Osabei Tower
Landomist
In which the First Prime wasn’t expecting Scholar tay’Nordif’s pilot… so soon.
The luck is with Tor An in earnest, this chapter. Several times he is narrowly saved from disaster.
I still find the business of the expected pilot puzzling. Claiming a non-existent pilot to buy time is one thing, but claiming an actual pilot who has arrived on other business, without knowing anything about who he is or whether he can be trusted, is quite another. (Though I suppose she does know a few things about him. The fact that he’s engaged in the puzzle of a disappearing system is quite informative in context. As is, come to think of it, the fact that he allowed himself to be brought in without immediately denying that he was the pilot she wanted.)
Also, I’m side-eying the moment where she fumbles her data-wand in her haste to download Tor An’s data. We’ve seen before what can happen when Maelyn tay’Nordif fumbles something in her haste.
(That makes two pilots now who have instinctively felt the Truth Bell as equivalent to an alarm signifying the utmost emergency. I wonder if that was a deliberate design feature, bearing in mind that the scholars themselves don’t seem to have the same reaction.)
It turns out that the scholar who had a go at Jela last chapter is Den Vir tay’Elyd, the same whose office Grudent tel’Ashon took such pleasure in raiding. He seems like a very unpleasant fellow, even compared to the general level of unpleasantness in the Tower.
Did Cantra “build in” this pilot story into Maelyn tay’Nordif? Or is this the intersection of luck for Cantra, Jela, Tor An and (possibly) the cat that placed such a notion in Scholar tay’Nordif’s brain?
Scholar tar’Nordif is clumsy, so I can’t predict which fumbles are necessary for some other end, and which are simply fumbles.
Why does Tor An snatch the data strip off the desk after Scholar tay’Nordif has downloaded it?
I would be really puzzled if Cantra pre-planned the pilot story, because she had no way of knowing about Tor An. I think it’s probably just the Luck (Cantra’s natural luck, Rool Tiazan’s tweaking of the lines, and, why not, the cat’s luck as well), but it’s such luck as to be worth remarking on.
I can think of several reasons for Tor An to want to hold on to the data strip. It’s his one significant bargaining chip and it’s also, in a way, all he has left of his home.
Yes, indeedy. Tor An has The Luck, like the probability-twisting Cantra, Jela, The Tree and even the cat. And this lot get together and form themselves a clan and breed for it! I swear this knowledge to be the only thing that saves the denouement of “I Dare” from being the most egregious piece of deus ex machinery I’ve ever read. Although these chapters in which the strings of reality are pulled from all directions to make everything come together so neatly – as a part of the actual plot, mind – come in a close second.
Jela’s constant reminders to himself to trust Cantra and her plans at one point brings him again face to face with the short time he has left. He thinks to himself that Cantra deserves to live on in the memories of twelve generations of pilots . . . I think he has underestimated here hasn’t he? Someone who is good at math tell me approximately how many generations it’s (probably) been to the story’s present?
Also in this chapter are some further references that reduce the cosmic concern back down to galaxy size. I’m having a hard time with this bouncing back and forth between the terms “universe” and “galaxy.”
31 generations, according to Val Con in Carpe Diem: “From the very first, from Cantra forward, Korval had kept the ships that came to it. Thirty-one generations of yos’Pheliums had led Korval, gathering ships…”
So, figuring 3 or 4 generations per century, that would be approximately 800-1000 years. We do not know how long a Liaden generation lasts, of course. Dictionary.com says a generation is roughly 30 years now, since we give birth at about 30, where it used to be only 20.
Mixing up the terms galaxy and universe. Yes, disconcerting. After all, QUITE different.
@generation
Since the normal age for becoming Delm seems to be 30 (Daav became Delm early, before turning 30 and there have been several times when Korval waited on a Delm because he/she was to young) and the Korval Delms we know about tent to become parent after becoming Delm I would guess one generation to be a rather longer time.
Playing with numbers gives:
31 generations * 30 years per generation = 930 years
31 generations * 35 years per generation = 1085 years
31 generations * 40 years per generation = 1240 years
31 generations * 45 years per generation = 1395 years
I find 45 years a bit long, but if medicine has enhanced lifespan long enough it might work. Also Liadens, coming from Inner World stock, properly carry genetically engineering to enhance lifespan and late fertility as adaption to space. Why do I propose that Inner World inhabitants have to have descended form genetic engineered people? The golden skin all Inner World descants have in common and which differentiates them from Rimmers and Soldiers must derive from genetic tinkering. And it would be quite senseless if skin tone was the only effect of that tinkering – especially since Inner World inhabitants felt so superior to anyone else.
Side note: So if you count history than the laws against artificial humans is quite the hubris.
Hmmmm…..I dunno. I somehow think Old Solcintra was an outer planet — at least not an inner. All the military had retreated to inner planets, except Jela’s friends. Wellick’s group. He would look at the star table with Cantra.
Old Solcintra was Inner enough for its inhabitants to have the skin tone and the manners and the superior attitude toward people from the Rim, but maybe not very far In and certainly not among the really prestigious core planets. (Or maybe it’s just In enough to count itself as an Inner planet and put on the airs and graces, without being In enough for the real Inner planets to count it as one of them.)
There’s a few places in the series where Liadens mention that it’s been approximately a thousand years since in the Migration. In the absence of any definite statement, I tend to assume that the founding of Liad is the event that the Standard Calendar is counting forward from.
Okay, I can accept that. An outer-inner planet, with all the insecurities that go with a stepchild complex.
I also date the calendar from that first landfall on Liad.
So it seems the migration was only appx a thousand years ago. I say only because think of how short a time that actually is, even in terms of our own recorded human history on this earth!