Bechimo
Crew Lockers
In which news is received of absent friends.
There I go again: the question I asked last entry is immediately answered, and not in the way I expected.
I had assumed, as Theo did, that the Uncle had been placed under ban before Bechimo took off. I don’t know about Theo, but in my case it was a consequence of also assuming that once Bechimo took off he had no further communication with the Builders.
If the Uncle was placed under ban after he told Bechimo to keep clear, one obvious possibility is that that’s why he was placed under ban.
Bechimo‘s first crew might well be regarded as kin to the Uncle in that they inherited the work of his kinsman Arin. I wonder if they’re more literally kin, too. There were a lot of kinship ties between the old ship families, not necessarily accompanied by something as immediately apparent as a family name. (We don’t know the first crew’s family name, but Bechimo does, and I assume he’d have mentioned if there were a connection that obvious.)
I don’t expect to get a definite answer to that question in this book, since it’s more concerned with Bechimo‘s second crew and their present. I was going to say that the story of the first crew might make an interesting book on its own, or perhaps as part of a sequel to the Jethri books, but even the little we know about what happened to them doesn’t make for much prospect of a happy ending.
For some reason, it was not until this second reading for me that discovery of the personal names came home to me. The first times through, the people’s names were merely information: “Oh, now we know about the original crew.” It wasn’t until my second reading that I felt some of the weight of this discovery.
PA: after he told Bechimo to keep clear.
But it was actually Jermone Joyita who issued the initial emergency order, right? And then Yuri Tomas, aka the Uncle, gave the confirmation that Bechimo‘s crew were no longer available to him. The fact that it was both of them who ordered Bechimo into full emergency mode indicates to Clarence that the crew was already “lost.” I’m actually glad this is the case, because it does not leave us suspicious of the Uncle’s motives. In fact, it rather leaves me suspicious about the motives of the other Founders! And meanwhile, wondering whether the original crew were the ancestors of the Bedel who are now on Surebleak.