Tag Archives: Lethecronaxion

Breath’s Duty

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Delgado
Leafydale Place
Standard Year 1393

In which Scout Reserve Captain Daav yos’Phelium returns a favour.

Speaking of first published appearances, this is Kamele’s, brief as it is, and it gave me entirely the wrong impression of her until Fledgling came out. I blame the translators’ decision to use “mistress” as a substitute for whatever word they use on Delgado, because while it has the advantage of bypassing a lengthy explanation it fails to capture the actual spirit of Kamele’s relationship with Jen Sar. On the other hand, I admit there were also some failings of comprehension on my part, regarding (a) the actual likelihood of Daav getting in the kind of relationship that “mistress” implies, and (b) the fact, which is mentioned right there in the story, that they’ve been together long enough for her daughter to be grown up.

This may also be, even more briefly, the first published mention of timonioum.

One of the purposes of this re-read was to see what new associations would come out of the stories by reading them in a different configuration: what would come out of a story by reading it near another story I maybe hadn’t read it near before? In this case, a new thing that struck me was the first dissonant detail: after a couple of pages of Jen Sar Kiladi getting ready for a fishing trip, just as he always does, he pauses to run through the Rainbow pattern. Reading the story so soon after Carpe Diem, with everything it has to say about the Rainbow and about the Rainbow being a Scout thing, that really jumped out at me as a sign that Professor Kiladi isn’t the groundhugging academic he appears. It says, if one didn’t already know, a great deal about his background in a very few words.

Another association that I don’t think I picked up before this re-read is that Acting Scout Commander sig’Radia has the same surname as Senior Scout Cho sig’Radia, the friend and mentor of Daav’s daughter. Probably a relative, not the same person; “Phoenix” has established that sig’Radia has a history of producing Scouts, and this story says straight up that Daav doesn’t know her. (I wonder, though: I don’t think Kiladi ever actually met Cho sig’Radia other than through written correspondence, and if he did notice the connection Daav wouldn’t make anything of it while he’s keeping the Kiladi connection quiet; conversely, of course, Cho sig’Radia knows Theo’s father only as Kiladi and has no reason to suspect he’s Daav. And one who was a Senior Scout a few years ago might have progressed far enough to become Acting Scout Commander now — especially since the “Acting” suggests that the Department’s recent actions have resulted in some rapid movement in the line of succession.)

I’m pretty sure I got the significance of the Richard A. Davis Portmaster Aid Foundation first time, though.

I seem to recall there being something I wanted to say about the bit where L’il Orbit casts shade on Kiladi’s piloting skills, but the only thing that’s coming to mind now is that it was never Kiladi, in the old days, who was called “schoolteacher”. And that there’s a bit of an irony in Daav yos’Phelium being named as a reliable pilot considering what happened the last time he was seen piloting a spaceship.

Carpe Diem – Chapter 70

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Vandar
Kosmorn Gore

In which Miri remembers Klamath.

Miri’s story, and her expectation that it will turn Val Con against her, is one of those things that I have feelings about but not many words. I’m more comfortable talking about incidental things, like Miri mentioning in passing that very few people succeed in entirely kicking a Cloud habit, which makes the Department’s assumptions about her seem like a bit less of an unprofessional reach.

Carpe Diem – Chapter 68

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Vandar
Winterfair

In which Val Con meets Tyl Von sig’Alda, Clan Rugare.

Given that it’s been suggested that Cloud targets the user’s most traumatic memories, it’s interesting that its effect on Tyl Von sig’Alda seems to have been to make him forget basically everything about being an Agent of Change.

(Also interesting: that although he is confused when Val Con mentions his ship, he doesn’t hesitate when Val Con asks for his first aid kit. Presumably carrying one of those is a basic pilot thing that he was doing even before he fell into the hands of the Department.)

sig’Alda’s recollection of his occupation suggests he’s not a former Scout, unless he left the Scouts for some reason to become a pilot-for-hire. I was going to say that it seems unlikely a Scout would choose such a course, but then I remembered that we know of a Scout who did very nearly that, and choice didn’t come into it: Val Con’s own father was called home from the Scouts to serve the necessity of his Clan, and later became a courier pilot at least partly because it was the closest he could get, while still serving the necessity of his Clan, to being a Scout again. And it could also happen more directly, that a Scout might be called home to serve the Clan’s necessity by being a pilot-for-hire, if the Clan’s necessity were that all its children be supporting it with paid occupations. (I think I’ve just argued myself out of believing that we’ve learned anything definite about whether sig’Alda was a Scout.)

Carpe Diem – Chapter 67

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Vandar
Winterfair

In which Zamir Meltz has something to say.

For someone who appears so little, and particularly as one whose appearances have consisted mainly of telling Hakan off when his enthusiasms run away with him, Hakan’s father has turned out quite well-rounded.

Agent sig’Alda remarks again on the luck that has preserved his life so far. It occurs to me that it may not be his luck — after all, Val Con needs him to stay alive too. And we’ve heard a lot about how Line yos’Phelium rides the Luck, but I don’t recall having heard anything similar said about Line sig’Alda.

Carpe Diem – Chapter 66

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Vandar
Winterfair

In which Tyl Von sig’Alda is a man with a plan.

sig’Alda shows a blind spot again: even after he carefully notes the fact that Val Con is heading for Miri’s last known location, it doesn’t occur to him that Miri herself might be the objective. Granted, he doesn’t know that Val Con knows Miri’s location, but then again he doesn’t know he doesn’t, and given how many of his scenarios involve pre-arranged plots against the Department you’d think a simple pre-arranged rendezvous wouldn’t be difficult to consider. But no; sig’Alda can’t imagine Val Con arranging to meet up with Miri, at least not for her own sake, because he can’t imagine wanting to see Miri again.

The Department really does spend a lot of time considering scenarios in which people are plotting against them, it seems. An occupational hazard of spending all one’s time plotting against people, perhaps. It shows up again when sig’Alda, having concluded that Val Con and Miri were deliberately signalling to someone on the radio, decides it was most likely a pre-arranged signal to a co-conspirator. (It’s interesting that he doesn’t consider the possibility that they might have been signalling to him, although to be fair I suppose that would seem less likely after Val Con’s marked lack of enthusiasm when he answered the signal.)

Carpe Diem – Chapter 64

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Vandar
Winterfair

In which Val Con speaks to a compatriot and a brother.

Val Con slipping out of his Department conditioning with the l’apeleka he learned from Edger is interesting in several ways.

One way is that it’s an example of things that go around coming around. If Val Con hadn’t been the kind of person who would and could befriend a Turtle, he’d be in serious trouble now (if he wasn’t already dead, back in any of the several incidents where his friendship with Edger has already helped pull him out of the fire).

It’s also a sign of one of the Department’s blind spots. They must have known Val Con had a history with the Clutch — they have access to Val Con’s service history, and even if they didn’t the fact that Edger lent him a ship would have been a big hint — but they don’t seem to have thought much of it. It’s not so much that I expect them to have had a counter for the l’apeleka specifically — I wouldn’t be surprised if Val Con is the only non-Turtle who knows much about it, and certainly even if an agent of the Department tried to get a Turtle to talk about Turtle things he wouldn’t get far — but even if they didn’t know about l’apeleka specifically, they might have considered the possibility that Val Con had learned something unusual from the Clutch, and they didn’t. All the time we’ve seen the Department spend thinking about what lessons they need to learn from Val Con’s past, and his time with the Clutch never comes up. It’s like they take it as read that no non-Liaden culture could produce anything the Department needs to worry about.

Carpe Diem – Chapter 63

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Vandar
Winterfair

In which Tyl Von sig’Alda offers a gift.

I do not think sig’Alda is as proficient at reading Miri’s moods as he thinks he is. There are several other possibilities that might produce a paling of the complexion, a roughening of the voice, and a brightness of the eyes, and every one of them is more likely than the explanation he prefers.

Similarly, I suspect there are gaps in his grasp of spoken Terran, which is probably sleep-learned and unlikely to have been practiced much with colloquial native speakers. There’s a limit to how much meaning can be extracted from a textual representation, but I’m pretty sure when Miri says “Thanks a lot” it isn’t the simple expression of gratitude sig’Alda takes it for.

Carpe Diem – Chapter 62

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In which Tyl Von sig’Alda makes an approach.

sig’Alda is demonstrating a very closed-minded attitude here: instead of paying attention to new information and adjusting his theories and plans, he’s holding on to his theories and plans and taking in only what information fits what he already believes he knows. Some of it’s definitely indoctrination, like the way he shies away from the possibility that Val Con might be consciously and happily free of the Department’s influence, and some of it is… probably at least partly due to indoctrination, like the way he dismisses everything any Terran does as an irrelevant distraction. But I’m not sure that explains the way he seems to have accepted certain things as facts when they were only ever presented as plausible theories, like Miri’s supposed drug addiction.

One way and another, his inability or disinclination to accept new information is going to come back and bite him sooner or later, when reality fails to match the contents of his head. The question is how much damage he’s going to do before then, trying to impose the contents of his head on reality.

Carpe Diem – Chapter 36

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Liad

In which Tyl Von sig’Alda gets his orders.

After the earlier chapters about Tyl Von sig’Alda being set explicitly in Envolima City, it’s worth noting that this chapter declines to be specific about where on Liad the control center of the Department is located. Except that it’s underground.

And that it is intended to “one day be the command post for a galaxy”, which doesn’t help locate it physically, but does a great deal to reveal the Department’s intentions. They’re not only interested in limited actions for the preservation of Liad; they’re out for conquest. All according to The Plan. (It’s always a bad sign when an organization is dedicated to something called “The Plan”, don’t you find?)

The other thing this chapter doesn’t say, in the midst of all this preparation for sending sig’Alda after Val Con, is how they know where to send him. Did his analysis of Val Con’s options produce that precise a result? Or maybe they don’t actually know yet, and are just putting the wheels in motion so that he’ll be ready to go at a moment’s notice when they do know where he’s going.

Carpe Diem – Chapter 25

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Liad
Envolima City

In which Tyl Von sig’Alda comes to a satisfactory conclusion.

There’s a notable omission from Tyl Von sig’Alda’s analysis of Val Con and Miri’s motives for joining forces: no mention of Miri’s trouble with the Juntavas which was, at least initially, the actual reason they stuck together.

One apparent possibility is that Agent sig’Alda doesn’t have knowledge of the Juntavas’ doings; they seem to be a Terran-only organisation, and they’re no doubt pretty short with strangers found sticking their nose into their business. But that doesn’t hold up; we’ve seen that the Department have ways of getting information they shouldn’t have access to, and in particular we’ve seen sig’Alda himself obtain information on this subject from a Juntava. It’s highly unlikely that Jefferson spent all that time talking about how they captured and stranded Miri and Val Con without ever mentioning why.

So the explanation seems to be that sig’Alda does have access to the information about the Juntavas’ interest in Miri, but has dismissed it as an insignificant Terran squabble irrelevant to the doings of Liadens.

(The other reason Val Con and Miri stuck together seems to be so far off sig’Alda’s radar as to not even occur to him as a possibility. Which is perhaps a bit shortsighted, given that there’s the example of Val Con’s uncle and aunt to show that it is possible that such a thing might befall one of Korval. But then, short-sightedness has ever been one of the characteristics of bigotry.)

I wonder how much of sig’Alda’s disdain for Terrans is original to him, and how much is a result of his Department training.