Athisse

Athisse is the capital and major city of Loris, presented as a place of striking public architecture and effortless abundance. When Johnny Bezique tours it, the city becomes the clearest expression of Lorian society’s achievements—and the setting in which he recognizes that those achievements do not resolve the conflict between Loris and Earth.

Capital and Urban Fabric

The city is described as cyclopean, filled with enormous, fantastically beautiful buildings, including castles and palaces. These structures are public, and their bold asymmetry gives the city a visually adventurous character rather than the uniformity of a conventional civic center. Its grandeur is not confined to monuments: Athisse contains bazaars, restaurants, parks, statues, houses, graveyards, funparks, hot-dog stands, playgrounds, and a clear river. The variety makes the city feel built for ordinary life as well as spectacle.

Abundance and Civic Life

Athisse’s amenities belong to a wider Lorian system in which food, clothing, housing, and entertainment are free. People take what they need and contribute what they wish, with resources balancing without money; accordingly, the city has no need for banks, treasuries, vaults, or safe-deposit boxes. Even doors open and close by mental command rather than locks. This material ease is paired with Loris’s stable population, ecological balance, and highly developed technology, while self-regulating machines perform brute labor and people choose creative work freely.

Bezique’s Visit and the City’s Significance

The Lorians give Johnny Bezique hypnopaedic knowledge of their language and show him around Athisse. He learns about the society over a few days with the help of Helmis, his specially assigned guide, whose patience, insight, humor, and gentleness only intensify Johnny’s dislike of him. The more Johnny sees, the more impressive the Lorian arrangement appears: Athisse is not simply beautiful but evidence of a society that seems to have reconciled prosperity, freedom, and order.

That apparent perfection does not reassure Johnny about Earth’s future. He recognizes that humans may refuse to be governed by aliens even when those aliens are benevolent and seem to act in humanity’s interest. Athisse therefore sharpens the story’s central political tension: the city offers a persuasive image of what good government might achieve, but its very difference from Earth makes that achievement insufficient to secure human consent.