Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak
In which there are conversations on the way to dinner.
Luken’s reassurance to Theo – “You are among kin, now, and the House will be vigilant for you” – has, I think a double meaning. On one level, it’s the same thing people have been saying ever since she was invited to guest, that the house has good security and she’ll be protected from physical danger; on another level, I think it’s a reminder that as her kin it’s within their melant’i to protect her from the less obvious dangers attendant on making a social error.
It belatedly occurs to me that Jeeves has lately been referred to only as the head of house security, and not as a butler; of course this makes sense, since Trealla Fantrol no longer has need of a butler and at Jelaza Kazone the job is already ably filled by Mr pel’Kana.
It’s said of Luken that he is “grandfather to no one in this room”, which is less definite than I thought I remembered, leaving open the possibility that he has grandchildren elsewhere. One thing we can say about them, if they exist, is that they’re not counted as children of Korval, or they’d have appeared on a roster by now or been mentioned somewhere in all the arrangements resulting from the declaration of Plan B; perhaps their parent, Luken’s child, married out of the clan.
The scene with Pat Rin and Penn at the end seems like a bit of abrupt shift after the rest of the chapter, but I notice a thing which ties the scenes together (apart from them presumably happening on the same evening): the one scene has Theo remembering to be polite among Liadens by not shaking hands, and the other scene has Pat Rin remembering to be polite among Terrans by shaking hands.
In theory Luken bel’Tarda had a grown child at the time of Local Custom and then had another child for Korval with Syntebra el’Kemin in Er Thom’s place. Is bel’Tarda just going to die off as a line?
Bechimo seems certain that Jeeves is mistaken, muddled, about once having been an Admiral. I follow his reasoning, but for one sentence. Excerpt:
“….the one calling himself Jeeves, security for Clan Korval, once security for an entire world, and before that, the surety of an empire. Archives suggested that the admirals had been destroyed. Bechimo set match programs working, comparing archives with the information Jeeves had shared. …No doubt that Jeeves was old, even if he had been mistaken about having been an Admiral. It was Bechimo’s working memory that Jeeves had been attached to an admiral, likely as a secretary. Such an adjunct would have required sentience, yet craved the guidance of a more powerful mind….On low power, under-maintained, abandoned. Uneasy dreams might be born of such times…Dillusions might easily lodge in the mightiest of minds. Admiral or amanuensis, Jeeves was undoubtedly old, his data deep, and his ability to cross-reference astonishing.”
Anyway…so, it’s the “working memory” line that strikes discord. Bechimo wasn’t alive when Jeeves was an admiral, so he would have no memory of it, working or long-term. In chapter 1, Ghost Ship, Bechimo himself implies that he is only 500 years old, roughly. “In more than five hundred standard years, no one on the approved list had requested entry.”
Yet in Ghost Ship chapter 3, Theo reflects on Jeeves, recalling from school that three Admirals — tactical AIs — were built for the Terran Wars, “seven hundred years ago, or more”
Meanwhile, Jeeves tells Val Con and Theo that he is concerned for Bechimo’s state of mind, alone all these centuries, and hiding. Lol.
In my copy of the book (the Baen e-edition), the phrase used is “working theory”, which makes the whole thing make much more sense.
Huh. I listened to the audiobook. It sure sounds like memory to me. Theory is perfect.