See Maps II, then On The Highroad River I.
When a Tigery visits an inn run by a Cynthian, she serves him a bowl of tea to be followed by roast cowbeef! Then he converses with the other guests who are human. This is multi-species interaction gone mad! Tea has spread not only into the Merseian Roidhunate but also into the Patrician System which is on the frontier of the Terran Empire and in danger of being occupied by the Merseians.
In the inn, a Navy man says that the Empire has gone soft and needs a new Argolid dynasty. Combarelles, the Intelligence officer, cautions him to silence but then she herself makes even more incriminating remarks. Admiral Magnusson is:
"'...trying to set matters right, but - No, I shouldn't say more.'" (p. 225)
(Like Desai.)
She knows that Merseians too are bitter. Targovi innocently asks how she knows. She has spoken to prisoners. Again she says:
"'No. I'd better not say any more...'" (ibid.)
She is suspicious of some spaceships landing on the independent island of Zacharia. (Targovi pretends not to know where it is.) The suspicious ships look too sleek to be smugglers. They might be the Admiral's... Again:
"'No more!'" (p. 226)
Every time she says "No," she gives Targovi something else to investigate: Merseian prisoners and Zacharia.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I remember those wistful comments about the Argolid dynasty! It shows how there was still longing for a legitimate dynasty on the throne. And late in the book we see mention of the Wang dynasty, albeit the last members of that family were allegedly too idiotic to raise the following needed to defend their claim to the crown after Josip died.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment