Ayres And Eyre

Lady Varvara, widow of the Imperial resident on Nyanza, is an:

"'...Ayres [scroll down] of Antarctica.'"

-Poul Anderson, "The Game of Glory" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 303-339 AT II, p. 310.

Our daughter's partner, Mike, is a Eyre of Birmingham.

Ayres and Eyre sound similar despite their two spelling differences.

The multiracial, multicultural British city, Birmingham, prefigures Poul Anderson's multispecies Terran Empire - although I now suspect that multispecies civilizations are in the realm of fantasy rather than of hard sf.

Merseians and Ythrians are akin to trolls and elves.

Got to finish second coffee and move.

Terra In "The Game of Glory"

In "The Game of Glory," I, Dominic Flandry has leave on Terra where he spends three months at the perpetual banquet of the Lyonid family and fights a duel with someone's husband but that does not exhaust the information on Terra in this story. In II, we learn that the widow of the murdered Terran resident on Nyanza, Lady Varvara, was born an Ayres of Antarctica and that some of her bodily features also show the Chinese strain in the Ayres pedigree. She welcomes Flandry because he is straight from Terra and informs him that associating only with an inferior class has rubbed off on her and made her soul greasy. An interesting social throwback.

(An unfamiliar and inappropriate cover image. Commander Flandry is an alternative title of The Rebel Worlds. Flandry is a Captain in "The Game of Glory.")

Flandry's Deductions About Nyanza

Dominic Flandry:

travels five parsecs from Brae to Nyanza in a high-speed flitter;

lands at a spaceport of grav-grid, field and buildings with forest to west and south, a small ancient city to the east and a cloudless sky above blue ocean to the north;

is flown to the resident's mansion in an aircar by the Portmaster;

from the air, sees steep narrow streets of native stone with many pedestrians but few vehicles and busy modern docks where -

- a majority of sailing ships implies a leisurely, aesthetic life-style;
but their hydrodynamic design implies appreciation of efficiency;
sea-water processors, factories and sea weed delivered to a plastics plant imply that most Nyanzans harvest the ocean and trade with this one island for industrial products and technology.

The widow of the murdered resident is an Ayres of Antarctica. Thus, that Terrestrial continent is occupied in the Imperial period. I seem to remember something about the urbanization of Antarctica in the Psychotechnic History? 

"An Inferior Class"

Spare a thought for the plight of Lady Varvara Ayres Bannerji, widow of Hurri Chundra Bannerji, the recently assassinated Imperial resident on Nyanza. Immediately after her husband's violent death, she speaks disparagingly of "Lubbers," then explains:

"'City people. Technicians. Pinkskins. Whatever you want to call them. Like that fat little von Sonderburg.' She was shrill again. 'Do you know what it's like, Captain, to associate with no one but an inferior class? It rubs off on you. Your soul gets greasy.'"
-Poul Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2010), p. 312.

Good heavens! Those of us with less refined souls do not have such problems. Lady Varvara offers to come to Flandry, even right away, just because he is from Terra. Flandry inwardly promises the deceased Bannerji that he will try to avoid this but it is his duty to be tactful, "For the Empire and the Race!" (ibid.)

They are both saved by the arrival of another visitor who turns out to be a more interesting prospect for Flandry. But later in his career, on Diomedes, the wife of another, still living, resident turns out to be a valuable source of intelligence for the skilled and resourceful Flandry.