Dickson modeled quasi-Hispanic Nahar partly on Galicia. The Gallegos are the Scots or Bretons of Spain - a romantic but suspicious people. Their lean country is the ancient heart of Spain and the site of its holiest shrine, Santiago de Compostela. (Coincidentally, among Galicia's cities is La Coruna - medieval Corunna - from which the story's narrator takes his name.) However, Nahar's social conditions - hungry campesinos and greedy ricones - resemble those in con temporary Latin America. The Dorsai could easily be U.S. military advisers caught in a revolution. But the merits of the two warring parties are not really at is sue. What matters is preventing the tyrant William from exploiting the situation to his own advantage. Cries for justice - in Nahar and elsewhere - will not be properly answered until the Cycle's close a century hence.
Since the moment of fulfillment is not yet at hand, partial solutions are all Lost Dorsai's survivors can reach. Corunna's heart is just beginning to heal. (He will seem normal when he meets Donal Graeme in Dorsai I.) Whatever Padma has learned, it does not include a profound understanding of the Graeme twins. But having shared the Gebel Nahar experience with them may dispose him to act on their behalf in "Brothers." Losing Amanda weakens Kensie's will to live enough to doom him in "Brothers" about five years later. The excess of fraternal love Ian shows by refusing to compete with Kensie for Amanda is precisely why he suffers so much in "Brothers" and after wards. Amanda strikes a better balance than the men. Though the Star Maiden grieves both her twin suit ors, she does win peace of soul for herself. She becomes a spiritual mother to her people as the first Amanda was a physical one.
Only Michael's victory is final because it is sealed in death. Michael is a willing sacrificial lamb. Kensie is a bright golden Achilles cut down in his prime. Ian, on the other hand, endures like a battered Herakles. He is the ultimate Dorsai, with a darkness in him so deep it bedazzles. He demonstrates how much harder it is to live heroically than to die heroically. Not for Ian the quick, sharp moment of trial. He must prove himself day in and day out through one grim moral choice after another. His leadership and example help the Dorsai survive desperate times. Thus something re mains of his family and people a century later for Hal Mayne and his beloved, the third Amanda, to use in the evolutionary struggle.
Thus the illuminations, like the Childe Cycle they complement, turn on the question of balance. Though the demands of integrity and responsibility can clash, they should unite to reinforce each other. As the second Amanda concludes: " 'In the end the only way is to be what you are and do what you must. If you do that, everything works.' " Balance through union is a universal imperative for the race as well as the individual. The conscious and unconscious aspects of human nature must come together. Then evolved mankind - intuitive, empathic, creative - can win the future with out losing the past.
To dramatize these principles, Dickson has in effect assembled his own set of secular-historical archetypes. The Cycle and the illuminations function like an original system of mythology that correlates with nearly every area of human experience. It has shaped the author as much as he has shaped it: life anticipates art; art elucidates life. Dickson could apply Hopkins' definition to himself: "What I do is me: for that I came." His twenty-year quest to complete the Childe Cycle has become a kind of initiation for him, both as an artist and as a man. He tried to live the unity he preaches by combining fluffy and intense traits within himself. He knows that separately, the plume is frivolous and the sword ruthless. But together they are gallant.
The plume waves. The sword flashes. The proud chevalier has pledged himself to see the journey through and will not count the cost of keeping faith.
Editor's note: As a special bonus for readers o/Lost Dorsai, the author has consented to the publication of an extensive excerpt from his great work-in-progress, The Final Encyclopedia. Penultimate novel in the Childe Cycle, Mr. Dickson feels that The Final Encyclopedia is his most significant work to date. It commences on the following page.
THE FINAL ENCYCLOPEDIA: AN EXCERPT
The story up to this point:
Hal Mayne, an orphan found in a small, otherwise empty interstellar ship drifting near Earth orbit, is raised on Earth by three tutors, who are his guardians: one Dorsai, one Exotic, and one Friendly.
When he is fifteen years old his guardians are murdered by the Others, the ambitious and charismatic crossbreeds of the Splinter Cultures, who are rapidly gaining control of human societies throughout all the inhabited worlds. The historical time is approximately 100 years after the time of Dorsai! and Soldier, Ask Not.
Such a contingency had been foreseen by the tutors. Hal, grown, will be the natural opponent of the crossbreeds, but until grown he is no match for them. He flees, first to Coby, the mining world where he spends nearly two years, until he is located there by the Others - although the Others still do not realize his potential. Still, their second in command, Nigel Bias, has become interested enough to want to see Hal face to face.
Hal escapes from Coby and lands on Harmony, under the alias of a dead Friendly known as Howard Immanuelson. Recalcitrants are opposing the Others and their controlled governments on both Harmony and Association. As Immanuelson, Hal is befriended by a recalcitrant named Jason Rowe, whom Hal meets in the detention center where both Jason and he are being held by the local authorities under the suspicion of their being what Jason actually is.
THE FINAL ENCYCLOPEDIA:
An Excerpt
The cell door clashed open, waking them. Instinctively, Hal Mayne was on his feet by the time the guard came through the open door and he saw out of the corner of his eye that Jason Rowe was also.
"All right," said the guard. He was thin and tall - though not as tall as Hal - with a starved angry face. "Outside!"
They obeyed. Hal's tall body was still numb from sleep, but his mind, triggered into immediate overdrive, was whirring. He avoided looking at Jason in the interests of keeping up the pretense that they had not talked and still did not know each other, and he noticed that Jason avoided looking at him. Once in the corridor they were herded back the way Hal remembered being brought in.
"Where are we going?" Jason asked.
"Silence!" said the guard softly, without looking at him and without changing the expression of his gaunt, set features, "or I will hang thee by thy wrists for an hour or so after this is over, apostate whelp."
Jason said no more. His thin face was expression less. His slight frame was held erect. They were moved along down several corridors, up a freight lift shaft, to what was again very obviously the office section of this establishment. Their guard brought them to join a gathering of what seemed to be twenty or more prisoners like themselves, waiting outside the open doors of a room with a raised platform at one end, a desk upon it and an open space before it. The flag of the United Sects, a white cross on a black field, hung from a flagpole set upright on the stage.
Their guard left them with the other prisoners and stepped a few steps aside to stand with the five other guards present. They stood, guards and prisoners alike, and time went by.
Finally, there was the sound of footwear on polished corridor floor, echoing around the bend in the further corridor, and three figures turned the corner and came into sight. Hal's breath caught in his chest. Two were men in ordinary business suits - almost certainly local officials. But the man between them, tall above them, was Nigel Bias.