The Last Chereionite

By travelling to 802,701 AD, the Time Traveller finds mankind devolved into Morlocks and Eloi. By travelling to an ancient planet in the Merseian Roishunate, Dominic Flandry confronts the last Chereionite. I think that these two sf climaxes are comparable. The Flandry novel, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, is embedded in an action-adventure space opera series with Flandry of Terra as hero and Aycharaych of Chereion as villain. Nevertheless, Aycharaych's conclusion transcends his pulp magazine origins. Chereionite technology preserves the scanned and recorded likenesses of:

"'...the loftiest spirits of a million years...'" (XX, p. 599)

"'...- would you let your war lords turn these instruments to their own vile ends?

"'No!'

"And Flandry understood." (p. 600)

This might count as an Andersonian moment of realization except that this time we do not have to wait to be told what it is that Flandry has realized. If Aycharaych had not tricked the Merseians into believing that a few million powerful Chereionites did staff work to support his solo field work, then the Roidhunate would have sacked his planet, would have destroyed his heritage and then, with the appropriated Chereionite instrumentalities, have wrought even greater harm than he alone ever did on their behalf.

However, we cannot condone the manipulation of living beings that he regards as an art and a sport.