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The Green Odyssey


The Naked Word electronic edition of

The Green Odysseyby Philip Jose' Farmer, 1957



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