Tag Archives: Midj Rolanni

Quiet Knives

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In which Captain Rolanni goes to Shaltren sooner than expected.

This is an important story for the Juntavas, laying the groundwork for them to be something a bit more nuanced than The Space Mafia.

The pacing of this story didn’t quite work for me the first time I read it, with all the build-up to Kore’s escape attempt/Rolanni’s rescue attempt, and then it suddenly didn’t matter because Chairman Trogar meets his fate in an unrelated Act of Turtle. (And I got the feeling that the role of the Turtles isn’t sufficiently set up for someone who hasn’t read Carpe Diem first — though I’m in no position to say for sure, since I did read Carpe Diem first.) On this re-read, I got a better feeling of how the two things aren’t entirely unrelated; for one thing, if Sambra Reallen hadn’t called the department heads to a meeting as a distraction from Rolanni’s rescue attempt, they wouldn’t have been on hand to witness the Chairman’s downfall, and Reallen wouldn’t have been there to take hold of the situation before it got out of hand.

(Incidentally, from the mentions of them in this story, the department heads seem to be functionally just such a council of elders as Chairman Trogar boasted to Edger did not exist and had no power over him.)

Also, I’m thinking now, Rolanni’s attempt to rescue Kore is a bit like like Marguerite’s attempt to rescue her husband in The Scarlet Pimpernel, in that whether she will succeed in rescuing him is not the big question of the story; the big question was already answered when she decided she had to make the attempt.

It struck me on this re-read that “Kore” is also the name of a figure in Greek mythology, but I think that’s probably just a coincidence, notwithstanding that this Kore also has what might be understood as a descent into the underworld.

Another more useful thing that struck me on this re-read is that Rolanni’s personal and professional history places her as part of whatever the modern equivalent is of the trading family network that Jethri’s family was part of back in Balance of Trade.

Something I noticed the first time and again on this re-read is that we get very little detail about Kore’s employer, the High Judge, not even a name; I suspect the authors were leaving room to fill in details if he showed up in another story later. The first time I read this story, I wondered if he might be Clarence O’Berin, but that was mainly because I wanted more stories about Clarence; what little we get about the High Judge’s personality doesn’t really fit. It’s definitely not Clarence, anyhow; “Shadow Partner” has him still holding down the position on Liad many years after the High Judge started on the career path that led to him being the High Judge.

Tomorrow: Plan B

Carpe Diem – Chapter 18

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Starship Clarion,
Allied to Captain Robert Chen-Jacobs
Taking orbit around the world named Kago

In which Edger perceives a need for haste.

It seems we’re getting a quick tour of the other plot strands before we return to find out how Val Con and Miri’s shopping trip progresses.

This event has a specific date attached to it: it’s four days since Edger and Sheather left Lufkit, which they did on day 255 of the year, and thus a day or two after the scenes a few chapters ago of Edger’s messages arriving on Liad. How that lines up with Miri and Val Con’s plot strand is not obvious, because that has been proceeding in imprecise intervals of “a few days” and “a week” — but one thing that is clear is that the plot strands cannot be proceeding strictly in step. We’ve had Miri and Val Con’s first week on the new world in the interval between Edger’s message arriving on Liad and Edger himself arriving at Kago, an interval that as has already been mentioned is no more than four days. There has to have been some shuffling for the benefit of the dramatic flow.

The story of Captain Rolanni and the reason she is bound for a planet where respectable ships do not ordinarily go is told in the short story “Quiet Knives”. Speaking of shuffling for the benefit of the dramatic flow, I couldn’t find a good break in the novel to squeeze the short story into, so I’ve scheduled it in between the end of Carpe Diem and the beginning of Plan B.