendary alien natives of
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 Darkover. Can these gentle creatures overcome the ruthless power of the menace that threatened the
very heart of their world?
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
DEDICATION
To four people who—each in his or her own way—kept my sense of wonder alive:
Anne McCaffrey
Juanita Coulson
Ursula LeGuin and
Randall Garrett
Prologue
Contents
/
Next
WORLDWRECKERS, INC.
THEY DIDN'T CALL it that, of course. But that was what it was all the same, and the men knew it as
they went up the long series of interlocking escalators which would take them to the isolated penthouse.
There were two of them, one large and one small, and both with the sort of highly forgettable faces
which make for good policemen, detectives or secret agents. The miracles of cosmetic surgery were
usually reserved to make people striking; but an astute observer might have guessed that some such
cosmetic surgery had been used to remove every trace of individuality from the two faces. Subtly done,
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of course, but very completely. They had become a part of the crowd, any crowd; and that in itself was a
triumph, for they were neither light nor dark, and would not have been noticed, in a crowd of exclusively
Afro or Nordic types, as belonging obtrusively to one or the other. If any Masai, or pygmies, had
survived on Earth in this year, they would have stood out as not being distinctly of that type; but in this
era of highly interracial breeding stock, with the outer extremes of the human phenotype gone forever,
they would never be noticed.
One of the men, who used the name Stannard, and had used so many that he did not remember his
original name twice in a year, pondered on it as they stepped onto the final escalator.
Worldwreckers. He'd been almost everywhere and done almost everything on any planet which would
hold him but he'd never dealt with them before.
Everybody in the Empire knew about them. Mostly it was something you heard about underground and
wondered about vaguely, if your business didn't lead you into the tremendous ebb and flow of planetary
commerce. What was worldwrecking anyway, you might wonder, and why should anybody care to
wreck a world? It sounded like something out of special three-dim cinedrama, and it was vaguely funny.
But to the people who did come into it—like himself, Stannard reflected—it wasn't funny at all.
Neither was it tragic.
It was just business.
But why had they let their business be known by such a name?
He shut off the flow of curiosity—it wasn't what he was paid for—as the last escalator came to a slow
halt. There were quiet gold-colored curtains all around and an outer reception hall where a girl, almost as
unobtrusive as Stannard and his companion, examined their identity cards and let them pass through a
metallic door into a small and plain office. Whatever Stannard had expected of this secret network and
semilegal business, it wasn't that it would look like a shipping office with the kind of simple computers
which kept records of traffic flow, stored information and gave out instant library service. Nor had he
really expected that the central head of this vast network would be a woman.
A woman, quite beautiful and quite young. Or—Stannard amended his thoughts quickly—apparently
young. He could detect no scars of cosmetic surgery or molding and he was trained at spotting them, but
some tautness around the eyes betrayed that innocent youth had nothing to do with the fair-skinned,
unlined face and smooth throat. Her voice was deep and quiet.
"Mr. Stannard and Mr. Bruce. Please sit down. Your principals, as you probably know, have been in
communication with me and have paid the advance deposits which we require before negotiations can be
made final. My name is Andrea Closson, and I am fully empowered to deal with you."
They took seats and she went on, in the same quiet and dispassionate voice:
"I am prepared to make guarantees, at this point. How much have you been told about this matter of
Darkover?"
Stannard said, "We know as much, we were told, as we would need to know for this conference."
"Very well, then. You know, of course, that this is illegal. By the various treaties of the Terran Empire,
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 any planet has a right to a Class D trade agreement, which means, in Darkover's case—" briefly, she
consulted the glass plate atop her desk where the computer readout could be seen, a flurry of fast pale
lights for trained scan readers to instant-scan, "means construction of a large spaceport for Type Beta
traffic flow, services and concessions to cater to spaceport personnel, a Mapping and Exploring division,
Medical Exchange services, and clearly defined tradezones, with no Terran infiltration into native areas
and vice versa. The Thendara Spaceport on Darkover has been in full operation for—" again she
consulted the scan reader, "seventy-eight of their years, consisting of 389 days each. Trade is
well-established in small medicinals, steel tools and similar Class D artifacts. Under the terms of a Class
D agreement there is no mechanized industry, no mining or surface transit, and no continuous input or
outflow of exportable or importable goods or services. All efforts to establish negotiations with native
Darkovan authorities with a view to opening the planet to colonization and industrialization have failed.
Am I right?"
"Not quite failed," Stannard said. "They've been ignored."
Andrea Closson shrugged that off. "Anyway they have not succeeded, so you are willing to send in our
services."
"Worldwreckers," said Bruce. It was the first time he had spoken.
"We prefer to call ourselves a planetary investment corporation," Andrea said smoothly, "although if the
undercover branches must be called into use, we cannot operate openly as such. In brief, if a planet
refuses exploitation—forgive me, I should have said profitable investment—" but the irony in her
expression was apparent, "our agents can give its economy the kind of, shall we say, nudge which will in
the long run make it worthwhile for that planet to request outside investors to come in."
"In short," Stannard said, "you wreck the economy so that the planet in question has no recourse but to
turn to the Terran Empire to pick up the pieces?"
"That's a harsh way of putting it but I suppose true in essence. And the planet in question, I'm told by the
investors, usually profits in the long run. I don't ask
who
it profits. That's not my business."
"It's ours," Stannard said. "Can it be done with Darkover? And how soon? And how much?"
Andrea did not answer at once; she was pushing buttons for the desk-top scan reader. She seemed to
have found something suddenly that arrested her attention, for the flickers of her eyes—they were odd
eyes, Stannard thought, a very pale, pellucid gray, a color he didn't remember seeing before—the swift
flickers of a trained scan reader, suddenly slowed down and stopped. She looked, as far as he could tell,
both startled and shocked.
She said abruptly, "Have either of you gentlemen ever been to Darkover?"
Stannard shook his head. "I never go that far off my orbit."
"I have," Bruce volunteered unexpectedly. "I went there once for, well, that doesn't matter." He shivered
suddenly. "Hell of a place; I've no idea why anyone wants it opened up; they'll have to give extra pay for
volunteers. Cold as space and twice as dismal. Completely unspoiled, as tourist books say. It could use a
little spoiling."
"Well, that's what we're here for," said Andrea briskly, turning off the desk-top scanner with a decisive
gesture. "Gentlemen, I am prepared to offer terms and guarantees. For the agreed upon sum," she
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 mentioned a sum in milli-credit units, which changed so often it represented a minifortune or a maxifortune
that week, "we are prepared to guarantee that within three Central Record Type Empire Years, the
planet now known as Darkover will be open to Type B exploitation—to prepare it for Type A
exploitation would take twenty years and would never be profitable—with full permission to begin mining
and export operations by a limited group of investors. Half of the sum must be paid now, in legal
titanium-based hard currency paid into a numbered account on Helvetia II. The remainder will fall due
within one Standard Month of the day that Darkover is declared a Class B Open world."
Stannard said, "What's your guarantee that our principals will pay the final installment? Not that they've
any intention of defaulting, but it takes Empire Senate action to declare a world Open. Once they've
made that legal, why can't my principals simply go in, as any other investors would?"
Andrea smiled, and the smile was so much like a steel trap that Stannard revised his opinion of her age
upward by thirty years. "The contract, which you must sign with your principals;' real identities by
number, states that upon default your entire interest in the planet in question reverts to Planetary
Investments Unlimited—which, as you have pointed out, is known widely as Worldwreckers,
Incorporated. Furthermore, default in this arrangement entirely voids the secrecy clause."
They had thought of everything, Stannard realized. Because worldwrecking arrangements were illegal
everywhere, and any planetary investment unit, bent on exploitation, which hired the services of a
worldwrecker, was permanently warned off from that planet.
"We're quite legitimate on the surface," Andrea said grimly. "You have legally hired our services for
public relations and propaganda. Most of our agents, the ones everybody sees, will never be within a
light-year of Darkover itself. They'll be atEmpireCenter , attempting by perfectly legal means to persuade
the legislators that Darkover should be a Class B Open world. A few more will be doing the same with
the Darkovan authorities."
"And the rest?"
Andrea said, "The rest—are none of your business."
Stannard agreed. He didn't want to know. He had spent a lifetime doing chores of this sort for a
thousand principals and he made a good and almost luxurious living by not wanting to know.
They signed papers and produced numbered identity proxies, and then they went away again, and out of
Andrea Closson's life, and out of the story of Darkover forever. They were so forgettable that even she
forgot them, as individuals, within five seconds of the time they disappeared into her outer office.
But the minute they had gone, she pressed the scan reader button again, setting it to STOP. The words
blurred there. But she closed her lids the better to see it inside her eyes, in memory.
High mountains, a familiar skyline, dark against the crimson sky of the lowering sun; a sun like a red and
bloody disk. Only the tall buildings of theTradeCity , pictured beneath the incredibly familiar mountains
and sun, were new and surprising.
So they call it Darkover now.
A murmur of music whispered in her mind, the total recall that she had found intolerable for the first
hundred years and had done as much as she could to desensitize; now she could not remember the name
of the melody, and spent a few split seconds rummaging in a past she had deliberately put away, before
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