In which Aelliana meets Daav’s brother and Daav’s sister.
I’m intrigued by the ramifications of Aelliana addressing Lady Kareen in the mode of pilot-to-passenger. It’s understandable that that mode would come to her tongue before whichever tongue is appropriate for delivering a set-down during a social call (even if Aelliana had been taught that mode, I doubt she’s ever had a chance to practice it) but it’s not really appropriate — except possibly in one sense: as the lifemate of Korval Himself, Aelliana shares his melant’i as the Captain whose passengers are every other Liaden, including Lady Kareen. (I wonder if she was standing close enough to Daav at that moment to have unconsciously picked up an intimation of the mode he was restraining himself from using.)
I hadn’t really thought about it, but it makes sense that Anne would have a place for work at the University, perhaps working with people she’s met through her work finishing Scholar yo’Kera’s book. Certainly she’s not the type to just sit about the house all day. The reason I might not have thought of it, I think, is that I wouldn’t have expected the University of Liad to be accepting of a Terran, but perhaps it helps that she is of Korval as well.
There are several grace notes I love in this chapter, including the cameo by Shan’s Mouse and Mr pak’Ora’s evident relief at not being required to remain in the same room as Lady Kareen.
“except possibly in one sense: as the lifemate of Korval Himself, Aelliana shares his melant’i as the Captain whose passengers are every other Liaden, including Lady Kareen”
Sorry, I do not see this at all. She is not, yet, the lifemate, and if she was, then she would also be Delm. In which case a) she most likely would have used Delm to clan member mode and b) the foremost expert on the Code would have have used a different mode in addressing her.
Yeah, that’s admittedly a stretch, which is why I hedged with “possibly” and might should have hedged with something stronger. It also gets tangled in the question of the distinction between lifemates-in-truth and lifemates-in-law.
But do you have a better explanation for why Aelliana settled on that mode? And why the foremost expert on the Code let her get away with it?
As far as why the foremost expert on the Code let her get away with it, I think we can comment based on other books in the series. Lady Kareem is not a pilot despite being a member of Korval. She was her the Delm’s first born and should have been the heir were she to have been a pilot. I can’t remember, but I feel like even Luken bel’Tarda (the minor line that Korval was forced to incorporate) has a class 3 pilot’s license. In Clan Korval pilots are everything and therefor anyone who is not a pilot is, to an extent, nothing. And that’s something Lady Kareem has always been painfully aware of. She took refuge in the Code to establish herself as a person of worth because she felt she had none.
So, as all members of Liad are passengers, Aelliana spoke to Kareem as pilot-to-passenger it would have been an painfully unsubtle rebuke. A jab at Lady Kareem’s most vulnerable spot.. which she *must* accept because it is utterly, technically correct. Aelliana is a Pilot in the heart of Clan Korval where any pilot, no matter how low, will out rank a mere passenger.
That’s an interesting interpretation, and very Liaden. I think it might be subject to the same objections, though, as depending on Kareen accepting Aelliana as Daav’s lifemate and delmae, because surely the mode of pilot-to-passenger is only appropriate when a pilot is addressing her own passengers. I can’t imagine it would be correct for a pilot to go into some other pilot’s ship and address that pilot’s passengers in such a way. And Kareen might be a passenger, but she’s Korval’s passenger.
Aelliana argues that Daav did no more than his duty in rescuing her. Her basis for that claim can only be that, as her co-pilot, he had a responsibility for her safety. She must therefore be arguing from her melanti as pilot. I’m guessing that one of the points of the different modes in high Liaden is to make clear which melanti you’re speaking from: since Aelliana is speaking from the melanti of pilot, she needs to use pilot-to-something. But how many pilot-to-something modes can there be? I’d guess that there are sufficiently few that pilot-to-passenger, even if not the perfect choice, is close enough that Kareen saw no point in arguing about it. Note that ‘pilot-to-passenger’ is an English translation of the name of the mode, which may not have perfectly captured its scope.
My understanding of mode is that it’s determined by who’s taking part in the conversation, not what the topic of the conversation is: a person describing an action she took in her melant’i as a pilot would use a pilot mode in some circumstances, such as if she were making a report to a port official, but wouldn’t in others, such as if she were telling a friend about it over dinner.
Re-reading the chapter, I think Kareen initially doesn’t say anything about Aelliana’s choice of mode because she’s too surprised (by the mode, by fact that this person is speaking up in defence of Daav) to make a quick response, and then once she’s gathered her wits she lets it pass because she’s picking her battles and she’s more interested in the battle she wants to have with Daav.
You may well be right, but note that Kareen doesn’t ignore this attack on her, and go back to berating Daav, but leaves, which suggests that she’s not merely moving back to her main topic, but has at some level accepted the defense offered.
To expand my own suggestion, I agree that Aelliana could have said ‘Excuse me, you appear to unaware that Daav is my co-pilot, and was acting in that melanti to rescue me last night’, in adult-to-adult. But her attitude is much more ‘how dare you, who doesn’t understand the issues involved, criticize my co-pilot, who was acting correctly’. And that means she needs to use pilot-to-passenger.
No, I understand that that’s what you meant, I just don’t agree with it. (And I’m going to stop there, because when I let myself get into the “Everyone would agree with me if they just understood what I was saying!!!” headspace, it tends to cause more problems than it fixes.)
@ appropriateness of Aelliana addressing Lady Kareen in the mode of pilot-to-passenger
I believe it is appropriate – and not only because Er Tom’s ‘well played Pilot’. Kareen sees the invasion into clan Mizel in a social frame. Aelliana tells the passenger (she clearly recognized that in Kareen) not to interfere in a pilot matter. Of course the invasion into Mizel is both – pilot priorities clashing with social iniquities.
Which of course is how Aelliana’s relationship with Kareen starts of on the wrong footing – an interloper reminding Kareen of her failure.
But in what sense does Kareen qualify as a passenger? And, specifically, as Aelliana’s passenger?
Changing to your other subject, I think a university job for Anne makes sense, because scholars and professors are typically more liberal and tolerant than the general citizenry.
More liberal-minded perhaps, i.e., intellectually liberal, but would you really say more tolerant? The entire society on Delgado is ruled by scholars…who are anything but tolerant/? And I would say that the authors are merely extrapolating from what they’ve observed themselves.
@Paul
There is no sense in which Kareen is Aelliana’s passenger. But the question is, does Liaden distinguish between Pilot-to-Person-uninvolved-in-running-the-ship,-but-who-is-a-passenger and Pilot-to-Person-uninvolved-in-running-the-ship,-and-who-is-not-a-passenger-either ?
If it does then pilot-to-passenger is clearly inappropriate. But if it combines the two, (and the mode is called pilot-to-passenger when translated into English) then it doesn’t matter that Kareen is not a passenger when deciding whether Pilot-to-passenger is appropriate.
The extreme lack of utility of the second mode, combined with the similarity of the two from the speakers point of view, suggests to me that the two are combined.
Thanks James that is my thought. In this situation Aelliana is not yet identifying with Korval, just with Daav. Therefor Kareen cannot be her passenger – only a passenger.
If a non-pilot wanted to go into a room where pilots are playing bowli ball – the warn-away would be also pilot to passenger.
I think you’re both conflating “passenger” with “non-pilot” in a way that goes against how Liaden modes work.
The whole point of modes is that they are specific, embodying the relation between two particular people in a particular situation. If the mode is “pilot to passenger”, that means that the first person is a pilot and that the second person is the pilot’s passenger and that they’re discussing something where those two facts are both relevant.
There can’t be any such mode as “Pilot-to-Person-uninvolved-in-running-the-ship,-and-who-is-not-a-passenger-either”, because that’s not specific. Forget about what the person isn’t, and specify what the person is — mechanic? customs official? pizza delivery person? Then you’ll know what mode is called for, and it won’t be pilot-to-passenger.
There also can’t be any such mode as “pilot to a passenger”. Pilot-to-passenger must necessarily be pilot-to-the-pilot’s-passenger, otherwise there exists no relationship, and some other mode is called for. (The alternative to “pilot addressing own passenger” is “pilot addressing another pilot’s passenger”, otherwise known as “pilot being an interfering busybody”, which is against the Code and would surely not have a mode set aside for it.)
If a non-pilot wanted to go into a room where pilots are playing bowli ball, I doubt that the warn-away would be pilot-to-passenger, even if the non-pilot actually was a passenger of the pilot giving the warn-away. There must be a more specifically appropriate mode — I would guess perhaps a version of “expert speaking on her subject to a non-expert”.
I agree that my already too long mode description was insufficiently specified. You’re right that there has to be a reason that it’s pilot-to something. What I had missed from my description was that (if it’s right, and I accept that it may not be) the person addressed must have just done something to make the fact that the speaker is a pilot relevant. So I see it as the mode that a pilot uses to tell their passenger why the ship can’t do what the passenger has just proposed, or to defend their co-pilot (or another crew member) from ill-informed criticism.
So the person addressed doesn’t literally need to be a passenger, but they must be unrelated to running the ship, and the relationship between them is that the person addressed has just said or done something that the pilot interprets as telling them (incompetently) how they should pilot. Pilot-to-intefering-busybody perhaps.
This would mean that pilot-to-passenger is not the mode used to make announcements like ‘We’ll be taking off shortly, and will arrive in Rome about 5 minutes earlier than scheduled’, which is an argument against my interpretation.
Actually, I think my previous comment was too restrictive. The additional clause wouldn’t have to be that the ‘passenger’ had made the the pilot’s being a pilot significant to the the discourse, it would be enough that the pilot being a pilot was significant to the discourse.
So, pilot-to-passenger is inappropriate to a custom’s officer, because either he’s inspecting your ship, in which case he’s involved in running the ship, or he’s not in which case it’s irrelevant that you’re a pilot. It’s inappropriate to a mechanic for parallel reasons. It’s inappropriate to a pizza delivery guy unless he’s just criticized the way your ship is on the landing pad, because except in those circumstances it doesn’t matter that you’re a pilot.
But it would be appropriate for announcements of arrival time, because it matters that you’re a pilot when you make them.
To go back to the original topic that started this thread, if there were a mode called pilot-to-interfering-busybody, I think that that would have been the correct mode for Aelliana to address Kareen in. But I think that that mode is unlikely to exist, and is subsumed into pilot-to-passenger.
You’ve argued your way back around to “passenger” meaning “non-pilot not otherwise specified”, which I can’t accept. The word “passenger” means something; a passenger has certain rights from, and responsibilities to, the pilot.
I can see the need for a mode encompassing “pilot explains matters to a non-pilot who has criticised their course of action”. (Perhaps the mode of expert to non-expert, which has been mentioned in the novels?) I do not believe, and will not be persuaded, that pilot-to-passenger would be appropriate for that purpose unless the non-pilot was actually a passenger.
As the “fixer” of the ven’Tura tables, wouldn’t Aelliana essentially be a pilot to anyone who relies on ships in some way (especially Korval)? In that sense, all of Liad would essentially be her passengers.