To Perfection
In which Aberthaz Ferry utilises all of her potential.
There are several things that “off the board” could mean, but that was pretty much the one I was expecting.
To Perfection
In which Aberthaz Ferry utilises all of her potential.
There are several things that “off the board” could mean, but that was pretty much the one I was expecting.
I was confused by the description of the fortress: “a small, rocky worldlet” with a structure that “glittered and gleamed as if it were made of crystal.” Initially I was even confused about “which” Commander this was, I guess because we’d been doing so much switching back and forth in this book that my brain was dizzy and disoriented.
So okay, this one was the evil commander, but . . . what was this “fortress”? Do we assume that it was merely an illusion that Aberthaz Ferry had constructed for the Commander’s benefit? Or was this a real place she had found to be destroyed? If it’s a real place, could this have been the tertiary transfer point (killing 2 birds with one stone)? Or would the Commander have recognized that—whatever and wherever it is? Because her perception was described using the imagery of crystal, I had even wondered if Aberthaz Ferry had found a way to go into the Old Universe, but that was because I hadn’t taken the comments by the Old Tech devices—saying that a universe had died—as fact, and also had glossed over Ferry telling Theo she didn’t know how to fold space like Tinsori Light. In any case . . . what do we think it was?
I don’t know why it looks crystaline, but that crystal structure on the worldlet was one of three evil WORKS, the recruiting station at Hols Senneth, which presumably is the name of the rocky planetoid. Several chapters earlier, Ferry tells Bechimo:
“There were certain artifacts that crossed in the Migration which should not have been able to do so, but which did no harm here—and thus I averted my gaze. Of those with the potential, and the will, to do harm in this universe, there were three. One was the great Light which had been at Tinsori. Another was the recruiting station at Hols Senneth. The third was the World Eater Glyeth, whom I searched out and destroyed.” ……
“The recruiting station has recently been activated and so, at last, I have its location. Nullifying it will be my final act. I regret that the eradication of the great Light must fall to others. I do not doubt that you, your Bond-Captain, and your crew are its equal, but it will be a battle for the songs, even depleted as it must be.”
Yes I also assumed that the recruiting station at Hols Senneth is the same as the fourth transfer point, since all descriptions of the “Three” we have gotten were from its inside not the outside view. But I’m still not sure if the kind of collision Aberthaz Ferry is doing is destroying it or doing something else.
But then I’m still unsure about Aberthaz Ferry being a hero or a double agent. A’m I thinking about this to complicated?
Skip, don’t you think that the recruiting station at Hols Senneth must be the fourth transfer point, the one that Claidyne says was actually the original one? The fact that Aberthaz Ferry searched it out and named it as an evil WORK indicated to me that it must be the one that came from the Old Universe prepared to trap the unwary. But then didn’t Claidyne and Rys leave the stationkeeper still there when they left? See . . . I’m still all turned around and disconnected!
Othin, I don’t know whether your thinking is too complex, but I had similar thoughts (see above) in the sense that I was not originally convinced that destruction was the final goal. Now I’m not so sure.
My interpretation of the scene is that this is the quaternary transfer point, the original, which is also the Work that Aberthaz Ferry knows as the recruiting station at Hols Senneth, and that Aberthaz Ferry’s purpose is destruction: the removal of two hazards — the recruiting station and its current human avatar — and incidentally a quick and meaningful end for Aberthaz Ferry herself, who would otherwise be facing a long slide into senility.
The description of a small, rocky worldlet with crystalline structures fits with what little description of the quaternary transfer point we got when Claidyne and Rys visited it in chapter Three.
Ed8r, the quaternary transfer point is unmanned, which I take it is one of the reasons Claidyne and Rys went to it instead of the tertiary. The station Claidyne and Rys visit later, where they meet the acting stationmaster and learn about what the Healers have been up to, is at another location.
What Paul said. And I think Ferry totally destroyed it. Kaboom. V-strike.
If the fourth transfer point really was the recruiting station that would fit as it recruited the Commander by rewriting his/her brain.
“The recruiting station has recently been activated” – was this the recent Download of the Commander?
I take it that the recent activation was when Claidyne downloaded the Commander, yes.
I wonder if that means that the Department, when they downloaded the Commander, had precautions against detection that Claidyne either didn’t know about or didn’t bother with.
…actually, there’s one precaution we do know about: building other transfer points, which could be used without revealing the location of the original recruiting station (such as when Iridyce sen’Ager went to the secondary for her promotion to Commander). It’s possible that Claidyne’s visit is the first time the recruiting station’s been fully active in centuries – maybe even since it recruited the first Commander of Agents – which would explain why Aberthaz Ferry has had trouble finding it.