Commander Trolwen of the Flock of Lannach remarks that it is not well and strides towards a village. Regarding this village, the text runs:
"...what was its name now? Salmembrok..." (pp. 191-192)
We could be forgiven for thinking that it is Trolwen who inwardly asks and answers this question about the name of the village. However, by the end of this paragraph, we are in van Rijn's pov:
"...van Rijn heard..." (p. 192)
- which continues until the end of this chapter although much of its text is conversation which can be narrated from either or neither pov.
Further down p. 192, we read van Rijn's self-pity from which he is hauled back to practicalities by the thought that SSL "...must be getting deeper into the red ink..." (ibid.) in his absence! Do they still print overdrafts in red in the Solar Commonwealth? That no longer happens here.
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
My thought was that printing over drafts in red and presenting "terminated" employees with pinks slips are so well known that they became permanently embedded in Western and then Technic civilization as cliches everyone understood.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
My thought also. Additionally, van Rijn's thought is translated from Anglic to "Old Anglic" (English) for our benefit so the English phrase "in red ink" might translate some different but parallel phrase.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree. Readers need to keep in mind that the texts of stories set centuries from now should be understood as having been translated what ever that future language was back to our English. In Old Nick's case, our English would be Old Anglic to him.
I also remembered how, more than 500 years later, in A CIRCUS OF HELLS, Dominic Flandry thought the Anglic spoken by the Wayland AI computer to be "quaint." Showing how Anglic had changed yet more.
That said, I can still see some cliches like "in red ink" or "pink slips" being translated literally into whatever English will become in future centuries.
Ad astra! Sean
It's probable. We still say "hold your horses", or "locking the stable door", and "put your hand to the plow".
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, and others can be thought of or remembered, as well. Such as the Biblical "Pride goeth before a fall."
Ad astra! Sean
To be bewildered is to be lost in the wilderness.
One thing moderns tend to forget (and more so as things like phones with GPS become more common) is how easy it was to get lost in the old days, if you were away from your own neighborhood.
Entire armies could get lost and nobody in them would have the slightest idea where they were.
The same happened to ships. I was just reading a journal written in the 1820's, of someone on a voyage from Bombay back to Britain, and the captain said that the shortage of provisions was no problem because soon they could put in at St. Helena and buy more.
It turned out that the next land they caught sight of was Madagascar, and the captain was off by about 3000 miles or more. And he had maps, a sextant, and a chronometer.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Oh, Man! Even with those sophisticated aids, that ship captain still got lost! And I have read of how anxious the commanders of armies could be about WHERE they were, and how the smart ones sent out lots of scouts simply to make sure they were not too far off their proper path.
Ad astra! Sean
Alexander the Great never got lost... one reason he’s remembered as “the Great”. He always made careful surveys of where he was going, consulting travelers and merchants and having specialists collate the information. Even so, he was -wrong- sometimes, because of the odd Greek conceptions of the world (they thought that Asia ended somewhere about the area of Bengal, for example).
Incidentally Alexander’s army rarely ran out of food — the march through the Gederosian Desert was one of the rare exceptions, and that happened because the fleet couldn’t’ keep in touch with the land column, as had been expected.
One way he kept the army fed was to send out emissaries ahead of it, on the QT, and offer cash for supplies. This saved the danger and uncertainty of foraging (aka “plundering”). The money usually came from loot, but it was the loot of kings, like the royal treasuries of Ecbatana and Babylon and Persis.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Iow, Alexander the Great was sophisticated enough to understand the need for surveys and to pay attention to LOGISTICS. But, soldiers being only human, I'm sure there was still some looting, but on a much more controllable level.
Ad astra! Sean
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