Civilization
In which Bentamin receives some good news from his aunt.
The Trade Council meeting shows that Shan was right about there being opportunities for trade in the Redlands System: even if they don’t manage to set anything up in the way of physical trade goods, they have something to offer in the way of up-to-date information about routes and conditions in the wider galaxy.
One paragraph gives us a couple of things to keep an eye on as the story progresses: Trader Isfelm’s big, showy ring (a Trader’s ring? a Jump-pilot’s ring? a clan ring?), and the research station she mentions (presumably researching the Dust, but on whose behalf?).
Apparently, my first reaction was right and that was Ren Zel sealing off the old universe. I guess travel time from Langlast to Millsap ate up more of Neogenesis than I realised.
I’m beginning to see why this plot strand might have been such a problem to interweave with the others. The authors had enough trouble balancing the two plot-important strands of Neogenesis‘s climax without adding a third that arguably didn’t contribute anything more than the people on Dutiful Passage looking around and wondering what that noise was. (Especially since, to set up the moment with the stylus, they would have had to also include everything else that preceded it.) And now, as Accepting the Lance gets underway, Dutiful Passage is off to explore new worlds and new civilisations, so it seems unlikely that they’ll be interacting with the ongoing plot back on Surebleak or the further adventures of Rys’s heist crew. (Although Tarona Rusk might do some more direct interaction with the latter, if she shows up again this book.)
This chapter says that the nav charts are more than two hundred standards old. So that could be how long the Dust kept the Redlands hidden from the rest of space. Aren’t the Jethri books set approximately 200 years ago?
So (MAYBE) that 200 years old bit means the trader with the big showy ring (Isfelm) was born in the dust and inherited it from a parent who got dust-bound and stranded in the Redlands. I’m wondering if clan Korval or rabbit Ixin had an Isfelm in their ancestry. Is Isfelm mentioned in Jethri books? Perhaps it’s a frequently given family name.
The Jethri books are set around 275 years before the series present. That’s consistent with the Redlands being in the Dust for around two hundred years. (The effects of the Dust were just starting to be noticed in the Jethri books, so it might have taken a few more decades for the Redlands to be cut off, which would account for Isfelm saying “two hundred years” instead of a higher number.)
I am inclined to agree that the ring is likely to be an inheritance from an ancestor who used to travel more widely. This is the first time the name of Isfelm has appeared in the series.
Thanks much. I couldn’t remember and was just going on memory — admittedly too lazy to check for myself.
I really enjoyed finding out the origins of the name “Isfelm” later in this book.