Coya's face is delicate and more than pretty. Her voice is lovely and low. David's face is rakishly shaped but currently grim. Regular readers might observe that David's maturation during the Polesotechnic League series is more pronounced even than that of Dominic Flandry in his series. At the end of this chapter, David will inform his employer and patron, van Rijn, that, following the death of his, David's, older brother, Michael, he is now head of the family and president of the Falkayn domain on Hermes so that is where his first duty now lies.
"Van Rijn's visage...was the most mobile and least readable of the three."
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), p. 176.
This encapsulates everything that we know about van Rijn. His face and bodily bulk will energetically play the role of genial host but his innermost thoughts will be articulated only when expedient.
Coya explains to Eric:
"'...for a long time in the Solar System...the issue has been what shall be final arbiter. The state...or a changeable group of individuals, whose only power is economic...'" (p. 177)
I paraphrase because I have previously discussed these issues here and especially here. I think that one other final arbiter is possible: an educated and informed working population routinely controlling advanced technology, nanotech etc, in order to address the needs of, and also to facilitate the free development of, each individual. A social reorganization on this basis would make both money and bureaucracy redundant and therefore would be opposed both by League companies and by the Solar government.
Will technological advances make such a reorganization necessary? Will advanced technology used competitively also be used destructively as in the Babur War?
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