novius wrote:Krulle wrote:Pretty sure she IS waiting.
It may well be she's still expecting his Lotai to be semi-conscious, and a real relaxing exercise may bring a crack in it.
And she and Fireblade will jump at it, once they *see* it.
And given that something
did happen during Beryl's little experiment that assumption might not be too far-fetched.
Wait. Didn't I say in the comments thread for
Page 134 that Fireblade seems to sit a bit sideways towards his viewing angle, but turning to look straight at him?
Whether I'm right or wrong - maybe she
did notice something and may or may not have told Tempo.
Maybe the change in sleeping accomodations has nothing to do with lack of space, but it was directed by Tempo, because she has good reasons to believe that his Lotai may drop in a relaxed atmosphere. And now both Tempo and
Fireblade seem to wait for something - it stroke me a bit odd that she moved over for two pages, not carrying anything, just to watch him, and then turning back to Tempo.
Coming to think of it, maybe
that's what the construct was concerned about. It knows much more about humans than it let on, and that might include knowledge about the type of situations his Lotai may drop.
Tempo may not even need Fireblade for this. According to her entry on the
Dramatis Personae page, she has pretty formidable psychic abilities of her own:
Though her abilities lack the raw amplified force of an Unsheathed, she makes up for this in the subtlety of their use.
Actually, a more subtle probing attempt might even be her preferred option. It doesn't seem like the Loroi understand how Jardin can resist their probes, and one possibility they might have considered is that he's simply able to bring up his defenses too quickly and too effectively for them to get past (it might even be something akin to an immune response). In this case, using Fireblade could actually be counterproductive, as her approach makes it obvious that her target's mind is under attack. A gentler, more stealthy approach might let Tempo slip past the defenses unnoticed.
Another possibility is that she could simply let Beryl and Jardin continue to bond, in the hopes that he'll open up and give the Observer a guided tour of his head (perhaps inadvertently). Tempo can then get the information from Beryl, (who is pretty talkative, and seems to wear her emotions on her sleeve, so it shouldn't be too hard).
It's also possible Tempo has, for the moment, given up on the psychic probes, and is instead trying to glean information from Jardin based on his words and body language. He lets his guard down in a relaxed social moment, and lets slip something he was trying to keep secret. To facilitate this, part of the little sanzai conference she had might have been her giving the shuttle crew permission to get friendly with the human.
Somewhat off-topic and compete speculation, but it strikes me that Tempo may be working towards an agenda that none of the other Loroi on the shuttle are aware of. She
is an intelligence officer and trained diplomat, so I could see her keeping secrets from them. She could get away with this via sanzai either by having a section of her mind that's expected to be walled off (the "that's classified information" section, Fireblade would likely have one as well for OpSec), or by being able to convincingly lie through senzai, sending out all the right psychic signals to convince other Loroi she's being truthful. This would also bring up the intriguing possibility that there could be an entire secret faction of Loroi quietly and subtly steering their empire by telling the right lies in a society built on the blunt, unvarnished, and open truth.