Aycharaych: Depths And Shallows

 

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, IX.

For all his philosophical and cultural depth, Aycharaych can be offensively shallow. He claims that Jaan has gained by the schizophrenia that Aycharaych has imposed on him. He suggests that Flandry:

"'...might have lived more whole of heart...'" (p. 464)

- if he had served Merseia. Flandry angrily and rightly rejects this. He prefers his cynicism to cheering a leader and adds that every conqueror and liberator should wear a device showing a girl and her kitten at ground zero. Sounds relevant, topical, up-to-date? Flandry, thou shouldst be living at this hour!

Meanwhile, in other reading, Matt Helm investigates a flying saucer which cannot be an extra-terrestrial spaceship because Helm's series is not sf. But all fiction meets in our collective imagination.