Monday 19 March 2018

Escape From Kompong Timur

Flandry is wanted by Biocontrol and Sumu the Fat.

(i) Someone who will keep quiet ferries Flandry, Luang and Kemul across the lake.

(ii) They take a private cabin on a motorized raft along the Ukong River to Muarabeliti. (How many river journeys in the Technic History?)

(iii) From there, the rich fly but Flandry and his companions get a compartment on a monorail across the jungles, plantations and wet lowlands.

(iv) They stay at the Inn of the Nine Serpents in the mountain city of Gunung Utara. (Scroll down.) And see here.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I'll bet that "someone" mentioned in your point " i " was paid at least a thousand silvers to ferry Flandry and his friends. That would be a truly massive amount of cash in Unan Besarian terms.

Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Though bribery is a delicate art, if you're operating undercover. If you offer too much, you're going to frighten people and arouse suspicion and that will produce "talk" and rumors about someone running around slathering cash on people.

You want to make people believe you're being -conventionally- skanky, some normal form of crime/corruption.

As Dave Drake points out in one of his fantasies, corruption is like any form of business -- to be sustainable, it requires a certain degree of trust, and thus it's easier between people who are familiar with each other.

This is one reason governments throughout history have often recruited people to serve far away from home.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling,

Good points! I should have thought of them. The ferryman was most likely paid enough, but not too much, and it was probably Luang who paid him. Because it was she he knew and had some trust in.

Sean