A Text With Two Levels

The text of Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire proceeds on two levels. We follow the intelligence-gathering exploits of Targovi and his companions while also reading vivid descriptions of sensory experiences.

(i) Targovi smells Tigeries as sweet, human beings as sour and Merseians as bitter - he bristles.

(ii) Sun-rise on Daedalus:

the sun-ring shrinks to an eastern ark;
eastern sky white, western blue, gilded clouds;
dew, songbirds, a red squirrel (a Terran import but so is the whole ecology);
scholars walking between ivied halls.

(iii) "...this night's flight above the Hellenes to a lake where they swam while the reflection of the sun-ring flashed everywhere around them, as if they swam in pure light; and ate pheasant and drank champagne ashore..."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 419.

If we count the feel of the water, then all five senses are addressed here. On the intellectual level, a Zacharian presents specious reasons for helping Merseia and even quotes Plato but that will have to wait till the next post.