"The bulk of Centralia marched over the horizon." (p. 78)
I googled Centralia and learned.
Vivienne says:
"'I must look like a perfect mutie.'" (p. 79)
This is the first indication that, after two "atomic wars," there are mutants and that "mutant" is abbreviated as "mutie," as in Heinlein's Orphans Of The Sky, where "mutie" also means "mutineer."
We might have met muties in or near the Crater which, however, is the lair of criminals dominating the surrounding "low-levels": crime and poverty but not, as yet, mutations.
The end of a Poul Anderson novel resembles a mathematical limit that can be approached but never reached. The further we read into the text, the more we find to blog about.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And, as we know from one of his essays, Poul Anderson came to doubt we would see "muties" of the kind seen in TWILIGHT WORLD. Excessive radiation was more likely to kill any unborn child whose DNA had been changed by that radiation.
Sean
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