When Falkayn and his human captor, Latimer, open their faceplates inside the alien spaceship, the breathable atmosphere is desert-like, hot and dry, full of stinging ozone and of odors like spice, leather and blood. Latimer is clearly used to it.
Ascending a gravshaft, they enter a large garden of flowers and trees that are brown-gold, not green, with a fountain in a clearly weathered stone basin. Its carvings are artistically exquisite whereas the bulkhead is decorated in tasteless splashes of color. Barbarians have conquered or succeeded a civilization?
The stateroom beyond is indeed barbaric: pelt on the floor; one bulkhead gold-plated; another decorated as in the garden; another draped in scaly leather; a screen showing flashing, jagged, abstract shapes to the sound of drums and horns; a large skull above the door; bitter smoke from time-worn censors; carelessly scattered cushions and miscellaneous items; the Minotaur-like alien standing in another doorway protected from Falkayn's hand-held grenade by a transparent shield.
Walking into such a place would turn my stomach.
4 comments:
Paul:
With regard only to the "tasteless splashes of color," I'd point out that it might be the aliens' eyes see in a different range, some variation on colorblindness, so that these colors look more appropriate, and work together better, to nonhuman eyesight.
The rest of the furnishings support the "barbarian" interpretation ... but again there might be something about, for instance, the juxtaposition of the different wall coverings that has, to nonhuman thought processes, a less-garish psychological effect than to ours.
Reading your comment, I was reminded of a passage from Roger Zelazny's This Immortal, when a nonhuman tells a woman:
"We are blind to what you refer to as 'red,' but in this 'white' flower I see two colors for which there are no colors in your language.... Some of our paintings look garish to Earth eyes, or even seem to be all of one color—blue, usually—because the subtleties are invisible to them. Much of our music would seem to you to contain big gaps of silence, gaps which are actually filled with melody.... That is why I cannot tell you what Taler is like. It would be a different world to you than the world it is to me."
Ah, those yellow Gollancz SF specials! How many of them I read in my youth!
David,
Right.
Mr Stirling,
I first read GUARDIANS OF TIME and ORPHANS OF THE SKY in yellow Gollancz.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
I have a of those Gollancz books myself, which I purchased when filling out my collection of the works of Anderson. My first reading of any of the Time Patrol stories was from GUARDIANS OF TIME, way back in 1979, in a Gollancz edition. Minus the yellow jacket cover!
Sean
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