This expectation enables James Blish and Poul Anderson to surprise us with alternative meanings. In Blish's "Beep"/The Quincunx Of Time, the outfit called "the Service," is simply "the Service," nothing else, and is not a branch or arm of the government but the entire government - but it is a while before we realize this.
In Anderson's "Windmill," the narrator works for "The Service..." (p. 142) and is "'...a Maurai spy...'" (p. 143) but we then learn that he is "...an agent of the Ecological Service...," (p. 151) which makes sense in the light of the Maurai assumption of global environmental stewardship.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And that kind of assumption, or PRESUMPTION if you were one of those who resented the Maurai, makes it logical for the Ecological Service to have its own spies. But "Progress" also mentions the Maurai having an intelligence service of the more ordinary kind. But I can see the Maurai Federation having more than one intelligence service. One focusing on straightforward military and political intelligence of the ordinary kind, the other being the Ecological Service's spies.
Ad astra! Sean
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