Spiral Dance
The Little Empty
In which Cantra and Jela have a talk.
The first aid kit offers to make Cantra not only good as new, but better. One is inclined to wonder, if it had been given permission to install a few upgrades, what else it might have slipped in at the same time.
Most of the chapter is Cantra and Jela talking. He tells her about the tree. She tells him about what happened to her family.
(It’s interesting that Jela says the tree hasn’t told him its name or that of its species, just because there’s a scene, in a much later novel, that mentions in passing that the Uncle does know the name of the species. It makes sense that he would have wanted to learn more about them after the encounter just finished — but who is there that he could have learned it from?)
Uncle’s note is typically insincere-sounding. Jela and Cantra cannot know if Uncle does anything other than cherish without comment his “somewhat over exuberant” children. Dulsey may or may not know anything about what happened at their exit and may or may not have asked Uncle to extend her regards. Neither Jela nor Cantra is going view Uncle as family.
Uncle AND his goons acted fully without honor, repeatedly, including the “sincere apology” note Uncle sent. It bugs me that Uncle is becoming more likable in Dragon Ship. I don’t want to like him.
I had also wondered how Uncle learned the name of the sentient trees, Ssussdriads, also written as Ssuss Dryads, I think. We do not know who or what Uncle was, before he became this nearly immortal and consistently enigmatic character.
I liked the conversations. I begin to better understand Cantra.
By the way, loved it when Cantra commended Tree as faithful crew, protecting the ship. Cute, when Tree saluted captain.
I think this is the first time Cantra received and ate a seed pod. Yes?
Lots of interesting history in this chapter about military weapons npbuilt on Shereika technology, captured in the prior war. Jela tells Cantra about battle robots based on captured shereika plans gone mad, laying waste to entire worlds they were designed to defend. I wondered if that was the automatic killing devices the Commander of Agents activated in I Dare, under Solcintra.
Also, Jela tells Cantra about “fleets of robot ships, under self-aware robot commanders, who’ve been fed all the great battles fought by all the great generals. They’ve turned them lose, I hear, to roam out into the beyond and engage the Shereikas…The reports I’vse seen have them turning pirate and holding worlds hostage for their resources.”
That passage caught my eye, bringing Bechimo to mind, and Jeeves.
Yes, this is Cantra’s first seed pod.
I also thought of Jeeves on reading the passage about the self-aware robot commanders, though I think Jeeves himself was a later attempt at the same idea.
Coming back to add that the question of who might have told the Uncle the Trees’ name is answered later this book, in Chapter 32.
Jelala alone: Jela tells Cantra about battle robots based on captured shereika plans gone mad, laying waste to entire worlds they were designed to defend. And just before that, Cantra is telling Jela that the Uncle ain’t collecting; he’s using. Figures he can beat the enemy by mastering their machines and turning them against their makers.
On my reread, the combination of these comments struck me also as being nice foreshadowing for what happened with Tinsori Light.
Regarding the seed pods, I see that these are two of the three that were observed by Cantra, back in Chpt 14. WHat happens to the 3rd?
What’s interesting about these sequences where someone is offered to become more than as good as new, both here, in “The Space at Tinsori Light”, and I *think* in one other place, though I can’t recall where exactly, is that the character never actually makes a choice. Instead, both Cantra and Jen Sin are interrupted just before they decide, Cantra by the Tree it seems, and Jen Sin most likely by Lorith opening the healing unit. Now, considering that both of them were definitely in autodocs of sheriekas origin, accepting that “perfection” would probably be a very bad idea, but it’s definitely interesting to me that neither character actually makes a choice. I suspect that means that the choice is such a misleading one that almost anyone going into it without foreknowledge would accept the improvements, and so the Tree and Lorith act to prevent the choice being made.
Yes, I took it as providential that the choices were interrupted.
Another telling thing is that those autodoc units seem to only offer the choice sometimes. Cantra as well as Dulsey have been in the unit before, and I suspect we would have been told if a choice had been offered then. So there has to be a kind of trigger for the choice to be offered.
Also the Uncle had been using similar autodocs or duplicating machines if one is to believe Grig (in Balance of Trade) and there was no choice mentioned. There seems to be a secret there.
Depending on a Sherikan made autodoc’s definition of perfection … it might create a Sherika – if the choice was made. Yuk what a thought.
Well, now that we know more about how the sheriekas think, I would say that it is unlikely that one of their machines would be designed to create another one of *them*. More likely it would create an unwitting servant, someone who would have some kind of unconscious bent to work towards annihilating life (think of whoever designed the pamphlets Cantra and Jela encountered).
And, now that I’ve read Accepting the Lance, many of the references to the sheriekas quest for perfection have been clarified, and it is (again) demonstrated what it means for sentient intelligences to seek perfection.