Lodestar III

(I think that those wings look too bat-like, too Diomedean?)

When I stopped posting last night, I missed the next obvious point in the text. In an interstellar spaceship, the sky dwelling Ythrians need not only a corridor with a viewport but also an enormous hold to fly around in. Ythrian spacecraft have to be bigger than their Terran or Merseian counterparts.

It would be interesting to read about an interstellar expedition undertaken by Ythrians for their own purposes but this is not that. Nicholas van Rijn is looking for something in space and does not want anyone else to know about it so he lets it be known that he will take his twenty five year old granddaughter, Coya Conyon, on a lengthy cruise aboard his space yacht without even a single mistress.

This deceives his competitors into thinking that maybe he is slowing down. It also informs us the readers that Coya, now a professional astrophysicist working at Luna Astrocenter, has existed for the last twenty five years. She would have been fifteen at the time of the Satan affair, when van Rijn's protege, David Falkayn, became her hero. Van Rijn's ancestry was Dutch and Malay. Coya's grandmother was Mexican and Chinese. Malcolm Conyon, with Scottish descent via Hermes and African descent via Nyanza, came to Earth and married van Rijn's daughter, Beatrix Yeo.

Van Rijn's yacht left Coya and him on Ythri and continued in the same direction while they became the only passengers on the chartered ranger Gaiian (Dewfall), captained by Hirharouk of the Wryfields Choth, and traveled for a month into unknown space. It seems that, for comfort, van Rijn has moved a lot of his own furniture into the Ythrian ship; two loungers, a desk chair, an emperor-size bed, a sofa, a bookshelf and a drinks cabinet stocked with beer, gin, whisky, cognac, vodka, arrack, akvavit, wines, liqueurs, ansa, totipot, slumthunder, maryjane, ops, gait, Xanadu radium, soft drinks and coffee.

Maybe we are not learning about Ythrians but reinforcing our knowledge of van Rijn? But here is one detail. Hirharouk, speaking Anglic but using Planha phraseology, begins, "'For honor and life...'" -Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (New York, 2010), pp. 633-680 AT p. 647.
Then he corrects himself: "'...khr-r-r, I mean please...'" (ibid.)

In An Ythrian Ship III

Continuing the theme of hedonism from "In An Ythrian Ship II" (here) -

Coya, visiting van Rijn's stateroom, can sit on:

an extra lounger;
a desk chair;
an emperor-size bed;
a sofa between liquor-cabinet and bookshelf;
the deck -

- and she can consume:

beer;
gin;
whisky;
cognac;
vodka;
arrack;
slumthunder;
maryjane;
ops;
galt;
Xanadu radium;
a soft drink;
coffee.

Will technology ever enable a man like van Rijn to carry such luxuries with him between stars faster than light?

Coya And Van Rijn

"Lodestar."

Coya Conyon's mixed - Dutch, Malay, Mexican, Chinese, Scottish/Hermetian and African/Nyanzan - ancestry and her more restrained lifestyle make her "...a typical modern human..." (pp. 643-644) but she also sounds as if she would belong in the twentieth century when this story was written. When referring to a comrade called Yunus Bakhsh, I was asked where he was from. I replied, "He is from the North East of England. His ancestry is elsewhere." (I am not sure where.)

The gulf between Coya and her grandfather is shown when he offers her a choice of:

beer

gin

whisky

cognac

vodka

arrack

akvavit

wines

liqueurs

ansa

totipot

slumthunder

maryjane

ops

gait

Xanadu radium

a soft drink (he winces)

- but she prefers coffee and does not smoke.

Van Rijn: "Ah, they don't put the kind of stuff in youngsters like when I was your age." (p. 648)

Coya: "A few of us try to exercise some forethought as well as our consciences..." (ibid.)

Coya: "I'm sorry. Didn't mean to sound self-righteous." (ibid.)

Van Rijn: "But you did." (ibid.)

Just before that, he had thought it a shame that "'Customs has changed.'" (ibid.) An earlier "custom" would have been for a young woman like Coya to appear half naked in company. She reddens at his remarks. It is good to read about a generation gap working the other way. (I was certainly alienated from my parents but not from my daughter. We crossed a threshold in our lifetimes.)