Ships are being pirated by an alien power called the Kossaluth of Borthu. The Brotherhood will not take any more ships through Kossaluth space and will strike against any employer who tries to send them there. The Brotherhood hopes for League agreement without a public fight. In fact, the Lodgemasters had held back the members for two years, hoping that the problem would be solved but it has not been. All this sounds very familiar.
What does van Rijn want?
An avoidance of the extra expense of detouring around the Kossaluth;
an end to the pirating.
He knows what Torres from the Brotherhood is bound to say so his response is "...surprisingly mild." (p. 140)
Nevertheless, he must go through the forms:
he says that the Brotherhood are cutting their own throats, "'...slow and outscruciating.'" (ibid.);
he manages "...a bass scream..." (p. 141) at the suggestion of detours.
Torres waits out the dramatics. So he knows that they are dramatics. They both know it. So are the dramatics necessary? Like haggling, they are van Rijn's way of doing business. In a later installment:
"Van Rijn got stuck in the emergency hatch and required pushing, while his anguished basso obscenities drowned the nearing thunder."
-Poul Anderson, The Man Who Counts IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 337-515 AT p. 354.
Anguished? If he had needed to be quiet, then he would have been, so how spontaneous are the obscenities? (There is something to be said for letting off steam when you do not need to keep a low profile.)
Van Rijn will not just oppose the Brotherhood's proposed boycott of Kossaluth space. He will work hard to solve the problem.
(Also, notice the Pathetic Fallacy in The Man Who Counts. The characters are in trouble - they have been shipwrecked - and there is approaching thunder.)
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Others might not care for them, but I find the antics and malapropisms of Old Nick amusing! And, as others have suggested, they must have been at least partly to get opponents to underestimate van Rijn. And partly because he really was naturally inclined to be boisterous and fond of colorful language. And, as you said, when he HAD to, van Rijn knew how to be serious or "quiet."
Sean
Didn't PA say in (at least Satan's World) that a hyperdriven ship is undetectable past 1 ly away from the detector? If this were the case, League ships could divert their courses slightly, jig their courses randomly for a brief time, and/or just play dead for awhile.
-kh
Keith,
Such practical measures are discussed in the story. Some ships do get through.
Paul.
Thx
-kh
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