Spiral Dance
In which all the king’s horses and all the king’s men aren’t available, so it’ll have to be Jela and the Tree.
Back when Cantra was preparing to make way for Maelyn tay’Nordif, she mentioned that coming out the other side usually involved a drug and a “taler”. The task of the taler is presumably the one that the Tree gives Jela: telling her the story of herself, to remind her which bits of her are real. The drug side of it, the Tree seems capable of handling itself, as it did on the way in.
There’s more of the book left than I’d been expecting. I’d remembered the expedition into Osabei Tower as most of it, with a straight run to the end from there.
It surprised me that Cantra did so little to ensure her own resurrection, if Scholar tay’Nordif succeeded. Did she expect that to not be necessary? Why?
I definitely don’t think, from the way she was thinking about it before she went in, that she expected it to not be necessary; I think it’s more that she expected it to not be possible. In the first place, it was pretty unlikely that they were all going to survive to the end of the mission. On top of that, I get the impression that the aelantaza aren’t given access to the details of the resurrection process, the composition of the drug, and so on, that being one of the ways their handlers keep them in line. The Tree apparently worked out for itself what would be helpful, which it didn’t occur to Cantra it might be able to do.
Right. Because it seems obvious to me that The Tree is a biochemist of exquisite and puissant skill. From the outset, its pods have seemed to be engineered specifically for each individual and created in order to achieve specific ends. Jela’s sleep until rescue comes in the beginning. The pods that the tree has been giving Jela with increasing frequency, nourishing him while in the tower and counteracting his aging process, and the pods it makes for Cantra on Landomist that facilitate her awakening as Scholar Maelyn tay’Nordif and then help to remove the artificial personality and re-seat the original when the job is done. The Tree is far more than a leafy pet although Cantra hasn’t quite got over her prejudicial species-ist preconceptions yet.
Because we (and Jela and Tree) were introduced to the “Cantra” persona, we have accepted it as “who she really is” when actually it is who she really isn’t. We have no name for the aelantaza who existed before she was rescued by Garen and forced by the line edit to hide herself under the Rimmer pilot persona. But we do have hints throughout the books, that the Rimmer pilot is a construct just as much as was Scholar tay’Nordif. It’s just that Jela can only tell her about “Cantra.”
True, Ed8r. And maybe that’s best. Let her forget some of her prior personas.
The Tree probably applied what it learned about aelantaza drugs (from Cantra) to Jen Sar Kiladi, so he could go deep into his new identity without needing drugs and a taler. Or…maybe Aelliana served as his taler, all along keeping him from sinking too deep into the Scholar.
Ps. I loved this chapter.
Wonderful chapter. My thoughts here after the 3rd time through were similar to my comments above: that Jela could only provide such “tales” as she had given him, and those were almost all from the point of view of “Cantra, the Rimmer pilot.” But perhaps, although she apparently could remember incidents from her former life, she may never have been her own person, for even an instant. From what we know of Tanjalyre, they weren’t big on developing individual personalities, so much as preparing receptive “blanks” for the personalities they would be assigned to impersonate.
Another reason why Cantra might have wished to stay Maelyn tay’Nordif is … her mother.
Maelyn tay’Norif is a pretty fantasy with a real mother who is still alive. While losing Garren is still an open wound in Cantras life.
Even when we and Cantra know that Garren isn’t her biological mother, Garren filled a need in Cantra’s life. Just imagine, all of your relatives being killed and you yourself on the run and then your rescuer offering to be your family. And you never having had a mother before, but always dreaming of being a normal person with a mother. Quite heavy stuff.
Oh Cantra might not always have been a rimmer, but most other aspects of her person might have been real. And I always believed Cantra to be her real name. There was somewhere this story about a halfling Cantra and her brother.
There is a story on Splinter Universe about Cantra and her brother which is set before she was taken on by Garen and which refers to her as “Cantra” — but by definition it’s a story that didn’t end up being included in the series proper, so we can’t necessarily rely on it for details.
One thing that did get said in the series proper, in Crystal Soldier, is that Garen believed that Cantra was her daughter who died before Cantra was born. I always took that to mean that “Cantra yos’Phelium” was the name of the daughter and our Cantra took the name when Garen took her on, but now that I look I don’t seem to see anywhere that comes right out and says that.
So that’s a wash: there doesn’t appear to be any solid evidence either way.