A Blind

Ensign Flandry.

Lieutenant (j.g.) Sergei Karamzin to Ensign Dominic Flandry:

"'I wasn't ordered to stop thinking. And you know, I think this Starkad affair is a blind. They'll develop the war here, get our whole attention on this sinkhole, then bang, they'll hit someplace else.'

"Flandry blew a smoke ring. 'Maybe.'"

-CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, p. 171.

Flandry knows but cannot say. Karamzin has almost got it. The Merseians will maneuver the Terran fleet into concentrating its forces on the Saxonian System until a rogue planet hits Saxo, causing it to nova and destroying the fleet. By exposing this ploy, Flandry has saved Terra and the Empire in his very first exploit yet this is all written so plausibly that we do not complain. Fortunately, his second instalment is lower key although it also has lasting outcomes.

Upward and outward.

Space Combat And Survivors

Ensign Flandry, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

"...the ship boomed and shuddered. She had fired a missile salvo: the monster missiles which nothing smaller than a battleship could carry, which had their own hyperdrives and phase-in computers." (p. 175)

"When such speeds, masses, intensities met, robots took over. Missile raced at missile; computer matched wits with computer in the weird dance of phasing." (p. 176)

"The other missiles must have been avoided or parried, and by now were destroying themselves lest they become threats to navigation. Max Abrams would have called that rule a hopeful sign." (p. 178)

Abrams finds hope in self-destroying missiles! Would all that wealth and technology really be invested in destruction? Think how much it could accomplish if invested in life. There would be nothing material left to fight over and I do think that, in those circumstances, people would fight over ideas or beliefs either. Disagree and argue, yes. Fight, no. Imagine: one aberrant individual reading some history learns that there used to be jihads and crusades and tries to persuade his co-religionists to revive the practice... Meanwhile, no one is manufacturing any weapons...

Ranjit Singh, Ensign Flandry, Dragoika and four other gunners survive in the Sabik. Captain Einarsen is definitely dead. We do not know about Lieutenant Karamzin.

Ranjit tugs at his beard: the uncut hair of a Sikh.

Between Species...

Ensign Flandry

Dragoika, a Starkadian Tigery, invites Dominic Flandry to her cabin but he says that he is under a geas.

Lieutenant Karamzin appreciates Dragoika's shape and asks Flandry how she is but Flandry asks him not to talk about her like that.

 

A Circus Of Hells

In Old Town on Irumclaw, sex with seventeen intelligent species is on sale.

 

"Tiger By The Tail"

Flandry thinks that his Scothan captor is male and equipped much like him.

 

Later, there is something between Flandry and Queen Gunli of Scotha.

 

Swamp Thing: Earth To Earth by Alan Moore

Abigail Cable is charged with "crimes against nature" because of her relationship with the Swamp Thing, a humanoid vegetable. Although Abby has been photographed embracing Swampy, their union consists of her sharing his hallucinogenic consciousness by eating one of this tubers but she does not explain this to the court. The charge is dropped when it is pointed out that there are many other inter-species relationships in this particular fictional universe. (There might be one in Metropolis...)

It is part of this blog deal that Poul Anderson is compared with whoever else I am rereading even at the expense of bizarreness.

Flandry And Blomkvist

"He remembered how Lieutenant Danielson had gigged him for leaving off the helmet."

-Ensign Flandry, CHAPTER FOUR, p. 30.

 

"So you saved my life, Flandry grumbled. You're still a snot-nosed bastard."

-ibid.

 

"He suddenly heard an echo of Captain Adolfsson's inimitable voice from winter manoeuvres at the infantry school in Kiruna. Blomkvist, keep your fucking head down if you don't want to get your arse shot off. Years later he remembered the extra practice drills that Captain Adolfsson used to devise." 

-Stieg Larsson, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (London, 2008), CHAPTER 22, pp. 369-370.

 

So both Flandry and Blomkvist remember their military training.

 

Danielson joins the ranks of spear carriers like Karamzin, Brummelmann and Quarles but, in this case, his single short denunciation of Flandry is our only knowledge of Danielson. And the same goes for Adolfsson in relation to Blomkvist. Interesting characters whom we notice only if we pause for a closer look.

Describing Starkad

Ensign Flandry, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, p. 171.

In response to Karamzin's inquiry, Flandry tries to describe Starkad:

"...dawn white over a running sea...";

"...slow heavy winds that roared on wooded mountainsides...";

"...an old and proud city...";

"...loveliness on a shadowy ocean floor...";

"...two brave races...";

"...billions of years since the planet first coalesced...";

"...the great globe itself...";

"'...a very interesting paleolithic culture on an island they call Rayadan...'"

 

When the alarm hoots, Karamzin, who really hopes for Merseian opposition, is the first through the door. From now on, battle stations.

Lieutenant (J.G.) Sergei Karamzin

Ensign Flandry, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Karamzin is yet another minor character seen once and never again but he tells us something about the Terran Empire, especially when he says of Dragoika:

"'She's only a xeno.'" (p. 171)

Remember Ensign Quarles' dismissive attitude to xenos.

On Merseia, Flandry had learned that:

"The Merseians were not the antlike monsters which Terran propaganda depicted."

-CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 107.

So Quarles and Karamzin have been brought up on Terran propaganda and lack Flandry's ability to learn otherwise.

Karamzin, who has been on station in a battleship for a year, is frantic for new faces and news. There has been an unsuccessful attempt to brighten a wardroom with pictures and draperies. Karamzin regards psuedosensory inputs and the galley, which is good, as "'...just medicine...'" (p. 170) and hopes for opposition from the Merseians whereas Flandry, who has already seen action, hopes otherwise.

 

When Karamzin asks Flandry how Dragoika is, Flandry replies that she is his friend, "'...worth a hundred Imperial sheep...'" (p. 171) and should not be spoken of with disrespect. Flandry learns from experience but how many other Terrans do? He thinks of Starkad as:

"...the great globe itself..." (ibid.)

This is Shakespeare, from a passage also quoted by Manse Everard and Prince Rupert, and is highly relevant in view of the imminent fate of Starkad:

 

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, 
As I foretold you, were all spirits and 
Are melted into air, into thin air: 
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep. 

William Shakespeare 
From The Tempest, Act 4 Scene 1

(The image shows Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.) 

Dragoika

Dragoika is:

an inhabitant of the planet Starkad of the star, Saxo;

a member of the land-dwelling intelligent species, the Toborko or Tigeries;

captain of the Archer, a merchant ship belonging to the Sisterhood of Kursoviki;

share-holder and captain-director in a fleet-owning kin-corporation, the Janjevar va-Radovik;

speaker for the corporation among the Sisterhood.

She insists on accompanying her friend, Dominic Flandry, on the Terran expedition to confirm whether a rogue planet is on collision course with Saxo. Captain Einarson of the Sabik appoints Flandry as "liaison officer" and tells him to keep his xeno VIP/pet savage out of the way. However, Flandry pretends that the VIP needs to be informed of developments, thus gaining communication from the bridge. Thus also, the reader sees the space battle from Flandry's pov. Otherwise, it would have had to have been from some other character's pov with Flandry kept in the dark until later.

Lieutenant (j.g.) Sergei Karamzin appreciates Dragoika's female build and movements and asks Flandry how she is. Flandry has not had intimate relations with Dragoika but could have had and the next novel, A Circus Of Hells, informs us that, on Irumclaw, it is possible to buy sex with individuals from seventeen intelligent species.