Tag Archives: Mac Gold

Trade Secret – Chapter 12

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Keravath, on Port, Balfour

In which Jethri meets an old friend and a lawyer.

Jethri and ter’Astin have come to Balfour to meet some people. The Scout is to meet with some “specialists” (in which specialism, he does not specify), and Jethri is to meet with a lawyer, a trade law specialist who has had previous business with Elthoria, to explore the question of what can be done about his logbook being stolen.

Jay Rivenkid Dorster, Esquire, professional trade law specialist and free-lance stress-tester of furniture, is a real character. I may have said before that one of the things I like about this series is that many of the characters who only stick around on the page for a chapter or two have enough personality to stick around in the memory for much longer.

This is the first time Jethri’s been among Terrans since he shipped out with Elthoria, and he’s having some difficulty shifting smoothly back into dealing with Terran faces and Terran ways. I hope that doesn’t get him into any trouble.

The old friend he meets is Freza DeNobli, the young woman he might once have had a thing with if the scheduling had worked out. It seems like they’re both hoping the scheduling will work out a bit better this time. For now, though, the schedule only has room for a brief session of essential catching-up talk.

(It appears that there really is some kind of document bearing some resemblance to the thing yos’Belin was talking about last chapter – and to the information-share Paitor was telling Khat about a few chapters before. But I still think that the reason there’s no mention of it in the Commission’s records is that the Commission isn’t interested.)

I am not happy about the pair of workers Jethri sees moving around closer to the ship than they ought to be. That kind of thing too often means trouble one way or another.

Trade Secret – Chapter 3

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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.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 31

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Day 161
Standard Year 1118

Irikwae

In which Jethri and Khat each have a long and incident-packed day.

Well now, this is a long chapter.

Khat’s day brings her to Banth, an inhospitable planet which a surprising number of Liadens seem to want to visit. And among them, the chel’Gaibin and her son, who reacts badly to encountering one of Jethri’s kin. I really like the sequence with Khat’s friend Keeson and his sister, which probably wasn’t strictly needful to the plot but adds a lot of texture to the story.

Jethri’s day, in between encounters with tailors and dancing instructors, takes him out to the vines, teaches him a few things about the local fauna, and leads to a possibly unwise bright idea involving the device Grig called a “weather maker”.

It’s been alluded to previously, but this is the first time the Code of Proper Conduct has been mentioned by its full title. Also mentioned is that it’s currently three volumes long, a state of affairs that I seem to recall does not maintain itself indefinitely.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 17

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Day 107
Standard Year 1118

Elthoria and Tilene

In which Jethri’s new status occasions some changes of schedule.

Norn ven’Deelin says, in word and in deed, that she trusts Jethri to behave honorably and do well, and not to make her regret claiming him as kin. I wonder how she’d have handled the situation if she didn’t trust him so well. (She wouldn’t have let the chel’Gaibins take him while he was under her protection, and perhaps she might have claimed him as kin anyway, seeing no other option – because I don’t think she’d have done that, even trusting Jethri as she does, if she’d seen another option – but perhaps she’d have arranged his schedule differently, kept him more out of the public eye, and let it be more in name than in fact.) On the other hand, perhaps this is a pointless question: if she didn’t already think well of him, he wouldn’t have been trading under her on Tilene and the situation would never have arisen.

The Master Trader’s concern over the unnamed practice lately surfaced on Tilene is ominous, especially once one starts wondering if it’s of a piece with the “climate changes” observed by her friend the Scout Captain on Kailipso.

Tan Sim’s family are seriously unpleasant people. Not that we hadn’t already been getting that impression, of course.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 10

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Day 65
Standard Year 1118

Kinaveral

In which Mr Rumor has been doing the rounds.

I like “at sevens and eights”, which is presumably the same as “at sixes and sevens” only worse.

Mac Gold seems like an unpleasant fellow, and I wonder how much of the rumor he recounts is what Mr Rumor is actually saying and how much is him putting his own spin on it for his own purposes. (I mean, people do talk, and people who talk don’t always need encouragement to assume the worst, but based on what we’ve seen of him so far I wouldn’t put it past him.)

Balance of Trade – Chapter 2

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Day 32
Standard Year 1118

Gobelyn’s Market
Jethri’s Quarters

In which Jethri gets the bad news.

The downside of this being a re-read is that I’m mostly inspired to talk about the things that strike me new or different, so I don’t really have anything to say about the conversation between Jethri and his uncle, which hasn’t changed notably since last time I read it.

The sequence of Jethri and the calendar is a nice bit of characterization, both of Jethri the teenaged boy and Jethri the spacer who’s spent most of his life in a tin can and feels uncomfortable without a ceiling close over his head.

The calendar also offers a worldbuilding hook in itself, or perhaps I should say a worldbuilding bridge; the reader who is familiar with 21st-century Terran garage calendars will find things to recognise in certain aspects of it.

Speaking of which: The Gobelyn family are Terrans, a word which appears here for the first time this re-read.