Jelaza Kazone
In which the Elders are taking an interest.
Seeing that working Turtles have names like “Edger” and “Sheather”, I wonder what the emissary is going to make of a human named “Shaper”.
I’d have thought that, even by Turtle standards, twelve thousand years would be a bit long to count as “soon”. Though I suppose it also depends on how long they expect the repairs to take: it might be that the work will take thousands of years to finish up, and thus better to get started as quickly as possible.
It’s interesting that the emissary speaks of the fault in the planet’s core as something that was “done to” the planet, rather than it being the result of a natural process. Raises the question of who it might have been done by, and for what purpose. (And reminds me of the sheriekas undermining the timonium-rich planet Vanehald in Crystal Dragon.)
I don’t think we know what the natural lifespan of a Tree is, although I think it’s been said that Jelaza Kazone has reached its full adult growth, so the Elders might be wishing to avoid seeing Jelaza Kazone’s life cut short or they might be thinking ahead to the needs of its children.
Val Con declines to grant Emissary Twelve space in the garden to park her ship…how strange 🙂
Tree’s age: Nobody knows but here are some ideas:
We do not know the typical life span of a Ssussdriad, but Jelaza Kazone is at least 1,000 years old, possibly 1300.
“ Anne sighed, slowly, and shook her head. “It’s the Tree? Jela’s original? …That makes it, what? Nine hundred years old?”
“Somewhat…older, perhaps.” he said. (Local Custom ch 17)
“As best we know, it is in the prime of its life, pilot, and not likely to fall for many, many years.” ( scouts progress ch 26)
And the Tree may have already been around for quite a while before it met Jela: there’s a chapter later in this book where Emissary Twelve says that the Tree is older than the oldest Elder of the Clutch, and in the same scene that even the youngest Elder of the Clutch has been alive longer than Korval has been a Clan.
Really? Wow! Now how old is eldest clutch ?
Thanks Paul, I somehow missed that.
Well, we know the Tree itself is older than Korval, because we were “there” when Jela found what he thought was a sapling. But even as a sapling, we cannot estimate its age, because likely its growth had been inhibited by the condition of the planet, and—I suspect—by its own choice to limit its energy to simple survival.
So, although we now have some relative positions of age, we still cannot determine whether the Clutch themselves were escapees from the Old Universe, can we? Although apparently the Clutch themselves can judge “age” even reaching back into the Old Universe. Or, maybe it’s not that the Clutch can judge the Tree’s age but that the Tree was able to communicate to them its age. As being the Elder, I think that’s more likely.