Four Rivers

The Boat Of A Million Years, XII. 

"The village stood on a bluff overlooking a broad, shallow river and the cottonwoods along the banks." (p. 244)

"...the broad brown river and its trees..." (p. 253)

Compare the locations of the Time Patrol Academy in the Oligocene and the main base of Havig's group in the Pleistocene, both here, and a river in an emulation, here.

Time is like a river.

Deathless says:

"'Time has overtaken me.'" (p. 256)

- and:

"'If I have learned anything in my lifetimes of years...it is that there is no 'always.'" (ibid.)

He departs. Another immortal wanders the world. And Chapter XIII takes us somewhere else.

Five Senses By The Lyubisha

See By The Lyubisha River.

Flandry:

sees the broad brown river flowing between blue-green and plum-colored trees, braes, bluffs, coombs, flashing brooks, ocherous palisades and forest, with hundreds of wings flying overhead;

hears the river chuckle, the brooks sing and guslars trill;

feels a mild breeze;

smells soil and growth;

will shortly taste a frying riba caught from the river and cloud apples gathered for dessert.

By The Lyubisha River

On Dennitza, the Kazan is a large astrobleme. During glaciation, a colter of ice pierced the Kazan ringwall, then the melt-begotten Lyubisha River formed a canyon. Flandry watches the broad, brown river which is:

"...quiet except where it chuckled around a boulder or a sandbar near its banks."
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT p. 524.

(In Anderson's Time Patrol series, time is compared to a river with changeable features like sandbars that can divert its course.)

"...ocherous palisades..." are "...maned with forest." (ibid.) Leaves are bluish-green or plum-coloured.

"...trees...grew taller than the taiga granted." (ibid.)

My points are, first, that Anderson shows us an alien landscape where, e.g., we must not assume that leaves are Terretrial green and, secondly, that his vocabulary is rich even when describing features that might be common to Earth and Dennitza.

The Onslaught

"Starkad rotated thrice more. Then the onslaught came."

-Ensign Flandry, CHAPTER SIX, p. 52.

 

On Starkad, two intelligent species are in conflict. This onslaught is an attack of sea-dwellers on land-dwellers.

 

"Then the blow fell. The Birds could not have timed their attack better."

-James Blish, Midsummer Century (London, 1975), 12, p. 102.

 

On Earth in 25,000 A.D., two intelligent species are in conflict. The blow is an attack of Birds on men.

Anderson's phraseology reminded me of Blish's, then I realized that the two situations were similar. Space travelers help the Starkadians and a time-projected personality helps the men.

During the onslaught, Flandry is in the seaport of Ujanka which is:

"...slashed by the broad brown Pechaniki River." (ibid.) 

 

How many broad brown rivers does Anderson have?

 

See:

 

The Rivers Of Time

The Lyubisha (Scroll down)

The Inn In Sehala

Fire Time, IX. 

Four stories of mortared stone.

Another eight of adobe.

A central court with garden and pond.

Balconies from every room.

Covered ramps from the court.

Battlemented flat roof.

(Ishtarian residents need sunshine for their symbiotic plants.)

Rooms for human beings.

Heavy walls for insulation and defence.

The building has stood for more than a thousand years.

Its entrance faces down a slope to a broad brown river.

There are docks, warehouses and ships.

Shouts, thuds, creaking wheels and cables, booming rolling barrels.

Sehala, not a city, has fields, not streets.

Not what we expect although it follows from what we have been told.