Revolutionists

In which Geral Jethri believes in the Envidaria.

If someone had asked me what I expected future Liaden Universe stories to be about, I don’t think I’d have picked “what Jethri’s descendants are doing in the present day” as a possibility, but now that it’s happened it seems like an obvious question to explore.

I like this story more than the last one. I found the characters and plot more engaging. I wasn’t always clear on just what was going on, but I was always clear on what the stakes were for the protagonist.

There are a lot of unpleasant details about how the system is set up on Spadoni Station that just get dropped in casually, because Geral doesn’t have anything to compare them to and thinks of them as normal. One day, after he’s seen more of the universe, he’s going to look back and be appalled.

Having a familiar face show up at the end (well, I say face…) was a nice surprise.

Here’s a question: At what point do we think Famy Binwa went rogue? Was it the plan all along to act while all the higher-ups were busy at the meeting, or did he learn something about what was happening in the meeting (perhaps during those few minutes where he went to take care of something) and decide to do something about it?

25 thoughts on “Revolutionists

  1. Ed8r

    Paul: Here’s a question: At what point do we think Famy Binwa went rogue? Was it the plan all along to act while all the higher-ups were busy at the meeting…

    That’s what I assumed, at least on first reading (which is all I’ve done so far), although I could see him going away, confirming that they were really going through with it, and coming back that much more desperate to see it through. His fate certainly sealed for me which “side” I’m on!

    That familiar face was indeed a pleasant surprise, but it confused me because I had not recognized this story as present day within the Liaden Universe. Is there some time reference that my math-impaired brain did not connect?

  2. Othin

    Time reference –
    The familiar face is one reference, the other time reference – the historian’s comment in the intro – makes it clear that the time is when the trade lance of the seventeen worlds become more accessible again.

    So let’s check. The Envidaria was published about 1118 or a bit later. But it was written when Jethri was still a child, before Arin Gobelyn’s death, which puts it between 1104 and 1108. The unusual cosmic phenomena is expected to last for five centuries and was just beginning when the Envidaria was written. At the time of Trade secret this cosmic phenomena is still in so early stages that it isn’t common knowledge, while being measurable by those ships with knowledge about the Envidaria.

    So in which when does this put this story? There is a wide range for interpretation. Let’s assume a beginning phase of a 100 years, a middle phase of 300 years where contact to the 17 worlds is extremely limited and an end phase of another 100 years – and vola we have about 500 years. Depending on the real beginning of that phenome Revolutionist might happen at the end of the 14th century (simultaneously with Korvals settlement on Surebleak) or a 100 or a 150 years later.

    I expect we’ll find out in one of the next still untitled stories.

  3. Othin

    @Famy Binwa
    Oh, I expect he had known or overhead some of his mothers plans. Enough to prepare. And I like your idear of him somehow checking if his elders were really going through with them, before committing. But which side is going rogue? The government or Famy? It is a matter of perpective and obey illegal orders.

  4. Paul A. Post author

    But which side is going rogue? The government or Famy? It is a matter of perpective

    That’s true. I would have said that to go rogue there needs to be a higher authority one is breaking away from, but even there Famy’s got it covered: his perspective is that the station’s constitution is the higher authority that the administrators are disobeying, and he’s just trying to put things right. The only point in the story that anybody actually comes right out and accuses somebody specific of being a Revolutionist, it’s Famy accusing the administrators.

  5. Ed8r

    Another passing thought: In the history quoted before the story begins, it is said about Jethri Gobelyn that “his genes are said to be widely dispersed in and around the Seventeen World trading nexus.” So, rather than Jethri actively “dispersing” his genes, isn’t it likely that all those different versions of Arin and Yuri account for this impression?

  6. Paul A. Post author

    That actually doesn’t seem likely to me at all. We know that there are a bunch of Arins and Yuris about the place, but they go to a lot of trouble to avoid anybody else noticing. Most people would never meet more than one in their life, let alone enough to start speculating about the procreative prowess of their ancestors.

    I think it’s more likely that the story about Jethri comes straightforwardly from his own actions: we’ve seen ourselves that he gets on well with women, sometimes very well indeed, and I don’t see any reason to assume he got any worse at it as he gained experience.

  7. Othin

    @Jethri’s progeny
    Jethri not only gets on well with women but he is not one to be stingy with any woman friends wish for offspring. He might take offence if a woman tries to trick him, but he wouldn’t turn away from an honest request or wish.

  8. Ed8r

    Paul: We know that there are a bunch of Arins and Yuris about the place, but they go to a lot of trouble to avoid anybody else noticing

    Oh, yes, of course. I did not intend to indicate that anyone would actually know the sources. I only meant that, with as many clones as are named AND as many as it is implied there may be, the spreading of so-called “Jethri’s” genes likely proceeded from more sources than just “our” Jethri. Maybe I’ll be wrong. Maybe whatever new Jethri book is being written will show him with a “girl in every port.”

  9. Ed8r

    What I’m trying to say is that with all these other versions of the same genes in existence, there would be no way for “historians” to trace all the family lines to the one clone we know as Jethri, would there? Or would the tweaks Arin made in the Jethri version account for this evidence of dispersal?

  10. Paul A. Post author

    What I’m trying to say is that you’re coming at this backwards.

    You’re trying to make “his genes are said to be widely dispersed” work as a description of somebody noticing a wide dispersal of genes and explaining it by tracing them back to Jethri, which I don’t think is what the historian is saying at all. I think it’s the other way around: people during Jethri’s lifetime noticed him, the “peripatetic traveler”, contributing to the gene-pools of various places he visited, and so it is said that now his genes are widely dispersed.

    (I also think it’s a mistake to get too attached to the word choice. I doubt there’s anybody literally going around testing the genes of people who look like Jethri. If there are, they’re certainly not getting a chance to test any of the Yuris — can you imagine the Uncle letting someone get away with that?)

    (While I’m picking on word choice, I’ll also say that “a girl in every port” is probably not a fair description of the situation. Remember that local custom exists, and that part of the local custom of the culture Jethri was raised in is to encourage the sharing of genes between loop-ships and space stations, to avoid any one station or ship being stuck with a gene-pool too shallow to prospoer. Spadoni Station, in this story, is an example of what that can lead to, with the people in power dangerously inbred and only surviving by preying on the people who have genes from outside.)

  11. Othin

    “Spadoni Station, in this story, is an example of what that can lead to, with the people in power dangerously inbred and only surviving by preying on the people who have genes from outside.”
    Thanks for clarifying that.

    This explains nicely why Gerals mother gets paid for her blood. I only thought it was to keep people from aging or old people, at least old once in power, alive. Now I think it’s a bit of both.

  12. Paul A. Post author

    The bit about the Seniors being dangerously inbred is pretty clearly said in the story: “…it was the ’fusions that let them get to their proper ages and the ’fusions that kept them safe during the thin-food. They’d been so close-knit that cousins were sisters and little brothers nephews.”

    It doesn’t say much about why Geral’s mother was chosen beyond that she had “good blood”, but it does say that one of the signs she had good blood was that she had Geral successfully, and mother and son are both sturdy, which is a sign of genetic health: good blood in a metaphorical sense. And the main thing we know about Geral and his mother’s genes is that some of them come from Jethri when he passed through.

    And thinking about good blood in the metaphorical sense has got me looking at those ‘fusions again. My first time through the story, I took them as literal blood transfusions, and I still think that’s part of it. But now I’m thinking that the Seniors might also be after Geral and his mother for metaphorical blood transfusions: getting good genes back into the gene-pool. The development with the twin sisters strikes me as far too calculated to be anything except somebody’s deliberate attempt to get some more children with Jethri’s good blood in them. And that worked out okay for Geral; he got to do his bit and move on… but it’s raising some disturbing speculations about what his mother might be doing to earn her keep, during those months-long stretches where he doesn’t see her out and about.

  13. Ed8r

    Paul: raising some disturbing speculations about what his mother might be doing to earn her keep

    Yes, Paul, that type of earning had occurred to me also.

  14. Othin

    “I doubt there’s anybody literally going around testing the genes of people who look like Jethri”
    This reminds me, there are already areas where the howl population or at least 50% of it is genetically recorded. This is mostly done for scientific research, fighting illnesses and avoiding inbreeding. Just think of Island.

  15. Ed8r

    Annn-n-nd now that I am back into Balance of Trade and headed for Trade Secret, I am vividly reminded of the direction Jethri seemed to be going, which would suggest he himself succeeded in widely dispersing his genes.

  16. Ed8r

    Rereading this story, something that stood out to me was this: It was kind of funny seeing the images of Jethri on this very same station back when it was fresh-built. Geral had just been thinking about reading what sounds as if it’s meant to be novels—or at least short stories—about Jethri, but apparently there must be video records as well. So not only Geral but everyone on the station can see how much he looks like Jethri Gobelyn.

    I wonder if he and Disian will make an appearance in Trader’s Leap this next December?

    (Side note: now that Disian and Bechimo are considered to be persons, will we stop seeing their names italicized?)

  17. Paul A. Post author

    My impression is that the authors will continue to italicise the names of persons who are ships. So far they’ve always put “Bechimo” in italics, even when it’s a scene from the viewpoint of someone like Theo who already considers him to be a person and when it’s clearly referring to Bechimo-the-person and not Bechimo-the-ship.

    (My own practice for this blog is “Bechimo” when referring to Bechimo-the-ship and “Bechimo” when referring to Bechimo-the-person, but that’s at least partly because I’m usually referring to Bechimo-the-person so it saves me some extra keystrokes each time.)

  18. Paul A. Post author

    I’ve been trying to think of how other authors do it, but there aren’t that many stories about people who are also ships.

    Hellspark does differential italicisation, but it also has the person acquire a nickname; the ship is “Margaret, Lord Lynn“, the person is almost always “Maggy”.

    Anne McCaffrey dodges the issue in her BB ship stories, because BB ships don’t have names, only serial numbers; “Helva” is always Helva-the-person, because Helva-the-ship is addressed and referred to as “NH-834”.

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