Peregrine Trevelyan

 

I became unsure as to whether Trevelyan Micah's departure from the Coordination Service to become a Nomad had been mentioned in a text by Poul Anderson or only in an interstitial passage by Sandra Miesel. The only possible text was Star Ways/The Peregrine. However, the relevant passage, when sought for, is to be found not in the concluding CHAPTER XX but slightly earlier in CHAPTER XIX. 

Trevelyan explains that the Service dislikes the Nomads because:

"'They're a disrupting influence on an already unstable civilization.'"

-Poul Anderson, The Peregrine (New York, 1979), p. 168.

(We will return to the question of why an interstellar civilization should be unstable.)

However, the Nomads are not evil and, having spent time with them, Trevelyan is:

"'...beginning to think that a healthy culture needs such a devil.'" (ibid.)

He thinks that he will become a Nomad, thus Peregrine Trevelyan. Incredibly, he still thinks that the "integrators," Service computers, should "...give a final verdict..." (ibid.) But he believes that he has "...found the way." (ibid.) The way to what? In this context, he can only mean the way to a stabilization of interstellar civilization. If he and other Cordies with their specific abilities are adopted, then:

"They would give Nomad life a direction and a restraint it lacked and needed, quietly, without disrupting its spirit." (pp. 168-169)

Thus, Trevelyan's aim remains the stabilization of the Stellar Union, not (yet) the preservation of knowledge after the dissolution of that Union.

Isaac Asimov's Hari Seldon prepares for the Fall of the Galactic Empire.

Anderson's Dominic Flandry prepares for the Long Night after the Fall of the Terran Empire.

Paul and Karen Anderson's Gratillonius, the last King of Ys, preserves what he and others find that they are able to preserve after the inundation of Ys and the withdrawal of the Roman Empire from Northern Europe.

Trevelyan does not yet realize that he is at the same historical crossroads as Seldon, Flandry and Gratillonius.