Solcintra
In which some details are hammered out.
Of all the familiar names that unexpectedly turn up in the duology, dea’Gauss is probably my sentimental favourite. (Although I feel moved to note that he’s not as accomplished a contract-wrangler as his descendant, if that’s not too obvious a thing to be worth saying; I can’t imagine the modern Mr dea’Gauss letting a clause get past him that was so ambiguous as to support several centuries of dispute about its interpretation.)
Another amusing thing in this chapter is the list of things the Solcintrans avoid using: genetic engineering, AI, mobile phones — in short, all the technologies whose absence might have caused a reader in 2006 to regard the twenty-year-old future established in Agent of Change as a bit dated.
(That said, it makes sense for a culture who use body language so heavily as the Liadens do to not make much use of mobile phones. You can’t bow properly over a mobile phone.)
Perhaps the ambiguity that escaped Cantra’s dea’Guass is easier to see in hindsight. His descendant has all the experience of his ancestor to instruct him.
Nalli Olanek is facing up to harsh realities, which she has been held from before by High House edict that anything “techy ” will be shunned. She’s doing a pretty good job, considering her background. Of course, Cantra is clearly not going to compromise one bit, though she’s not (now) being harsh about it.
Thank you for making this observation. I’ve often wondered why Liadans don’t engage in artificial insemination, incubation, or even simple surrogacy contracts when their contract marriages are known to cause distress. Or at least, when the parties of a contract marriage must generally be visited by a healer to ease them out of the marriage. That seems inefficient, doesn’t it? But it would make sense that the culture continues a distaste for genetic engineering since they come from a universe were batchers and kobolds and smartstrands are a common and loathed thing.
I have wondered if Solcintra’s original high house leaders would have been quite as intolerant, rigid, and anti-innovation as the elevated servant class became. In English aristocracy, the servants were depicted as more rigidly puritan than their “betters” (and the “so-called high houses,” feeling they had big shoes to fill, might have overcompensated).
Yet “no one ever wanted to visit Solcintra” because it was unwelcoming to foreigners, and even before the true high houses lifted, Cantra and Uncle were attacked in that restaurant for Uncle wearing smart strands.
So the groundwork for intolerance was always there, but the nouveau-rich high class might have magnified it.
And in this chapter we’re speaking in terms of “galaxy” again…although since it’s Cantra explaining things to Speaker Olanek, I supposed she could be forgiven for sticking to the neighborhood concept instead of trying to talk about other neighborhoods.
The phrase “pilot’s tea” is used here, not for the first time. What do others think this is, from the description? We get the adjectives “strong” and “sweet,” so we know that much, but what about leaf? Are we talking about true tea here? Or is it some other infusion? In our world people refer to “herbal tea” even though this is not truly tea.
And while we’re discussing it, how about other mentions of “tea” throughout the series. Is it supposed to be different growths and blends of the tea we know: Camellia sinensis? Or are the authors using a word familiar to us to name something else entirely?
@ Ed8r I assumed it was the authors using a word familiar to us to name something else. Rather like Borril was an animal that occupied the “dog” niche on Vandar.