"World with no name.
Green it was.
Green and gravid.
It lay supine in a sea of sibilant jet, a festering emerald in the
universe ocean. It did not support life. Rather, on its surface life
exploded, erupted, multiplied. and thrived beyond imagining. ... Save
for a few pockets of rancid blue, the oceans themselves were green from
a surfeit of drifting plant life that nearly strangled the waters. ...
even the air had a pale green cast to it... " (Midworld, p.1)
"The biotic density far exceeds that of any previously recorded rain
forest. Even the thranx, who are partial to such conditions, might have
difficulty establishing themselves here. The growth may not be
manageable, and I remind you that we know nothing of the actual surface,
which must be shrouded in perpetual darkness." (Mid-Flinx, p.68)
To an orbit around this planet a pre-commonwealth human colony ship was
mistakenly directed by its autopilot. Without fuel to travel to any
other destination, or any means to send a message back, the colonists
decided to try their best to tame the savage land they found below.
Generations later, a tenuous truce exists between the descendants of
those colonists and the forest that is home. Sophistication and
technology has, of necessity, given way to hunting and gathering skills.
Memories of the commonwealth, of other planets, of a life beyond
immediate survival, have become folklore and superstition. What seems
like a simple tribal lifestyle, is the only way to coexist with a planet
which holds so many powerful dangers.
Furcots, agile and intelligent 6-legged green-furred creatures had
existed on Midworld prior to the humans, but together the species seem
to have become more. The relationship of each human to a single furcot
is one of unique adaptation. Each human person has their companion furcot
person. They hunt together, eat together, and brave the dangers of the
world together. Each cannot live without the other, can't even conceive
of the idea of not being somewhere near.
"...the people here have been surviving, on their own and completely out
of touch with the rest of human kind, for something like seven hundred
years. ... The descendants haven't completely forgotten their origins,
but they've been living here long enough to revert to a semiprimative
condition. ... Nothing survives here for long unless it learns to
cooperate with the world-forest. Try to dominate it and you're plant
food." (Mid-Flinx, p.313)
Rare enough among these people are those who will brave the highest and
lowest of the seven levels of a jungle over a kilometer deep. It is also
no surprise that most beings from the commonwealth who stumbled upon
this world could easily miss these few small tribes, could fail to
observe the interdependence life on such a world. They are blind to all
but the wealth to be made from the resources visible all around.
"For the forest dominated the world with no name. It evolved and changed
and grew. It added to itself. When the first humans had reached it, the
world nexus saw their threat and their promise. The forest had strength
and resilience and fecundity and variety. It was adding to its
intelligence now, slowly, patiently, in the way of the plant. ...
Universe! Beware the child cloaked in green bunting." (Midworld, pp.
212-213)
