Dutiful Passage
Millsap Orbit
In which Padi has a long day.
Shan has a plan: to visit the Redlands, which it turns out is not one country, or even one planet, but a system with three inhabited planets.
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Tradedesk, Gallery 770
In which it is always good to have news of kin.
The red bar, it appears, indicates a person who’s been invited to the traders’ after-dinner. That number includes, apart from Jethri and Grandma Ricky, Samay pin’Aker and Infreya chel’Gaibin, but not Bar Jan chel’Gaibin. With Infreya chel’Gaibin, instead of her son, is a pilot Jethri doesn’t recognise – perhaps Former Scout yos’Belin – wearing her red badge tag “slightly askew”, which may be an indication that she’s been adjusting the number and colour of tags from those to which she is properly entitled.
Jethri gets to learn some more of the things about his father that people assume he knows already. In this case, it’s about Uncle and Dulsey, and the fact that Arin looked as much like Uncle as Jethri looks like Arin. Which, as Jethri himself notes, is interesting.
Tradedesk
In which Jethri goes to dinner.
Jethri’s badge has three colour codes on it: green, indicating he’s a trader; blue, indicating he’s a pilot; and red, which we still haven’t been told what it means. The fact that Grandma DeNobli picks a table under the red banner to eat at suggests a couple of possibilities.
One of the things on offer at the dinner is bloosharie – the third different spelling for it in as many books.
It being a dress-up sort of occasion, Jethri’s wearing the firegem ring that he bought in the prologue and which hasn’t been mentioned since. I wonder if, with all these people around, someone’s going to take an interest in it.
Keravath, on Port, Balfour
In which Jethri and ter’Astin finish their business on Balfour and move on to their next destination.
Trouble indeed: somebody has been aboard the ship. Somebody who had a key, which they ought not to have had, and by the signs is a Scout. (Or an ex-Scout? I continue to cast suspicious looks in a very particular direction.)
Jethri’s meeting with the memorable Mr Dorster has turned up more of Iza’s neglect: basic documents and proofs of identity never completed or filed.
The Scout is also interested in the mysterious manifesto, “Arin’s Envidaria of the Seventeen Worlds”. As it is now too late to ask Freza more about it, Jethri merely tells him, truthfully but incompletely, that he never heard of it before today. The Seventeen Worlds are apparently a cluster of planets along the galatic arm where travel is unusually restricted by cosmic phenomena that are expected to last for the next few centuries; if Arin was taking the long view – and considering how old he probably was, it might not have seemed as long as all that – the Envidaria may involve a plan for how things will shift when the cosmic phenomena get out of the way. (And although “the next few centuries” is a pretty vague timespan, I can’t help noting that one plausible interpretation of a few centuries on from this novel puts us right about the time the next Liaden novel is due to be set…)
And now they are off to Vincza, where the Scout has hope for finding something and Jethri has been invited to a regional trade meeting (run by the Carresens Coordinating Committee, a name which rings a distinct bell: the Carresens are still trading in one of the later novels, and I seem to remember one of them mentioning Arin in a historical context, though I don’t recall what is said).
I wonder if Freza’s ship will also be attending the trade meeting. Not just because of the several reasons Jethri has for wanting to see her again, but also because the meeting’s being held in the system where they had their last, ill-fated meeting, and it would be kind of appropriate for it also to be the location of their next meeting, where hopefully they will fare better.
Clan Ixin’s Tradeship Elthoria, in Jump
In which Jethri’s mother wishes to discuss the future.
I like the story about how Jethri obtained his shirt. I wonder whether returning the defective cookpot was a straightforward transaction, or required a bit of trading skill. I’m also amused, given what we’re told later about some of the crew admiring the figure he cuts while he exercises, that he’s doing so wearing a shirt that promises “Satisfaction Guaranteed” (luckily for him, it’s not likely any of his admirers read Terran script).
Also, since his old calendar is mentioned and this is the kind of thing I notice, I notice that both the shirt and the calendar hail from Trundee’s Tool and Tow, and I wonder if that means they were obtained on the same port, or perhaps that Trundee’s has branches on more than one planet.
The Scout has informed Master ven’Deelin that his business concerns clan and kin, and will require not only personal attention but personal attendance. She has taken him to mean her own attention and attendance, and surely she must be right, for I don’t think the Scout would be unclear; but I did wonder for a moment if it was going to be Jethri’s attendance that was called for. We still don’t know why the Scout sent his message to Jethri addressed to “Jethri Gobelyn”. (And I wonder if the Master Trader is aware that he did.)
I notice that when she mentions Tan Sim, Master ven’Deelin always refers to him descriptively, as Jethri’s partner, never by name. It may be nothing, but I wonder if perhaps, considering the state of things between her family and his, there’s a point of melant’i that requires her to avoid acknowledging who he is (at least for the time being).
Clan Ixin’s Tradeship Elthoria, in Jump
In which Jethri reads his mail.
Maybe I just have a suspicious mind, but I do wonder if there was more than just unlucky timing to Dyk’s interruption of Jethri’s getting-to-know-you session, either on Dyk’s own part or on the part of the Captain.
I’d been meaning to keep an eye out for the first honest-to-goodness, undeniable cultural reference that shows that Terrans are from our planet Earth, but I may have let it slip by me. “Balrog” is surely one of those, anyway, even if it’s not the first.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Jethri as a possibility, but it seems plausible to me that the Scout’s desire to speak with Jethri Gobelyn rather than Jethri ven’Deelin means he’s made some discovery touching on Arin’s kin. If so, that could be good news or bad, and no way to tell until the Scout has had his say, and possibly not even then.
Stateroom Number Two
Liaden Tradeship Wynhael, Outbound from Banth, a Backworld
In which Jethri’s story is by no means over.
A new novel!
The prologue gives us Bar Jan chel’Gaibin nursing his grievances, some hints about what’s up on Banth, and Jethri continuing his career but discovering that Old Tech is still going to be a part of his life. The chel’Gaibin seems to have decided to take particular offence against Khat, so no doubt we’ll be hearing more of the crew of the Market along the way. That’s all the major dangling threads from Balance of Trade picked up already – all I ask now is a throwaway line about how Jethri’s moustache management is getting on, and I’ll be happy.
We get quite a detailed portrait of Bar Jan chel’Gaibin in the first part of the prologue. Not a nice fellow, the chel’Gaibin. The description of his debt book is revealing, and so is the bit about the rigged dueling pistols – that latter also saying something about the family he comes from, given that they’re the house’s pistols and not his personally. (I wonder if we’ll be seeing those pistols in action, later.)
We also learn some things about Jethri. The bit about him feeling as if fractins are aware of him is new, though it fits in with what we already had about his knack for salvage items.
Jethri is currently working on a world where they go in for elaborate ceremony, which gives us some interesting new flourishes on the bows. I particularly like the revelation that the language of bows includes a construction for “I realise my sleeves aren’t long enough to do this bow justice”.
Day 189
Standard Year 1118
Irikwae
In which Junior Trader Jethri Gobelyn looks to the future.
I’m still not sure about the wisdom of choosing Master ven’Deelin as the evaluating master. She does have a point, but then this isn’t just about avoiding partiality, it’s also about being seen to avoid partiality: letting her evaluate her own apprentice gives anyone who doesn’t want to accept Jethri an opening to suggest that she let him off easy.
Although, it just now occurs to me, to do so would be inevitably to cast aspersions on the melant’i of a widely-known and well-respected Master Trader, which they might well be forced to conclude was a course of action whose consequences they couldn’t sustain. So perhaps it’s not so unwise as I thought.
Tomorrow, “Out of True”, which is still up on the Baen front page. Then, on to the sequel.
Day 185
Standard Year 1118
Irikwae
In which a few loose ends are attended to.
I had forgotten that in the end Jethri turns all his fractins over to the Scout. (But he keeps the notes which the Scout suspects of being a guide to reading Old writing. That could lead to interesting things in future.)
I had not forgotten that Miandra gets sent off to get trained as a dramliza (I wonder if it’s by anyone we know?). At least, I had remembered that one of the twins did, but it wasn’t until some point in the re-read that I knew it was Miandra; I often forget characters’ names after the first time through, even when they aren’t identical twins.
Day 180
Standard Year 1118
Irikwae
In which the cargo pod is opened, and many things are revealed.
This is the chapter in which Jethri gets his family background – and someone does indeed mention him and the word “clone” in conjunction, though the details are skipped over for the present moment.
I like how casually the matter of Grig’s true age is dropped in, near the beginning of the chapter.
It is also established that “duplicating unit” is what Grig’s family call the type of device Cantra called a “first aid kit” – which raises a few questions about what they used them for before they figured out the first aid kit function.
Well, all right, one thing they apparently used them for was duplicating people, what Raisy calls “reproducing the pure stock”. Pure what, she doesn’t say. Anyhow, that brings us back around to Jethri being a clone.