Awaiting Transport
In which Jela heads off into the wild blue-green yonder.
Not that much happens in this chapter: a shuttle lands, Jela and the tree get in, it takes off again. The interest is in the details: about the technology of the shuttle, about Jela’s training, about Jela’s past (the intriguing description of his name as “nothing more than a quartermaster’s joke”).
Speaking of names, we learn the name of the Commander who recruited Jela to his present course of action: Ro Gayda. Absent further context, it’s not clear whether that’s all surname, or part surname and part personal name (and if so — he added, remembering Ro Laren — which is which).
There’s also an interesting description of Jela helping the tree gain a fuller understanding of flying machines.
Jela is stripped of every past thing, except the tree and — he hopes — his name. Even the small kit that he was given at the start of his mysterious training went off of the shuttle with the two assistants who helped him load on. But he gains the commander’s name and a command position that ought to keep a curious M sufficiently amused and occupied.
Eagles Over the Kennebec, a livejournal blog of Sharon Lee, has URL http://rolanni.livejournal.com/. Is that Ro Lanni?
Captain Rolanni is a character who appears in the Agent of Change novels briefly (and in a short story of her own, at more length).
Ro Laren isn’t a Liaden Universe character at all, and I apologize if I confused you. She hails from Star Trek, and from a planet where the custom is to put family name first. I just happened to think of her because of the coincidence of the name.
I looked up Ro Laren and then remembered who she was. But I didn’t remember Rolanni.
Don’t worry about confusion — I don’t remember names well, but I appreciate the random connections.
On the plane, Jela dreams, and wakes recalling that of all the specialized training he recently underwent, “it was the language work which had been a nonstop challenge.” (similar to Theo’s problems learning high Liaden).
Waiting to board, we get a hint that Tree is indeed happy to travel, as endorsed in Ghost Ship, moving day on Surebleak, when Tree’s exuberance nearly overwhelms Val Con and Miri. Here, as Jela awaits his plane, the Tree “sat companionably by his side, its top-most leaves moving…”
When we’re told that Jela “felt he knew” which of the contrails in the sky was the higher of the two, I thought this indicated more than just his own background and experience and was again a hint that the Tree was sharing its perceptions with him, even as he was communicating with the Tree.