They’d found him floating below, miraculously alive, having just missed cracking his skull on a number of intervening branches. A couple of Deyzara had fished him out of the water and brought him up. Diagnosis had been swift: mental breakdown brought on by too much time on Fluva. Sandravoe had extended his tour of duty several times, receiving a bonus for each extension. His offers had been reluctantly accepted because it was hard to find qualified personnel willing to remain on Fluva for any length of time. Besides having to adjudicate the never-ending turmoil between the Deyzara and the Sakuntala, there was also the often hostile and unpredictable flora and fauna, the interesting new diseases, the voracious molds and fungi, and of course the small and slightly disturbing fact that it rained 90 percent of the year. And the absence of dry land.
There was permanent dry land, Matthias knew. Up in the western mountains that ran the length of Fluva’s single substantial landmass. The mountains caught the flow of moisture from the western ocean and turned it into rain. The rain fed thousands upon thousands of rivers that, for most of the year, overflowed their banks and drowned the immense tropical woodland that the moisture supported. The result was varzea, where the land lay thirty meters or so below the surface of the merged rivers. It was a morass, it was a mess, and the combination had a disconcerting tendency to drive visiting humans insane.
Not the Deyzara. Imported from Tharce IV a couple of hundred years ago, the Deyzara were well adapted to working in Fluva’s sodden conditions. They thrived in its climate, working the plantations that produced dozens of highly valued botanicals and other products. Preoccupied with fighting among themselves, the native Sakuntala had accepted the Deyzara’s presence from the beginning. Unfortunately, the Deyzara bred rather faster than the locals, with the result that there were now nearly as many Deyzara as long-arms. Now, a highly vocal and influential faction among the Sakuntala wanted all Deyzara off the planet.