Rockhaven
In which you still don’t get rid of Jela that easily.
It’s always amusing when fictional characters have philosophical discussions about whether their life is proceeding according to some pre-ordained plan.
I do like the Uncle’s comeback when Cantra says she doesn’t believe in fate. And the verbal fencing on the topic of being raised up to be civilized.
I was right, or remembered right, about the “teaching devices” being trouble. (I wonder, all the same, whether there’s any connection between them and the teaching devices that show up later in the series.)
The tree flexes its muscles. (Or whatever. As Cantra realises when she’s fixing to worry about what the tree might get it into its head to do next, there are a lot of metaphors that don’t really fit snug on a tree.)
Arin. There’s a name I wasn’t expecting to encounter quite so soon.
The Uncle’s last play for Jela’s loyalty is interesting. He really does keep up on the latest gossip, but he doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does.
I do think these teaching devices (toys) are similar to the ones that show up here and there in the Liaden Universe, beginning with the trade show toys in Balance of Trade. One of them is losing timonium and burns Jethri.
Loved this chapter. Go Tree!! She really surprised everyone, Lol.
Uncle is pretty awful here. I don’t see him as a potential hero.
Sorry, I was unclear. There’s a clear family resemblance between these teaching devices and the various bits and bobs of Old Tech that show up in the Liaden Universe, but when I said “the teaching devices that show up later” I was thinking of the sleep-learning machines that the Liadens of Val Con’s time have in their autodocs. Might they be based on principles gotten from sheriekas tech? (Particularly since it’s pretty obvious from this book that the autodocs themselves were.)
Oh. Yes, I think you could be onto something. Don’t recall reading it explicitly stated, but that makes sense.
You say, “I was thinking of the sleep-learning machines that the Liadens of Val Con’s time have in their autodocs.” Oddly, I never pictured the sleep-learning machine as the same machine as the autodoc. Did the text say so?
It did, at least some of the time. But only, I find, some of the time.
The sleep-learner Miri learns Liaden in on the ship to Lytaxin at the beginning of Plan B, which I think is the first such device I encountered in the order I first read the novels, is explicitly stated to be an integrated function of the ship’s autodoc. On the other hand, the sleep-learner Miri recalls from her merc recruitment on Surebleak was apparently only a sleep-learner – the business that ran it was called a Learning Shop, not “Major Medicine While U Wait”. Likewise, when Aelliana goes into the house’s sleep-learner near the end of Scout’s Progress, the house’s autodoc is mentioned as a separate device.
So it looks like an autodoc can also be a sleep-learner, but the two devices can also be found separately, and my memory was influenced by the first one I’d encountered being both. (I wonder if it’s only in small ships that they’re combined, to save space. Then again, I wonder if it’s only in the Department’s facilities that they’re combined, and the technology isn’t widely available. I’ll have to remember to watch out for this when we get that far.)
Nicely thorough and circumspect. Now we know more than we started with.
PS. In contrast to your experience, I first encountered a sleep learner in Scout’s Progress, with Aelliana. First impressions do certainly…impress.
And it turns out I misread the beginning of Plan B, and even on the ship of the Department the autodoc and the sleep learner are two separate devices. So I was wrong about sleep-learning machines in autodocs from start to finish. Funny the tricks memory can play on a person.
The Uncle is, indeed awful. Also, he is referred to as the batch leader and as a Batcher during the course of this chapter. Is the Uncle’s origin ever made more plain than the hints we get here?
The first aid kit was even then a very sophisticated healing unit – it’s abilty to totally remove Dulsey’s tatoos was a suprise to Cantra and Jela as well as the Uncle. My impression is that healing units were quite common – but without the sherikas tech far less effective.
The sleep learner is Terran Technology (around Jethri’s time), properly improved and then adapted galaxy wide (o.k. I don’t think the sleep learner common in Yxtrang territory). To me it sounds more like someone took the idea of a learning unit – properly from those sherieka toys and wished to produce a defanged and more controllable and usable version. Whether the Uncle, the Bedel or someone else entirely had their hands in this invention – who knows. Personally I’d be glad if some inventions were made by normal people. But the Bedel dreaming equipment has some similarities.
@Othin from 2018: But the Bedel dreaming equipment has some similarities.
Yes, and where is it we’re told that the Bedel do take sheriekas tech and “defang” it? I hadn’t made the connections before: the Uncle is connected to the Bedel and it was the Uncle who wanted to, and does, use “defanged” sheriekas tech.
@“defanged” sheriekas tech
I and properly must of the readers assume that the old tech is sheriekas. But is that true? Or are the Illoheen tricksters that wish everybody to believe this? Just thinking about Tinsory Light and the common knowledge being that it was sheriekas build. But in truth sheriekas just subverted something that was built by the uncle. Properly the sheriekas are not as great as everybody believes, since they are masters in taking credit for other people’s inventions and powers.
While we’re on the topic, what about the machines that the DOI set in motion on Liad . . . with the degrading timonium, it seems as if they were either sheriekas tech brought through by someone from the old galaxy/universe or their tech was based on a sheriekas design? Are we ever told more?
Ed8r.
Yes, we do learn more.
Ummm . . . discuss?
Ha! Very tricksy, Jason. You could’ve mentioned Accepting the Lance. I gave in to impatience and am reading it now, and I see we are given quite a bit more information than I’d imagined!