"Trevelyan nodded. We are scattered so thinly, we who guard the great Pact." (p. 150)
In this text, the guardians of the Pact are the Stellar Union Coordination Service. In other series by Anderson, the Time Patrol and the Terran Navy Intelligence Corps are scattered thinly. Patrol agents are "Guardians of Time" and the Corps guards the Pax. That second sentence above expresses the thought not or not only of Trevelyan but also of the almost invisible first person narrator, another Coordinator, who introduces the story by claiming that he is now letting the truth be known a generation later. The tone of the story is reflective, as befits a narrative added to the series several years later.
Poul Anderson has two kinds of heroes:
guardians of civilization, indeed of cosmic and temporal order;
champions of freedom, opponents of those who try to impose a life-denying order.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And we need both kinds of guardians! I just wish or hope the guardians of the first kind you listed were doing as good a job as the Time Patrol and the Imperial Naval Intelligence corps. Because I am no longer sure our Central Intelligence Agency in the US will be allowed to do its proper job.
I thought of Anson Guthrie and his downloads in the HARVEST OF STARS books as examples of the second kind of guardians.
Ad astra! Sean
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