Where Did The Ancients Go?

(Aeneas killing Turnus.)

Cosmenosists hope, then believe, that the Ancients went beyond and will return. Several volumes later, Fr Axor hopes that the Ancients had a divine incarnation. He cleverly puts a Christian slant on the mysticism surrounding the Ancients. We would like to know more about his researches.

Meanwhile, the Ythrian Erannath presents a perfectly plausible theory about what happened to the Ancients but it is so understated that we might miss it or have forgotten it by the time we read about Axor. The small, three-eyed lucks or slinkers are found on planets with Ancient remains. Kept as pets, they telepathically amplify their owners' emotions. Tinerans, addicted to perpetually amplified and re-amplified emotions, act like psychopaths. Possibly, the Ancients developed the lucks as pleasure sources but died from their effects.

This theory is not proved but fits the evidence and makes sense so it will suffice as a hypothesis until a better explanation is found. Accepting Aycharaych's identification of the Ancients with the Chereionites also explains what happened to the Chereionites. Meanwhile, however, Axor might still find what he regards as sufficient evidence that there was an Ancient/Chereionite Incarnation.

Aycharaych In Conversation II

In conversation with Dominic Flandry on the neutral planet, Talwin, Aycharaych refers to Bach's St Matthew's Passion, to Rembrandt and to Tu Fu. When Flandry mentions a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning that begins:

"What was he doing, the great god Pan,
"Down in the reeds by the river?"

- Aycharaych is able to recite the concluding stanza:

"'Yet half a beast is the great god, Pan,
'To laugh as he sits by the river,
'Making a poet out of a man:
'The true gods sigh for the cost and pain -
'For the reed that grows nevermore again
'As a reed with the reeds in the river.'"
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 464.

Here explicitly, as Flandry surmised, Aycharaych justifies the suffering of others in the cause of his supposed art:

"'In action I find an art; and every art is a philosophical tool, whereby we may seek to win an atom deeper into the mystery.'" (p. 463)

Not when the actions are as despicable as Aycharaych's in The Day Of Their Return, although, even there, he claimed that he had not really harmed the man whom he made schizophrenic in order to use him as a prophetic dupe.

Aycharaych In Conversation

We see Aycharaych of Chereion in conversation with Chunderban Desai once and with Dominic Flandry twice. He lies to Desai, claiming to be from a planet called Jean-Baptiste in Sector Aldebaran of the Terran Empire. Despite this dishonesty, we have no reason to doubt his stated interest in humanity:

he knows of the Indian Mutiny, the Taiping Rebellion and Christianity;

he has studied Aeschlyus, Li Po, Shakespeare, Sturgeon, Mikhailov, Bach, Richard Strauss, Rembrandt and Hiroshige;

he borrows and reads a volume of Tagore while waiting in Desai's office.

Fictitious characters are usually fictions to each other. Anyone can refer to Sherlock Holmes and many do (although, in the case of Anderson's Time Patrolmen, Holmes is not a fiction). We have to accept that, in the Technic civilization timeline, there was an American science fiction writer called Theodore Sturgeon but not one called Poul Anderson. (Beowulf Shaeffer in Larry Niven's Known Space future history refers to Heinlein and also to Carter (?). Known Space does have a John Carter on Mars, obviously an ironic reference to ERB's Warlord of Mars.)

Aycharaych tells the philistine Flandry that Johann Strauss is not to be compared to Richard who is more misunderstood than Xingu. He admires an orchid seen against a null-gee sphere of water with the universe beyond:

"'Black against the quicksilver water globe...the universe black and cold against both. A beautiful arrangement, and with that touch of horror necessary to the highest art.'"
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 162.

I do not agree about the horror but thus Aycharaych rationalizes his art "'...of espionage and sabotage, whose materials are living beings...'" (p. 391)

- to quote Desai in conversation with Flandry.

By calling the violet flower black, Aycharaych lets slip that Chereion's sun "'...is cooler and redder than [Flandry's].'" (p. 162)

Inconsistencies

"Perfect consistency is possible only to God himself, and a close study of scripture will show that he doesn't always make it." (1)

That was Poul Anderson's standard response to readers who spotted inconsistencies in his future history. A lot of inconsistencies in fiction can be ironed out if it is recognized that most fiction, even when the narration is in the third person, is narrated from the point of view of a fictitious character who may be mistaken. Merseians are mammals but with more traces of reptilian ancestry than Terrans. Or they are warm-blooded giving live birth but are not mammals, "...no kind of animal that Terra had ever brought forth." (2) That last remark is obviously correct. The statement that they are mammals is made from Flandry's point of view. The statement that they are not is made from another character's. Thus, the statements express different characters' understandings, not objective facts.

In A Circus Of Hells, Flandry greets Tachwyr the Dark of Merseia as a member of the Vach Rueth whereas The Game Of Empire presents Tachwyr as the Hand of the Vach Dathyr. We are to understand that Tachwyr has risen to the Handship of his Vach between novels but the Vach should not have changed. But, of course, Flandry could have been mistaken. This would be out of character but is at least possible and A Circus Of Hells does show him making youthful mistakes. Flustered at meeting his former acquaintance unexpectedly in the formal setting of a Naval reception, Flandry could have stumbled and misremembered Tachwyr's Vach, like introducing someone as Northern Irish when we should have known that he was Scottish. Alternatively, there is a Story To Be Told about why, against immemorial Merseian custom, Tachwyr did for some reason change his Vach. Again, changes to immemorial custom are at least possible. The only logical impossibility here is Tachwyr both being in Vach Rueth and not being in Vach Rueth at the same time.

In "Honorable Enemies," Flandry says that Chereionites have full citizenship in the Merseian Empire whereas everything else that we know about Merseians entails that they either subordinate or exterminate other races:

"... the highest end of all...absolute freedom for our race to make of the galaxy what they will." (3)

That would seem to be incompatible with granting members of other races equal citizenship. However, the Chereionites are a very special case and, again, Flandry's information could be incorrect.

By referring to scripture, Anderson unintentionally invited comparison between his History of Technic Civilization and the Bible so how does Anderson's series measure up to this comparison? The Bible, like the Technic History, is a history of a people. Its books cover successive generations who lived in different but historically connected periods. Some books present alternative versions of events. Individual stories in Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate and, in a separate volume, his account of the founding of the Terran Empire are presented as possibly fictionalized narratives of events that did occur. Further, some of Anderson's characters seek theological significance in the course of events. Thus, I think that the comparison with the Bible is valid. 

(1) Poul Anderson, "Concerning Future Histories" IN Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, Vol 14, No 3, whole no 71, Fall 1979, pp. 7-14 AT p. 13.
(2) Poul Anderson, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, London, 1975, p. 29.
(3) Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry, London, 1976, p. 31.