In Chapter IV, Miriam "Banner" Abrams arrives among the towers of Archopolis and stays at the Fatima Caravanserai.
In V, Emperor Gerhart receives the Grand Duke of Hermes in the Coral Palace.
In VI, Flandry, Banner and Chives leave Terra in Flandry's private spaceship, the Hooligan...
In XIV, they are back on Terra in Flandry's cabin in the High Sierra. When Flandry and Banner hike, Poul Anderson describes the scenery. Our last sight ever of Chives is when he takes a fishing rod, "...promising trout meuniere for dinner." (p. 184)
Our last sight in this novel of Flandry and Banner is in the concluding sentence:
"They walked on into the autumn." (p. 188)
And we do at last get a more rounded sense of Terra as a planet.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Anderson should have told us in THE GAME OF EMPIRE what happened to Chives in the years after A STONE IN HEAVEN. Most probably, since he was getting old and frail in the latter book, he had died by the time of GAME. Problem being that we don't know. Chives might even have retired to Shalmu.
I finished rereading GENESIS, which I did because of your recent commentary on that book. And I'm rereading some of the stories collected in DIALOGUE WITH DARKNESS, esp. "A Chapter of Revelation" and "Sister Planet." And at least one or two more stories in that collection.
Because of a really fascinating article about Shakespeare and the First Folio which I read in a recent issue of NATIONAL REVIEW, I am finally getting serious about reading my copy of the 1974 RIVERSIDE SHAKESPEARE. A huge work which will take me a long time making progress reading!
Ad astra! Sean
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