Offerings In Space, On Earth And On t'Kela

"'For this I will give St. Dismas an altar cloth, not too expensive.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Hiding Place" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 555-609 AT p. 608.

"'Oo-oo-oo,' [van Rijn] groaned. 'St. Dismas, I was going to put a new stained-glass window in your chapel at home. Now I think I will kick in the ones you have got.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Territory" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, March 2010), pp. 1-76 AT p. 14.

"Uulobu had lit his fire and thrown the eyeballs of his kill onto it. His chant to his gods wailed eerily through the car wall. Van Rijn clicked his tongue. 'Not so promising material, that,' he said. 'You civilize them if you can...'"

-ibid., p. 23.

I suppose that van Rijn has a point. Altar cloths and stained-glass windows are more civilized offerings than burnt eyeballs. 

Later in the Technic History, barbarians who have been sold spaceships and atomic weapons by unscrupulous traders will take multi-limbed idols with them on their raiding expeditions but St. Dismas and the t'Kelan Real Ones will understand when I do not seek out those further references here and now - poor, lonely, old, but not fat, blogger still recovering from a cold although it does not seem to be COVID.