Unan Besar II

Kompong Timur, capital city of the planet Unan Besar, is:

two thousand kilometers south of the nearly extinct volcano, Gunung Utara, where a mining town occupies natural tunnels and artificial caves linked by mountain-side ledges and trails, volcanic heat is used for energy and lava is channeled away from the inhabited areas;

one thousand kilometers south west of Ranau, where each two hundred meter high Tree is inhabited by a single clan using parasitic grasses to build dwellings, storehouses etc on the road-like branches and harvesting smaller plants that grow on the big one.

Thus, Poul Anderson imagines three distinct human societies on a single colonized planet.

Unan Besar

Malayans colonized New Djawa. After a war with Gorrazan, some New Djawans colonized Unan Besar, where they have remained isolated for three centuries. Their ruling group, Biocontrol, trades with Betelgeuse, exchanging hides, fibers and fruits for technology, books and newstapes, but keeps its population ignorant of galactic affairs. Unan Besarians speak Pulaoic.

Unan Besar is:

one AU from its sun, which is more massive than Sol;
warmer than Earth.

It has:

no moons;
a small axial tilt;
0.8 gravity;
heavy clouds;
few uplands;
small continents;
shallow seas;
many islands, swamps and jungles;
a nine month year;
a ten hour rotation period;
an estimated population of 100,000,000;
a germ that enters human blood and excretes acetylcholine which destroys the nervous system unless Biocontrol sells each individual their laboriously brewed and carefully monopolized antitoxin.

Modern laboratories can synthesize the antitoxin and distribute it cheap or free but Biocontrol does not want that. The capital Kompong Timur, beside a lake, has many canals, tall well lit buildings, including the Biocontrol Pagoda, at the center and the dark unpoliced slum of Swamp Town beyond.

Early during colonization, Biocontrol scientists, by threatening to destroy their vats, replaced the government in order to reform society but of course became a self-perpetuating oligarchy. Flandry, usually against revolutions, tries to ask two commoners why they have not thought of revolution but cannot find that word in his implanted Pulaoic vocabulary.