Can we:
"'...squeeze a few more drops of information out of...'" (p. 6)
- what Guion says to Manse Everard?
Although Everard has been thoroughly debriefed about his Phoenician mission, Guion wants to interview him while his memories are still fresh and also to get acquainted, hence the dinner invitation. Everard might have omitted some details that he thought were irrelevant although Guion does not intend to intrude on his privacy. A possible contradiction here? - but Guion only hopes to squeeze a few more drops of information out of what Everard experienced and observed. He wants to know how Everard's experiences felt to him.
Guion asks whether Everard intends to remain in touch with Wanda Tamberly. He mentions her because the events that caused Everard and Tamberly to meet involved Exaltationists. Everard has encountered this group three times. Guion asks whether that can have been coincidental. He also asks whether it was accidental that Tamberly became involved when, without knowing it, she had a relative in the Patrol. Everard begins to point out that Wanda's uncle was the reason that she became involved. This certainly makes Guion's second question seem pointless. However, Everard breaks off when he realizes that there is more going on than he understands.
Because of Everard's three encounters so far with the Exaltationists and because of Tamberly's involvement, the Patrol wants to know more about them, not to pry into their personal lives but hoping for a clue to the hypermatrix of the continuum although that is a misleading description. Such knowledge might help to track down the last Exaltationists and might also help with something beyond that. Is there something about Everard that explains why he has encountered Exaltationists three times and something about Tamberly, other than her uncle, that explains why she became involved? Everard is too preoccupied to notice Guion's hint at a meaning, direction and ending beyond the apprehension of the last Exaltationists.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I thin Guion himself was unsure, something seemed not quite as it should have been in what he was investigating. Even if it was nothing specific and concrete that he could grasp. Hence the tentative and cautious way he interviewed Manse and Wanda.
Ad astra! Sean
That "something's off" feeling or a sense "that doesn't listen quite right" are alarm signals.
(From SM Stirling.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly! And Guion must have served the Patrol a very long time, so he would have experience of such "not quite right" things.
Ad astra! Sean
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