Aycharaych says:
"'My friend...you too play a satanic role. How many lives have you twisted or chopped short? How many will you?'"
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT Chapter IX, p. 464.
Friend!
On Chereion, Aycharaych appeals to Flandry, even addressing him by his first name:
"'Dominic, stay. We'll think how to keep your ships off and save Chereion...'" (Chapter XX, p. 600)
When Flandry objects that this would require him to betray his companions, Aycharaych offers him perhaps the ultimate temptation:
"'Yes. What are a few more lives to you? What is Terra? In ten thousand years, who will remember the empires? They can remember you, who saved Chereion for them.'" (ibid.)
He has already pointed out that he serves an abiding heritage whereas Flandry serves a dying civilization and asked, "'Who has the better right?'" (ibid.)
Flandry could have replied that he would not betray his murdered fiancee's kin but, instead, he generalizes:
"'There've been too many betrayals in too many causes.'" (ibid.)
How many of those betrayals have been by Flandry himself?
(Tonight, we watched the first instalment of a new Montalbano series.)
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, Flandry did not deny he shared a bond with Aycharaych, even a kind of strange, peculiar friendship.
Hmmm, was Aycharaych offering to DOWNLOAD Flandry's personality into the advanced computers and data bases of his extinct race? Given how Aycharacy claimed that was what some of the most august and renowned persons of his race had done, that might indeed be a tempting offer!
And I would say, Terra, dying or not, and her daughter worlds had the better claim--because they were LIVING, not dead as Chereion was.
Given his admittedly somewhat "ambiguous" life, I have to admit the possibility of Flandry having perpetrated betrayals. Most strikingly, with Djana (in A CIRCUS OF HELLS)?
Sean
Another thought I had was that even four or five thousand years later, in the Commonalty, people still remembered the Empire!
Sean
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