Chives, Not Jeeves, In Combat

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, XVII.

Once again, a tail is used as an extra limb. Chives strangles a guy with his while resisting the attack on the Shkoptsina. (p. 562) Also, this time with a gun, he explodes one assassin's head and another's leg and holds a fourth guy in an elbow-lock as a shield while shooting yet others.

Earlier, when a Naval patrol attempted to arrest him, he considered that conformity would be imprudent but also tried not to inflict irreparable damage on men wearing his Majesty's uniform.

Still earlier, in "The Warriors from Nowhere," Chives had taken the liberty of disintegrating his grace, Duke Alfred of Tauria.

Given all this and the use of the word, "'...imbroglio...," (p. 556) we recognize Jeeves' speech patterns although not his attitude to physical violence.

Like Bruce Wayne's Alfred Pennyworth and the servants of Dornford Yates's characters, Chives gives satisfaction in more ways than one.

Perfect Metaphors

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, XVII.

When Kossara Vymezal emerges from among the ychan delegation to address the Shkoptsina:

"A moan lifted out of the benched humans, as if the fall wind had made entry; the zmayi uttered a surflike rumble." (p. 560)

("Ychani" and "zmayi" are, respectively, the Serbic and Eriau names for the Dennitzan Merseians.)

Perfect. Our old friend, the autumn wind, which had accompanied the march through Zorkagrad, seems to have entered the parliament building. We know that zmay voices can be described as rumbling and most of the zmayi/ychani live on the Obala, the east coast of the colonized continent.

Every syllable of the text resonates with significance.

Explicit Pathetic Fallacy II

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, XVII.

I have discussed this paragraph before (see Explicit Pathetic Fallacy) but let's take a closer look at it.

"A west wind skirled against the sun, whose blaze seemed paled in a pale heaven." (p. 551)

The wind comments, as ever. Sun and sky pale as Flandry, Kossara and Dennitza move further into the danger zone.

"Clouds were brighter; they scudded in flocks, blinding white..." (pp. 551-552)

But that is above. Down below:

"...their shadows sweeping chill across the world, off, on, off, on." (p. 552)

The world of men is shadowed and chilled.

"Winged animals wheeled and thinly cried." (ibid.)

Remember, Dennitza has no birds but winged theroids. These are not singing, as they have sometimes done in previous chapters, but crying thinly.

The trees, mostly imported Terran, are described as casting about, creaking and soughing Delphic utterances. Such utterances were at best ambiguous.

The wind rips off leaves, described as fire-tongues, which "...scrittle off over the pavement." (ibid.)

There are wandering rain puddles. In the pathetic fallacy, rain is nature weeping.

Finally:

"All nature was saying farewell." (ibid.)

Indeed.

Relics And Electronics

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows.

Relics are old. Electronics are new. Right? Not in the period of the Terran Empire.

Flandry and Kossara must risk assassination by attending the Dennitzan Shkoptsina/Parliament. When Flandry points out that the politicians could meet by holocom, Kossara replies:

"'Electronics will do for ornamental relics. The Shkoptsina is alive, it debates and decides real things, the members need intimacies, subtleties, surprises.'" (XVII, pp.550-551)

Earlier, she had said:

"'The Shkoptsina's no controlled inner-Empire congress. It's about five hundred proud individuals, speaking for as may different proud sections of land or walks of life. It's often turbulent - fights have happened, yes, a few killings - and tomorrow it'll be wild.'" (XVI, pp. 548-549)

Well, the mention of killings is not reassuring. Still earlier, I was surprised when we were told that the Gospodar addressed the Shkoptsina in militia uniform with "...knife and pistol on hips..." (XIII, p. 514) Weapons carried into a parliament!

We appreciate that the Shkoptsina is a living assembly but that need not involve fights or killings.

Five hundred members of the Shkoptsina, four hundred ychani marching to demand entry and an armed fifty-man would-be Revolutionary Committee waiting nearby. The chamber is about to become a battlefield. 

March Through Zorkagrad

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, XVII.

While four hundred ychani, led by Ywod and enclosing Flandry and Kossara, march into Zorkagrad, Flandry asks why the suburb that they pass through is deserted. Kossara passes the question on:

"Untrained humans could not have conveyed information accurately in that wise; but soon she told Flandry from Ywod..." (pp. 553-554)

- that local citizens have taken a form of direct action called an ispravka.

We admire the ychani's ability to pass information accurately back along the ranks of a march. When large numbers of human beings gather together, there is always the potential for utter confusion. Of course, many large events are orderly because they are sufficiently well organized and because most people know in general terms what is supposed to be happening but any new informational input has to be announced through a PA system. There is no ability to pass information accurately from person to person.

Once, when a crowd had congregated and was setting off to march through a city center, one man took it up on himself to stand beside the starting point of the march repeatedly shouting, "He's not letting you through up there!" Who was not letting us through? A policeman? A march steward? Someone else? Where was he not letting us through to? As we proceeded, we were able to march unhindered along the intended route. What were we supposed to do? Stop marching to ask that guy to explain himself or just continue marching? We did the latter.

At a trade union conference, the General Secretary, in the chair, announced that there was a bomb alert and asked us to leave the building. While we were leaving, he said, "I can see some people at the back of the hall waving their arms as if to tell me that the alert is over but I have not yet been told this by building security so could people please continue to leave the building?" Almost immediately, he said, "I have now been told by building security that the alert is over. Could people please return to their seats?" Needless to say, I heeded the Secretary, not anyone taking it up on themselves to flap their arms from the back of the hall!

Relevance

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, XVI.

Flandry postulates:

"'...some thoroughly armed bully boys hidden away in buildings near the Capitol...'" (p. 549)

- and, furthermore, that such a group of armed bully boys might try to seize the Capitol! (They might.)

Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell said that education might lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square. See here.

Since Poul Anderson's Technic History begins with an Apollo University in Leyburg on Luna in 2057, I think that its timeline diverged from ours earlier than 2021 and therefore that that alternative timeline does not contain the events of our January 6, 2021. Nevertheless, I sense events in divergent timelines passing almost detectably close to each other, like trains on parallel tracks. Miss Marple witnessed a murder in one train while leaving Paddington in another. (See here, although there are different versions of this story. See here.) This feels a bit like that.

If I can leave you with a bizarre thought for the night, I will. Good night.

Ythrian And Merseian Arms

Don't the legs and claws look like arms and hands? Maybe this helps us to understand how the Ythrians' legs became arms and the clinging claws at the edges of their folded wings came to be used instead for (awkward) walking?

See also Arms On Merseia.

"Ywod, Hand of the Vach Anrochin, steadcaptain of Nanteiwon, raised his arms. 'Silence!' he called.

-A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, XVI, pp. 540-541.

 

Adzel had found that raising his arms on Merseia had the opposite effect but that was a long time ago on another planet.

 

This post has, briefly, addressed biological and social changes.

On Yet Another Beach II

See On Yet Another Beach.

In A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, XVI, Kossara prays behind a boulder far down the beach from the ychan fisher village of Nanteiwon which looks small between gray sea and sky. Is it somehow appropriate to pray in such an intermediate place, between sky, sea and land?

Kossara lost her parents, two brothers and a sister in the attack on the Vymezal estate. She, who will later be canonized, asks the Father of Creation to receive them, Jesus to absolve them, Mary to comfort them and the light of the Holy Spirit to shine upon them.

Is it irreverent to compare this prayer with others? Prayers are expressions of aspiration and goodwill. One view is that, to be efficacious, they must be addressed to a specific named deity. Another view is that Someone hears every prayer...:

"He has different names in every country (for he is worshipped in different forms and in many tongues, but it is always Odin they worship)."

-Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology (London, 2018), p. 2.

 

When Tiger Tanaka, head of the Japanese Secret Service, trains the disguised James Bond to pose as Japanese, Bond must offer a prayer to the sun goddess. Watched by two Shinto priests and surrounded by other supplicants, he approaches the shrine, bows, tosses a coin, claps his hands, bends his head, claps again, bows again and withdraws. When he admits that he did not make any prayer because he was concentrating on remembering the sequence of motions, Tanaka replies that the goddess will help him to concentrate more in future. Does Tanaka believe that this is literally true? Does Bond refrain from expressing skepticism out of diplomacy? (He is indeed in the Diplomatic Section and on a diplomatic mission, no longer 007 but now 7777.) The pagan view is that belief does not matter.

Fast Action

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows.

Events move quickly in troubled times. Flandry has a single conversation with Danilo Vymezal, voivode and nachalnik, Kossara's father. Flandry and Kossara have a single night, day and following evening in Vymezal's cabin by the Northrim. Then:

Danilo Vymezal and all his household are murdered with a tactical nuke;

Gospodar Bodin Miyatovich is arrested for high treason;

Chives is wanted dead or alive;

Flandry and Kossara fly to the Obala...

 

Endgame time. We expect Flandry to defeat the conspiracy but also know that he can lose much:

 

in Ensign Flandry, he lost his innocence;

in A Circus Of Hells, he earned the enmity of Djana;

in The Rebel Worlds, he loved Kathryn but she stayed with Hugh McCormac.

 

Flandry suppressing suspicion of his son echoes Gratillonius in denial about his daughter. 

 

Two dramatic potential turning points in the Technic History are Falkayn's confrontation of van Rijn at Mirkheim and Aycharaych's appeal to Flandry on Chereion. After what has happened with Flandry's son and fiancee, Aycharaych asks him to make further betrayals. That was probably already impossible but has certainly become so.

 

We parallel Flandry and Aycharaych with Bond and Blofeld:

 

at the end of Thunderball, Bond learns that someone called Blofeld had been the top man in SPECTRE;

 

in The Spy Who Loved Me and again at the beginning of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Bond knows of a criminal called Blofeld but there has been no personal contact as yet;

 

at the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, with the murder of Tracy, the conflict between Bond and Blofeld becomes personal...

 

Similarly, by the end of A Knight..., Flandry has lost both his son and fiancee. How can Aycharaych possibly ask him:

 

"'What are a few more lives to you? What is Terra?'" (XX, p. 600)

 

A few more lives!

 

In this final dialogue, Aycharaych addresses Flandry as "'Dominic...'" and confirms again that he has been engaged in "'...an art, a sport...'" (ibid.)

 

Finally, we fully understand both of these "Honorable Enemies."

By Spring

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, XV.

"'We've a stiff way to go yet,' [Flandry] said, 'but we should be home safe by blossom time.'" (p. 533)

"'...do you mean it about spring...we may have to wait that long?'

"'I hope not.'" (pp. 533-534)

 

I quote this dialogue because it sounds like now. Will we be out of lock down by spring? But, even if we are, other urgent problems wait.

 

In this and several other novels, Poul Anderson conveys the sense of living in troubled times. And that resonates with now.