Other POVs

Is any of The Man Who Counts narrated from Nicholas van Rijn's pov? I don't think so although I have not checked every page or passage. The main drama of the book is the capable entrepreneur's effects on others and how they perceive him. He does not do everything but gets everything done by understanding and motivating all those around him. He is the Man Who...

Van Rijn's third appearance in the Technic History is in "Esau," which starts with the pov of Emil Dalmady who lands on the roof of the Winged Cross in Chicago Integrate and walks through a garden to a penthouse. We have not yet been told that this is one of van Rijn's dwellings so we do not know whom Dalmady is about to visit. Near the top of the second page of the text, we learn that he is about to have a personal interview with a merchant prince of the Polesotechnic League and, by the end of the paragraph, he confronts Nicholas van Rijn who greets him but does not stand. Dalmady is glad not to be dwarfed by height as well as bulk.

Dalmady's meeting with van Rijn is merely an extended framing device for Dalmady's adventure on Suleiman so this is really a Dalmady story, not a van Rijn one. Although Dalmady is not a series character, Anderson skilfully weaves him into the Technic History. Hloch's Introductions tells us that Dalmady was successful in later life - the Planha phrase for this is that he "...soared high for long years..." (The Van Rijn Method, p. 517) -, that children of his moved to Avalon with Falkayn and that his daughter wrote this and two other stories that are incorporated into the Earth Book.