In which Tolly Jones gets a new assignment.
I wonder if Tolly’s ever going to learn that Haz isn’t as easy to manipulate as he keeps thinking she is. (I wonder if he’s not letting himself learn it, because the thing he keeps failing to take into account is her connection to him, and processing that would mean thinking about the implications.)
Tolly’s comment, about the Institute trying to make their assets more biddable by designing them to gain satisfaction from being dominated, makes me wonder about Inki. Is she like Tolly, and lacks that attribute? She certainly didn’t seem very satisfied with being dominated by the Institute.
How does Disian know that Tolly is present without asking? Perhaps she and Jeeves have been in touch, one autonomous logic to another; she mentions that she has been discussing the situation with “the Free Ships, and others of our kind”, which would include Jeeves. He could have told her enough about Tolly’s last known situation for her to know, when she encountered Admiral Bunter and Tarigan, that Tolly was likely to be on one or the other.
Tolly being sent to deal with the Tinsori Light changes things up a bit. I wasn’t sure how things were going to proceed at Tinsori Light, with Tocohl the only viewpoint character left, but now the authors are shipping in a new set of viewpoint characters, which opens up possibilities. I picture them arriving at the Light and meeting Tocohl there, perhaps now under the control of the Light…
And/or Director Formyne’s team…
And if we count Haz, that makes three pilots of Korval. Poor, poor Uncle Yuri.
I would count Haz as a pilot of Korval. Even though a little iffy at times.
Tolly is probably slow to learn because he’s aware of his aeleantaza gifts and doesn’t want Haz to feel drawn to him by some false feeling. Maybe he doesn’t know that some higher-level trang (Jela) had anti-aelantaza genes built into their model.
Disian seems to have been looking for Tolly, which means she not only knew that he was on board one of the ships, she knew he would be at this uninteresting bit of space. Unless it was a coincidence finding him here, she must have heard at least indirectly from either Tolly or the Admiral, since they are the only ones who knew where they were going. Presumably the Admiral has been communicating with Jeeves without anyone mentioning it.
Disian was definitely looking for Tolly, but I don’t think I go as far as believing that she knew she would find Tolly at that location before she arrived and saw who was there. Tolly’s internal monologue mentions that it’s a hiding place known to both himself and Disian, so all she needs to know is that Tolly is in danger (which Jeeves might have told her) to have it on the list of places to look for him. We don’t know how many other places she’d looked already, or how many more she still had left to look.
Admiral Bunter might have told Jeeves, but I’m not sure when he’d have the opportunity: he and Tolly didn’t decide where they were retreating to until while they were in Jump to Nostrilia, so the only time Admiral Bunter could have told Jeeves was during the brief and busy period in realspace at Nostrilia, when one rather hopes he was concentrating on what he was doing.
You remind me, though, of something I intended to say in the post but forgot: now that the excitement’s over, Haz will definitely be reporting back to her Captain about what happened and where she and Tolly are going next, and I hope we get to see the delm’s reaction to the news.
Disian has abandoned her crew, and whatever job she’s doing for the Carresens-Denobli to go and look for Tolly. That seems like the kind of thing a responsible person would only do if they expected to find who they were looking for quickly. On the other hand, getting a top mentor to Tinsori Light is important, so maybe she has dropped everything just in the hope of finding him here.
Without commenting on whether or not she does, I’m not sure that Haz necessarily needs to report in: she has orders to escort Tolly to a stable situation which she is still in the process of carrying out. Miri doesn’t strike me as the kind of captain who demands regular progress reports while you are carrying out her orders.
And Haz is an Explorer by training, of course, which means that she’s used to missions where one goes off and does what needs to be done, and never contacts Command except at the end to say that it’s been done.
I was assuming that it would be considered appropriate to let the Captain know that Tolly has been successfully rescued, but on reflection I can see where it could just as easily be argued that it would be premature to do that until she’s got Tolly to that stable situation. I said “now that the excitement’s over”, but the excitement isn’t over yet, really.
A thought has occurred to me about a possible circumstance in which Disian might be well-informed about Tolly’s mission to mentor Admiral Bunter:
We never did get told who it was who recommended Tolly to Jeeves for that job in the first place…
That’s a good point. Something occurred to me as well: Back in Alliance of Equals, Tocohl had heard rumors of an ancient work being reawakened, but we never heard from whom she had heard them. She hasn’t had much time or opportunity to make her own contacts, so presumably it was from someone Jeeves had introduced her to. He’s likely to have introduced her to the free ships, and we know they were discussing it, so that’s another link which might have kept Disian well informed. It also might explain how Disian knew the co-ordinates of Tinsori Light: Tocohl told her.
I also believe that Disian watchet this place (something similar to the watchers Bechimo’s crew uses to inform them on the arrival of the scout ship) – Tolly explictly mentioned that those coordinates were known to him and Disian. So if she was somewhere nearby – she’d likely get informed and goes investigating.
Jeeves and Disian as part of the network of free AI’s helping each other out makes sence. Maybe it was Disian in the first place telling Tolly about Surebleak as a place save from the directors – after having got that info from Jeeves. It will also explain how Jeeves got the Tollys references – especially since Jeeves and Tolly don’t know each other.
I discounted the possibility of Disian coming to the location in response to their arrival, because she arrives almost immediately after they do; there doesn’t seem like time for the news to have reached her and her to have traveled from wherever she was.
PA: How does Disian know that Tolly is present without asking?
I have a different idea about this than I see floated above: I suspect that there is still a connection between Tolly and Disian through the subetherics, and that she was able to “sense” where he was.