Vandar
Kosmorn Gore
In which Miri remembers Klamath.
Miri’s story, and her expectation that it will turn Val Con against her, is one of those things that I have feelings about but not many words. I’m more comfortable talking about incidental things, like Miri mentioning in passing that very few people succeed in entirely kicking a Cloud habit, which makes the Department’s assumptions about her seem like a bit less of an unprofessional reach.
Vandar
Winterfair
In which Hakan sees a thing that he cannot have seen.
The first published description of an autodoc in action, and one of the more detailed explanations of what it is an autodoc actually does.
The autodoc’s analysis indicates that Miri caught a bit of the MemStim that felled sig’Alda, which presumably explains why she’s been reliving Klamath all the way to the ship. (Not that it needs a memory drug for a gravely injured person to be reliving a past trauma, but it might otherwise have been a bit of coincidence that she was reliving precisely that one.)
It probably says something about sig’Alda that he didn’t bother to hide the footprint trail from his ship. Even given an out-of-the-way location, it might have been better tradecraft to make it less easy for someone to stumble across if they happened to be passing. I have a nasty suspicion that he didn’t bother because he figured any local who found the ship would be done in by the security system, and as far as he was concerned that was a satisfactory state of affairs.
Vandar
Winterfair
In which Val Con meets Tyl Von sig’Alda, Clan Rugare.
Given that it’s been suggested that Cloud targets the user’s most traumatic memories, it’s interesting that its effect on Tyl Von sig’Alda seems to have been to make him forget basically everything about being an Agent of Change.
(Also interesting: that although he is confused when Val Con mentions his ship, he doesn’t hesitate when Val Con asks for his first aid kit. Presumably carrying one of those is a basic pilot thing that he was doing even before he fell into the hands of the Department.)
sig’Alda’s recollection of his occupation suggests he’s not a former Scout, unless he left the Scouts for some reason to become a pilot-for-hire. I was going to say that it seems unlikely a Scout would choose such a course, but then I remembered that we know of a Scout who did very nearly that, and choice didn’t come into it: Val Con’s own father was called home from the Scouts to serve the necessity of his Clan, and later became a courier pilot at least partly because it was the closest he could get, while still serving the necessity of his Clan, to being a Scout again. And it could also happen more directly, that a Scout might be called home to serve the Clan’s necessity by being a pilot-for-hire, if the Clan’s necessity were that all its children be supporting it with paid occupations. (I think I’ve just argued myself out of believing that we’ve learned anything definite about whether sig’Alda was a Scout.)
Vandar
Winterfair
In which Zamir Meltz has something to say.
For someone who appears so little, and particularly as one whose appearances have consisted mainly of telling Hakan off when his enthusiasms run away with him, Hakan’s father has turned out quite well-rounded.
Agent sig’Alda remarks again on the luck that has preserved his life so far. It occurs to me that it may not be his luck — after all, Val Con needs him to stay alive too. And we’ve heard a lot about how Line yos’Phelium rides the Luck, but I don’t recall having heard anything similar said about Line sig’Alda.
Vandar
Winterfair
In which Tyl Von sig’Alda is a man with a plan.
sig’Alda shows a blind spot again: even after he carefully notes the fact that Val Con is heading for Miri’s last known location, it doesn’t occur to him that Miri herself might be the objective. Granted, he doesn’t know that Val Con knows Miri’s location, but then again he doesn’t know he doesn’t, and given how many of his scenarios involve pre-arranged plots against the Department you’d think a simple pre-arranged rendezvous wouldn’t be difficult to consider. But no; sig’Alda can’t imagine Val Con arranging to meet up with Miri, at least not for her own sake, because he can’t imagine wanting to see Miri again.
The Department really does spend a lot of time considering scenarios in which people are plotting against them, it seems. An occupational hazard of spending all one’s time plotting against people, perhaps. It shows up again when sig’Alda, having concluded that Val Con and Miri were deliberately signalling to someone on the radio, decides it was most likely a pre-arranged signal to a co-conspirator. (It’s interesting that he doesn’t consider the possibility that they might have been signalling to him, although to be fair I suppose that would seem less likely after Val Con’s marked lack of enthusiasm when he answered the signal.)
Dutiful Passage
In which Shan and Priscilla regroup and reflect.
“I didn’t know it wasn’t possible, so I did it” is a glib enough explanation, but given some of the things we’re told elsewhere, I have a suspicion that Shan’s achievements are a sign that there’s more to him than he knows — and particularly, that it’s being brought out of him by his association with Priscilla, which would explain why it wasn’t spotted when he was young.
That’s an interesting detail, about direct mindspeech being so uncommon that Priscilla doesn’t know of anyone with the capability. Now I’m trying to think if there have been any other people doing it in the series so far.
This is another chapter which gains in richness from all the work the authors did in Conflict of Honors.
Vandar
Winterfair
In which Val Con speaks to a compatriot and a brother.
Val Con slipping out of his Department conditioning with the l’apeleka he learned from Edger is interesting in several ways.
One way is that it’s an example of things that go around coming around. If Val Con hadn’t been the kind of person who would and could befriend a Turtle, he’d be in serious trouble now (if he wasn’t already dead, back in any of the several incidents where his friendship with Edger has already helped pull him out of the fire).
It’s also a sign of one of the Department’s blind spots. They must have known Val Con had a history with the Clutch — they have access to Val Con’s service history, and even if they didn’t the fact that Edger lent him a ship would have been a big hint — but they don’t seem to have thought much of it. It’s not so much that I expect them to have had a counter for the l’apeleka specifically — I wouldn’t be surprised if Val Con is the only non-Turtle who knows much about it, and certainly even if an agent of the Department tried to get a Turtle to talk about Turtle things he wouldn’t get far — but even if they didn’t know about l’apeleka specifically, they might have considered the possibility that Val Con had learned something unusual from the Clutch, and they didn’t. All the time we’ve seen the Department spend thinking about what lessons they need to learn from Val Con’s past, and his time with the Clutch never comes up. It’s like they take it as read that no non-Liaden culture could produce anything the Department needs to worry about.
Vandar
Winterfair
In which Tyl Von sig’Alda offers a gift.
I do not think sig’Alda is as proficient at reading Miri’s moods as he thinks he is. There are several other possibilities that might produce a paling of the complexion, a roughening of the voice, and a brightness of the eyes, and every one of them is more likely than the explanation he prefers.
Similarly, I suspect there are gaps in his grasp of spoken Terran, which is probably sleep-learned and unlikely to have been practiced much with colloquial native speakers. There’s a limit to how much meaning can be extracted from a textual representation, but I’m pretty sure when Miri says “Thanks a lot” it isn’t the simple expression of gratitude sig’Alda takes it for.
In which Tyl Von sig’Alda makes an approach.
sig’Alda is demonstrating a very closed-minded attitude here: instead of paying attention to new information and adjusting his theories and plans, he’s holding on to his theories and plans and taking in only what information fits what he already believes he knows. Some of it’s definitely indoctrination, like the way he shies away from the possibility that Val Con might be consciously and happily free of the Department’s influence, and some of it is… probably at least partly due to indoctrination, like the way he dismisses everything any Terran does as an irrelevant distraction. But I’m not sure that explains the way he seems to have accepted certain things as facts when they were only ever presented as plausible theories, like Miri’s supposed drug addiction.
One way and another, his inability or disinclination to accept new information is going to come back and bite him sooner or later, when reality fails to match the contents of his head. The question is how much damage he’s going to do before then, trying to impose the contents of his head on reality.
Interdicted World I-2796-893-44
In which Tyl Von sig’Alda comes to Winterfair.
Tyl Von sig’Alda’s impressions of Winterfair are a contrast to Miri’s a few chapters ago. They’re seeing many of the same things, but reacting to them very differently. That even extends to the dateline at the head of the chapter: sig’Alda knows the local name of the planet, but he’s not going to lower himself to using it.
I wonder if sig’Alda was a Scout before he was recruited by the Department; not all the pilots taken by the Department were. His reactions here are certainly not those a Scout would have, but that just brings us back around to the question of how much of his attitude is him and how much was instilled in him by his Department indoctrination.
And once again, the child he encounters is not given any gendered pronouns, and nor is the child’s parent — but, where it felt earlier like the authors were leaving room for the reader’s imagination, here it feels like the reason their genders are not noted is because sig’Alda doesn’t see them as human enough to care.