Tinsori Light
In which the relief arrives.
I feel like there’s another small gap in the narrative here, between where we last saw Tocohl, in control but struggling, and where we find her now, of the kind where I feel there should have been something in between even if it was just a form of “and everything went according to plan”.
Seignur Veeoni takes the situation in her stride — there’s not a lot in this universe that can knock her equanamity, and while one might have thought she’d be put out to arrive for the job she’s spent her entire life preparing for and discover that Korval’s done most of the job for her already, this is the woman who not only acknowledges Korval’s Luck as an objective force but has already tried to use it to her advantage. Her brother, however, I expect to be horrified when he finds out. (Probably she will tell him herself, and not expect nor understand his reaction.) Or perhaps he will be able to find it amusing instead.
And perhaps the luck was on Seignur Veeoni’s side, at that. If the Lyre Institute hadn’t attacked her residence, necessitating the detour to Surebleak, she would probably have gone to Tinsori Light sooner, possibly arriving before Tocohl and Inki. And if she had, how well would she have fared?
I too felt there was something lacking here, and I was disappointed to once again have to do my own connecting (or…leaping might be a better descriptive word).
I look forward to seeing more of Seignur Veeoni in the next book(s). By the way, did anyone else have a problem visualizing this character as female? Her first name reminds me too closely of the Spanish polite form of address for males: Señor.
I wonder what Lyre will do with the fractins. I feel they will appear again in the future.
I agree. It’s not clear, but I supposed the authors intended for Tolly to get some credit for helping Tocohl become more comfortable with her job containing / becoming the Light. A wave of his hand, and voila!
The authors tend to put a lot of detail into social interactions, cultural variations, etc. The actual plot sometimes gets broad brush strokes.
One of the reasons why Tocohl accepts Veeoni’s fratcins so easily is that she has heard about and proparly read her publications about new fratcins for this universe and she belives her to be an independent source (she doesn’t know that Veeoni is the Uncle’s). And to a degree Veeoni’s doing what she prepared for, installing her precious fratcins so that the Light might have full functionallity.
While I had no trouble visualising Veeoni in a female body, she certainly isn’t womanly. I see her as someone with a very specialized and narrow talent (nearly Savant-Syndrom), maybe a further development of Jethri’s sense for fratcins. I don’t think that Veeoni places much import on her gender, she also has no use for emotion. When she tells her brother that she didn’t plan to lose her child, it almost sounded like loosing her hope of rebirth affeced her more, but even so both things as well as the death of some of the Ms don’t seem to weigh much on her – at least not in a way she can express. That made me wonder if she meant a daughter or son or something entirely else, when she used the term child. Also if her work is so consuming and improtant I can’t see her having gotten pregnant.
The way Veeoni’s charakter works I don’t think she could have accepted the mentor and the situation she found the Light to be in so easily without her prior experiance of her plans going awry. Also her time with Aunt Kareen – observing and helping two scientist working in tandem with only barely overlapping fields as well as direkt interaction with Korval and Karval’s scientific branch might have helped.
A main part of Veeoni’s charakter seems to be to look solution-oriented on any newly assessed situation and than act without delay. The outcome of the situation is far more important than who does what.
@Tocohl’s new situation
In Alliance of Eaquals the rumors about the ancient one was one of the things Tocohl asked Tolly and Yo about right after meeting them, the first opportunity she got to talk with them allone and undisturbed. My best guess is that Jeeves at least partly created her to follow that rumor and do something about it, maybe with the dual purpose of
– forward protection of Korval – who of course would have had to act on such knowlage of an awaking great work – in the service of Life.
– learning as much as possible from such an advanced AI without getting corupped himself.
We have to remember that the Tocohl we saw helping the admiral isn’t the same as the one going to the Light. From the moment she decided to accompany Mentor Yo she prepared as a soldier how to protect and save as much as possible of the Light. Seeing the situation the Light was in created her necessity to either help the Light survive the removal of the core comanats or become the Light. Tolly is then only a trusted insturment in achiving her necessity – which makes minuite description on what happend – how to move her into the three craniums or when Veeloni comes on how the fratcins are installed – superficial.
@ Name Seignur Veeoni
You are right. Seigneur (English: Lord, German: Herr), was the name formerly given in France to someone who had been granted a fief by the crown, with all its associated rights over person and property. This form of lordship was called seigneurie, the rights that the seigneur was entitled to were called seigneuriage, and the seigneur himself was the seigneur justicier, because he exercised greater or lesser jurisdiction over his fief.
In common speech, the term grandseigneur has survived. Today this usually means an elegant, urbane gentleman. Some even use it in a stricter sense to refer to a man whose manners and way of life reflect his noble ancestry and great wealth.
Yeah – noble ancestry and great wealth! Veeoni exercising jurisdiction over her fief – I can see that 🙂 And she had been granted KNOWLAGE by the UNCLE with all assorted rights over person and property.
But I can’t find anything to Veeoni. Is it only a nice sound or does it have a meaning or association?
@what Lyre will do with the fractins
I second that. And this isn’t the only open question regarding the Insistitute. What will their reaction to the nor’Pheliums and Admiral Bunters disapearence be? What will they do to regain Tolly? Now that they have realised that they are no longer flying under Korvals radar – will they seek confrontation? Also how intact did they survive migration? They seem to no longer establish lines of their engeneerd humans – and not to use line edits – or do they? Are their directors serial – similar to the Uncle?
And what will the Uncle do with those 2 Lyre agents he has? Or what will those agents do?
One thing I thought of after reading about those false fratcins was that horrorvision of Lyre selling them to DOI or misguided scouts who would try to use them on Bechimo.
I think Bechimo’s safe from corrupted fractins: as Val Con went to some effort to establish in this novel, Bechimo was built in the new universe out of entirely new components, at a time before Seignur Veeoni had discovered how to make new fractins. So his design may have been influenced by memories of what fractins could do, but he doesn’t actually run on fractins, and probably doesn’t have anywhere fractins could plug in.
Although, having said that, I then remembered that in this chapter Seignur Veeoni talks about interfacing fractins and the modern cranium technology together, so perhaps it is technically possible. So maybe the thing to count on instead is that Bechimo and his crew are unlikely to let any fractins of unknown provenance get anywhere near him.
[mod note: For clarity, I have deleted a few comments from this thread, that were Othin having trouble getting a comment to post properly and reactions to same.]
[Also, you may notice that there’s a new upgrade to the commenting system – for five minutes after you submit your comment, there will be a link that lets you edit it, in case you have second thoughts or you’re plagued with spelling errors that hide until the moment after you click the Post Comment button. Hopefully that will help in future situations like this.]
I used the 5-minute edit today. Perfect!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
(In RL, I *am* an editor, and I am indeed quite “plagued [by] spelling errors that hide until the moment after [I] click the Post Comment button! And last week, even senseless comments that misspoke about facts in the stories.)
A friend of a friend of mine coined the term “ohnosecond”, referring to the amount of time that elapses between a person hitting the Post Comment button and the person noticing an error that had been invisible until then and is now impossible to correct.
Regarding the mismade fractins: For all we know, Seignur Veeoni may have designed them for a fatal explosion for whoever attempts to assemble them into a working set. I would not shed a tear for Lyre.
But won’t it be again the agents and not the directors taking the risk? So I’m not sure this accomplishes anything.
Once again, a good point. Perhaps the plot could arrange for a big demo for the directors and take them all out at once?
I’m wondering – Seignur Veeoni referred to the Uncle having done the same thing. When? And what exactly did it accomplish? The defective fratcins – might there be a danger in them – with just some more defects heaped on them of doing something even Veeoni wouldn’t want? I distrust her arrogance.
Also at the beginning of Neogenesis Veeoni wasn’t easy with talking. But when speaking to Aelliana or Tochol and Tolly she was conversing quite normally. Did her stay with Kamelle do such much for her social competence? Or is it just the Uncle she uses her short communication with?
Othin, what do you mean “Seignur Veeoni referred to the Uncle having done the same thing.” WHen did she make this claim?
Just after she’s revealed that she allowed the Lyre Institute to steal a false set of fractins, she says, “It is no more than you have done yourself, you know.” I took her to be making a statement about the general strategy – that the Uncle has in the past also used the trick of allowing an enemy to steal from him something that he deliberately left for them to steal – not that he’s done it specifically with fractins before.
It’s not just the Uncle that she uses her short communication with; she does it with Miri the first time they meet, too. I think the difference with Aelliana, and with Tocohl and Tolly, is that in those conversations she’s in her element, a scholar and expert sharing thought with other scholars and experts.
Thanks, Paul. That’s why I didn’t remember . . . that’s how I interpreted it also. But perhaps Othin is correct!
I don’t necessarily mean fratcins, just that he prepared some tech to be defective and allowed somebody else to take it while that somebody believed to get the real thing. But yes, I’d like to know the story of that.
@ Veeoni’s communication skills
Thanks Paul, for sharing your thoughts on that. So you don’t think she is inapt at communication, just lazy or impatient or insecure when not dealing with her specialty?
My opinion would be that she *is* socially inept. The text goes so far as to describe for us her upbringing, during which she really had no contact with anyone but Uncle, who was teaching her technical matters, not social cues. Likely she does not bother with being “polite,” i.e., following social norms (something very important in Liaden society) because manners—an abstract concept—seem superficial and artificial to her. But, if you get her started on her specialty, there she has a solid ground of both training and knowledge, so she can discuss a wide range of aspects of this topic as if they were concrete.
What Ed8r said, and also: One thing she’s shown to have issues around is her status as an expert. She doesn’t know how to deal gracefully with people who question her conclusions and she doesn’t know how to deal gracefully with people who can’t keep up with her train of thought. Her conversations with her brother have both problems, probably made worse by her feeling that he ought to know better. (Although she handles it better in her last conversation with her brother on Surebleak, which might be a sign that she did learn something from Kareen and Kamele.) In her conversations with Aelliana and Tolly, they accept that she knows what she’s talking about, and they understand what she’s talking about, so those sources of friction are removed.