Into Night

"Marius."

It is night and Reinach sits with his back to a closed but un-curtained window, showing rain and darkness. He asks Fourre:

"'...what way are we heading?'

"Fourre looked past him into night. 'Toward war,' he said quite softly. 'Another nuclear war, some fifty years hence. It isn't certain the human race can survive that.'

"Rain stammered on the windowpanes, falling hard now, and wind hooted in the empty streets." (p. 20)

Observations

Clearly, Fourre looks into two nights: the darkness outside the window and the Long Night, so to say, for the human race. Fourre is like an Ythrian seeing the shadow of God the Hunter across the future.

I had meant to stop there but the pathetic fallacy continues. Not only does the rain speak - stammers hard - as the human character speaks but also the omnipresent Andersonian wind hoots in the appropriately empty streets. The elements underline and punctuate Poul Anderson's dialogues. Readers who do not consciously reflect on these background sound effects must nevertheless be affected by them.