The tone of this story is consistently reflective, contemplative and melancholy. The unnamed narrator regrets that:
"...the young generations, the folk of the star frontier, so often do not understand..." (p. 137)
- that:
"We guard the great pact..." (ibid.)
These young generations and frontier folk accept help from the Coordination Service but then regard it as the enemy when it gets in their way. The narrator will tell us a story that has been suppressed for a generation so that we can judge for ourselves. (Why suppressed?)
Coordinator Trevelyan Micah spends his furloughs on Earth because its quiet and intellectuality are refreshing. This fits with what I said about reflectiveness. He has been staying in a part of Europe where the medieval and ancient pasts are still evident and they seem, in the description, more dominant than the technological present.
His girl friend does not want him to leave immediately because:
"...our trumpeter blows too many Farewells each year." (p. 138)
He says that he would love to see her on his next leave but does not promise.
Trevelyan's prospective antagonist is Captain Murdoch Juan. An extraterrestrial headwaiter is reluctant to interrupt the Captain's privacy but, when Trevelyan shows his ID, the headwaiter remembers that the Coordination Service had forestalled a war on his home planet... A sad reminder but it gets Trevelyan past the waiter.
Murdoch greets Trevelyan with resigned recognition. Murdoch's woman companion, Faustina, is from the marginally habitable New Mars where she would have grown up in poverty. Murdoch would have rescued her from that but Trevelyan's interference will sabotage Murdoch's latest scheme.
Melancholy.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Melancholy but a good read, albeit I thought Trevelyan Micah too heavy handed about Murdoch Juan and the planet Good Luck. My thought was the Coordinators could have let Murdoch have that planet as long as long as he began its colonization fairly slowly in areas which had been only lightly inhabited by its extinct natives. A compromise, iow.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that one of the major causes of the American Revolution was the British attempt to restrict westward expansion by the American colonists at the expense of the Indians.
Granted, a lot of that was that Indian wars were expensive and the British government was in debt up to its eyeballs after the 7 Years War/French and Indian War.
However, the colonists regarded any attempt to limit their expansion as an existential threat and insult.
The Cordys would be in a similar position, and eventually would suffer a similar backlash. Frontier settlers tend to have a diamond-point concentration on certain matters.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
A good analogy and one I wish I had thought of. Yes, after what happened at Good Luck I can see discoverers/settlers of other worlds like GL flatly refusing to cooperate with the Stellar Union, even violently rebelling against it.
Ad astra! Sean
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