A Few Decades

Backtrack to "Cold Victory."

Remembering the days when the Solar Guard had protected everyone, Robert Crane thinks:

"Please God, that day would come again." (p. 82)

After the Unionists have won the civil war:

"'If nothing else,' said Neilson-Singh, 'you people bought for Earth a few more decades of freedom. They can't take that away from you.'

"I looked at her with sudden respect. It was true. Men died and civilizations died, but before they died they lived. No effort was altogether futile." (pp. 93-94)

We saw here that those "few" decades would be twelve in number, several generations.

The message that peace and freedom are won only for a while but that that while is worth having is common to Poul Anderson's works.

When Manse Everard of the Time Patrol has saved Tyre from destruction, a full page of text describes the bustle and the comings and goings at the Egyptian Harbor, then Everard reflects:

"It would die at last, all of this, centuries hence, as everything must die; but first, how mightily it would have lived! How rich would be its heritage!"

-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 229-331 AT p. 328.

When Valeria Matuchek concludes her story at the Old Phoenix, she says:

"'Nothing ever was forever, anyway. Peace never came natural. The point is, it can sometimes be won for some years, and they can be lived in.

"'Enough. I hope you've enjoyed my story.'"

-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), Epilogue, p. 229.

This post quotes from Poul Anderson's:

Psychotechnic History;

Time Patrol series;

Old Phoenix multiverse.

I am sure that a blog reader will be able to find a comparable quote from his Technic History.