At the end of chapter 10, Bel Thorne went missing. This is an alarming turn of events. We know that Bel is highly trained, and has saved Miles’s life several times. Bel wouldn’t hesitate to step into the line of fire for Miles again, and in fact laid on Miles’s head when they were shot at by an unknown party with a riveter. Diplomatic Immunity has several characters whose abduction I think would not present much of a struggle for a trained operative. Bel is not one of them.
In short, this is very bad news.
You know what else is short? Time. Miles has four days to wrap this up if he’s going to be present at the birth of his first two children. And he would like to be. Ekaterin takes his concerns with wifely stoicism—she says they will discuss this in four days.
Miles sets aside his concerns about little Aral Alexander and Helen Natalia to focus on Bel, who is one of a host of missing persons Miles needs station security to locate as urgently as possible. Passengers Firka and Dubauer are also on the lam this morning. Chief Venn is inclined to assign Bel the lowest possible priority—he asks if Bel could have stayed the night with a friend, and implies that Bel might have been sleeping with Garnet Five—until Garnet Five arrives at Security Post One. She reports that she met Bel last night and the two of them saw Firka and tried to follow him. Firka knocked them out with an unknown aerosol, and Garnet Five woke up in a recycle bin. Bel was nowhere to be found. This raises the urgency of the search for Firka and the search for Bel while handily defusing the slur on Garnet Five’s reputation. Also, Firka seems curiously well-equipped.
One of the nifty things about mysteries is what they reveal about the ordinary workings of their settings. To understand how and why a victim was murdered or a crime was committed, you need to know how things are supposed to work, what’s ordinary and what’s out of the ordinary. So of course, I’m riveted by the recycle bin. This seems similar to the sort of dumpsters you see in alleys and behind businesses on Earth, which makes sense because dumpsters are one of those things that works well enough to be left alone—I can imagine improvements, but I can also imagine significant drawbacks to those improvements from the perspective of a person who has been knocked out with gas and stuffed in one. BUT BUT BUT this is Graf Station, and only part of it has gravity. How are people disposing of waste in the other parts? What are zero-gravity space dumpsters like? How are they handling this on the International Space Station? None of these questions are relevant to the plot, but there are days when I wish that, after crashing and burning in the Imperial Military Academy entrance examinations, Miles had pursued a career in public works so I could know the answers to all of these questions. Perhaps there is fanfic on that.
Miles attempts a fast penta interrogation and fails because Firka will not stop talking. Sometimes a person really needs to tell a story, and this is that person. His real name is Gupta. He has gills. He was created on Jackson’s Whole to be a genetically modified stage hand for a group of genetically modified underwater dancers. The troop was disbanded when the House that created it was taken over by House Ryoval a few years before Baron Ryoval was assassinated (by Mark, in case you had forgotten). Gupta, who goes by Guppy, found work transporting cargo, and was part of the crew of the ship that smuggled Dubauer to Komarr, and he’s the only survivor. Everyone else died of a disease that somehow produced a ton of heat and melted them. It’s like a nightmare horror story version of Ebola. It’s spread by direct contact, and I assume it’s a virus.
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Static Ruin
I like Miles as a former mercenary commander, intelligence agent, and high-powered space detective, but my brain is generating whole squads of alternative Mileses tonight. If he didn’t want to go into public works (and it would have been a huge benefit to the Vorkosigan’s District if he had, at least once they stopped letting 17-year-old Miles drive the snowplow) he could have considered public health. Miles likes to know more than everyone else, and to tell people what to do; I think he would have been good at the investigation side of public health, if perhaps a little tactless on the recommendations front. I have many questions about health facilities and public health issues on Graf Station. Miles is somewhat more focused on tracking Dubauer.
Guppy weathered his illness in his personal water tank, and is now seeking revenge. He bought passage on one of the ships in the Komarran convoy in order to stay close to Dubauer. He reported his concerns about Dubauer to Solian just before Solian disappeared, and synthesized Solian’s blood to keep Barrayaran security focused on searching for him. I think he’s very tired. By the time the Quaddies bring a dose of fast penta to the interrogation room, Guppy has debriefed himself more thoroughly than Miles ever could.
Bel Thorne is still missing.
Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer teaches history and reads a lot.
I was also curious. https://www.nasa.gov/content/repurposing-space-station-trash-for-power-and-water/ is an article from NASA on how they deal with trash on the International Space Station.
I suspect the quaddies do a lot of recycling. You would need some kind of one-way disposer – like an old fashioned corner mail box? – to collect used coffee bulbs, etc.
How do you think quaddies serve food on 0g stations?
Chief Venn is inclined to assign Bel the lowest possible priority—he asks if Bel could have stayed the night with a friend, and implies that Bel might have been sleeping with Garnet Five—until Garnet Five arrives at Security Post One
It appears Barrayarans aren’t the only ones to think things about Betan herms.
Or Bel is just another pesky downsider , and Chief Venn doesn’t like downsiders this week.
The interrogation of Firka does not take place in Chapter 11. Did you go past Chapter 11 and into 12? (Or am I just really caffeine deprived?)
The way Miles got Guppy to talk, and tell his whole story, riveted the Quaddies. It’s one of my favoirte Miles moments, even though he really does little except listen and prod a bit.
I remember being anguished about Bel the first time I read this! Such a great character.
I think he would have been good at the investigation side of public health, if perhaps a little tactless on the recommendations front.
The idea of Miles as a Dr. House style medical investigator amuses me greatly.
As an awed onlooker observes this is the first Fast Penta interrogation anybody has ever witnessed without the Fast Penta. Anybody else really, really want to expose Dubauer to some of his own evil concoctions just now?
@@.-@ – I accidentally left chapter 12 out if the title!
@@.-@, 8 – We’ve just fixed the title. Thanks!
Miles’ “interrogation” of Guppy is one of my favorite bits. There’s the way Guppy comes to unholy life when he realizes Miles is Barrayarran and still has his grandfather’s collection of Cetagandan scalps. Also, there’s the way Miles is finally getting some good out of his Barrayarran reputation.
he could have considered public health. Miles likes to know more than everyone else, and to tell people what to do
And, of course, he has a tremendous aptitude for sewers. Alternate Miles is beloved of the District, the terror of the Hassadar plumbers’ guild, and has to be repeatedly restrained by his Countess from talking about work at dinner (and indeed leaping up from the table, pacing around the room, and demonstrating sediment filtration using an improvised model made from tableware). Generations yet unborn know him from the stories of their childhood as the Plumbing Count, a misshapen but basically benevolent kobold who lurks in the storm drains like Pennywise to remind children to wash their hands properly and not flush anything non-flushable.
@11 It could still happen! Miles has enough years left in him to become the eccentric Plumbing Count, or the Public Health Count, or the lead in CSI: Vorbar Sultana, co-starring Ekaterin, Enrique, Martya, and Roic, with once-a-season guest appearances from Mark and Kareen, oh dear I just described Cryoburn didn’t I.
All this makes me wonder how long Barrayaran ImpSec files remain classified, and if it’s long enough for the legend of Count Miles Vorkosigan, patron of Ma Kosti’s famous restaurant empire (and the reason why desserts with a side of maple ambrosia are known to future generations as “a la Vorkosigan”) to overshadow his later revealed covert oops career.
“Covert ops”, autocorrect, covert ops.
(Though, yeah, there’s a lot of the other kind too.)
@12, 13 – “covert oops” is perfect. XD
It’s basically Miles entire career. Oops. I have a mercenary fleet. Oops. I rescued Gregor. Oops. I saved the Cetagandan Empire. Oops.
@@@@@ 11: ajay
Generations yet unborn know him from the stories of their childhood as the Plumbing Count, a misshapen but basically benevolent kobold who lurks in the storm drains like Pennywise to remind children to wash their hands properly and not flush anything non-flushable.
“Bilbo?” “Oh, eh, Bilbo Vorkosigan
“The auditor, isn’t you mean?”
“Ah, yes, passed once our way,
“A saucy fellow, but…
“(Oh, they are all one, these Vorkosigans)”
With apologies to Tolkien and Pound.
https://genius.com/Ezra-pound-cino-annotated
We talked last week about how little crime there was on the station and how that affected the quaddies’ skills and approach; we see another bit this week, with Adjudicator Leutwyn clearly out of his depth. But what struck me was Garnet’s rather provincial astonishment at the idea that Gupta could be a dancer; she’s obviously not processed that dancing underwater would be very different from dancing in 0g. (Somebody should take her to see O.) For that matter, ISTM that flippers would add a dimension even in 0g, because they’d let the dancer move without impellers or contact.
This is the first we hear of the ba torching the Cetagandan ship (after killing its crew and taking its cargo). Connecting with ex-Jacksonian smugglers was smart; other teams might have had somebody curious enough to wonder, and possibly to be more wary.
We could use a Plumbing Count around here; I’ve spent three months dealing with a broken lateral (the connector between house and main), and a friend apparently had theirs crushed by nearby construction. I wonder what sort of futuristic techniques Miles might manage to import — as of ACC it seems that Barrayar was stuck with the same old plunge and snake (and I’m not sure about the snake).
@15: maybe it’s catching; who was it who suggested to Mark in ACC that Cordelia would be the perfect solution to the Koudelka’s obstinacy? Something about “Butter, meet laser knife. Oops!”.
And did anyone else notice the “Alice’s Restaurant” reference? I’m sure that sequence of *ected was intentional.
“We could use a Plumbing Count around here; I’ve spent three months dealing with a broken lateral”
“Asking Miles Vorkosigan to fix your drains” is a Barrayaran idiom whose meaning is somewhere between “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut” and “burning down the village in order to save it”.
@18 Miles track record on drains is actually pretty good compared to his other exploits.
Oh, sure. And a sledgehammer will definitely crack nuts, too.
@15 We should retitle all of the Vorkosigan books under the covert oops framework! Annoyed all of Jackson’s Hole, oops. (Destroyed another 9th Satrapy… family habit.) Found own clone and commanding officer’s rebel father, oops. Destoryed own ImpSec career, became an Imperial Auditor, oops. Fell in love with widow of man who died in sight of me, oops. Created scandal involving aforementioned love, two Countship succession lawsuits, and bug butter, oops. Saved Cetagandan empire again, oops.
But what struck me was Garnet’s rather provincial astonishment at the idea that Gupta could be a dancer; she’s obviously not processed that dancing underwater would be very different from dancing in 0g
Gravity or no gravity- I think it’s clear that Gupta isn’t an athlete, which dancers are.
Now I’m wondering about a company that would spend multiple years breeding, raising and training a troupe of underwater dancers. Who would they sell them to? How long has this group been on pre-order? Were there other groups, kind of like Sea World having lots of Shamus? Are they all clones? (Your dance troupe consists of dancers A, B, C, D, E, & M, 2 stage-hands, and one dance instructor/manager. Pre-order here with one click!*) No wonder they suffered a hostile takeover.
*Ordering from Amazon.JH of course.
@2 – I suspect that the assumptions being made are not so much about Beta herms as they are about Quaddies who will sleep with Downsiders. They know Garnet is in a relationship where she’s going out of her way to help her partner immigrate, yet rather than thinking she’s in a committed relationship, the assumption is that she’ll sleep with another Downsider.
We know that most Quaddie habitats don’t have gravity sections, and therefore will have few or no long-term, Downside residents – they can’t live there safely. What we are seeing is not typical Quaddie society. It is the carefully controlled interface with Downsiders that the Quaddies allow. Leo’s founding vision for Quaddiespace involved isolation, not integration.
The Quaddies we meet are all ones who have chosen to take jobs that involve working with Downsiders. This probably involves special training – how to fly a float chair, move in gravity without a float chair, speak Galactic languages in addition to the Quaddie language/dialect, etc. Things a typical Quaddie living in an entirely no-gravity habitat wouldn’t need to learn. And the Quaddies specifically trained to deal with Downsiders are still inclined to be suspicious or dismissive of Downsiders.
Quaddies have good historic reasons to be wary of Downsiders. Yes, Downsiders created them, and a few helped them escape to freedom. But Downsiders also created them to be slaves, and attempted genocide of their founding generation.
Just how much did the Barrayan plasma arc attack on their station remind Quaddies of history lessons about VanAtta and other Downsiders trying to destroy their first habitat, and them with it?
Just because the ballet section they choose to show Downsiders involves a Downsider in love with a Quaddie and working to save Quaddies doesn’t mean that other sections don’t show Downsiders as villains. Heroic Quaddie girls fighting off Downsiders trying to forcibly sterilize them. Downsider nannies abandoning their young charges when facing a depressurization scare. And of course Van Atta, scheming and leading the plot to destroy them all. A great story, but not as flattering to Downsiders as the bit Miles, and we, see.
@23 – Venn’s exact words were, “But Garnet Five is known to, um, favor exotic downsiders, and the Betan herm is, after all, a Betan herm. Simple explanations after all.”
@@@@@ 24, In other words Garnet Five is kinky, Bel as a herm was born kinky, obviously they decided to be kinky together, along with a subtext of no Quaddie could be seriously and exclusively interested in a downsider and a herm in an exclusive relationship is a joke. Definite prejudice there on Venn’s part. How common such prejudice is among Quaddies we can’t know.
I continue to love Nicole’s calm confidence in her partner. Why shouldn’t Bel have coffee with a friend? If both have gone missing something has happened to them.
The Quaddies we meet are all ones who have chosen to take jobs that involve working with Downsiders. This probably involves special training – how to fly a float chair, move in gravity without a float chair, speak Galactic languages in addition to the Quaddie language/dialect, etc.
This is an interesting one: what language are the quaddies speaking here? None of them seem to need an interpreter. And I’d disagree with your statement: “dancer” is not really a job that would involve working with downsiders, and yet Garnet Five is able to chat with various Barrayarans perfectly easily. There’s never any indication that the quaddies have a language of their own, other than whatever language it is they’re speaking to visiting foreigners. None of them seem to need computer translation.
Language isn’t really a big thing in these books. It’s mentioned that Barrayar has four languages (French, Russian, Greek and English) and that it’s pretty impressive for a normal Barrayaran to be fluent in all four. But pretty much everyone else in the nexus seems to speak English. The wife of the Baba of Lairouba in Brothers in Arms only speaks Arabic; various passengers on the merchant fleet speak various different languages and rely on computer translation. There aren’t many others. (Presumably the Escobarans speak Spanish? But we never get to Escobar to find out.)
“Dancer” is not specifically a job working with downsiders. But choosing to audition for a company that is located on a station with gravity, where you will be performing for downsiders, expected to interact with downsiders in the audience, and, as a lead, be the public face of the company at things like receptions, is a job that involves interacting with downsiders.
If Garnet had wanted there are surely other prestigious dance companies in habitats without gravity, where contact with downsiders would be limited. Accepting a position in this company was a choice, and one with challenges. For example, pre and post-performance receptions with VIPs in the audience often come with the job of being a lead. It would be an extra physical stress to deal with such events in gravity, combined with the rigors of the performance.
Even with float chairs, being in gravity is going to mean moving and using muscles in very different ways than a Quaddie would be used to. At least until they’ve had time to adapt, that’s going to be a problem for a dancer. A post-performance reception in gravity would be like an athlete having to try a brand-new workout routine immediately after a race or game.
@15
Yes, yes. Yes. Without the “oops”. Thataway.
I can picture just about anyone talking to Miles for more than a minute reacting like Goldblum.
@17
Yay, someone else picked up the Alice’s Restaurant line!
The Fast-Penta-less interrogation is just such a delight. “Er . . . did you have any questions, Chief Venn?”
@22: Gravity or no gravity- I think it’s clear that Gupta isn’t an athlete, which dancers are. That’s still a snap judgment. Gupta has just spent the last whatever strapped to a pole like a dead animal, and is seriously dehydrated and wearing a poncho that obscures his physique, so estimating his athleticism is difficult — and he’s almost as far from base stock in one direction as the quaddies are in another direction, so assuming she can read his musculature is debatable. (I can see a smart designer giving him Popeye muscles in legs as well as arms, to flex the flippers with more force/control.) He is mentioned as “lanky” enough not to match certain photos, but that’s not exclusive.
Your economic guesses, on the other hand, are fun; we can’t know whether they were a custom job worked out with somebody with money burning a hole in their pocket (cf the pegasus in “Jerry Was a Man”) or a speculative project the owner hoped would pay off. I’d bet the former based on Jackson Whole’s mercenary nature; ISTM that we know that some projects (e.g. Mark?) can be grown faster than human-normal, although maybe not as fast as in Varley’s Eight Worlds or Schulman’s The Rainbow Cadenza, so the troupe might not have been started until there was money on the table.
@27: If Garnet had wanted there are surely other prestigious dance companies in habitats without gravity, where contact with downsiders would be limited. Is the quaddie economy big enough to support multiple art-dance companies? We know there are several stations in the system and they’ve centuries to be fruitful and multiply the economy, but I wonder how many people could make a living at dance. (Yes, I expect there are people who part-time dance with some other job while trying to break in — but ISTM dancing at the top level would be full-time job, as I understand it is here-and-now, especially when considering the after-performance in-gravity work you describe.)
Bel’s desperate ‘Don’t breathe, Garnet!’ was almost certain to be too late but it had to try. She probably breathed in some of the stuff before the warning had time to register.
‘I hate gravity!’ Of course Garnet hates gravity, it’s not natural for her just as non-gravity is unnatural to us legged types. It makes her feel helpless and crippled and it’s damaging to her health if she’s subjected to it too long. How can a dancer not hate something that makes it impossible for her to perform her art? Gravity is something she’s willing to put up with for a short while, properly equipped with her floater, for Corbeau’s sake but otherwise no.
@30, I remember in Falling Free, the quaddies saw gravity like we would see glue or quicksand- something unnatural that holds you down and sticks you in place.
I wonder if downsiders who decide to stay in Quaddiespace can get the genetic changes to allow them to live more easily in freefall- something like Miles’ anti-nausea chip or Nikki’s Vorzohn’s Disease fix.
@29 – the total population of the entire Union is only about one million, so if we compare it to places of similar size here on Old Earth, I guess there could be a couple other top-level dance companies but not very many. I’d still assume that the Minchenko is the most prestigious, however. Of course, there are probably some amateur or semi-pro companies, as you say. Though how the idea of being a part-time or semi-pro anything fits with the Quaddie work gang ethos, I wouldn’t know.
@15 Tung himself noted the oops-es: (The Vor Game, chapter 11)
Tung pursed his lips. “Accident? Maybe . . . Your ‘accidents,’ I once noticed, have ways of entangling your enemies that are the green envy of mature and careful strategists. Far too consistent for chance, I concluded it had to be unconscious will.”
I am thinking that cooperative activities, like music and dance, might take some of the cultural space that competitive activities such as sport take in our culture.
When we see the founding Quaddies in Falling Free, we see that they’re being raised to be cooperative, rather than competitive. Such as the gym exercise that was a group dance, where everyone won when they could keep the pattern going. Living independently in space without the support of a nearby planet would intensify this – Quaddies must cooperate, or die.
A significant proportion of Quaddies would be doing work that isn’t directly part of a capitalist economy, but which is entirely for communal benefit, such as maintaining air quality, habitat pressure integrity, etc. (Things that we assume the planet will do for us.) Any Quaddie doing work that is directly tied to the cash economy would be expected to contribute significantly to the support of the Quaddies that keep their habitats going.
With each other, Quaddies have to have a culture of extreme cooperation, not competitiveness. With Downsiders, Quaddies can’t compete directly – they would have an unfair advantage in free-fall games, and be crippled in games played in gravity, compared to Downsiders, and vice versa. Even a Downsider game like chess would seem strange to a Quaddie, limiting a field of play to a flat plane, and ignoring the possibility of movement in 3-d space. Even “up” and “down” are concepts with little meaning for them.
So there may be significantly more Quaddie dance and music groups than one would expect in a Downsider population of the same size. Because schools and socialization would emphasize cooperation – Quaddie children that did things to benefit the group, and with the cooperation of the group, would be encouraged, while trying to win at the expense of others would be seen as dangerously anti-social – such a person might want to hold back from supporting life-maintaining community services, for their own benefit.
When you’re in the performing arts, it is intensely cooperative. Everyone in the orchestra, band or troupe must work together, or it’s pointless. Even when it becomes competitive, such as marching band contests, it is only a small part of the experience, compared to rehearsals and non-competitive performances. And even in competition, it is to see who can do the best to bring joy to the audience with an excellent performance, not about one team beating another. Or else it is auditions – a small but necessary part of sorting into groups of similar skill, but only a step along the way, not the point of the activity.
This may also contribute to some of the Quaddie wariness about Downsiders. Downsider competitiveness might seem dangerous and unnatural to Quaddies. Miles sees the Quaddie dancers performing, cooperatively, and immediately assumes they must also have competitions. There is even the implication that he thinks that competing in these activities would be part of what makes Quaddies human. While a Quaddie might think that taking something cooperative and joyous like dance, and turning it into a competition where someone must have the disappointment of loosing, is what makes Downsiders unsafe.
@@@@@ 29, Chip137:
Your economic guesses, on the other hand, are fun; we can’t know whether they were a custom job worked out with somebody with money burning a hole in their pocket (cf the pegasus in “Jerry Was a Man”) or a speculative project the owner hoped would pay off
I hadn’t read Jerry Was a Man for decades. So I looked it up. And found this:
I“What do you expect, man? It takes eleven months to grow a new-born colt. I want one month of design and planning. The embryo will be removed on the fourth day and will be developed in an extra-uterine capsule. I’ll operate ten or twelve times during gestation, grafting and budding and other things you’ve heard of. One year from now we’ll have a baby colt, with wings. Thereafter I’ll deliver to you a six-months-old Pegasus.”
Is Heinlein’s extra-uterine capsule the first SF appearance of the uterine replicator?
@@@@@ 34, Ursula;
I am thinking that cooperative activities, like music and dance, might take some of the cultural space that competitive activities such as sport take in our culture.
Long ago I read about music in Canada. I can’t find the source, so this is from memory.
When picture palaces showed silent films, the accompanying music was live. At the least, a piano added to the drama. The posher the theater, the more likely it was to host small groups. Piano, violin, woodwinds, brass. They showed up for work and played the same old thing, over and over. Think a Greek Chorus, that only hums.
These players often met between gigs, and played for the fun of it. Just to play something else. Something they all enjoyed playing. Other amateurs joined in. Many small town orchestras got their start from such groups. They continued to give concerts even after the talkies came in.
Some analogous process may have happened in Quadi space. There could have been genera of entertainments talking to each other throughout the hub. 0-G ballet could have been one pastime/entertainment among many.
@37 – There could have been genera of entertainments talking to each other throughout the hub. 0-G ballet could have been one pastime/entertainment among many.
Oh! Work chanties! Quaddies singing as they plant seedlings in hydroponics, or songs that work through the steps of attaching a new standard habitation module to a habitat. If you have to do a series of steps in a precise order, repeatedly, a song can help keep you from missing a step, because it puts the whole thing in rhythm.
I love this idea, of the arts being so deeply entwined in Quaddie culture. To me it seems completely reasonable; one of their founding parents, so to speak, was a musician who loved to teach, and the Quaddies probably went about forming a society with deliberate care and planning, because it’s built (and trained) into them. So with Madame Minchenko’s presence and gifts, I can definitely see music, dance, art of all kinds being made as fundamental a part of Quaddie culture as work, cooperation, and how to recognize dangerous pressure changes.
What I’d love to know is whether an antidote to zero-g deterioration in downsiders has been discovered in the, what, one hundred and thirty years since the Quaddies were made. In Falling Free downsiders have to exercise to prevent irreversible changes that would strand them in zero-g. Is that still true? Will Bel (spoilers!) have to remain in zero-g after the end of this book, and give up gravity altogether? What effect will that have on its employment?
Does anyone remember the ’90s show Space: Above and Beyond? It had genetically engineered people grown in vats (“tanks”) until age 18, though it was never made clear whether that growth was accelerated or not.
“the total population of the entire Union is only about one million”
Ah, interesting. I’d forgotten we get an exact figure.
That’s tiny. It explains why Garnet seems to be such a celebrity; she’s one of (probably) two or three hundred professional performing artists in the entire Union. The US has about 80,000 professional actors, singers, musicians and dancers, according to the Census; at that ratio the Union should have 270 or so. So Garnet Five’s ballet company – its dancers and musicians – must represent a significant fraction of the entire professional artistic output of the Union. And she’s their prima ballerina.
Ensign Corbeau is dating the quaddie equivalent of Beyoncé.
What I’d love to know is whether an antidote to zero-g deterioration in downsiders has been discovered in the, what, one hundred and thirty years since the Quaddies were made.
Yes, it has – it’s called “artificial gravity”. :)
@40, Indeed. I wonder if Corbeau realizes just how privileged he is? Quite possibly he does. Miles may not be the only Barrayaran with enchanted princess fantasies. Does Corbeau see himself as the frog transformed by the love of a beautiful princess? Is Garnet flattered and overwhelmed by this romantic image of herself in his eyes?
Additional to 40, that explains why Nicol and Garnet know each other. It isn’t a weird coincidence or the author pulling the strings; they’re two fish in an extremely small pond.
I am thinking that cooperative activities, like music and dance, might take some of the cultural space that competitive activities such as sport take in our culture.
It’s a good point. What do quaddies do for fun? Apart from going to the ballet, that is. Visiting crew use the docks for games – but the quaddies don’t, because that area is under gravity. One of the quaddies plays jacks when he’s feeling bored.
Floater races sound like fun, and I can’t believe that it’s a downsider-only pastime.
But if you think that professional dance is cooperative not competitive, I can only think you haven’t met many dancers. Think of Garnet looking daggers at her understudy mucking up the part that she should be dancing. Amplify that.
Cooperation and competition are not mutually exclusive. I can totally see Quaddies going for team sports in a big way. Zero gee soccer?
@43 – Yes, there is competition in things like dance, at the level of auditions.
But at this stage, Garnet is not criticizing her understudy to try to win against her or beat her. She’s making mental notes for the next rehearsal, which will surely involve a discussion of this performance, and Garnet’s insights as a performer having a chance to observe will help make the performance better.
Some competition, particularly at the audition stage, is an aspect of the performing arts. But it is not the point of the performing arts. If Garnet treated the other dancers as competition anywhere but during auditions, if she went to rehearsals and performances trying to compete with them, rather than working to bring out their best, she’d be a poor performer, because the final show would suffer. She knows she needs everyone around her to be the best in order to do her best.
It’s a very different social and mental place than being on a sports team, where competition is the point. You won’t have people on the football team working to help make their competition, the other team, do better.
@23:
Quite a lot, I’m sure. The dehumanizing language used against Garnet Five when her apartment was invaded would have triggered her to remember history lessons about previous times Quaddies had been talked about as less than human.
This is the chapter when the Quaddies react with horror at the idea of a fake engineering license, right? I love that call-back to the rigorous integrity that Leo Graf taught regarding any structure (physical or social) upon which safety relies.
@44
No soccer (or, you know, European football) for Quadies ;-) Handbal on the other hand would be deadly. Or volleyball, if you can somehow adapt the net and regulations for zero gee.
And if there are Harry Potter books in the Vorkosiverse – just think of zero gee Quidditch :-D
I’m not sure how volleyball would adapt; ISTM that it’s very much bound to above-and-below. There are a couple of genre sports that might work — dazzle dart, from “Bullard Reflects” (reflect the beam from the captain’s timed-output “light pencil” into the photocell in the opponents’ goal), and a sort of quantum soccer described by Greg Egan (the object is for the team to place themselves in a way that the probability wave of an imaginary ball is concentrated in the opponents’ goal — don’t ask me for details, I’m not a physicist).
@40 – According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the U.S. had 482,683 people professionally employed in “performing arts and spectator sports” in 2017 (annual average) so a figure of ~1,500 individuals in Quaddiespace seems like a more reasonable figure, assuming the quaddies devote the same proportion of their societal resources to performing arts and spectator sports as early 21st century Americans. Of course 1,500 quaddies working in performing arts and professional sports doesn’t translate into 1,500 artists and athletes. A good number will be choreographers, directors, stage hands (like Guppy), set designers, lighting designers, costumers, etc. In other words all the support personnel required to have a professional-grade performance.
I’d also suspect that, as with early 21st century America, the numbers of enthusiastic artistic amateurs in the UFH far outnumbers full-time professionals.
It is worth noting that the only game we see a Quaddie playing is jacks. And it is being played solo, not in competition with someone else.
A few thoughts on the game of jacks. It requires gravity, so it is not a game a Quaddie would grow up playing. It is a good game for learning how things behave in gravity, and practicing one’s reflexes in gravity. It is portable and inexpensive – an adult can keep a set in a pouch in their pocket, and play when they have a few minutes spare time. It requires little space to play, is quick to set up and put away.
Hypothesis – Quaddie adults are taught the game as part of their training to function in gravity, when they take a job that requires them to be in gravity. It is considered acceptable to carry a set and play when things are quiet at work, as a productive activity, improving one’s skill and reflexes in gravity.
Not unlike how Solitaire was first included in Windows to help people learn to use a mouse.
I think Miles, Bothari and Elena actually do visit Escobar briefly, but anyway, we don’t need to go to Escobar if Escobarans come to us (well, come to Barrayar). The warrant for Enrique’s arrest is issued by the Cortes Planetaris de Escobar. (It seems odd that simply fleeing the planet would elevate his case to a planetary court level, but maybe the fact that a foreign aristocrat with diplomatic immunity is suspected of harboring him has something to do with that.) And although we haven’t gotten to it yet, Illyan’s building envy is for the Investigatif Federale building.
Miles’s streak of spending almost all his time on planets where most people speak English (and when he visits Earth he’s in London) is maybe a bit improbable, but maybe it reflects English as an interstellar common denominator, too. That would be consistent with a bunch of planets (or multi-system empires) apparently having their embassies clustered in London.
It would also explain why even children on Kibou-daini speak English well enough to have no problems interacting with offworlders.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the U.S. had 482,683 people professionally employed in “performing arts and spectator sports” in 2017 (annual average) so a figure of ~1,500 individuals in Quaddiespace seems like a more reasonable figure,
Both can be correct! I deliberately picked the figure for just performers because I wanted to compare like for like – performing artists with performing artists.But, yeah, sure, 1500 total, including professional sportsmen, stage hands, choreographers, lighting crew and so on. 270 if you’re just talking about people who get on a stage and do stuff.
And I don’t have a very good feeling for the total complement of a company, but at a conservative estimate I’d say the Minchenko ballet should have 20 dancers and the same number of musicians. Forty quaddies – about one-sixth of the UFH’s total professional artists are in this one company.
@49 is also assuming that the quaddies do professional sports, which (as Ursula notes) is unclear. I don’t have a good feel for what fraction of the 483K would be support rather than public; I’ve seen a 40-piece orchestra with a couple of stage hands, but a huge crew chasing an orchestra out of a convertible arena, so I could easily believe 50% of that number is support (including invisible administrators) and much of the rest is minor leaguers, which ISTM need a much larger population to support (as professionals, not part-timers) at all.
I can imagine sport-like contests that don’t involve direct conflict; e.g., head-to-head race to deal with a series of set problems related to living in space. However, that would be not professional sports as we know it but a competition in vital professions.
On the gripping hand, it’s not clear to me that the absence of sports in this book means they don’t exist; how much do we know about sports anywhere in the Vorkosiverse? The closest I can think of is grandfather Piotr’s dressage horses, for which we don’t hear (IIRC) of competitions; it’s possible sports are just not mentioned, as in the large majority of SF that I recall.
@53 The Vor play polo. Count Piotr kept a string of polo ponies. Prole soldiers devised boot polo which is described in Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
We don’t see any other sports on Barrayar, although Vorbarr Sultanna has a magnificently ugly stadium designed by Lord Dono Vorrutyer.
Quaddies might well play games like the water ping-pong that’s played on the International Space Station. Or dodge ball in 0g.
@53: Miles played cross-ball as a child; I don’t recall much of a description of the sport, but it apparently rewarded maneuverability, and was low-impact (otherwise, Miles would have broken bones playing it).
According to LMB “[t]he language on Escobar is a rather scrambled creole or amalgam of Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and a few other things”.
I believe the BLS statistics I cited earlier count administrators in a different category, even if they’re administrating performing arts and spectator sports. In other words, if you include administrators the number is likely higher than 1,500 quaddies.
I would assume, this far in the future, that none of the languages spoken are equivalent to ones spoken today – there would be at least as much difference as between Old English and contemporary English. Possibly more, as mentioned with the development of creoles. And divergent – colonies founded centuries ago speaking the same language probably don’t understand each other any more.
Miles, we know, has a top education intended for someone with Galactic contacts, and that includes multiple languages. Probably both native Barrayan languages and at least whatever his grandmother speaks on Beta Colony.
In Shards Cordelia is reading a book in Barrayan English printed in the Cyrillic alphabet. So I suspect the main language on Beta Colony is a version of English. After all Beta Colony was settled by people from the US. Miles grew up speaking with both accents as he tells Bel in DI
And this might imply they’re speaking English in Diplomatic Immunity.
I can imagine sport-like contests that don’t involve direct conflict; e.g., head-to-head race to deal with a series of set problems related to living in space. However, that would be not professional sports as we know it but a competition in vital professions.
Not all Earth sports involve direct conflict in the sense of one team trying to do something (like score a goal) and the other team trying to stop them. A lot of them involve “who can do this task better”? For example: athletics. Who can throw this thing further or more accurately? Who can run faster, jump further, ride this horse more skilfully?
And that was a competition in vital professions as well, where the profession in question was “soldier”.
@45:
Except you compete against your own teammates in practice every day in team sports (if you don’t, you’ll never see any playing time). Its how you improve. Competition does not involve doing things to actively make the other team (or player) worse. Competing, whether its with a teammate or against an opponent, is about doing your best. The vast majority of sports have rules against actively doing things to make the other team’s player worse. No that it doesn’t happen.
I did team sports from elementary all the way through high school (football, baseball, basketball), and was a music and theater major in college. I then toured as a musician professionally until my kids were born. Between the two, I found the Arts to be far, far more competitive in the backstabby, I-hate-you-and-want-you-to-die-so-I-can-do-what-you-do kind of way.
@49:
God, it seems like there’s more than that in a single Marvel movie, based on how long it takes to get to the post-credits scene.
@@@@@ 54, Sue11:
The Vor play polo. Count Piotr kept a string of polo ponies. Prole soldiers devised boot polo which is described in Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
Polo was a war game. It was played as a war game for close to 3,000 years. It only lost its war game status a century ago.
Pitor’s formative period and major wars was spent when cavalry ruled the field. For him dressage and polo and boot polo were all war games. Pitor fought the Cetagandans in the equivalent of WWI. When unprecedented mechanized warfare outperformed the horse cavalry.
By the time of Diplomatic Immunity, both may survive as spectator sports. Just as horse sports did in the 20th century. It’s hard to say. We don’t have much information about entertainment media. But within living memory horse competitions were war games.
@58,
I tend to think that Miles’ ‘Betan accent is kind of California surf dude.
43: In a book I read long ago about a child entering the Imperial Ballet School in St Petersberg, and then when she was a teenager losing her ability to dance in an accident and being transferred to a training school for actors, the narration describes her confusion at switching from a system where everyone dances and each performance will include virtually every able dancer, to a system where there are only a few parts available and the actors must compete for each part.
I suggest that just because we take for granted competitiveness in the performing arts in our competition-orientated culture, this doesn’t mean quaddies do.
We never do find out the economy of the Union Of Free Habitats, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it operated among quaddies (indeed for all Union citizens) on a taken-for-granted ethos that everyone works and everyone will naturally want to work at the things they’re best at; with perhaps an element of “and some things need to be done even if no one particularly wants to do them, so we rotate those jobs around and share them out”. Money may be strictly for downsiders, or they may have some Universal Basic Income system.
Money may be strictly for downsiders, or they may have some Universal Basic Income system.
Don’t the Station security people make references to “overtime”?
As usual we are told very little about the nuts and bolts of a Nexus society. One can fill in the blanks as one likes.
Speaking of overtime the night shift commander is told she can go home but Miles notes she’s still around hours later. Her interest and maybe her concern keeps her from going home to bed. She’s got to see what happens next. I don’t blame her. Great and perilous events are obviously afoot. How can she possibly go to sleep?
64, 65: Checking, yes: when Miles asks to have Bel seconded to him after the shooting, Bel says “yes, provided Boss Watts authorises both all my overtime hours, and someone else to take over my routine duties” and Greenlaw says sure, she’ll add the cost to the fleet’s bill. So the quaddies have salaries and overtime, which are paid in cash rather than in some sort of work-hour coupon.
Firka bought that hot riveter for cash as well, and from a shop that serves Station residents; because they asked “who bought it? Quaddie or downsider?” and the shop assistant couldn’t remember. Nicol bought Bel peppermint tea before they were attacked.
So the Quaddies have a cash economy. Doesn’t mean they don’t have a strong sense of duty to the community as well, of course (after all, the Barrayarans do!)
Cash is a great convenience, it can be exchanged for anything you please and is mch more flexible than barter. It also allows you to invest surplus contributing to the economy. It is in short extremely flexible as opposed to work coupons or credits.
Given they escaped from a life of unpaid labor earning money to be used as they wish might be very important to Quaddies. Independence and autonomy is exactly what they were denied by the corporation that owned then.
@67 – It could be argued that cash effectively is “some sort of work-hour coupon”, especially the kind of fiat currency issued by modern (and, presumably, Nexus) governments. Not everyone seems to get paid the same rate (e.g. overtime is available for longer shifts) so it’s more a work-unit coupon than a work-hour coupon, but the principle is the same.
69: I knew even as I typed it that someone would make that point.
But: if money paid by the Fleet can be converted into whatever it is that Bel’s receiving in exchange for work, and which Bel can in turn convert into peppermint tea, then whatever Bel is receiving in exchange for work is, in the only sense that means anything, money as well. It’s a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account, and it’s freely convertible into other things (like Betan dollars, or whatever currency the Fleet is paying its bill in) that are also money.
A longer discussion of the moneyness of money would risk being a) dull for everyone else and b) antagonistic. And while I don’t mind being b) I try to avoid being a).
After all, if the Quaddie government simply creates these things to reward its employees at a rate of one per hour of work (or whatever) why does it need to charge them back to the Fleet? They’re basically a pseudocurrency, like Brownie Points or something. If one Brownie does something especially good that earns her sixty Brownie points, then Brown Owl doesn’t have to tax all the other wee girls to pay for it.
It charges them back to the fleet because the fleet must pay in galactic currencies. Which can then be used to purchase and import galactic goods and services. Either necessities the Quaddies can’t produce, to pay for Galactic information and training of Quaddies of skills not yet available in Quaddiespace, resources (such as samples of new fruit varieties) that cam be used to enhance and expand Quaddie industries, etc.
The Quaddie government will pay, say, the fire control team that responded to the plasma arc attack, directly. No matter what – it would be unsafe for the firefighters to have doubts whether they’ll be compensated if they respond to fires set by downsiders.
But that doesn’t mean that downsiders get to start fires without consequences. High fines provide restitution, deterrence, and an outlet for revenge.
And the money will be part of the controlled interface Quaddies have with Downsiders, distributed by the courts as appropriate.
@40 ajay- re Ensign Corbeau is dating Quaddie Beyoncé.
And now I’m thinking of Garnet 5’s dance audition piece Single Ladies (Put a ring on it).
Doesn’t the Beyoncé video have the dancers dancing right through wall-transition, with down’ changing so they kept going? Just my memory…
Art imitates life! I just came across an article about a bacterium that eats nematodes from the inside out. ( Normally nematodes eat bacteria. )
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/02/the-golden-death-that-digests-worms-from-inside-out/583648/
@@@@@ 11, ajay:
And, of course, he has a tremendous aptitude for sewers. Alternate Miles is beloved of the District, the terror of the Hassadar plumbers’ guild, and has to be repeatedly restrained by his Countess from talking about work at dinner (and indeed leaping up from the table, pacing around the room, and demonstrating sediment filtration using an improvised model made from tableware). Generations yet unborn know him from the stories of their childhood as the Plumbing Count, a misshapen but basically benevolent kobold who lurks in the storm drains like Pennywise to remind children to wash their hands properly and not flush anything non-flushable.
Some experiences are more formative than others:
“Why is my District death-rate low?”
Said Binks of Hezabad.
“Well, drains, and sewage-outfalls are
“My own peculiar fad.
“I learnt a lesson once, It ran
“Thus,” quoth that most veracious man:—
It was an August evening and, in snowy garments clad,
I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezabad;
When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all,
A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.
I couldn’t see he driver, and across my mind it rushed
That that Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone musth.
I didn’t care to meet him, and I couldn’t well get down,
So I let the Waler have it, and we headed for the town.
The buggy was a new one and, praise Dykes, it stood the strain,
Till the Waler jumped a bullock just above the City Drain;
And the next that I remember was a hurricane of squeals,
And the creature making toothpicks of my five-foot patent wheels.
He seemed to want the owner, so I fled, distraught with fear,
To the Main Drain sewage-outfall while he snorted in my ear—
Reached the four-foot drain-head safely and, in darkness and despair,
Felt the brute’s proboscis fingering my terror-stiffened hair.
Heard it trumpet on my shoulder—tried to crawl a little higher—
Found the Main Drain sewage outfall blocked, some eight feet up, with mire;
And, for twenty reeking minutes, Sir, my very marrow froze,
While the trunk was feeling blindly for a purchase on my toes!
It missed me by a fraction, but my hair was turning grey
Before they called the drivers up and dragged the brute away.
Then I sought the City Elders, and my words were very plain.
They flushed that four-foot drain-head and—it never choked again!
You may hold with surface-drainage, and the sun-for-garbage cure,
Till you’ve been a periwinkle shrinking coyly up a sewer.
I believe in well-flushed culverts. . . .
This is why the death-rate’s small;
And, if you don’t believe me, get shikarred yourself. That’s all.
[Rudyard Kipling, Municipal, 1885]
@36 Is Heinlein’s extra-uterine capsule the first SF appearance of the uterine replicator?
No. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley used them in 1932, and Wikipedia notes JBS Haldane coined the term “ectogenesis” in 1924.
And it would not surprise me in the least to find the idea even earlier.
@76: And it’s pretty clear that Heinlein read Brave New World, since Beyond this Horizon seems to be a response to it.