Tag Archives: Panth

Carpe Diem – Chapter 20

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Vandar
Springbreeze Farm and Environs

In which Borril is not pretty.

The language lesson in this chapter is one of my favourite parts of the novel.

It is apparently just over a month since Val Con gave Miri the stick-knife in Econsey, which occurred a day or two before they left Lufkit on the 242nd day of the year, so this is somewhere in the vicinity of day 270 (and Edger’s interlude on Kago, instead of happening a week after they landed on this world, as the placement of the chapter suggests, happened a week before). That leaves, between their captivity with the Juntavas and their landfall on Zhena Trelu’s world, about two weeks for trying to get the derelict yacht working, Jump, and scouting from orbit. It didn’t feel like that long when it was happening, but I suppose it’s not impossible, though it is an awfully long time to be living on pretzel-bread, water, and salmon.

Miri, arranging the breakfast things, is described moving with surprising swiftness, an attribute which in this series is usually a sign of a pilot, or at least one with pilot potential. Miri isn’t a pilot, and has never mentioned having the potential or the interest, but given the life she’s led it’s not unlikely that the possibility has never occurred to her.

Agent of Change – Chapter 17

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In which Miri and Val Con discuss weapons.

At first it seemed like a quick turnaround that, less than a day after Miri tried to ditch the madman, it’s her reassuring him that he’s not a danger to her. But there was that demonstration, after she tried to ditch him, of how much importance he places on her survival, and even before that it wasn’t really what she was concerned about. Even when she admitted to being afraid, she made the point that it wasn’t Val Con himself she was afraid of. And I think, on reflection, that when she was bothered by his first demonstration of the Loop’s capabilities, what bothered her wasn’t just the apparent calmness with which he was able to discuss her death, but the calmness with which he was able to discuss his own.

On an entirely different note, I find myself wondering whether Professor Thos. Swift, author of the Young Person’s Book of Space Drives, was a member of the same faculty as the originator of the Antonio Smith Method.

Agent of Change – Chapter 15

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In which He Who Watches has an unpleasant day.

This chapter shows very clearly how much Val Con has come to care for Miri, even in the short time they’ve known each other. It also gives some indication how much she’s come to care for him, although she’s more reluctant to bring it out where people can see it, or to trust it (and who can blame her?).

Edger’s relation to Watcher, we learn, is that he is the brother of his mother’s sister. Which tells us something about the Clutch’s kinship system, because that’s a degree more specificity than would be necessary or meaningful among humans.