I remember a review that said something like "Poul Anderson combines elegiac prose with visions of mankind's future."
Chee Lan rides on Adzel's back on a beach shortly before they depart on their last mission, this time to David Falkayn's home planet, Hermes. Chee says:
"'After this is done with, if we're still alive, I'm going back to Cynthia. For aye...
"'I've been thinking about it since the trouble began...'" (pp. 202-203)
This is indeed the end. Not only has the old team been reassembled only temporarily but also Chee now says that she will retire.
During their conversation, Adzel shakes his head to mean no but it is explained that he has learnt this gesture from human beings. (Some other aliens do it anyway.)
They pass David and Coya Falkayn looking only at each other:
"Of three races and one fellowship, these four had little they need conceal between them." (p. 204)
A fellowship, as in Tolkien.
Continuing their conversation, Adzel tells Chee:
"Oh, I regret nothing... The years have been good. I will but wish my children have the same fortune I did, to fare among miracles.'" (p. 204)
Unlike Adzel, I regret much: all those unenlightened motivations and actions and wasted thoughts. But we can continue to meditate.
Chee wishes likewise but adds:
"'...I'm afraid we've had the best of what there was. The time that is coming -' Her voice trailed off." (ibid.)
We have come a long way from:
"The world's great age begins anew ...'"
- at the beginning of Trader To The Stars. (But Dornford Yates' Jonathan Mansel says that the great days will come again.)
Adzel advises Chee:
"'Let us savor this final adventure of ours for what it is.'" (ibid.)
And we do.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Poul Anderson wrote elegiac prose? I agree, and prose that was often poetic as well. To say nothing of how A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST was often even in disguised blank verse.
As for Adzel shaking his head to mean "no," that would be am example of human cultural influence affecting beings of other races. And, long afterwards, in THE GAME OF EMPIRE, we see Tachwyr the Dark raising his arm to the Grand Council, as a gesture requesting silence and attention, even tho that was not an originally Merseian custom. Another bit of human culture affecting even beings hostile to mankind.
And Chee Lan was right, the best part of the earlier stages of Technic Civilization was ending. It was not yet the Time of Troubles, that was still at least a century in the future, but the times were becoming bad.
Ad astra! Sean
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