Monday, 22 April 2019
Mental Horizons
Tolk the Herald (linguistic specialist, interpreter and messenger), accustomed to dealing with other cultures, is more open than his fellow Lannachska to van Rijn's insistence that even flying soldiers need an infantry to take and hold a position. However, even Tolk resists the suggestion that it is more urgent to recapture a food source than the site of a seasonal rite. To welcome High Summer back as the ancestors always did is to keep the Flock alive. But so is to eat. Van Rijn argues that the migrators value ritual so much because they cannot carry material wealth with them.
Of course, van Rijn practices religious rituals but does not let them get in the way of business or work. The Maccabees fought on the Sabbath.
In order to escape from Diomedes, van Rijn has to change the planet beyond recognition. Fortunately, in the Technic History, there is no Federation to enforce a Prime Directive.
"'I made a new way of life here,' said van Rijn expansively. 'It is not this machine or that one which has already changed your history beyond changing back. It is the basic idea I have introduced: mass production.'" (p. 418)
Before van Rijn, the Lannachska had been hunters living in small matrilineal clans loosely organized into the Great Flock mainly for the purpose of completing the annual migration safely. After van Rijn, how will mass production affect their social relationships?
Wace, as ever, makes his private remarks:
"It was too much for one man to do, organizing, designing, supervising, trouble-shooting - Van Rijn seemed to think it was routine to lift neolithic hunters into the machine age in a few weeks. He ought to try it himself! It might sweat some of the lard off the old hog." (p. 421)
Van Rijn knows that it is not routine:
"'It is not time enough! In these few ten-days, I have to try make what needs years!'" (p. 417)
In other words, he is trying it himself. Meanwhile, Wace's soliloquy tells us that this factor/engineer does a lot of necessary organizational and conceptual work - but it is under van Rijn's direction.
What Van Rijn Thinks Of Wace
Van Rijn's assessment of Eric Wace is, of necessity, much more realistic:
"'He is a talented engineer, him my young friend.'" (p. 416)
He must be or van Rijn would not have employed him in the first place. In fact, van Rijn continues:
"'But then, the factor on a new planet had pest-bedamned better be a good engineer.'" (ibid.)
Pest-bedamned? Best-bedamned? A factor on a settled planet need not be an engineer whereas, on Diomedes, Wace has to be a multi-talented improviser. Van Rijn's view of Wace is also more expansive and charitable than Wace's view of him:
"'...my young friend.'" (see above)
When Tolk refers to Wace's "schemes," van Rijn huffily corrects him. These "schemes," various new weapons, are van Rijn's. All that Wace has to do is to make what van Rijn tells him to.
"'All?' asked Tolk dryly." (ibid.)
Tolk's question is well-placed. Wace must apply skills, not merely follow instructions. Nevertheless, it is van Rijn that has the ideas for machines guns, ballistas and shields and also the need for infantry even among winged Diomedeans who can think only of air forces. Van Rijn is making a revolution.
Wace's Thoughts
Eric Wace thinks of Nicholas van Rijn:
"You bloated leech, do you expect to be carried home by my labor and my brains, and fob me off with another factor's post on another hell-planet?" (p. 415)
Observations
(i) Brain work is mental labor. The more accurate distinctions to be made are between:
work and leisure;
mental and manual labor;
"bloated leeches," who do exist, and workers by hand or brain.
(ii) Anderson demonstrates that van Rijn continually applies his brain to practical problems and also works manually when necessary, e.g., he stood for hours up to his waist in sea water to improvise a raft in the sinking skycruiser. (Wace notices but also seems to forget such details.)
(iii) Van Rijn does not fob anyone off but promotes according to merit.
(iv) As the series progresses, Anderson demonstrates that not all company owners are like van Rijn and that, consequently, major conflicts arise within the Polesotechnic League.
Sunday, 21 April 2019
Eodan And Shadow
Eodan lies in his saddle blanket, becomes the wind, blows across the earth, searches for a ghost, passes above many old skulls, searches over glaciers and down to the sea, passes the hound at the gates of hell, circles hell and shakes his spear beneath its black walls, then realizes that hell was deserted long ago, returns centuries later to the upper world in spring, passes the grave mound of a warrior named Eodan on the edge of the world where the wind is forever blowing (compare Dagobert), sees a flower of spring, hears the earth turning among a blaze of stars, sees seasons pass and returns to the light.
Shadow hangs on a tree, dies, is conducted to a hereafter by Ibis and judged by Anubis, passes into nothing and then returns, revived by the goddess, Easter.
The Future Commander
(i) Prince Charles is the "future King" because he is the Heir to the Throne.
(ii) King Arthur is "REXQUE FUTURUS" because he is a myth.
(iii) Sometimes a Member of Parliament is described as "a future Prime Minister," then is never heard from again.
(iv) When something like (iii) is said in a novel, it is usually a sign that the author means that it will happen, e.g.:
"'...however the gods decree, Tolk...you still foresaw this outcome. Maybe you should be Commander.'
"'Oh, no. Not I. It was the fat Eart'ska who predicted this - in detail.'
"Trolwen laughed, 'Perhaps, then, he should command.'
"'Perhaps,' said Tolk, very thoughtfully, 'he will.'"
-The Man Who Counts, VIII, p. 391.
We become used to how our central character is referred to in his absence:
"'Where's Freeman van Rijn?'"
"'...the fat Eart'ska...'"
etc.
Horse Maneuvers
Van Rijn's dialogue is not as full of malapropisms as we might expect. Feigning naivety, he theatrically mis-speaks in one of the Diomedean languages:
"'My good friend... um... er... pokker [?], what is the word? - my admiral, we, ahem, we talk-um like good brothers - good brothers, is that how I say-um, Tolk?'
"Wace winced."
-The Man Who Counts, VII, p. 377.
When explaining what he is doing with the languages, van Rijn makes one semi-pun:
"'You think just because I make so much trouble, and still sit hours every day taking special instruction from Tolk, it is because I am a dumb old bell who cannot learn so easy? Horse maneuvers! Half the time we mumble together, he is teaching me his own Lannach lingo. Nobody on this raft knows it, so when they hear use say funny noises they think maybe Tolk tries words of Earth language out, ha?'"
-op. cit., VI, pp. 373-373.
Horse manure, horseplay and maneuvers all have their places in "Horse maneuvers!"
Van Rijn foments a civil war merely to give him cover to release the Lannach prisoner, Tolk, who will hopefully return with a rescue party. The Grand Admiral of the Fleet and his son, thinking that van Rijn is inexperienced in matters of diplomatic deception, are completely bamboozled by his elaborate act suggesting mutiny by their Chief Executive Officer.
The only safe course of action with van Rijn would have been to kill him at the outset but no one could possibly have known that in advance.
Keenness For Discord
Van Rijn and his companions are captives of divided Diomedeans although van Rijn spots the divisions before Wace does:
"Wace thought that van Rijn's out-size nose must have an abnormal keenness for discord. Only now did he himself sense the tension on which his boss had obviously been counting." (VII, p. 376)
Then, even when Wace has been told that van Rijn is faking his ignorance of the local language:
"...he found it hard to believe that so ludicrous an accent and grammar were faked.
"And why?" (p. 377)
Here, Wace is being unforgivably obtuse. There are obvious advantages in seeming not to understand local speech. Van Rijn has learned of Fleet factions through his ears, not through his nose.
"Engineers I Hire."
Nicholas van Rijn, spice merchant and title character of The Man Who Counts, states the point of the novel:
"'Bah! Details! I am not an engineer. Engineers I hire. My job is not to do what is impossible, it is to make others do it for me.'" (VI, p. 371)
In Black Easter, Baines, arms merchant and aesthete of destruction, having commissioned a major demonic conjuration, asks his scientific adviser:
"'Are you happier with electrons than with demons? Okay, good for you.'"
-James Blish, Black Easter (New York, 1977), XVI, p. 157.
But he then adds that the distinction between particles and demons is one of those technicalities that he hires people like the scientist and the magician not to bother him with. The difference between van Rijn and Baines is that the former considers the moral consequences of his actions.
Negotiations Without Language
Van Rijn's acute observation continues. Recognizing a bowline, he feels homesick. The Diomedeans dare not bring their dugout too close to the sinking skycruiser so the three human beings must be pulled across on a rope. However, without any common language, it is necessary to convey to the rescuers first that boxes of food supplies must also be transported and secondly that the merchant prince absolutely refuses to be pulled through the water! Three of the winged natives must improvise a rope sling and air-lift his stubbornness who had screamed indignantly and sat down mutinously on the nearly submerged vessel to make his point. How this is achieved without any common language is beyond Wace - but then Wace has a lot to learn about "The Man Who Counts."
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