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The Gradual Week 7
Summary
- Sandro settles into his cabin aboard the Serquian and shelters there for the first day, feeling unsettled by his recent experience with the adept. The next morning he walks the deck and, after looking out at the various islands for a time, the sea and the sky, he feels invigorated again.
- The third morning, now feeling himself again, he again walks the deck. He plans to get some composing work done this day, but before that happens a woman with a silver mane appears at his side at the ship's rail. It's Renettia, the woman adept he first met on Ristor. She tells him that she will assist him upon arrival in Quy. She demands his stave and 40 thaler - no other currency will do. Sandro has to change money and retrieve his stave from the cabin, but he gives both to her and she leaves him for a time. She returns later that day to hand his stave back, and says there was 'nothing to be done'. Pheelp, the male adept who refused to give his name, had apparently done a good job. Where does she stay on the ship, Sandro wonders?
They arrive at Quy, a steep, wooded island. Renettia appears at his side again before they dock. There's some confusion over whether he's been to Quy before. First he insists not, but maybe he has. She concludes that both she and Pheelp have made a mistake - that Sandro has been to Manlayl instead. Sandro agrees. Renettia tells him that it's an honest mistake - Manlayl is 'gradually cognate' with Quy, meaning it has a similarly sized and shaped gradual profile. Because of this mistake, an adjustment must be made and it must be done ASAP - assuming he agrees. After he checks in at the shelterate building, she takes is stave and leads him off, insisting he bring all his luggage with him if he doesn't wish to lose it. - They embark on a small boat and motor out into the sea, where they circle around some small islands. The sun seems to rise and fall in the sky, setting in reverse. She quizzes him on his planned itinerary, and they speak a little about the smells on Temmil, his final destination. He recalls his last trip there. When they finally return to Quy, there's no sign of the Serqian, and she tells him he was here before afterall: "Your earlier visit to Quy. I should have realized. You were here before. Before is the same as now. Sorry.' Sandro replies: 'But I did come through Quy before. I have remembered.' She says, cryptically: 'Then is twice the same as now.' He heads to the Shelterate building to report for the first time. He has gained just over 5 hours.
- At the Shelterate Building, he sees Renettia again, but she has changed her clothes. He ignores her and enters, where he is grilled by the customs officers - especially about whether he will be working on the island. Working without a permit is a serious offense. They search his luggage and question him on his notes and violin. Afterward, he heads to the harbour but the Serqian is nowhere in sight. A schedule informs him it will arrive later in the day. He decides he doesn't want to be there when it arrives - he's afraid to see who might bet off the ship! So he heads to the hotel he booked.
Discussion
- Renettia reappears in the story. She has an accent, as if to explain away the poor communication between Sandro and her. Proper understanding seems to be impossible between Sandro and the adepts. Is this a reflection of how Sandro interacts with the World? The Archipelago? Is it a metaphor for all of our existences? Do we barely hang on to understanding in this world by the seat of our pants?
- If the whole Adept thing seemed like a shakedown before, Renettia's cornering him on the ship seems even doubly so. And yet, the results of these excursions do have obvious results. Has the world changed while Sandro was in the boat, or has Sandro?
- Was it your reading that Renettia made a mistake in thinking Pheelp made a mistake earlier? And that maybe she's overcorrected, and returned Sandro to his very first visit to the island?
Comments
I'm enjoying the unfolding mystery here, though feel acutely the issues @clash_bowley and @Apocryphal have talked about, namely how come such large and easily observed temporal effects are not general knowledge, and why on earth does Sandro not ask someone or do some research. I mean, the sun moving in the reverse direction is hardly a minor thing! One wonders if this might happen to anyone, or whether it only happens to or in the immediate presence of an adept? At very least I'd expect Sandro to ask somebody "by the way, what do you make of these adepts?" or even (if that was too scary) to ask one of his fellow travellers "who do you think these young people are at every port?" But no.
At least we have confirmation that the same young people can appear at multiple different islands within what seems too short a transit time. But also that they can simply ride a ferry like anybody else if they are so minded.
I'm still slightly perplexed as to the level of bureaucracy at the ports, especially in contrast to the normal laissez faire lifestyle seen more widely (which does also appear in this book, ie this particular version of the Archipelago, as well as others). And there are so very many islands! Everywhere Sandro looks while he's on the boat he sees more of them. And each one with the officious port officials?
I have been assuming that the adepts are simply skilled at identifying the gradual gradients and hence navigating through them to achieve a specific desired effect. But it just occurred to me (probably because of the parallel discussions about Vita Nostra) that it could be that they are in fact active agents of the temporal gradients, rather than passive observers of them. I wonder how one trains to be an adept...
I am not at this stage sure who made which mistake... or maybe they both did! Assuming that Sandro really did come to this island before, and not the gradually cognate one, I hadn't read it as going back to his very original visit (the one with the orchestra), but simply as having arrived a few hours before, well, he arrived this time round. I'm glad he chose not to go see who got off the boat, as we all know that this might have caused a catastrophic rift in temporal flux and potentially destroyed the entire universe... But I do wonder if he did get off the boat, whether the customs official would this time (if that phrase makes sense) comment about having just updated his records? I don't quite see where CP is going with all this potential for temporal anomalies, but no doubt we will find out...
"Where we're going, we don't need logic!"
How in the world would anyone have any clue? No one asks anyone anything!
Is there a difference? I mean in this world of the Gradual, is there a difference? I am not at all sure.
No. I think she corrected him into arriving a few hours before he'd arrived. That's all.
Indeed. My disbelief suspenders have well and truly snapped at this point. Subtle time anomalies I could live with. Hours and days of lost time? That occur so frequently there's a whole class of people to deal with them? Who are idle and unused by most travellers? And who no-one ever talks about? Or asks about?
Nope, it's a nonsense.
If this is meant to be a stand-in for bewilderment of being in a strange culture, I think Priest's gone too far. He could have treated travel like a game of Mornington Crescent and it would have been more believable. ("Oh no, you can't go to Tremmil from Quy, not with you already being in nim. You've got to reverse diagonalise your route so your best bet is to travel widdershins to Ristin, then you can get to Tremmil so long as you go via Orne.")
That's my reading too.
Oooh! That was good! I was intending for something like "My disbelief needs a whole suspension bridge..." but I could never get it to come out naturally! Brilliant!
Yep! And what about air travel? They have an internet and no air travel?
That would work far far better than this!
In this version of the Archipelago we have not encountered air travel at all... so far as I remember, though maybe the denouement of the book is the retrospective discovery of aerial flight using a closed timelike loop that Sandro discovers while in pursuit of And Ante. By the last chapter we will recall that air flight has been there all along and all this ferry stuff was so last century.
I erroneously thought you had made up that splendid flight of fancy. and then subsequently found out it is a real thing! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mornington_Crescent_(game) for those who like me had never come across it). In true nerd fashion, I used to travel through Mornington Crescent station back in the day when I lived in London and travelled down the Northern Line every day...
Hahahahahahaha! Yes!
THAT is so very Brit!
Not my coining, alas; I wish it was. I can't remember where I got it from. (David Langford?)
It is now in my treasure trove of witty remarks!
There are several playthroughs of the game on YouTube, well worth a listen. And the programme itself (I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue) is fantastic. I've been to a couple of recordings and I can tell you, the delightful Samantha really is a delight (I've not yet seen Sven, though).