(In this cover illustration, Targovi's physiology is too humanoid.)
Diana Crowfeather's private life becomes a sub-text. We know what Kukulkan Zachary intends. Axor, regarding Diana as a young, innocent and helpless maiden, fears for her virtue. Hold on there, Axor: is Diana still a virgin? Well, yes. We are surprised to read in the following chapter that she is. At least, I was surprised. However, Axor's otherworldliness makes him completely ignorant of his travelling companion's character. Diana is anything but helpless. She fends off Kukulkan while following not Axor's but Dragoika's guidance:
"'Give yourself to the wind, but first be sure 'tis the wind of your wish.'" (CHAPTER TWENTY, 418)
That wind sure gets around. Here it is not a commentator on life but the way to go in life.
Targovi chokes back laughter at Axor's concern for Diana, especially when the well-meaning Wodenite asks him, Targovi, to advise her as an elder brother. Targovi knows that Diana would certainly not welcome any such interference.
I have some questions for Axor:
How would Christian morality apply to intelligent species whose reproductive processes were completely different?
Why have all oxygen-breathing races fallen? Surely the first ancestors of some species would have exercised their "free will" by obeying a divine command? I have no problem with intelligent species being morally imperfect but then I have no reason to believe that they must have been created in perfect Paradisal conditions in the first place.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I was not really surprised Diana was still a virgin--because she was only in THE GAME OF EMPIRE. Of course there will be many exceptions, but I think many people in Western nations only become sexually active at age 18, 19, 20, etc.
I also thought of Rax, the non-Merseian spying for the Roidhunate in A CIRCUS OF HELLS. The "reproductive pattern" of "its" species was totally unlike that of humans.
And I do believe, as a matter of divine revelation, that mankind was created innocent in paradisal conditions. And then was tested and fell. Whether or not that happened to other intelligent races is a question we cannot answer at present.
Ad astra! Sean
I meant Diana was only 17 Terran years old in THE GAME OF EMPIRE.
Sean
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