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Necessity’s Child – Chapter 25

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In which Syl Vor introduces his sister to a game.

The information-trading game is interesting, because it’s never been mentioned before in a Liaden story, but it’s very similar to a game featured in one of Lee and Miller’s non-Liaden works.

Master Walk was published in a chapbook about a decade ago (the ebook edition is still available), and also appears in the print anthology Double Vision. I get the impression it was hoping to be the first of a new series – it’s got that feeling about it, like how you can often tell if a telemovie started life as a pilot episode – but so far there have been no sequels.

It’s science fiction again, set in a galaxy that is like and unlike that of the Liadens in various respects. The trading of information is a big thing both in the setting in general and the plot of Master Walk in particular, and the traders of information play the token-swapping game to keep score during a transaction. (It is considered that a transaction has not been completed with honor unless each participant gives and receives equal value.) The full game, at least in that version, uses tokens of several denominations, allowing a considerable amount of precision when indicating how much value is placed on a piece of information received.

There’s a moment that’s stayed with me, where a trader asks a question, receives the answer, and hands over a token indicating how valuable they found the answer to be – and the person they’re dealing with immediately also hands over a token, indicating that they’ve received valuable information from the size of the token the answer elicited.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 24

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In which there’s a new boy in the class.

Score one for Ms Taylor, declining to invite trouble by letting Pete and Luce sit close together.

There’s a large chunk of the middle of the novel that I don’t remember from the first time I read it, so I know only as much about Pete and Luce as Syl Vor does at this point, but I don’t like it any more than he does.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 22

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In which thought is given to the future.

Apparently we are not to discover just yet what has become of Rys.

Ms ker’Eklis seems to be in a bad mood; perhaps she resents her dinner being put back. As a Liaden, she ought to know about necessity, but perhaps she thinks a boy’s necessity is not as necessary as an adult math tutor’s. Or perhaps, to be fair, it’s only that she doubts this particular boy, since about half the mentions of Syl Vor’s tutors in the book so far have been because he’s running late for his lessons for one reason or another.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 17

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In which Kezzi gets a lesson and Rys gets some assistance.

This being a re-read, I remember at least some of what is revealed later about the woman who is seeking something, and I wonder why she stopped to have her fortune read in the turn of a card; from what do I remember of her, it doesn’t seem like her to set store in such things.

Though perhaps there is something to the cards: after all, the card was right about her. Or perhaps that’s not the cards, but the person holding them, who sees things that others don’t. Or perhaps it’s just a coincidence; even if they operate only by random chance, the cards can’t be wrong all the time.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 9

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In which Syl Vor has been reviewing the forms.

Of course the corollary of asking Syl Vor to make sure someone knows where he’s going is that it allows for judgement as to whether someone ought to go with him. Wandering around the grounds is one thing, but a boy his age really shouldn’t go into a place like Surebleak city on his own, even if he does have a knife and a gun with him and some idea how to use them.

It occurs to me to wonder whether Syl Vor was deliberately trying to avoid adult oversight for his trip. I don’t think so, since he’s making an obvious effort to do the thing right, so I think it’s just what he says, that he didn’t want to be a nuisance by interrupting anyone, and hasn’t entirely grasped the idea that it wouldn’t be such a nuisance alongside the possibility of him getting in serious trouble on his own. (At least, I don’t think he’s consciously avoiding people – but on the other hand, he does show some uncertainty that he’s doing the right thing, and there’s a thing people sometimes do where if they suspect they’re going about something wrong they unconsciously steer clear of anyone who might tell them so.)

Eleutherios

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“Eleutherios” is, without hesitation, one of my favourite short stories in the Liaden Universe. (It occurs to me that several of my favourites are stories that stand alone, without direct ties to the characters and events of the novels; the extra work called for to establish the setting and characters pays off, I guess.)

The title is from the Greek, and means “liberation”.

One of the things I like about it is that it’s a happy ending all around (except, I suppose, for the police, but somehow I don’t find it in me to feel sorry for them, much). Niku is liberated from captivity, and Friar Julian and his church are liberated from their encroaching poverty.

I always find myself wondering how much of a hand Friar Julian’s gods had in that, because one of the other striking things about this story is that nothing Friar Julian believes about his gods is shown to be wrong. Niku may be chuckling to himself about being able to use Friar Julian’s faith to achieve his goals, but I wonder if somewhere there’s a god chuckling to himself about being able to use Niku’s unbelief in a similar manner.

During this re-read, I found myself wondering if the gods and their consorts might be, as it were, people we know; specifically, with certain details from the duology fresh in mind, it occurred to me that “a god and his consort” might be somebody’s understanding of a dramliza – and that the gods and their consorts might even be, perhaps, the same Names revered on Sintia, seen from a different angle. I am, however, less confident of this idea now than I was about halfway through; by the end of the story, there had been enough mentions of men in Friar Julian’s religion pledging to each other as life partners that I don’t even feel confident assuming that the gods’ consorts are female.

“Eleutherios” is the first story in the re-read that doesn’t have any straightforward indications of when it’s set, so perhaps I ought to say a few words about why I placed it here. The answer, in a few words, is “gut feeling”. It seems, to me, like it’s set early in the Liaden Universe, but there aren’t any details I can point to that firmly settle it, and some of the bits that feel to me like they support my theory could probably be seen to support a different theory if you happened to have one. The aspect I think I can explain most clearly is that there are parts of the culture that remind me of the culture in the Crystal duology, which suggests to me that that wasn’t so long ago; in particular, the police and their restraining chip remind me more than anything else of the bond-threads used to control runaways in the old world.

(There is a thing that needs to be said, sooner or later, about Niku’s kin, but that’s not so much relevant to this appearance as it is to their next, so I think I’ll save it until then. I may, at that time, give it a post of its own.)