Van Rijn On Lannach

On the Diomedean island of Lannach, home of the Flock, the settlement called Salmenbrok is fortified but only against aerial attack because all the higher life-forms on Diomedes, whether animal or intelligent, are winged:

there is no stockade;
ground floors have no doors and only slit windows;
entrances are in upper floors or roofs;
covered bridges and tunnels connect buildings;
houses are of mortared stone, not logs as in the valley;
wooden locks are designed like Chinese puzzles;
there is a communal windmill, a sail-propelled railway, a wooden lathe with a diamond cutting edge and a wooden saw with volcanic glass teeth.

We are told that van Rijn is delighted but are we to understand that he acts delighted for his own reasons? Much of his apparently spontaneous behavior is an elaborate dramatic performance. He says that he and the Lannachska can do business but we know that, centuries later, they will still be failing to integrate into Technic civilization. See Diomedean Demands. Meanwhile, in any case, van Rijn must help the Lannachska against the Draksha.