Shipyear 65
Tripday 155
Fourth Shift
20.00 hours
In which Priscilla learns a thing or two about Shan.
The detail about Priscilla’s shirt caught my eye on this reading: one of those little things that might escape one’s notice if one hadn’t got the background detail about the way she used to dress back on Sintia.
It appears that there are, after all, creatures other than the norbears in the pet library; though I confess I haven’t the slightest idea what a sylfok might be.
Shipyear 65
Tripday 155
Third Shift
14.00 hours
In which Priscilla accepts a promotion.
Priscilla’s grasp of Liaden communication is improving. Not only does she have a repertoire of useful hand gestures for sentiments like Think nothing of it, this time she is able to separate her friend Shan from her boss Captain yos’Galan.
This is the first time Priscilla has thought of Moonhawk, at least where we could hear her, since she witnessed Moonhawk being declared dead, way back in the first chapter.
Is this the only time in the series Priscilla mentions a sibling?
Shipyear 65
Tripday 155
Third Shift
12.30 hours
In which there are consequences of the encounter at the jump point.
When Kayzin Ne’Zame suggests to Shan that Priscilla should be promoted to second mate, I suspect that’s Shan being a trader and allowing himself to be reluctantly persuaded into the course of action he already wanted to take.
This chapter contains a hint that there’s an actual practical reason for Shan to carry that glass of wine with him everywhere. As he told Priscilla, he does drink from it sometimes. The rest of the time is perhaps so that the times when he needs it don’t stand out, to give away something that might produce a disadvantage.
Shipyear 65
Tripday 155
Third Shift
12.00 hours
In which Gordy becomes a tree.
A little domestic interlude before the crew meeting, which is no doubt going to have Consequences.
I like the part where Lina is watching Priscilla at work. It adds to the ongoing thing of Priscilla’s friends learning about her, and it’s also a nice example of the technique of having a character compare an unfamiliar thing with a thing that’s familiar to the character but not so much to the reader, and thereby show the reader more about both things.
Shipyear 65
Tripday 155
Second Shift
6.00 hours
In which Sav Rid Olanek makes a countermove.
Just one of those details one notices: Near the beginning of the chapter, Priscilla wishes she might be told that she’d done something well, rather than the second mate’s understated “okay”. By the end of her chapter, she’s got her wish, although (as is so often the case with wishes) in circumstances that she might happily have foregone if given the choice.
One wonders precisely what instructions the mercenaries were given that their captain summarized as “he wanted you out of the race real bad”. I’d be inclined to assume that meant shoot-to-kill, but we were told earlier that death is not usually considered an appropriate way to achieve Balance, and I don’t think Sav Rid’s that far gone yet. Is he?
Shipyear 65
Tripday 155
First Shift
4.00 hours
In which preparations are made for departing Arsdred.
Shan apparently has an alarm clock set so that hitting the snooze button makes it try even harder to wake him. There are days when I could do with one of those.
Shipyear 65
Tripday 148
Fourth Shift
20.00 hours
In which even a Mendoza of Sintia must deal with graceless people at parties.
Though Priscilla welcomes the intercession of Mr dea’Gauss and Judge Zahre as divine intervention, she might reasonably be inclined to doubt that that was what it was after it results in Ambassador Grittle’s outburst. And yet, I wonder; we know from the Moonhawk stories that the Goddess is not averse to steering her children through uncomfortable moments on the path to good outcomes, so it’s possible that there was a divine intervention and that the outburst was as much an intended part of it as the intercession. (Indeed, there are times when I suspect that the entire course of Priscilla’s life from that day in Diablo’s has been part of divine plan that we have yet to see the end of. It’s a hard road she’s been walking, but certain people seem to have spent the last few centuries building roadblocks over all the easy ones.)
Speaking of roadblocks, I take it that Shan’s shadowed expression in the last scene of the chapter is due to the reminder that, for all that they’re able to be comfortable and joke together, Priscilla still thinks of him first of all as Captain yos’Galan, with all the limits that implies on how they might interact. If she’d understood that she had the option of replying to her friend Shan instead of to her captain, and if she’d chosen to exercise that option, the conversation might have proceeded very differently.
Shipyear 65
Tripday 148
Fourth Shift
17.00 hours
In which Priscilla’s sister offers her a gift.
This chapter heading offers a couple of puzzles.
In the first place, it’s now the following day and yet also still the day of the ambassadorial reception — but I think I have that figured out: though the previous chapter begins on Tripday 147, it’s not unlikely that Mr dea’Gauss found enough work to keep him busy through several shifts, so that the final scene of the chapter (“much later, after the inspectors had left for the night”) is actually early on Tripday 148. And it’s in the final scene that Shan says that the reception will be later the same day.
The other puzzle, which I have no such satisfying solution for, is that it says both “Fourth Shift” and “17.00 hours”, which doesn’t work in either my favourite or my less-favoured models of the Passage‘s shift system. In fact, I believe there is no way of dividing the day into four equal shifts that would place 17.00 hours in the fourth shift.
Unless.
Unless, for some reason, the shift times are offset so that the change from one day to the next occurs not at shift change but during a shift. A 24-hour day divided into 6-hour shifts fits the available data — if the first shift begins with the last hour of the previous day. Second shift from 5.00 to 11.00, third shift from 11.00 to 17.00, fourth shift from 17.00 to 23.00, first shift from 23.00 to 5.00. It even accommodates chapther 10 without any need of fudging.
(But at this point I won’t be surprised if another chapter later on fails to fit this model, too.)
Shipyear 65
Tripday 147
Third Shift
15.00 hours
In which Mr dea’Gauss gets to work.
So, about three days to get from Liad to Arsdred in a hurry. (Dutiful Passage, I think someone said in a recent chapter, has taken about four months to get to Arsdred, but it was going the scenic route and stopping places for days or weeks along the way.)
The exchange rate for Terran bits to cantra is still (or again?) 35,000 to 1, as it was in Balance of Trade.
There are a remarkable number of ambassadors on board the Passage at present. Apparently, they’re here for an ambassadorial reception, but it says something about the ship’s melant’i, that it’s able to hold ambassadorial receptions — and more, that so many are in attendance when the ship is still in lockdown, with nobody allowed on board without specific authorization. (I get the impression from the ambassadors who have had speaking parts that some of them have come specifically because of the ship’s present situation, to show solidarity.)
Arsdred Port City
Midday Bazaar
In which Mr dea’Gauss arrives on the scene.
I don’t think there was ever a time when I didn’t like Mr dea’Gauss. This was my first introduction to him, and he makes a good impression right out of the gate.
Incidentally, he’s about seventy Standards of age, here. That’s not as old for a Liaden as it would be for one of us, but it’s old enough for a distaste for being flung across the galaxy at high speed to be quite understandable. (Though given his personality I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr dea’Gauss has had a distate for being flung precipitously across the galaxy at every age.)
It’s difficult to estimate just how speedily he’s been flung from Liad to Arsdred, since the chapter heading doesn’t include a date; that will have to wait until Mr dea’Gauss arrives on Dutiful Passage and the chapter heading returns to Shipyears and Tripdays.