"'We can't go back to killing the People again!' Flandry protested.
"'Can't we just?' Quarles said.
"'After what we've seen, what they've done for us -'
"'Grow up. We belong to the Empire, not some barnacle-bitten gang of xenos.'
"'You may be out of the matter anyhow, Flandry,' Ridenour said. 'Your orders came through several hours ago.'
"'Orders?'
"'You report to Commander Abrams at Highport...Special duty, I don't know what.'"
- Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 79.
Three Points of Interest
(i) How many Naval personnel would agree with Flandry and how many with Quarles? The latter makes the Empire sound like conquering sf villains rather than defenders of civilization.
(ii) In this novel, Ridenour, the preoccupied and rather impatient xenologist, is seen only from the outside but he becomes a viewpoint character in a later installment set on a different planet. (Any future history needs many-sidedness.)
(iii) Flandry's career continues to advance. He has already:
survived being shot down;
fought the sea people and captured one;
arranged preliminary negotiations with them;
defended a land dweller seaport against them.
Now, he will become Abrams' aide on a trip to Merseia! Fortunately, it is Flandry, not Quarles, that advances in the service of the Empire.
Is Abrams right to be so suspicious of the Merseians? Yes, they are clearly stalling discussions with the Empire for some unstated purpose. Yet the Dennitzan Merseians are loyal to the Emperor, not to the Roidhun. Although we are not told, we can infer from this that Abrams would recognize that the problem is not with the entire Merseian species.
2 comments:
Hi, Paul!
If John Ridenour seems impatient and preoccupied in ENSIGN FLANDRY, that's merely because he was tired and overworked from trying to understand not just one, but TWO non human races on Starkad.
As for Quarles, it's only fair to say a young officer like him is not always likely to be as perspicacious as Flandry was already showing himself to be. It's kinder to hope that as time passed Quarles came to have a deeper and more sympathetic understanding of non humans. The mere fact that the Imperial Navy has non human officers (one example being Flandry's executive officer when he commanded a destroyer in THE REBEL WORLDS) shows that the thoughtless prejudice Quarles shows was not approved of by the Imperium.
And Abrams was certainly right to be distrustful of the Merseians, both because that was his professional obligation as an Intelligence officer and because of his awareness of how the ambitions and racist ideology predominant among Roidhunate Merseians made them hostile to Terra.
Needless to say, racism and aggressive expansionism were not driving forces among all Merseians! A shock of the kind suffered by Dywr the Hook when he realized how his own people betrayed him could break him out of that mindset. Or there were Merseians who did not like how Merseia was developing or simply sought a better life--these would be the kind of Merseians who settled centuries before on Dennitza. I would need to check, but I think Abrams himself mentioned there were Imperial worlds which had Merseian populations. Hmmm, if so, that might have help inspire Poul Anderson into deciding Dennitza had Merseians!
Sean
Sean,
Abrams deffo mentions that there are human beings in Merseian service. If he also says that there are Merseians on imperial worlds, I should find it because I will probably continue rereading ENSIGN FLANDRY to the end. Today, however, after checking emails, I will try to get back to reading Tacitus on the Roman Empire in Latin.
Paul.
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