Bechimo
In which Bechimo has doubts.
There are some interesting details about Bechimo‘s background in this chapter. The Builders clearly gave some thought to the question of what might happen if the AI running their more-or-less autonomous ship, with full control over the airlocks and life support systems and all, turned out to be the kind of AI that sci-fi horror movies have warned us about.
Also, we get what I think is the first mention of Bechimo‘s preferred gender.
Tokeoport
In which Theo is separated from her ship.
The woman with the too-large jacket and the too-large gunbelt harks back to the previous chapter, where the two robbers saw Theo’s too-large jacket and speculated that it was a “trophy”.
In the news report, a car containing a driver, cook and gardener in the employ of Korval returned “immediate fatal return fire” to a hostile action involving a former under-boss and an unspecified number of “backers”. Unless the driver was particularly fast on the draw, I suspect that means the cook and the gardener were also armed.
Runcible System
Daglyte Seam
In which the Department of the Interior prepares to attack Korval and her allies.
I like the structure of this chapter. Three scenes that have no obvious connection, but implicitly the latter two scenes concern people who are going to be affected by the events of the first.
It occurs to me to wonder what would have happened if Commander of Agents had chosen to leave Korval alone for the time being. Her concern is obviously that Korval will continue to be a threat, but Korval has accepted Liad’s decision that guarding Liad is no longer its business, which means that the Department is no longer its business – but the Department will quickly become its business again if the Department attacks it directly. I suppose if the Department did leave Korval alone and concentrate on subverting Liad, Korval would eventually become involved because it does still have allies on Liad who would sooner or later be affected by the Department’s actions – but think how much the Department could get done in the mean time!
The Grand Progress
Surebleak
In which Delm Korval is given more welcomes, in a variety of styles.
I’m not sure what to make of this: we’ve had at least two people remark on how much Val Con resembles Pat Rin, and at least one say she doesn’t think the resemblance is all that marked. Different people looking for different things? Or perhaps it’s a question of expectation; with so few data points it’s difficult to be sure, but the degree of perceived resemblance might vary depending on whether a person has been told beforehand to expect it.
I like the idea that the Tree’s response to being moved is to be pleasurably reminded of its younger days when it travelled regularly. I wonder if it ever got bored just standing around for years on end. Perhaps it helped that it had people around it who went and travelled, to some degree, on its behalf.
There’s a fair amount of leeway in the question of just how young the young Mr pel’Kana actually is, since the last we heard of the old Mr pel’Kana was nearly twenty years ago.
Surebleak
In which Korval acquires a new neighbour.
It’s an evocative name, “World’s End”. There’s the obvious sense in which the place is named, referring to a physical boundary, a place where the world comes to an end, but there are other things it could mean, such as a temporal boundary, a time when a world comes to an end. Sometimes a person’s world can come to an end even though the planet continues untouched. Yulie’s world might have ended when he lost the last of his kin. It might have ended today, if Boss Conrad had been someone other than the person he is.
(And isn’t it interesting how, when he’s talking to Yulie, he’s mostly Pat Rin but sometimes he’s Boss Conrad for a moment or two?)
It’s also interesting to speculate how things might have gone differently if Yulie’s brother hadn’t got himself killed before Boss Conrad showed up, and had been the one handling the negotiation for road access.
Day 376
Standard Year 1392
Blair Road
Surebleak
In which Boss Conrad throws a party.
And that brings us up to the end of Pat Rin’s 1392. If you don’t keep track of these things, that means he’s just about caught up with the end of Carpe Diem.
Which is interesting, because it’s been nearly three months since Pat Rin got the Plan B scatter order that kicked all this off, an event which is shown occurring – anyone? – that’s right, very near the end of Carpe Diem.
Now, that’s not a problem in itself, because I’d already figured out that the not-on-Vandar scenes in Carpe Diem aren’t necessarily in sync with the Vandar scenes – witness the entire journey of the Dutiful Passage from Arsdred to Krisko, sandwiched between two Vandar scenes that occur on a single day – but I do tend to wonder about some of the corollaries. If it was really three whole months from the Plan B scatter to when Korval started coming together again, what were people doing for all that time? Where did Nova go for three months before showing up on Liz’s doorstep? What were the crew of the Passage up to? (Apart from refitting the Passage as a battleship, which, to be fair, I have no idea how long that would be likely to take.)
And, what really bothers me, what were Val Con and Miri up to for those three months? Everything after the scene where Priscilla gets the info from Miri that leads to Nova activating Plan B is set during the week of Winterfair, right at the end of the year, so if Plan B was activated three months before the end of the year, that means Miri and Val Con had a very active first month on Vandar and a very active last few days, and in between was two or three months of nothing much happening. Which doesn’t feel right, somehow – not that it’s necessarily unlikely for a group of people in a remote town on a remote planet to have a quiet couple of months, but when I read Carpe Diem the gap doesn’t seem that long, and the active period preceding it feels like more than one month.
Day 376
Standard Year 1392
Spaceport
Surebleak
In which the Surebleak Portmaster has unexpected visitors.
The portmaster double act is a favourite entry in the roster of memorable minor characters.
The fact that Pat Rin’s gift is one of Ajay’s rugs, which he’d spoken earlier of trying to get on sale at the Port, suggests the tenor of the rest of the gifts: they’re not just nice gestures, they’re product samples, examples of what the bosses’ territories have to offer.
Day 308
Standard Year 1392
Blair Road
Surebleak
In which the people meet the new boss.
Following on from what I said last time, I note that when telling Ms Audrey about the Sinner’s Carpet Pat Rin is again selective with the details, and selects a different set than when talking to Jim Snyder.
On a subject I’ve been keeping track of: Ms Audrey’s guess is that Pat Rin’s preferred game is dice, rather than cards, but his reply is exquisitely uninformative.
Day 307
Standard Year 1392
Blair Road
Surebleak
In which the new boss is not the same as the old boss.
One hazard of reading a series like this in chronological order like this is that one occasionally encounters two stories that are set within a few days of each other but written years apart, and then it can be difficult to avoid noticing discrepancies.
The difference between the implication here about the carpet’s creator and the explicit description in “Persistence” is, I think, clearly a deliberate creative decision by the authors, and can be easily explained in-universe as a deliberate creative decision by Pat Rin, who would not misinform a potential buyer as to the value of a carpet but also knows the value of tuning the details to fit the audience. I can’t see any such clear-cut explanation for the fairly large difference between the price Pat Rin paid for the carpet in “Persistence” and the price he remembers paying here.
On the other hand, there are good juxtapositions, too. Snyder taking Cheever at face value is extra amusing coming so soon after Beba seeing right through him.