Maia And Sandra

Mirkheim, II.

Sandra Tamarin will be the viewpoint character in this chapter and the first thing that she will do will be to wake up. However, the chapter does not start with that. Instead, the omniscient narrator takes us on an interesting journey at the speed of light.

From below the eastern horizon, the Hermetian sun, Maia, gilds steeples and towers in Starfall. When the sun rises above Daybreak Bay, its light travels over the Palomino River, along Olympic Avenue to Pilgrim Hill, among trees, gardens and buildings and past Old Keep, New Keep and Signal Station. One beam, passing above an upper balcony of New Keep, goes through the French windows and onto Sandra's bed, waking her in the first sentence of the second paragraph.

Now we are in her point of view and the first thing that we learn is that her husband, Peter Asmundsen, who had proposed to her on p. 7, died more than four years ago. Events move fast towards a future historical climax but, although it is dawn in Starfall, it is midnight in Lancaster.

I Remember Hermes

Mirkheim, Prologue, Y minus 24.

"Both moons of Hermes were aloft, Caduceus rising small but nearly full, the broad sickle of Sandalion sinking westward. High in the dusk, a pair of wings caught light from the newly set sun and shone gold. A tilirra sang amidst the foliage of a millionleaf, which rustled to a low breeze. At the bottom of the canyon it had cut for itself, the Palomino River rang with its haste; but that sound reached the heights as a murmur." (p. 5)

I like the wings gold in the light of the already set sun. A tilirra, a millionleaf and the Palomino River are referred to as if we knew them. Several colonized planets in Poul Anderson's Technic History become concretely realized places. It is as if we had been there. I remember Ys - and also Hermes, Avalon, Dennitza, Merseia etc. 

Falkayn's Age V

Rereading "Lodestar" and Mirkheim, I wondered whether to re-address the question of Falkayn's age but decided to leave it. For what it is worth, the relevant texts are, in this order:

"The Three-Cornered Wheel"

"A Sun Invisible"

"The Trouble Twisters"

"Day of Burning"

Satan's World

"Lodestar," first narrative section

Mirkheim, Prologue, Y minus 18.

"Lodestar," second narrative section

Mirkheim, Prologue, Y minus 9.

Mirkheim, I-XXI

"Wingless," where David is a grandfather

Complicated, you must admit.

My Response To Van Rijn's Problem

See Unrighteous News.

If I were a wage- or salary-earner in the Solar Commonwealth, then I would want my union at least to have a say in how the money in the pension fund was invested. Independent financial advisers would also have to be consulted.

I would want the union to be:

democratically controlled by its members; 

not a profit-making organization;

committed to siblinghood;

completely independent of government, which is another employer;

campaigning against SSL lobbying, logrolling, pressure and bribery;

also campaigning against cartelization.

Is van Rijn alarmist when he says that he does not envy the Falkayn's children? Why should they care whether government becomes more involved in running businesses like van Rijn's? I agree that the cartelization is one big problem and would want the unions to oppose it.

Unrighteous News

Mirkheim, Y minus 9.

Van Rijn's Problem

The Garver Bill will give trade unions control of the pension funds of Solar Commonwealth citizens.

 

Therefore, United Technicians will control the Solar Spice & Liquors pension fund.

The Home Companies will cooperate with this legislation and the Seven In Space will be indifferent.

Therefore, the Polesotechnic League Council will not oppose the Bill.

Despite their rhetoric about siblinghood of workers, unions are profit-making organizations.

 

Having said that, van Rijn then says that it is not a problem (!) but adds that the close ties between unions and government are a problem.

He does not want government involved in running his business and does not envy the Falkayns' children.

David Falkayn suggests a public relations campaign with pressure on legislators, logrolling etc but van Rijn thinks that this will not work against the Home Companies. (Also, he is seventy one - the same age as me - and tired.)

Hanny Lennart of the Home Companies phones to warn van Rijn against lobbying and bribery.

My Response

Please allow me some time to formulate it.

At First Sight II

Mirkheim, Prologue, Y minus 28.

"He thought a grove of low trees with long black fronds stood at the edge of sight on his left, and that he could make out the glistening city that he knew was to his right. However, this was as unsure as the greeting he would get. And every shape he discerned was so alien that when he glanced elsewhere he could not remember it. Here he must learn all over again how to use his eyes." (p. 3) 

This is Benoni Strang's first visit to the sub-Jovian planet, Babur. He experiences what has previously been described both by CS Lewis and by Poul Anderson. See At First Sight.

A Baburite says:

"'After our experience on Suleiman...we question what we may gain from the Polesotechnic League.'" (p. 4)

Thus, this section of the Prologue is a sequel to the Nicholas van Rijn story, "Esau." Strang confirms this by assuring his hosts that:

"'The Solar Spice & Liquors Company is not the whole League...'" (pp. 4-5)

Genesis, Gabriel And Prophets

Mirkheim, Prologue, Y minus 18.

"A ship hunted through space until she found the extinct supernova. Captain David Falkayn beheld the circling planetary core and saw that it was good. But its aspect was so forbidding that he christened it Mirkheim." (p.7)

See Genesis 1:31.

Y minus 9.

"'I told Mortensen no calls from anybody less rank than the angel Gabriel." (p. 12)

See Luke 1: 19.

"You, in a clown suit with a red balloon snoot and painted grin, you would still look like some minor Hebrew prophet on a bad day." (p. 14)

See Twelve Minor Prophets.

Three more Biblical references.

On Hermes

Mirkheim.

In Prologue, Y minus 24, Sandra Tamarin informs us that she has had a son, Eric, by Nick van Rijn. Thus, this section of the Prologue is a sequel to The Man Who Counts. In Prologue, Y minus 18, David Falkayn discovers Mirkheim. Thus, this section is set between the two narrative sections of "Lodestar."

Sandra's father has business interests that disqualify him from election as Grand Duke of Hermes, therefore she will probably be elected as Grand Duchess. Although this is not mentioned here, readers should remember that Hermes is David Falkayn's home planet.

Peter Asmundsen, who cannot avoid giving preferential promotions to Followers, thinks that his Traver employees have legitimate grievances and that he might threaten to strike if he were in their place. He manages this situation first by traveling to meet Traver leaders in person and secondly by hammering out compensations for Travers like extra vacations. This whole social structure sounds unwieldy and unstable. Why not just abolish this distinction between Followers and Travers? Even if he were minded to do so, Asmundsen lacks the authority to upend society unilaterally. In this passage, Poul Anderson shows us how a man of intelligence and goodwill is able to manage his employees within the framework of an inherently unequal social system. Elsewhere in the novel, he shows us how men lacking goodwill operate.

If Asmundesen had opted to handle the issue from a distance, then he would have been able to use the "'...complete equipment, communication, computation, data retrieval...'" (p. 5) in Sandra's parents' home. Anderson, writing in 1977, listed these functions separately instead of just referring to computers.

Lines Of Descent

Lines of descent provide some, although by no means all, of the historical continuity in Poul Anderson's Technic History. See Falkayns And Flandry. Later Flandry period installments present:

two sons of Hans Molitor;

a son and a daughter of Dominic Flandry;

a daughter of Max Abrams;

a son of Dragoika -

- and the very last installment of the Technic History presents remote descendants of rebels exiled by Flandry.

 

The series is not a history of a single family or "people." Instead, its collective protagonist is the human race interacting with many other intelligence species - beginning on Ythri - and the history ends with those remote descendants who are no longer human.

Falkayns And Flandry

The view of Chicago Integrate from Nicholas van Rijn's penthouse on the roof of the Winged Cross:

"Whenever they visited, the Falkayns never tired of that spectacle."

-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT Prologue, Y minus 9., p. 11.

Consecutive readers of Poul Anderson's Technic History know that David Falkayn works for van Rijn but do not yet know of any couple called the Falkayns. However, the text continues:

"To David it was comparatively fresh; he had spent most of his life off Earth." (ibid.)

 

This confirms that one of these "Falkayns" is the one that we already know and also fits with what we know about him.

 

"But Coya, who had been coming to see her grandfather since before she could walk, likewise found it always new." (ibid.)

 

This informs us that van Rijn's granddaughter, Coya Conyon, introduced in the concluding story of the previous volume, is now married to David.

After this prologue, future history will accelerate:

in Mirkheim, Chapter I, the Falkayns had stopped space traveling to bring up their daughter, Juanita, and Coya is pregnant again;

in Chapter XVIII, Nicholas Falkayn is born;

in the following story, "Wingless," Nicholas Falkayn, an engineer on the planet Avalon, advises his son and the viewpoint character of the story, Nathaniel/Nat;

the last work to be collected in Rise Of The Terran Empire, which is another complete novel, The People Of The Wind, features a remote descendant, Tabitha Falkayn, who is also Hrill of Highsky Choth on Avalon, but that is the last that we see of the Falkayns.

After that, the narrative slows way back down again with twelve of the remaining nineteen works devoted to a single influential figure, Dominic Flandry. But none of that should be in our minds as we read about the Falkayns' visit to van Rijn on the Winged Cross.