It is impossible to reread Poul Anderson without finding something new to post about.
"She kissed them both. Van Sarawak responded as eagerly as expected, but Everard couldn't bring himself to. He would have remembered Judas." (p.216)
Here is yet another appropriate Biblical reference embedded in the text. We have to be alert to every turn of phrase.
Everard tells Deirdre that the spells that he used to save their lives prevent him from returning her to her world. He tells Van Sarawak:
"'I can't send her back to what's waiting for this world.'" (p. 217)
Yes, he can but I am not going to go back through that argument yet again.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, Everard could have STEELED himself to sending Deirdre back. It would have been more accurate of him to say he could not BEAR to send her back to a universe he thought would soon be nullified.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Everard has to think about the significance of the word, "soon." Whatever is going to happen to Deirdre's world, it is not going to happen "soon" as time is reckoned within that world.
If a book is either burned or locked away and made inaccessible to the public, it does not make sense to ask at what point in the text of the book or on which page it was burned or made inaccessible. Whatever happened to the book happened to its entire text at once.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree with that line of reasoning. Everard meant "soon" in terms of his personal sense of time or timeline.
Ad astra! Sean
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