Evening On Esperance

The People Of The Wind, III. 

Not for the first time (!), we reread Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind. However, this time, we try to grasp not every rich and colourful detail in Poul Anderson's text but, more specifically, any information to be gleaned about the Ythrian institution of choths and, by extension, the related concepts of Khruath, Wyvan, Oherran and deathpride. 

However, some other details still catch our attention. I want to skip past:

"Ekrem Saracoglu, Imperial governor of Sector Pacis..." (p. 34)

- having found him unpleasant before, although there was some combox disagreement about that, but I cannot ignore a summer evening in an Esperancian garden:

"By then they were strolling in the garden. Rosebushes and cherry trees might almost have been growing on Terra; Esperance was a prize among colony planets. The sun Pax was still above the horizon, now at midsummer, but leveled mellow beams across an old brick wall. The air was warm, blithe with birdsong, sweet with green odors that drifted in from the countryside. A car or two caught the light, high above; but Fleurville was not big enough for its traffic noise to be heard this far from the centrum." (pp. 34-35)

There is much here to divert our attention from current pursuits.

No traffic noise. Perfect. 

Four senses: light; warmth; birdsong; odours. 

We have become accustomed to aircars as part of the scenery in the Technic History. On another humanly colonized planet, Hermes, French doors left open at night allow the Tamarin-Asmundsens to appreciate:

light from two moons;

cool air;

flower odours;

trills of a local bird equivalent;

city sky-glow;

aircars -

"...like many-colored glowflies."

-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT X, p. 152.

Four senses: light; coolness; odours; trills.

On Terra, in Flandry's time:

"White cloud wandered through blue clarity; aircars sparkled in sunlight. A breeze brought coolness and a muted pulse of machines in the service of man. And here came the souffle."

-Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven IN Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 1-188 AT III, p. 32.

Four senses: light; coolness; muted pulse; taste.

To return to Esperance, planets in the Technic History are made more real partly by being mentioned in more than one context. Nicholas van Rijn had worked on t'Kela with Joyce Davisson from Esperance. Now there is action on the surface of Esperance. It is such a prize colony planet that it reads exactly like Earth. Roses and cherries grow there as if on Terra. But there must be some difference. When Saracoglu plucks and eats a grape:

"The taste held a slight, sweet strangeness; Esperancian soil was not, after all, identical with that of Home." (p. 38)

And the evening proceeds:

"The sun was now gone from sight, shadows welled in the garden, an evening star blossomed." (ibid.)

Again, like Earth.