Tag Archives: T’carais

I Dare – Chapter 55

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Solcintra
Liad

In which the Captain acts for the safety of the passengers.

The mode of Ultimate Authority, which is referred to twice in this chapter, has, perhaps unsurprisingly, not come up much before: three times in the series up to this point. Priscilla adopts it briefly when putting Sav Rid Olanek in his place at the end of Conflict of Honors; Commander of Agents is said in Carpe Diem to use it when dealing with his underlings; and Val Con, greeting the Tree in Plan B, places the Tree in the position of ultimate authority.

The fact that it’s used twice in this chapter, and by whom, is the central conflict in a nutshell: the first is Commander of Agents again, and the second is Miri when she takes on the melant’i of Liad’s Captain. And I think it says something that, whereas Miri adopts the mode temporarily and in a situation where she is in fact the duly-appointed ultimate authority until the emergency is resolved, the Commander is not only self-appointed but apparently expects to be regarded as the ultimate authority all the time.

There’s a leap near the end of the chapter that I’ve never been able to follow. After the doomsday weapons are activated, ter’Fendil says he can deactivate them if Val Con gives him the control device, and Val Con does. Then it cuts to another scene, and when it cuts back everybody’s running for their lives and talking about the urgent need to do something before the weapons break out and start killing everybody. Is there something missing, or is it just me missing something?

Plan B – Chapter 16

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Lufkit
Epling Street

In which Sheather pays a visit to the home of an Elder.

Poor Sheather. He’s trying so hard to be inconspicuous and unthreatening, but he doesn’t quite grasp the inherent handicaps he’s carrying in those areas in the estimation of Terrans.

Plan B – Chapter 9

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Shaltren
Juntavas Headquarters

In which Edger and Sheather decide to search elsewhere.

Edger and Sheather have apparently been sitting around on Shaltren for the last few months, waiting for any response to the Juntavas danger-tree broadcast. Maybe that doesn’t seem like such a long time to a Turtle, though it’s long enough that even they are getting a bit impatient. I bet it seemed much longer to the Juntavas.

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 34

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Shaltren
Cessilee

In which Grom Trogar demonstrates the extent of his power.

It is not that Grom Trogar rules unchallenged, but that he has confidence that he can overcome whatever challenges are presented to him. This confidence is presumably based in past experience (I expect gaining and retaining the highest position in the Juntavas would have involved many challenges), but it seems to have led to him becoming incautious.

And so he puts himself in a position where his limits are discovered — very publicly, in front of delegates, security guards, unit managers, and all. None of whom, I notice, seem to be at all eager to avenge his death. Somebody who approaches challenges the way he does probably wasn’t winning any popularity contests; there are likely to be people in the crowd who are glad to see him go. The others might not be confident that they can take the Turtles even through superior numbers — or, if they think they have a chance there, perhaps they’ve asked themselves a question that doesn’t seem to have even occurred to Grom Trogar: If we do kill these two, who’s going to come and ask what happened to them?

That’s a beautiful detail about Edger and Sheather taking the time to ensure nobody might injure themselves by tripping over the lump of wall they removed.

Carpe Diem – Chapter 32

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Shaltren
Cessilee

In which Grom Trogar has found no cause to change his decision.

Grom Trogar claims at the beginning of this chapter that he regrets most deeply that he has found no cause to change his approach. He’s lying, but chances are he’s really going to regret it before long.

And frankly he can’t have been looking very hard: Justin Hostro found plenty of cause, and he only got given an hour to look for it.

Come to think of it, it’s interesting that Trogar got five days to consider, when Hostro only got one hour. Part of it, I expect, is deference to his more exalted station; as the Chairman of the Juntavas entire, his decision needs to weigh the needs of a hundred worlds instead of just one. And the situation is somewhat less urgent this time, with Miri and Val Con no longer in imminent danger of attack from the Juntavas.

I kind of wonder, though, if part of it is that Trogar did such a good job of offending Edger in their first meeting that Edger decided he needed five days to cool off, or else he might do something rash.

Carpe Diem – Chapter 30

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Shaltren
Cessilee

In which Edger and Sheather meet the Chairman of the Juntavas.

Here’s one indication that Trogar is lying to Edger: he says that Hostro has reported nothing about what happened on Lufkit, beyond the bare fact that he had Miri and then he didn’t — but he knows, without either of the Turtles mentioning it, about Costello threatening Watcher. (Or perhaps they did mention it, before the scene started, when they were explaining how they came to be standing in his office. What do you think?)

That’s an interesting bit of symbolism, the way Edger’s demonstration reduces most of the Juntavas-controlled worlds on the map to rubble — and the more so for the fact that it was just an incidental effect of Edger’s main intention.

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.

Carpe Diem – Chapter 7

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Liad
Trealla Fantrol

In which Val Con’s siblings receive news of his doings.

The mention of “children, cats, and dogs” as potential hazards to navigation is, I think, the first mention of there being dogs in Korval’s Valley, or indeed on Liad. In fact, I’m not sure it isn’t the only mention of dogs at all in the series (outside of Necessity’s Child, which has a major character with a dog). Characters in the Liaden Universe are much more likely to be cat people, like their creators.

Speaking of children, we get a run-down of the youngest generation of yos’Galans: Shan’s daughter Padi has been mentioned before, as has his foster-son Gordy (who would be about 18 Standards old now), but this is the first mention of Nova’s son Syl Vor and of Anthora’s twins, Shindi and Mik. Unsurprisingly, in the latter case, since they’re “brand new” — which is a reminder that just as Val Con’s relatives are unaware of what he’s been up to lately, so is he unaware of their latest news.

Agent of Change – Chapter 24

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In which the Juntavas let Miri and Val Con go.

A nicely unobtrusive example of virtue being its own reward: if Miri hadn’t thought about notifying the dead stranger’s family, she wouldn’t have found the coord page before it was spaced, and they’d have been in a heap of trouble.

Well. Not that they’re not in a heap of trouble as it is, with an Yxtrang ship bearing down on them, but you know what I mean.