In which Val Con and Miri are not getting much sleep tonight.
Chapter 20 is shaping up to be a long chapter, to the point that I’m almost wondering if I need to subdivide the sections even further. Makes sense, though, since this is the chapter where a whole bunch of plot strands come together, not just from this book but from the four books preceding it.
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Repair Bug
In which the Pathfinders offer assistance.
…or the other thing could happen, which is that they think Theo is a pirate. Which I can see how that might seem like a reasonable consideration, from their point of view.
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Bechimo
Wyrd Space
In which Bechimo‘s crew find a solution to a problem.
In the first proper chapter, we return to the crew of Bechimo, who are still where we left them, in the wyrd space with the mysteriously-appeared ship Spiral Dance.
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Bechimo
In which Bechimo is concerned for the safety of his crew.
We lead off immediately with the important news: despite Bechimo’s concerns about the Remastering Unit being affected by the Department’s attack, Win Ton is all right.
Well, okay, the important news is that Bechimo is still in one piece, but that’s pretty much implicit in the news about Win Ton, right?
(As the chapter progresses, though, there are hints that maybe Win Ton’s recovery wasn’t entirely unaffected.)
I’d like to know a bit more about how Bechimo “extrapolated this location”. It makes sense that a place like this wouldn’t be somewhere you’d be able to learn the co-ordinates of from piloting records – for that matter, if the main appeal of it is that nobody else can find it, being able to find the co-ordinates in piloting records would be a disqualification – but extrapolated from what? while seeking the answer to what question?
Frenzel
Chaliceworks Aggregations
In which Theo counts her blessings.
The placement of the scene with Kamele says something about the authors’ priorities. If it had appeared a few chapters ago, it would have contrasted obviously (perhaps a bit too obviously?) with the scene at Jelaza Kazone which reminds us that the person Kamele is going to Surebleak to see isn’t there, and nobody knows when he’ll be back. Placed here, it instead invites the reader to compare and contrast the strong-mindedness of mother and daughter. It also gives context, for readers who didn’t know it or had forgotten, for Theo’s musings about her family in the following scene.
Bechimo
In which Bechimo gets his first introduction to Theo’s family.
Bechimo still hasn’t got the memo about being safe, but I suspect on some level he’s aware that Theo has a point and is being stubborn about it; the interplay with the Protocol module strikes me as the AI version of “knows he’s behaving badly and doesn’t care”. And even though he says that he’s only trying to do right by the wisdom of the Builders, I’m getting a definite flavour of “I know best”, or at least “I don’t trust anybody else to do this as well as me”, from his attitude.
Bechimo
In which Theo has a few things to say about Bechimo‘s priorities.
Interesting that Uncle is on Bechimo‘s Disallowed List, when he told Theo he saw the ship when it was under construction. Did he start out working with the Builders, and do something that caused a falling-out? Or maybe the Builders already didn’t like him, and he only got to see the under-construction Bechimo briefly and had to sneak in to do it. (Either way, it might be support for the idea that Uncle’s shipyard in Trade Secret isn’t the yard that produced Bechimo, but a later attempt by Uncle to replicate the achievement.)
Because I need to imagine it looking like something, and because it seems appropriately science-fictional, I always picture Bechimo‘s discovery looking like the Utah teapot.
Bechimo
In which Theo has questions for Bechimo.
Yes, Theo, all of the above. Good luck with that.
Theo’s dubious, but we know from the prequels that it is possible in this setting for ships to travel from another universe into this – though not easy, which may explain why Bechimo‘s discoveries are always in pieces. Or, since Bechimo‘s also correct about the catastrophic event, it could be that they were in pieces already when they left their original universe.