More Information About The Always Fascinating Commisioner Desai

Chunderban Desai:

when on Aeneas, buys tobacco, expensively, from Esperance;

uses an atrocious cigarette holder of carved land-whale ivory because it was a present from a deceased ten-year-old daughter (so did Desai and his wife have eight children in total?);

unwittingly interviews and has lunch with a telepathic agent of Merseia;

is subordinate to Sector Governor Muratori, the latter based in the city of Catawrayannis on Llynathawr in another planetary system;

because the Virgilian System is close to the Domain of Ythri, allows Erannath of Stormgate Choth on Avalon to fly around on Aeneas, spying for both Domain and Empire;

points out to Aycharaych that Terrans happened to be the first into space in their immediate volume in recent history (it is strange to reflect that Ythrians, Merseians, Betelgeuseans and Baburites, although not Ymirites, acquired the hyperdrive from Terrans);

is High Commissioner of a planet whose society Anderson realizes in considerable detail - University, Landfolk, diverse immigrants, modern industrialists, Ancient ruins.

Another visitor to Desai's office points out that the University of Nova Roma is wealthy and powerful. We know from an earlier installment of the History that it was at that University that the Ythrian and human explorers of Gray, renamed Avalon by its colonists, met. Universities have enormous effects merely by bringing together scholars from throughout the accessible universe.