Three Staid Years

Mirkheim.

Falkayn asks:

"'What's happened to you two in the past three years?'" (IV, p. 76)

We are continually reminded of the passage of time. Change is the theme of the novel. The characters might have changed over a three year period and they also know that major social changes are happening around them. Falkayn has passed:

"...three staid years." (IV, p. 79)

Coya and he:

"...had both stopped space roving when their Juanita was born, because it meant indefinite absences from Earth. An older, more hedonistic, less settled generation than Coya's had bred enough neurotics that she felt, and made her husband feel, children needed and deserved a solid home. And now she had another on the way." (I, p. 34)

This had been the basis of the generation gap between Coya and her grandfather, van Rijn, in "Lodestar."

But what has David been doing? On the one hand, we know that he has been rich for life since the end of the Satan affair. On the other hand, both parents need not have stopped working full-time to give a single daughter a solid home.