"And at once, like a blow to the guts, wildly swearing to myself I must be wrong, I saw the face of the alien enemy." (pp. 80-81)
The enemy, usually, is someone else, other, foreign, alien, to be fought against. But we have found two other meanings of "enemy." See The Enemy. Which meaning applies here? Because the colonists on Sibylla have found their environment to be an insuperable enemy, they have practiced a deception, faking an attack by "the alien enemy," in order to oblige the Directorate government to ship them back home. The government might regard the perpetrators of this elaborate deception, when it is uncovered, as an enemy.
However, a creative solution is proposed. Naturally selected by Sibylla, then returned to Earth, the former colonists can easily conquer the Sahara and the conspirators are allowed to expiate their deception by leading this reclamation project. Poul Anderson's characters are problem-solvers, none more than in "The Alien Enemy."
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Compared to the World Federation of Earth in the Rustum timeline, the Directory of "Home" and "The Alien Enemy" seems a surprisingly decent gov't for an autocratic regime. It accepted that moral claim laid on it by the Sibyllans when it thought an attack by genuine aliens had been perpetrated. AND did not react brutally when the fraud had been exposed.
Ad astra! Sean
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