Later, Elfavy's father, Dawyd, confirms that sometimes people returning from the Holy City after Bale time do find that there has been destruction in the towns. Hidden cameras, when left, have always been either evaded or destroyed. But, again, Dawyd begins his account by saying:
"'It is not uncommon that some of those who go to the Holy City do not come back.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Night Face IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 541-660 AT IX, p. 629.
So what happens to them? And why does he mention them without any further explanation before mentioning the destruction in the towns? Have some people crept out of the Holy Cities, wreaked destruction in the towns, then gone somewhere else?
As a precaution, back in the towns, dangerous machinery, infants, the old and the sick are time-locked inside a robotically tended and guarded fortress which it is lethal to approach during that period even though attacks are increasingly rare. Dawyd speculates about unrecognized or troglodyte aborigines. (Unrecognized natives of a colonized planet feature in a Psychotechnic History story that I expect to read for the first time later this year in The Complete Psychotechnic League, Vol III.) The Gwydiona have no motivation to study the problem and that is very strange indeed.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Mysteries seem to abound in THE NIGHT FACE! One think I've wondered about is WHO destroyed those hidden cameras left behind in the towns during Bale Time? If all Gwydiona not temporarily imprisoned in the emergency fortress goes mad during Bale Time, how could any retain enough sanity to destroy the cameras?
Sean
Sean,
Even those in the fortress go mad if they are affected by the baleflower and, if they are not affected by the baleflower and thus are deprived of their periodic dementia, then they will suffer even worse mental consequences. I think that who destroyed the hidden cameras is a question that is not satisfactorily addressed unless the answer is that the Gwydiona, needing to conceal from themselves that some of them have caused the damage, destroy the cameras, then forget that they have done so. Yes, that has to be it.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That makes as much sense as anything I can think of. Yes, a desperate need to conceal from themselves what HAPPENS during Bale time would cause some of the Gywdiona to destroy those cameras and THEN suppress that knowledge when sane.
Grimly interesting, the idea that the Gwydiona have become so addicted to the Bale flower that they may have become genetically predisposed to NEED going periodically insane. Tragic and pathetic!
Sean
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