Dutiful Passage
In which Padi makes connections and Shan receives news from home.
The looper families Shan mentions are among those who have appeared or been mentioned in the Jethri-era stories: the Smiths were the first family to have norbears travelling with them, the Tragers were friendly with Jethri’s family, and the Wildes did that ill-fated bit of experimenting with Old Tech.
I don’t believe we’ve met Hepster si’Neest before, so we don’t really have grounds to judge whether the suggestion is that they’re conscientious or merely given to complaining. Since they’re abandoning ship, though, I incline toward the latter.
I can’t yet put a name to the face that Padi sees in her sessions with Lady Selph — or is it faces, plural? it might be two faces, of people who bear a familial resemblance but have different eye colours and personalities. The comparison of Priscilla and Moonhawk in the second session seems like it might be hinting that direction. Anyway, one possibility is that the face (or one of the faces) may belong to one of the Haosa, or to the Oracle, whose face we have not yet had described to us. Perhaps, since we know they’re related, one is Asta and the other is Tekelia — but if so, which is which?
Another mention of two hundred years. Coincidence?? Excerpt from Val Con’s letter to Shan, and Shan’s thoughts about it:
yos’Phelium also rejoices in the return of our cousin Jen Sin, whom we had long thought lost.
Shan tapped the screen. “Jen Sin yos’Phelium is dead,” he informed the empty air. “Two hundred Standards dead.”
That’s right, Skip. I was wondering that myself, but I didn’t take the trouble to go look it up.
Yes, I think Trader Isfelm’s parents or grandparents might have known Jen Sin, before he went to the Light. 😉
It would be several-times-great grandparents, I would think, seeing how long the Redlands have been cut off.
But speaking of Jen Sin, one of the first things we learned about him was that he lived in the time when a Jump Pilot’s Ring was a real useful piece of equipment and not just an interesting heirloom, so if Trader Isfelm’s ring is also a Jump Pilot’s Ring she inherited from an ancestor who remained in the Redlands when the Dust cut it off, it would make sense for that to have happened at around the same time.
Excellent, Paul!