Great Combinatory Matrix of the Universe I bend my thirty knees,
Avram Boond-ss'bb
***
To the Illustrious Polypod Avram Boond-ss'bb Fomalhaut (Piscis Australis)
In the name of the Southern Cross, peace, my dear Polypod. Allow me to answer your letter, on behalf of our beloved Intergalactic President, whose humble PR representative I am, hastening to guarantee the satisfaction of your request, the will of the Great Matrix be done.
His Excellency is well aware of his grave responsibilities as Guarantor of Integration, but he must also bear in mind his equally grave responsibilities as Supreme Commander of the Great Conflictual Potlatch Games.
Through all the centuries of recorded history it has always been difficult to control armies, and the ancient Hebrews actually assigned that task to their Deus Sabaoth. Today more than ever before, this task is overwhelming, if not impossible, in the context of Intergalactic Peace. You know that the greatest statesmen in history, as far back as the twenty-second century of the Christian era, emphasized the dangers of an unruly army of several hundred thousand troops during a transitory period of peace. The great coups d'état of the twentieth century derived, in fact, from an excess of peace (as the late President Flanagan said, only wars are the cradles of democracy and of libertarian revolutions). So you can imagine (but, indeed, you already know) how stressful it is to govern an army of billions of beings from numerous intergalactic ethnicities, in a state of Perpetual Peace and in the constitutional absence both of boundaries to be defended and of threatening enemies to be warded off. In this situation, as you are well aware, an army not only costs much more but tends to multiply its component units in deference to the well-known law of Parkinson. The ensuing difficulties are easily imagined.
Take, in fact, the cases of the drillers of Pluto and the Boos of Uranus. The original plan was to include them in the Lunar Mixed Corps, which, by long-standing rule, is made up of tractor patrols comprising two terrestrials (an Italian Bersagliere and a Canadian Mountie) and two extraterrestrials. You are surely familiar with the endless problems this lunar patrolling has caused. The incompatibility between the two terrestrial bodies was evident, first of all: coexistence was impossible for two soldiers both wearing broad-brimmed hats in the cramped oxygenated space in the forward cabin of the tractor. And you will recall that thefeathers of the Bersagliere's headgear proved to contain allergens extremely irritating to horses (this, by the way, may explain why traditional military wisdom has always opposed the formation of units of mounted sharpshooters). But you also know the Mounties' proverbial attachment to their mounts, which they will not give up even in a tractor (the attempt to mount the Redcoats on bicycles ended in miserable failure, as the traditions of the various corps cannot and must not be ignored). But that was nothing compared to the disastrous installation of Plutonians and Uranians in the rear section of the tractorsânot only because the Uranian Assault Boos' notoriously long tails cannot be accommodated in the tractor and must therefore drag behind it on the ground, suffering countless slow-healing abrasions, but also because, while the Boos normally live in an inflammable gaseous atmosphere, the Pluto drillers survive only at a temperature of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and no com-partmentation, however airtight, can guarantee sufficient reciprocal isolation. But the most serious consideration is that the Pluto drillers have a compulsive tendency to root in the ground and bore (in the petroliferous sense of the word); and while on their native Pluto this activity has no serious consequences, thanks to the regenerative capacity of the terrain, on the moon it promptly led to that condition to which mining experts have given the colorful term "green-cheesing"
Avram Boond-ss'bb
***
To the Illustrious Polypod Avram Boond-ss'bb Fomalhaut (Piscis Australis)
In the name of the Southern Cross, peace, my dear Polypod. Allow me to answer your letter, on behalf of our beloved Intergalactic President, whose humble PR representative I am, hastening to guarantee the satisfaction of your request, the will of the Great Matrix be done.
His Excellency is well aware of his grave responsibilities as Guarantor of Integration, but he must also bear in mind his equally grave responsibilities as Supreme Commander of the Great Conflictual Potlatch Games.
Through all the centuries of recorded history it has always been difficult to control armies, and the ancient Hebrews actually assigned that task to their Deus Sabaoth. Today more than ever before, this task is overwhelming, if not impossible, in the context of Intergalactic Peace. You know that the greatest statesmen in history, as far back as the twenty-second century of the Christian era, emphasized the dangers of an unruly army of several hundred thousand troops during a transitory period of peace. The great coups d'état of the twentieth century derived, in fact, from an excess of peace (as the late President Flanagan said, only wars are the cradles of democracy and of libertarian revolutions). So you can imagine (but, indeed, you already know) how stressful it is to govern an army of billions of beings from numerous intergalactic ethnicities, in a state of Perpetual Peace and in the constitutional absence both of boundaries to be defended and of threatening enemies to be warded off. In this situation, as you are well aware, an army not only costs much more but tends to multiply its component units in deference to the well-known law of Parkinson. The ensuing difficulties are easily imagined.
Take, in fact, the cases of the drillers of Pluto and the Boos of Uranus. The original plan was to include them in the Lunar Mixed Corps, which, by long-standing rule, is made up of tractor patrols comprising two terrestrials (an Italian Bersagliere and a Canadian Mountie) and two extraterrestrials. You are surely familiar with the endless problems this lunar patrolling has caused. The incompatibility between the two terrestrial bodies was evident, first of all: coexistence was impossible for two soldiers both wearing broad-brimmed hats in the cramped oxygenated space in the forward cabin of the tractor. And you will recall that thefeathers of the Bersagliere's headgear proved to contain allergens extremely irritating to horses (this, by the way, may explain why traditional military wisdom has always opposed the formation of units of mounted sharpshooters). But you also know the Mounties' proverbial attachment to their mounts, which they will not give up even in a tractor (the attempt to mount the Redcoats on bicycles ended in miserable failure, as the traditions of the various corps cannot and must not be ignored). But that was nothing compared to the disastrous installation of Plutonians and Uranians in the rear section of the tractorsânot only because the Uranian Assault Boos' notoriously long tails cannot be accommodated in the tractor and must therefore drag behind it on the ground, suffering countless slow-healing abrasions, but also because, while the Boos normally live in an inflammable gaseous atmosphere, the Pluto drillers survive only at a temperature of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and no com-partmentation, however airtight, can guarantee sufficient reciprocal isolation. But the most serious consideration is that the Pluto drillers have a compulsive tendency to root in the ground and bore (in the petroliferous sense of the word); and while on their native Pluto this activity has no serious consequences, thanks to the regenerative capacity of the terrain, on the moon it promptly led to that condition to which mining experts have given the colorful term "green-cheesing"
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