Surebleak Port
Office of the Road Boss
In which people want to talk about voting.
I wonder if the editor of the newspaper is the same printer on Conrad’s turf who started up the first newssheet after his arrival. If so, she seems to have taken to it pretty well.
I’m not surprised that Boss Surebleak has not made a statement beyond the original letter. What does surprise me a bit is that somebody got close enough to Boss Surebleak to get the forceful refusal described in the newspaper. Last I remember hearing, nobody knew exactly who Boss Surebleak was.
The bit about only letting native Surebleakers have a say in the decision seems reasonable. Making the Bosses responsible for saying who’s a valid voter on their turf wouldn’t have worked at all with some of the old bosses, but then again this would never have come up under the old bosses.
(It’s also an argument for the newspaper editor being the printer, as opposed to some experienced newsperson come from away and gotten involved. In a situation like this, you would want the explanation of what’s going on to be coming from a native ‘bleaker.)
I wonder again where this leaves the Bedel. They’ve all been on Surebleak for years, and the younger ones if not all of them were born on Surebleak, but they’ve kept to themselves so there might not be people who can speak to their eligibility. Though some of them, at least, have been out among the gadje long enough, trading and providing services, that there will be people who go, “Oh yeah, that’s Nathan, he’s been around as long as I remember.” So it might come back, again, to whether they want to get involved. It may end up being that the kompani who are staying will vote and the kompani who are going on the ship will stay out of it.
PA: What does surprise me a bit is that somebody got close enough to Boss Surebleak to get the forceful refusal described in the newspaper.
My first read-through, I took at face value the information the editor had written beneath Boss Surebleak’s reprinted letter in the newspaper. But by the second time through, I had decided that the editor was being facetious about both the “forcefully refused” and the”barely broke” off-arm.
btw: I think what tipped me toward deciding it must be merely facetious was the fact that Miri’s immediate reaction to reading it was to grin.
I could see Miri’s grin being a reaction to the understated way the newspaper describes the whole incident, which is very typical of Surebleak (nobody died, so it can’t have been that serious), or to the editor’s sense of Balance.
What I can’t see is the newspaper lying outright about the actions of Boss Surebleak at a time when it’s important for them to be seen as giving accurate and impartial information.