The Solution On Ikrananka

As at the end of the following story, "Day of Burning," Falkayn must convene a planetary conference. On Ikrananka, the conference brings together:

Emperor Jadhadi;

King Ursala of Rangakora, resisting Imperial annexation;

Harry Smit, the Ershoka (human) senior;

Bobert Thorn, the Ershoka rebel;

the mayor of the town where the conference is held;

"'...the distinguished representative of the merchant adventurers from Beyond-the-World, Da'id 'alkayn.'" (David Falkayn: Star Trader, p. 201)

Falkayn's compromise:

Rangakora to remain independent but to drop claims for indemnification;

the League will sell the Emperor firearms so that he can defend his borders and will no longer need Ershoka warriors;

the Ershoka to continue to own farms, ranches and town houses and now also to sell their services as guards of caravans against barbarians;

the Ikranakans to accept galactic missionaries;

threat of war by League (bluff) -

- "'...an equality of dissatisfaction...'" (p. 205), to be followed by unimaginable satisfactions. Of course, it works.

Phratries

In Poul Anderson's "The Trouble Twisters," three generations ago, five hundred human beings, would-be interstellar colonists, were stranded by pirates on the inhabited planet, Ikrananka. Thus, their situation is similar to that of a smaller human group in "Star Ship," an installment of Anderson's earlier Psychotechnic History.

Fitting into Ikranankan society, the human beings, "Ershoka," become a warrior "phratry." On Earth, phratries were often exogamous (see here) but this cannot be the case with the Ershoka among Ikranankans. In any case, it sounds as if Ikranankans marry within their phratries.

On Ikrananka, phratries specialize:

Shekhej are caravaneers;
Deodaka, originally hunters, conquered and became officials;
Rahinjis are scribes;
Tiruts and Ershoka are soldiers.

However, within each phratry, there are domestic and other responsibilities. Young Ikrankans can be adopted into different phratries but not Ershoka. Each phratry initiates its members into "secrets." In the unstable Ikranankan civilization, kingdoms last for only a few generations but phratries abide.

Attention

David Falkayn approaches the Imperial throne room on Ikrananka - although Jadhadi III sits not on a throne but on:

"...the Beast, a chimera in gilt bronze whose saddle he bestrode."
-Poul Anderson, "The Trouble Twisters" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 77-208 AT p. 116.

"At the entrance to the throne room, four Ershoka stood guard, as gaudily outfitted as the men before the Iron House. They weren't at attention. That hadn't been invented here and the humans had been smart enough not to suggest the idea. But they and their gleaming halberds scarcely moved." (ibid.)

Ershoka are human beings incorporated into Ikranankan society as soldiers. The Iron House is their phratry barracks. The Ershoka guards are flanked by Tirut archers. Tiruts are another warrior phratry. Anderson/Falkayn refers to the Ershoka as the Emperor's "...Sickerheitsdienst." (ibid.)

For earlier blog references to periods before standing to attention had been invented, see:

On Ikrananka
Then And Now
Phoenician Inventions

Timber And Wind

"The Trouble Twisters," V.

I was not sure whether there was no wood or just little wood on Ikrananka but the answer was forthcoming. Stalks are spliced and glued together to form timber which is "...more costly than bronze..." (p. 125) and transported under armed guard.

Streets were cobbled when the land was less arid. It sounds as though the demons are winning their struggle to destroy the ordered environment and to return it to chaos.

Adzel's Ershoka (human) drinking companion suddenly acts suspiciously. No longer seeming inebriated, he withdraws, claiming a remembered errand, and leaves Adzel to walk alone into an ambush. When Adzel tries to hold the Ershoka's attention, he replies:

"'Later, later.' Wind ran down the empty street, driving sand, and ruffled the bronze hair. No one else was in sight." (pp. 131-132)

I cite this as yet another example of wind seeming to comment on the action. Others have withdrawn but the wind runs by as if in warning.

Another familiar theme recurs when Adzel, proceeding alone along the street, recalls his home planet, Woden:

"...a certain sense of belonging, an innocence, was forever gone." (p. 132)

Trees

"The Season of Forgiveness."

Ivanhoans gather to look at Christmas decorations and a Nativity scene erected outside the trading base:

"A tree had been erected on the flagstones." (p. 333)

A couple of weeks ago, I explained to a Muslim neighbour that we were walking across town to a church with an annual display of decorated Christmas trees, where we would also meet our daughter and granddaughter: celebration, family and sharing of traditions. The church also had a screen displaying information about current conditions in Bethlehem.

"'[The Earthlings] should have special wisdom, now in the season of their Prince of Peace.'" (p. 334)

Any paganism can accept Christ as another god.

"'Raielli, Erratan!'

"Halt, Earthling!" (pp. 327-328)

On another planet, Ikranaka, Earthlings are "Ershoka." The land-dwellers on Starkad call them "the vaz-Terran." There will be many adaptations of terms like "Earthling" and "Terran" throughout the volume of space covered by Technic civilization.

The apprentices who decorate the base:

"...had no common faith." (p. 322)

- although maybe their organizer, Hernandez, is a Christian. When I was at College, 1988-'89, several of the students were keen enough to organise a carol service complete with Gospel readings which they rehearsed. There was a core of Christian commitment among the organizers. I said that I would meditate in my room at the time of the service. I am not up for singing anything let alone carols! - although people draw this line in different places. I know that I should not accept communion in a church but should accept food in a Gurdwara or a Krishna Temple. 

Wind And Cataract

"The Trouble Twisters," VII.

The Ershoka that have captured Falkayn approach a city held by their people but besieged by their enemies:

"'We'll make a rush,' Padrick said. The wind and the cataract boomed around his words. 'Thorn's folk'll see us and sally forth to fetch us in.'" (p. 157)

This happens so often that we have to notice it. How many authors would simply have reported Padrick's dialogue? Instead, Poul Anderson interrupts that dialogue with booming wind and cataract, supplying any prospective film-makers with appropriate sound effects. And what could be more appropriate to a proposed charge through enemy lines than a loud wind? Winds and storms punctuate Anderson's prose almost like commas and full stops.

A Moment Of Realization On Ikrananka

"The Trouble Twisters."

"But wait!
"Excited, he sprang up." (III, p. 107)

Yet another moment of realization!

Solar Spice & Liquors needs a stable society on Ikrananka. The trade pioneer crew has arrived in the middle of a military stand-off that is a potential civil war. With superior armament, the crew can end the stand-off without killing anyone. Then, with League negotiation skills, they can arrange a truce and amnesty and the beginnings of regular off-planet trade.

The trade pioneer crew is led by a human being, David Falkayn, and the rebels are human beings, the Ershoka, but that does not prevent Falkayn from offering to end the stand-off. He has come for inter-species trade, not for any idea of racial solidarity or superiority, although he must persuade the young woman whom he has rescued of this.

Of course, the plot gets more complicated than that and Falkayn must display a van Rijnian ability to address everyone's interests before there can be a satisfactory resolution.

Approaching The Twilight Zone

Poul Anderson, "The Trouble Twisters" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 77-208 AT p. 156.

What will a landscape on an extra-solar planet look like? Grass? No: "...mosslike growth..." Forests of trees? No: "... forests of plumed stalks swayed in the wind." Picture it.

David Falkayn and his Ershoka abductors approach the Ikranankan Twilight Zone. The rest of the scene could be Terrestrial. Apparently, the moss and stalks are green and:

"Once clouds massed in the north, colored hot gold. The mountains rose sheer to east, aglow in the level red light. Falkayn saw snow peaks and glaciers. Above them the sky was a royal purple deepening toward black, where fifty stars and a planet glimmered. They were at the edge of the Twilight Zone."

The author appeals to two senses because "...brooks rilled..." and there are a lot of colors: green, gold, red, white, purple and black.

Fact And Law

"The Trouble Twisters," XI.

Muddlehead, the ship's computer, claims to own wealth gained on Ikrananka. Chee Lan responds:

"'You're not a person!' Chee shouted. 'Not even in fact, let alone the law!'" (p. 208)

If, as we are given to understand, Muddlehead is self-conscious, then he, not it, is a person in fact and therefore should be recognized as such by the law.

Rereading, I found more action than I wanted toward the end of "The Trouble Twisters." However, what was clever was that, while Falkayn fought off the Ershoka, Chee Lan used local equipment to improvise a radio signal to Muddlehead. Poul Anderson's heroes solve practical problems. Always did. Always will.

Organized Crime

On Ikranaka, phratries specializing in sorcery serve the Emperor. There are also phratries specializing in murder, theft, armed robbery, gambling and prostitution:

Italy has the Mafia, Camorra, 'Ndrangheta and Sacra Corona Unita;
France has the Unione Corse;
China has Triads;
Japan has the Yakuza;
Merseia has the Gethfennu;
Ikrananka has the antisocial phratries as well as remnants from earlier cycles resentful of the Deodakh conquest.

Antisocial and resentful phratries skulk in the Old City of Katandara where Ershoka go in groups although Adzel counts as a group by himself. Every inhabited planet described by Poul Anderson is more complicated than we think.

More Consequences Of Ikranaknan Conditions

"The Trouble Twisters," IV.

The Chakora is fertile but the region around the Imperial capital, Katandara, is poor in wood so thick drapes serve for interior doors. The closest that Ikrananka has come to trees is "...long stalks, like plumed bamboo..." (I, p. 83) The exterior doors of the Ershoka barracks are iron.

A fountain is enclosed in a glass column to control evaporation.

A trader from Subsolar shivers.

Cosmology:

Fire and Ice interacted and condensed into the ordered universe;

there are no gods but demons try to restore chaos;

demons can be counteracted only by diverse magical practices;

some magicians are corrupted and serve Destruction.

Falkayn offers to sell four-leaved clovers and to teach a chance-controlling rite called poker. A reference to Martin Schuster's subversive introduction of the Kabbalah on Ivanhoe must, like the earlier reference to Beljagor, have been added when the stories were collected in order to pull the three stories together into a fictional biography of Falkayn.

Mexican And Alien

"...a memory of home - his parents, his brother and two sisters, Tio Pepe and Tia Carmen, the dear small Mexican town and the laughter as children struck at a pinata-
"'Raielli, Erratan!'
"Halt, Earthling! Juan jarred to a stop."
-"The Season of Forgiveness," pp. 327-328.

 Googling informs me that the Tio and the Tia are an uncle and an aunt, not the names of the two sisters. I had not known what a pinata was.

We learn two words in one Ivanhoan language and have now learned the word for an Earthman in at least three extraterrestrial languages -

on Ivanhoe: Erratan;
on Ikrananka: Ershoka;
on land on Starkad: vaz-Terran.

But most of the linguistic wealth of the Technic History passes us by. How many languages does van Rijn speak? In how many Merseian languages, apart from Eriau, is Olaf Magnusson fluent? I have expressed myself in questions rather than in statements in order to avoid having to search for the answers. However, the question about Magnusson is answered here.

Slight correction: "vaz-Terran" is collective, not singular.

Beauty On Ikrananka

"The Trouble Twisters."

Tidal action has forced one hemisphere of the small, eccentrically orbiting, librating planet Ikrananka to face its red dwarf sun but such slow rotation generates a weak magnetic field so that the planet retains an atmosphere although most of its water has frozen on the cold side making the warm side a slowly deteriorating desert whose inhabitants, struggling for survival in their season-less, rhythm-less environment, regard nature as hostile, believing in demons but not in gods, whereas dwellers on the edge of the Twilight Zone with rain, snow, day, night and constellations, more conventionally believe in an annually dying and rising god and a single devil whose power can be neutralized. The latter are easier to trade with.
-copied from here.

As Falkayn and his Ershoka captors approach, then enter, the Twilight Zone:

they leave the wasteland;
the country grows greener;
mosslike growth carpets the foothills;
brooks become audible;
the wind sways "...forests of plumed stalks..." (p. 156);
mountains glow in the red light;
there are "...snow peaks and glaciers..." (ibid.);
stars and a planet become visible;
slopes reflect heat;
ice melts;
rivers foam down cliffs;
the royal purple sky blackens;
the city, Rangakora, occupies a plateau above a mountain pass;
a road joins mountaintops, city and green, gold, glimmering, misty sea;
above the city, rainbows crown a waterfall;
then forest hides the river as it flows near the city wall;
Falkayn is impressed;
so am I.