In which a Turtle on urgent business is no trifling thing.
Edger demonstrates that, while the Clutch are not inclined to rush into anything, they’re capable of acting rapidly and decisively when the situation calls for it. And that, if they’re slow to come to a conclusion, that just means that they’ve given it a lot of thought, not that they’re stupid.
Every time we get a mention of Val Con’s minor telekinetic ability, I go back and check the chapter near the end of Mouse and Dragon, and every time the chapter stubbornly continues to be about young Pat Rin being discovered to possess a minor telekinetic ability. I don’t see how that could be the result of a confusion, so I suppose we must take it that they both possess a minor telekinetic ability. I still wonder what happened to Pat Rin’s.
I don’t believe a word of the stuff about electron substitution as a basis for Val Con’s enhanced psychic abilities, by the way, but it’s part of a grand tradition in space opera of using post-Newtonian physics as a handwave for all kinds of entertaining nonsense and I’m prepared to run with it. (Since I’ve raised the subject, though, I’d like to take this opportunity to recommend the essay on What Quantum Physics Is Not from Chad Orzel’s book How to Explain Physics to Your Dog, which is educational, clearly written, and features an evil mirror-universe squirrel with a goatee.)
I’m going “huh”. I reread Agent just a month ago, and am fairly sure the “electronic substitution” was the basis for the Clutch space drive. The drive affected both Val Con and Miriam strongly so long as it was operating.
Yes, the electron substitution effect is the basis of the Clutch space drive, as established back in Chapter Seventeen. In this chapter, Val Con discovers that one of the effects of the drive in operation is that his minor psychic ability is back and stronger than it’s ever been, which he attributes to the electron substitution effect improving the functioning of his brain – which is, speaking strictly scientifically, complete nonsense.
PA: Every time we get a mention of Val Con’s minor telekinetic ability, I go back and check the chapter near the end of Mouse and Dragon
So, you are thinking of Pat Rin with the dice? All I can think of is a scene I read very recently in Chapter the Ninth of “Shan and Priscilla RIde Again” that begins with “Indisputably, the glass was moving. Not, it was true, quickly, or even very much. But it was moving.”
I was rather surprised by the scene, because I’d already forgotten that Val Con had evidenced this ability on the Clutch “ship.”
I’m not convinced that dice listening to Pat Rin is an example of a minor telekinetic ability. It could be his gambler relationship with the Luck. A tiny bit of what Rool Tiazen did when selecting a certain strand of possibility.
While you may correct…in fact I like the idea…that does not preclude the dice scene in Mouse and Dragon from being what PA thought he remembered.
Oh, I was taking about that dice scene in Mouse and Dragon. …
Yes, I understood that you referred to the dice scene in Mouse and Dragon.
Only, I was trying to communicate that even though what the scene actually shows us is Pat Rin’s relationship with the luck (rather than evidence of him or Val Con being a minor wizard), it still could have been the scene Paul *thought* he was remembering (before he went back to check and found that the scene was about Pat Rin).
I hope we are not talking at cross purposes.
Thanks for clarifying. 🙂