"'...the best guess is, we'll smash enough of the system - whether or not we reach Aycharaych himself -'
"'For his sake, let's hope we do.'
"'Are you that forgiving, Dominic?'"
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Kinght Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT Chapter XX, p. 604.
Would it be better for Aychraych to be dead? Clearly, he is the title character of the novel. It is appropriate that he is last seen among technological "ghosts," the holograms of dead or departed Chereionites.
Aycharaych, using his planet's computers, had fooled the Merseians into thinking that a few million surviving Chereionites served them with staff work and advice while he was the sole field agent. The Merseians had thought that this powerful race must otherwise be left to its own devices. Thus, they themselves were prevented from adapting Chereionite technology for military purposes.
I now think that the Dennitzan bombardment of Chereion was so complete that the Merseians were unable to penetrate Aycharaych's deception even after the event. So little was left of the Chereionite cities that they were unable to discover that those cities had not been inhabited. In The Game Of Empire, Tachwyr the Dark still thinks well of Aycharaych and wishes that the latter had lived long enough to see one of his devious anti-Terran schemes coming to fruition. Tachwyr would hardly feel like this if his people had come to realize that Aycharaych had in fact prevented them from exploiting Chereionite technology to the full.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I'm chagrined, here you made points about A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS I really should have thought of! Yes, the book's title most logically refers to Aycharaych.
Yes, the Dennitzan bombardment of Chereion MUST have been so thorough that the Merseian Navy reinforcements which hurried to Chereion were convinced the very last Chereionites had been killed. And did not realize how Aycharaych had deceived Merseia--only that would explain why Tachwyr the Dark still thought well of him.
Sean
I thought the title referred to both Aycharaych and Flandry.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Perhaps Poul Anderson wanted readers to be UNSURE which person the title refers to. If both had been meant it would be logical for the title to be KNIGHTS OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS.
Sean
This novel has also been published as KNIGHT FLANDRY! - a companion title to ENSIGN FLANDRY.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, but sometimes Anderson had to put up with titles to his works that he did not agree with, due to the insistence of his publishers. An esp. bad example of a title Anderson disliked being WAR OF THE WING MEN, when his preferred title was THE MAN WHO COUNTS.
But KNIGHT FLANDRY was not as bad as that!
Sean
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