Nicol holds Venator and the Lunarians at gun point. He can either accompany the Lunarians with their hijacked antimatter to Proserpina, with Venator as an unwilling accomplice, or contact Venator's organization, the Peace Authority, which will then send a ship to arrest the Lunarians. Nicol opts for Proserpina and is asked why.
He hopes to join the Proserpinan bards singing the heroic age of their new world. His pain as an outsider might give him meaning. He cites his predecessors:
"'Homer sang of a bygone age...Shakespeare treated of Cleopatra and Macbeth. Fitzgerald drew on Omar Khayyam. Kipling told about India.'" (p. 190)
Nicol will "sing" of the inhuman universe - stars and comets - but with human beings out there.
The Man Who Counts ends with the recognition that the entrepreneur van Rijn is "the man who counts," i.e., the major motivator/manipulator, whereas Harvest The Fire ends with the acknowledgment that Nicol is indeed an aspiring poet.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I have read many of the poems and stories of Rudyard Kipling with great pleasure. And he too spoke in his time of the heroic age of British history in and out of India.
But I'm sorry Nicol did not include Dante and his epic poem THE DIVINE COMEDY as among the great works of human thought and action.
Sean
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