Dominic Flandry is a breakfast guest of Nias Warouw, the top cop on Unan Besar, as he is, much later, a dinner guest of Imperial pretender, Olaf Magnusson, and as James Bond is a dinner guest of Doctor No. Also, Flandry converses several times with Aycharaych just as Bond and Blofeld converse before fighting to the death. The conflict between hero and villain is conducted just as much in these conversations as it is physically.
A major feature of utopian or dystopian sf is a dialogue between a proponent and a critic of the utopia/dystopia. Flandry and Warouw discuss Unan Besaran Biocontrol. Appealing in the first instance just to straightforward self-interest, Flandry reasonably argues that Warouw, an able man, would be able to gain all that he has and more "'...in the modern galactic society.'" (p. 105)
Warouw's response:
"'What would I be there, another little politician making dirty little compromises - or Nias Warouw. whom all men fear?'" (ibid.)
He has made his choice and it is clearly the wrong one. Compromise is "dirty" when compared with force? To be a galactic citizen is not enough? I remember some Chinese sayings (quoted from memory):
"Two sages can share a blanket. Two Emperors cannot share a kingdom."
"A rich man thinks of his estates. A wise man thinks of the universe."
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, Nias Warouw made the wrong choice. Before Flandry arrived and started upsetting Biocontrol's apple cart, the right thing for Warouw to have done was contrive some means of leaving Unan Besar and starting over elsewhere. Given his abilities, that would not have been impossible for him to do.
Considering how often bad things have resulted from divided rule, I agree with the first of those Chinese sayings. I thought just now of how often civil wars troubled early Norwegian history, because all the sons of the king had an equal claim to the kingship. The youngest as well as the eldest, bastards as well as sons born of a queen.
Ad astra! Sean
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