Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which Lionel Smealy has a deal for the Road Boss.

There’s a lot of cultural misunderstanding in this chapter; it becomes apparent long before Lionel actually comes into the presence of the Road Boss that he’s setting himself up for failure, and it’s largely because he keeps trying to interpret the Liadens as if they were members of his own culture. In fact, this chapter reminds me a lot of the one in I Dare where Jim Snyder the insurance man completely failed to deal with the newly-arrived Conrad – which is not a complaint, in case it sounded like one. It shows that Jim and Lionel come from a common cultural context, one that has not disappeared from the Surebleak cultural mix just because the mix has had a heap of Liadens dumped into it.

The fact that his entire plan is founded on the common misapprehension that Val Con is Conrad’s younger brother doesn’t help either, of course. When you’re trying to make someone a deal they can’t refuse, it helps to actually know who you’re dealing with.

Although I see how a group of people used to operating in a laissez-faire environment might find the imposition of load size limits annoying, I kind of get the feeling that that’s not really the issue. It occurs to me that a lorry running the full length of the Road at midnight might have other reasons for not wanting to have its load inspected than just the question of its size.