Golden Queen - Chapters 14 and 15
Feb. 18th, 2023 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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i_read_whatSo last chapter focused almost entirely on the aftermath of a liaison between two consenting adults, presenting it as essentially adultery, because one of said adults keeps turning down a third person's romantic overtures.
...I don't get it, and I probably never will. Fortunately, I'm sure, we won't be harping on that crap any longer.
My hopes are immediately dashed when I'm treated to this opening paragraph:
Everynne led the others through the gates on the way to Dronon. After making love to Gallen last night, it seemed that everything was ruined. Both Veriasse and Maggie knew of the tryst, and somehow it had all turned into a fiasco. Now, as she drove, she thought that perhaps it would all end. Perhaps today she would die, and thus put to death her guilt.
For fuck's sake.
I get that Everynne is member of a race that Wolverton has declared to absolutely flawless martyred leaders-who-consider-themselves-servants-of-all (I hate that trope. If you're servants of all, why the fuck do you get to live in luxury and cast down edicts while other people starve?) and thus is predisposed to guilt and responsibility. I'm more willing to accept that Everynne's own upbringing has led her to treat her own wants and desires as less important than others.
But still. Why the fuck should Everynne feel guilty for a consensual "tryst"? Veriasse and Maggie are upset. Okay. Well? So? Leaving aside that Gallen and Maggie aren't romantically involved, we can't even say that Everynne broke some kind of girl code by banging someone that her friend has a crush on, because there's no indication that Everynne and Maggie have ever had a fucking conversation for the entire story so far. In fact, up until these last couple of chapters or so, they haven't really been in the same room together since everyone left the original fake Scot-Irish planet. (Tihrglas? I'm too lazy to look it up.) There is not enough plausibly there for me to believe in this sudden near-suicidal guilt.
I haven't wanted to bring up religion while reviewing books, because, for the most part, I don't really think it's that relevant. There are traces here and there of course. Tolkien's Catholicism isn't quite as obvious as CS Lewis's but you can still spot elements if you know where to look. There's a lot of interesting stuff said about the Mormon elements in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight or in the old, Glen Larsen, version of Battlestar Galactica. It's not specific to any one author or any one religion, either. It's also not really a measure of a quality OF the writing.
But it can be a point of annoyance when it's really heavy handed.
Now, to be fair, I don't know if I'd pick up on this if I didn't know that Wolverton taught at Brigham Young. Maybe that knowledge is coloring my perspective, but I have felt all along that the relationships between Gallen and Maggie, and Gallen and Everynne had some elements of a morality play. Gallen and Everynne's relationship is fundamentally shallow: based on physical attraction, brief momentary chemistry. It's a distraction from Everynne's fate as a blessed martyr (albeit hopefully a living one at the end of the story). It's meaningless and temporary. It's a "tryst".
Long term, Gallen's SUPPOSED to be with Maggie. Their's is the connection based on depth and history. They understand each other (supposedly) and have known each other all their lives. She's the childhood friend that he doesn't realize has grown up. His only real objection to her is her age, which prevents him from seeing her as the partner she's supposed to be. But that's a short term situation.
That's why, all of a sudden, Gallen's romantically in love with Maggie and begging her forgiveness. Despite the fact that he hasn't done anything wrong in any real sense. Spiritually he did, by briefly choosing transient pleasure over steadfast love.
Everynne's proper love interest, in a manner of speaking, is Orick. Hence the bit with the locket. Obviously it's not a sexual love, but it's a spiritual one. Priestly Orick venerates Everynne like the saint that she is. And the narrative has gone pretty far in reinforcing this notion.
It's funny, because the one point that I think IS worth exploring here is that, for all her maturity and knowledge, Everynne is three years old. She is, chronologically, far younger than even Maggie. But that doesn't come up, ever, as a reason to criticize Gallen. Maggie doesn't know, of course, but Veriasse does. I don't completely recall but I don't think it will ever come up again, except maybe in the context of someone musing on how saintly and tragic Everynne is. Because of course if we started to view Everynne as a child, we might realize that her role in the story is pretty fucking horrific, even beyond what she fears will happen.
(There is another comparison to Orick though, as being a bear, Orick is eight years old, but fully mature for his species.)
So anyway, everyone is driving toward the gate. They reach Bregnal, just as Maggie and Orick did last chapter, and it remains horrific. But there is an interesting bit of complexity here:
Veriasse gazed out over the countryside. His eyes were glazed with tears. "Look at all the hive cities. The dronon were building a vast military presence here."
"It looks as if the people of Bregnel decided to wipe them out at any cost," Everynne said.
Veriasse shook his head sadly. "I feared this was coming. The battle to free Bregnel was not going well. They could not have loosed the Terror more than two or three days ago. If they had only waited, perhaps this could have been avoided."
Life under the Dronon was objectively terrible, of course. And we saw from Maggie's experiences the kind of horrors that the Dronon intended for humanity long term. But this true genocidal horror came from the humans. Not the dronon.
Everynne checks the radio frequencies, and reaches a warning about the Resistance fighters setting loose the terrors and warning everyone to "take appropriate measures". Meaning take flight and leave.
Everynne looked out over the wastes in horror, thinking, If we go to war against the dronon, this is what it will be like. Terrors loosed upon hundreds of worlds. Fleets of starships bombarding planets with viral weapons.
...I mean, you don't have to resort to genocide. You could have a normal war. It'd still be horrible, of course, but it seems like only one side has the full on genocide weapons and that's your side.
There's a mention of Veriasse and Gallen sharing an oxygen exchanger (Gallen gave Everynne the second), and I'm wondering if the lack of one will mean that Maggie and Orick will suffer bad effects. Everynne wants to go to Dronon today. When they get to Weclaus, Gallen spots something:
"Bear tracks," Gallen said. "Orick's here! He left a message."
"Orick?" Veriasse asked. "But I didn't show them how to get to Wechaus."
"Maggie's a smart girl," Gallen said. "And you spent enough time looking at routes on your map that she could figure it out." He pointed at the paw print. "The marks are a code. Back home, when I guard clients, Orick walks up ahead. Noone ever bothers a bear, and he can smell an ambush better than any human. He leaves a print by the roadside if the path ahead is clear, but he leaves scratch marks under it if I'm to take warning. One scratch means something has him spooked. Two scratch marks means he is certain that an ambush waits ahead."
...so I wondered this before. But why DID Maggie and Orick go separately at all. I mean, obviously, Gallen asked Maggie to stay behind, and she said yes. But why did she say yes? What would have happened if she'd said no? There was no indicator, at least not that we saw, that either Gallen or Veriasse would have forced either her or Orick to stay behind. Everynne, of course, is rarely allowed to have an opinion, or proactively enforce it if she does.
But it does mean that with the flawed key, they got here first and could warn about this ambush. Everynne sees blood stains and worries, thinking Orick must be terribly wounded. She wonders if it's dronon. Veriasse isn't sure - there weren't many here before. But he agrees they should be wary.
And indeed:
They followed Orick's footprints down to a small valley; among the snow-covered rocks they found evidence of a great battle—scorch marks from incendiary rifles, bloody tracks.
The torn body of a vanquisher lay in the snow, his naked green flesh ripped by teeth, clawed by strong paws. His incendiary rifle lay nearby, yet Everynne searched the ground with growing discomfort. The signs seemed to indicate that more than one vanquisher had fought here. Everynne could make out tracks of at least three of the giants. But if there had been only one casualty, then it seemed that Orick had fought in vain.
Okay, I admit, even if I don't know why they bothered going separately, I do love the tonal shift from happy villagers and swimming bears to this fear and horror. What HAPPENED over the last few days???
Veriasse is able to analyze what happened, and how Orick killed the vanquisher (he ripped out its throat), he cuts the vanquisher open and sticks his hand in. Ew. It's still warm in its bowels, the vanquisher could only have been killed a few hours ago.
And this confuses me a bit:
"You know," Veriasse said as if to himself. "Maggie stole Gallen's key and experienced a temporal loss on her travels once again. Given this loss, the vanquishers who met us on Tihrglas can only have come from our own future. Which explains why they are obviously searching for me and Everynne. Somehow, the dronon learned our identities. We will have to be doubly cautious.
...I mean, okay, I get that the broken key moves everyone faster, but does it actually move people backward in time???
Interesting!
Anyway, Wechaus is trickier because noble people don't wear masks. Veriasse has Everynne use her cloak's hood to cover her face. She "dutifully" pulls the clothes out of her pack and does as he says and I twitch at that word. I REALLY hope the poor girl gets to learn some autonomy.
But oh, OH NO.
They had not gone more than a few hundred meters when they saw bear tracks leave the road again to the east; other tracks showed where vanquishers had pursued Orick across the road from the west.
Gallen shouted when he saw the prints and took off following the trail with Everynne close behind. Not fifty meters from the road, they found the site of the last battle, and Everynne cried out in horror.
A heap of blackened bones was all that the incendiary blasts had left of the bear.
And with this horrifying cliffhanger, the chapter ends.
It's short enough that I should probably proceed. And thus I will.
Chapter 15 returns us to Maggie and Orick, some days before. They reach an inn, manned by androids as the humans and bears play in the water. Maggie realizes, thanks to her Mantle, that Wechaus is "Backward". The androids waiting on tables are ancient models, and very few humans are wearing "personal intelligences", and the ones who do are wearing unsophisticated models. She thinks everyone seems very relaxed.
An android approaches and offers to set up an account, and I think Maggie's response is pretty funny/interesting:
"Maggie Flynn," Maggie answered, somehow surprised that these people would require money for their services. This was new. She immediately began to wonder how much they would require, but knew that when Veriasse came, he would be able to settle the debt. At the very least, she could sell a knowledge token from her mantle. Each of the metal disks stored thousands of volumes of data, and would be valuable to anyone who wore a mantle.
I criticize Wolverton a lot in these reviews, but I do think he's been doing a fairly nice job with the worldbuilding and these various societies. I also think he does a pretty good job of showing the resourcefulness of the characters. As annoying as I find the mantles on general principle, I have to admit that both Maggie and Gallen still get moments where they have to sort things out themselves. This is a good example: mooch of Veriasse, sure, but also, plan B.
Maggie's led to a luxurious submerged apartment. She asks the time: they're one day and sixteen hours ahead of when they left Cyanesse. I'm not sure what she means by "Ahead". Did they go back in time or jump forward in time, just not as much as the others did?
Oh well. This place seems pretty idyllic, and both Maggie and Orick get time to bathe, he goes to the hot springs outside, while she finds a lovely pool in a side room that is decorated to look like a forest. We know things will go to hell soon enough, but I'm glad that Maggie gets a nice experience here.
They go to the common room, and Maggie starts feeling like she's being watched. And oh! I see. "Ahead" does mean backward in time.
She got up to leave, but the dark stranger came and discreetly took her arm, forced her to sit again, then sat next to her. "By any chance," he asked, "have you been to Fale recently?"
"Yes," Maggie said, then realized that because of the way her gate key sent her back in time, she was currently on Fale, held captive among the aberlains. "I mean, no."
"I thought so." He smiled. "Eat with me."
"No, I have to be going," Maggie said.
But the man gripped her arm, holding her, pulling her back to her seat. "Come now, you've hardly touched a bite," he said, a gleam of excitement in his eyes. "Besides, you've only had the main course. You must try the desserts."
I will give Wolverton this too, I may not like the way the main romance is handled in this book, but he has the Awful Nice Guy down pat here. He warns her she won't get far, not to the next gate, and urges her to meet him in her rooms.
Maggie, wisely, stays the fuck OUT of said room and goes to find Orick. That said, she decides to be an idiot, and when faced with Orick's joyous enthusiasm, does not mention her creepy encounter. She then decides to be even stupider and head back to her room, figuring she'll see this through on her own without risking Orick.
She doesn't meet the stranger, but she does meet the innkeeper who wants her to settle her bill and leave and...oh, this is interesting and maybe a hint of a foreshadowing to something that happens later.
"What are you talking about, 'reward'?"
Bavin looked about cautiously, as if someone in the room might be listening. "The dronon—" he confided, "they're looking for a beautiful woman who is traveling the Maze of Worlds. She's rumored to be accompanied by several protectors. When you first came in, I wasn't sure you were the one, because you rode in with only that bear. That cast some doubt in my mind. But you rode an airbike that no one would ever bring down this far south in the cold, and that seemed strange. Then you pulled that key from your bag at the table, and you had the planetary police asking about you. . . ."
"I don't understand," Maggie stuttered. "Are you sure they are looking for me?"
"The dronon sent more vanquishers just a few days ago, using the gates, same as you," Bavin said. "Oh, they've got people scared—scared evil. Good people that would never have thought of doing business with their kind are scrambling now, and there's some that would turn you over in a second, thinking it might give them some leverage in the future. But not me—not me!" Bavin was shaking his head, and Maggie realized that he denied any possible turpitude simply because he was tempted to turn her in himself. "So like I said, I want you to settle up your account and get out of here."
She asks where to go. He warns her away from the gates. She states that she has no money, which rightfully offends him. She says she intended to work for money, and offers him a silver disk from her mantle. It has an android on it, and she regrets that she'll be giving up all her knowledge about androids in doing so.
Huh. I thought she got to retain the knowledge in the mantles? Is the disk simply something she hasn't learned yet? Or does the mantle store the knowledge, more like a portable library instead.
I admit, I dislike them less if it's the latter. Having a pocket reference is very different than having knowledge beamed directly into your brain. I wish that had been made clearer if it's true.
Anyway, Bavin has an attack of conscience and insists it's too much. He just sends her away. She runs off to warn Orick, but instead reaches the three vanquishers. She stays out of sight while they comment on the bike. They know she's here. She wants to go back to the inn, but can't risk being seen. She decides to try to get to the airbike and speed away as a distraction so Orick can escape..
And...oh. Nice fake out. Apparently the Awful Nice Guy is actually a friend. Though still presumptuous as he grabs her by the arm and pulls her out of sight. I don't remotely blame Maggie for distrust considering what happened to her before, and this guy's general level of presumptuousness.
Things get messy and explosive. Maggie says that she left a friend in there:
"I know!" the thin man said, though he did not slow the aircar. "I was trying to warn him when the vanquishers arrived. They sent for reinforcements, so we had to move fast. We hope that by killing the tracker, it will give your friend a chance to escape."
"We?" Maggie said.
"My doppelgangers," the thin man said.
Maggie had never heard the word doppelganger, so her mantle filled her with understanding. Some people chose to become immortal by cloning themselves and downloading memories into the clones. Among those immortals were people who often kept multiple copies of themselves running at the same time so that they could work toward a common goal. Their leader was called the primary, while the copies were doppelgangers.
...fascinating. Also with really interesting ethical issues. I'm intrigued.
As they flee, she sees a doppelganger take a hit from a vanquisher:
She looked down at the dying man and felt peculiarly detached. Though he was human, he was, after all, only a copy of a man, and therefore not real. But she knew that the man had felt pain and desires like any other person; he had hopes and dreams, and he'd just chosen to give his life for her.
Maggie looked up at the thin man who piloted the aircar. Somehow it was comforting to know that he was the kind of man who would be willing to die for her.
I'm reminded of how Gallen couldn't feel any particular empathy for watching one of the most traumatic moments of Veriasse's life. As annoyed as I am with the romance plot, I do like Maggie as a character far more than I like Gallen. I just wish that a) the romance was written differently and b) she'd stop hitting him. I'm pretty sure that Wolverton is trying for a fiery Maureen O'Hara type of vibe for her, but it doesn't really work for a modern audience.
Anyway, the chapter ends here.
...I don't get it, and I probably never will. Fortunately, I'm sure, we won't be harping on that crap any longer.
My hopes are immediately dashed when I'm treated to this opening paragraph:
Everynne led the others through the gates on the way to Dronon. After making love to Gallen last night, it seemed that everything was ruined. Both Veriasse and Maggie knew of the tryst, and somehow it had all turned into a fiasco. Now, as she drove, she thought that perhaps it would all end. Perhaps today she would die, and thus put to death her guilt.
For fuck's sake.
I get that Everynne is member of a race that Wolverton has declared to absolutely flawless martyred leaders-who-consider-themselves-servants-of-all (I hate that trope. If you're servants of all, why the fuck do you get to live in luxury and cast down edicts while other people starve?) and thus is predisposed to guilt and responsibility. I'm more willing to accept that Everynne's own upbringing has led her to treat her own wants and desires as less important than others.
But still. Why the fuck should Everynne feel guilty for a consensual "tryst"? Veriasse and Maggie are upset. Okay. Well? So? Leaving aside that Gallen and Maggie aren't romantically involved, we can't even say that Everynne broke some kind of girl code by banging someone that her friend has a crush on, because there's no indication that Everynne and Maggie have ever had a fucking conversation for the entire story so far. In fact, up until these last couple of chapters or so, they haven't really been in the same room together since everyone left the original fake Scot-Irish planet. (Tihrglas? I'm too lazy to look it up.) There is not enough plausibly there for me to believe in this sudden near-suicidal guilt.
I haven't wanted to bring up religion while reviewing books, because, for the most part, I don't really think it's that relevant. There are traces here and there of course. Tolkien's Catholicism isn't quite as obvious as CS Lewis's but you can still spot elements if you know where to look. There's a lot of interesting stuff said about the Mormon elements in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight or in the old, Glen Larsen, version of Battlestar Galactica. It's not specific to any one author or any one religion, either. It's also not really a measure of a quality OF the writing.
But it can be a point of annoyance when it's really heavy handed.
Now, to be fair, I don't know if I'd pick up on this if I didn't know that Wolverton taught at Brigham Young. Maybe that knowledge is coloring my perspective, but I have felt all along that the relationships between Gallen and Maggie, and Gallen and Everynne had some elements of a morality play. Gallen and Everynne's relationship is fundamentally shallow: based on physical attraction, brief momentary chemistry. It's a distraction from Everynne's fate as a blessed martyr (albeit hopefully a living one at the end of the story). It's meaningless and temporary. It's a "tryst".
Long term, Gallen's SUPPOSED to be with Maggie. Their's is the connection based on depth and history. They understand each other (supposedly) and have known each other all their lives. She's the childhood friend that he doesn't realize has grown up. His only real objection to her is her age, which prevents him from seeing her as the partner she's supposed to be. But that's a short term situation.
That's why, all of a sudden, Gallen's romantically in love with Maggie and begging her forgiveness. Despite the fact that he hasn't done anything wrong in any real sense. Spiritually he did, by briefly choosing transient pleasure over steadfast love.
Everynne's proper love interest, in a manner of speaking, is Orick. Hence the bit with the locket. Obviously it's not a sexual love, but it's a spiritual one. Priestly Orick venerates Everynne like the saint that she is. And the narrative has gone pretty far in reinforcing this notion.
It's funny, because the one point that I think IS worth exploring here is that, for all her maturity and knowledge, Everynne is three years old. She is, chronologically, far younger than even Maggie. But that doesn't come up, ever, as a reason to criticize Gallen. Maggie doesn't know, of course, but Veriasse does. I don't completely recall but I don't think it will ever come up again, except maybe in the context of someone musing on how saintly and tragic Everynne is. Because of course if we started to view Everynne as a child, we might realize that her role in the story is pretty fucking horrific, even beyond what she fears will happen.
(There is another comparison to Orick though, as being a bear, Orick is eight years old, but fully mature for his species.)
So anyway, everyone is driving toward the gate. They reach Bregnal, just as Maggie and Orick did last chapter, and it remains horrific. But there is an interesting bit of complexity here:
Veriasse gazed out over the countryside. His eyes were glazed with tears. "Look at all the hive cities. The dronon were building a vast military presence here."
"It looks as if the people of Bregnel decided to wipe them out at any cost," Everynne said.
Veriasse shook his head sadly. "I feared this was coming. The battle to free Bregnel was not going well. They could not have loosed the Terror more than two or three days ago. If they had only waited, perhaps this could have been avoided."
Life under the Dronon was objectively terrible, of course. And we saw from Maggie's experiences the kind of horrors that the Dronon intended for humanity long term. But this true genocidal horror came from the humans. Not the dronon.
Everynne checks the radio frequencies, and reaches a warning about the Resistance fighters setting loose the terrors and warning everyone to "take appropriate measures". Meaning take flight and leave.
Everynne looked out over the wastes in horror, thinking, If we go to war against the dronon, this is what it will be like. Terrors loosed upon hundreds of worlds. Fleets of starships bombarding planets with viral weapons.
...I mean, you don't have to resort to genocide. You could have a normal war. It'd still be horrible, of course, but it seems like only one side has the full on genocide weapons and that's your side.
There's a mention of Veriasse and Gallen sharing an oxygen exchanger (Gallen gave Everynne the second), and I'm wondering if the lack of one will mean that Maggie and Orick will suffer bad effects. Everynne wants to go to Dronon today. When they get to Weclaus, Gallen spots something:
"Bear tracks," Gallen said. "Orick's here! He left a message."
"Orick?" Veriasse asked. "But I didn't show them how to get to Wechaus."
"Maggie's a smart girl," Gallen said. "And you spent enough time looking at routes on your map that she could figure it out." He pointed at the paw print. "The marks are a code. Back home, when I guard clients, Orick walks up ahead. Noone ever bothers a bear, and he can smell an ambush better than any human. He leaves a print by the roadside if the path ahead is clear, but he leaves scratch marks under it if I'm to take warning. One scratch means something has him spooked. Two scratch marks means he is certain that an ambush waits ahead."
...so I wondered this before. But why DID Maggie and Orick go separately at all. I mean, obviously, Gallen asked Maggie to stay behind, and she said yes. But why did she say yes? What would have happened if she'd said no? There was no indicator, at least not that we saw, that either Gallen or Veriasse would have forced either her or Orick to stay behind. Everynne, of course, is rarely allowed to have an opinion, or proactively enforce it if she does.
But it does mean that with the flawed key, they got here first and could warn about this ambush. Everynne sees blood stains and worries, thinking Orick must be terribly wounded. She wonders if it's dronon. Veriasse isn't sure - there weren't many here before. But he agrees they should be wary.
And indeed:
They followed Orick's footprints down to a small valley; among the snow-covered rocks they found evidence of a great battle—scorch marks from incendiary rifles, bloody tracks.
The torn body of a vanquisher lay in the snow, his naked green flesh ripped by teeth, clawed by strong paws. His incendiary rifle lay nearby, yet Everynne searched the ground with growing discomfort. The signs seemed to indicate that more than one vanquisher had fought here. Everynne could make out tracks of at least three of the giants. But if there had been only one casualty, then it seemed that Orick had fought in vain.
Okay, I admit, even if I don't know why they bothered going separately, I do love the tonal shift from happy villagers and swimming bears to this fear and horror. What HAPPENED over the last few days???
Veriasse is able to analyze what happened, and how Orick killed the vanquisher (he ripped out its throat), he cuts the vanquisher open and sticks his hand in. Ew. It's still warm in its bowels, the vanquisher could only have been killed a few hours ago.
And this confuses me a bit:
"You know," Veriasse said as if to himself. "Maggie stole Gallen's key and experienced a temporal loss on her travels once again. Given this loss, the vanquishers who met us on Tihrglas can only have come from our own future. Which explains why they are obviously searching for me and Everynne. Somehow, the dronon learned our identities. We will have to be doubly cautious.
...I mean, okay, I get that the broken key moves everyone faster, but does it actually move people backward in time???
Interesting!
Anyway, Wechaus is trickier because noble people don't wear masks. Veriasse has Everynne use her cloak's hood to cover her face. She "dutifully" pulls the clothes out of her pack and does as he says and I twitch at that word. I REALLY hope the poor girl gets to learn some autonomy.
But oh, OH NO.
They had not gone more than a few hundred meters when they saw bear tracks leave the road again to the east; other tracks showed where vanquishers had pursued Orick across the road from the west.
Gallen shouted when he saw the prints and took off following the trail with Everynne close behind. Not fifty meters from the road, they found the site of the last battle, and Everynne cried out in horror.
A heap of blackened bones was all that the incendiary blasts had left of the bear.
And with this horrifying cliffhanger, the chapter ends.
It's short enough that I should probably proceed. And thus I will.
Chapter 15 returns us to Maggie and Orick, some days before. They reach an inn, manned by androids as the humans and bears play in the water. Maggie realizes, thanks to her Mantle, that Wechaus is "Backward". The androids waiting on tables are ancient models, and very few humans are wearing "personal intelligences", and the ones who do are wearing unsophisticated models. She thinks everyone seems very relaxed.
An android approaches and offers to set up an account, and I think Maggie's response is pretty funny/interesting:
"Maggie Flynn," Maggie answered, somehow surprised that these people would require money for their services. This was new. She immediately began to wonder how much they would require, but knew that when Veriasse came, he would be able to settle the debt. At the very least, she could sell a knowledge token from her mantle. Each of the metal disks stored thousands of volumes of data, and would be valuable to anyone who wore a mantle.
I criticize Wolverton a lot in these reviews, but I do think he's been doing a fairly nice job with the worldbuilding and these various societies. I also think he does a pretty good job of showing the resourcefulness of the characters. As annoying as I find the mantles on general principle, I have to admit that both Maggie and Gallen still get moments where they have to sort things out themselves. This is a good example: mooch of Veriasse, sure, but also, plan B.
Maggie's led to a luxurious submerged apartment. She asks the time: they're one day and sixteen hours ahead of when they left Cyanesse. I'm not sure what she means by "Ahead". Did they go back in time or jump forward in time, just not as much as the others did?
Oh well. This place seems pretty idyllic, and both Maggie and Orick get time to bathe, he goes to the hot springs outside, while she finds a lovely pool in a side room that is decorated to look like a forest. We know things will go to hell soon enough, but I'm glad that Maggie gets a nice experience here.
They go to the common room, and Maggie starts feeling like she's being watched. And oh! I see. "Ahead" does mean backward in time.
She got up to leave, but the dark stranger came and discreetly took her arm, forced her to sit again, then sat next to her. "By any chance," he asked, "have you been to Fale recently?"
"Yes," Maggie said, then realized that because of the way her gate key sent her back in time, she was currently on Fale, held captive among the aberlains. "I mean, no."
"I thought so." He smiled. "Eat with me."
"No, I have to be going," Maggie said.
But the man gripped her arm, holding her, pulling her back to her seat. "Come now, you've hardly touched a bite," he said, a gleam of excitement in his eyes. "Besides, you've only had the main course. You must try the desserts."
I will give Wolverton this too, I may not like the way the main romance is handled in this book, but he has the Awful Nice Guy down pat here. He warns her she won't get far, not to the next gate, and urges her to meet him in her rooms.
Maggie, wisely, stays the fuck OUT of said room and goes to find Orick. That said, she decides to be an idiot, and when faced with Orick's joyous enthusiasm, does not mention her creepy encounter. She then decides to be even stupider and head back to her room, figuring she'll see this through on her own without risking Orick.
She doesn't meet the stranger, but she does meet the innkeeper who wants her to settle her bill and leave and...oh, this is interesting and maybe a hint of a foreshadowing to something that happens later.
"What are you talking about, 'reward'?"
Bavin looked about cautiously, as if someone in the room might be listening. "The dronon—" he confided, "they're looking for a beautiful woman who is traveling the Maze of Worlds. She's rumored to be accompanied by several protectors. When you first came in, I wasn't sure you were the one, because you rode in with only that bear. That cast some doubt in my mind. But you rode an airbike that no one would ever bring down this far south in the cold, and that seemed strange. Then you pulled that key from your bag at the table, and you had the planetary police asking about you. . . ."
"I don't understand," Maggie stuttered. "Are you sure they are looking for me?"
"The dronon sent more vanquishers just a few days ago, using the gates, same as you," Bavin said. "Oh, they've got people scared—scared evil. Good people that would never have thought of doing business with their kind are scrambling now, and there's some that would turn you over in a second, thinking it might give them some leverage in the future. But not me—not me!" Bavin was shaking his head, and Maggie realized that he denied any possible turpitude simply because he was tempted to turn her in himself. "So like I said, I want you to settle up your account and get out of here."
She asks where to go. He warns her away from the gates. She states that she has no money, which rightfully offends him. She says she intended to work for money, and offers him a silver disk from her mantle. It has an android on it, and she regrets that she'll be giving up all her knowledge about androids in doing so.
Huh. I thought she got to retain the knowledge in the mantles? Is the disk simply something she hasn't learned yet? Or does the mantle store the knowledge, more like a portable library instead.
I admit, I dislike them less if it's the latter. Having a pocket reference is very different than having knowledge beamed directly into your brain. I wish that had been made clearer if it's true.
Anyway, Bavin has an attack of conscience and insists it's too much. He just sends her away. She runs off to warn Orick, but instead reaches the three vanquishers. She stays out of sight while they comment on the bike. They know she's here. She wants to go back to the inn, but can't risk being seen. She decides to try to get to the airbike and speed away as a distraction so Orick can escape..
And...oh. Nice fake out. Apparently the Awful Nice Guy is actually a friend. Though still presumptuous as he grabs her by the arm and pulls her out of sight. I don't remotely blame Maggie for distrust considering what happened to her before, and this guy's general level of presumptuousness.
Things get messy and explosive. Maggie says that she left a friend in there:
"I know!" the thin man said, though he did not slow the aircar. "I was trying to warn him when the vanquishers arrived. They sent for reinforcements, so we had to move fast. We hope that by killing the tracker, it will give your friend a chance to escape."
"We?" Maggie said.
"My doppelgangers," the thin man said.
Maggie had never heard the word doppelganger, so her mantle filled her with understanding. Some people chose to become immortal by cloning themselves and downloading memories into the clones. Among those immortals were people who often kept multiple copies of themselves running at the same time so that they could work toward a common goal. Their leader was called the primary, while the copies were doppelgangers.
...fascinating. Also with really interesting ethical issues. I'm intrigued.
As they flee, she sees a doppelganger take a hit from a vanquisher:
She looked down at the dying man and felt peculiarly detached. Though he was human, he was, after all, only a copy of a man, and therefore not real. But she knew that the man had felt pain and desires like any other person; he had hopes and dreams, and he'd just chosen to give his life for her.
Maggie looked up at the thin man who piloted the aircar. Somehow it was comforting to know that he was the kind of man who would be willing to die for her.
I'm reminded of how Gallen couldn't feel any particular empathy for watching one of the most traumatic moments of Veriasse's life. As annoyed as I am with the romance plot, I do like Maggie as a character far more than I like Gallen. I just wish that a) the romance was written differently and b) she'd stop hitting him. I'm pretty sure that Wolverton is trying for a fiery Maureen O'Hara type of vibe for her, but it doesn't really work for a modern audience.
Anyway, the chapter ends here.