the thirty-meter tree
Back in July 2002, I was reading Echoes of Honor, which was an all right book as books in this series go, but I was wondering about one really big detail.
At the beginning of the book, there's this one line that had me puzzled.
While she did, she looked up into the branches of the tall, vaguely palm-like almost-tree beside her. The trunk was a good meter across at the base, and she could just pick out Andrew LaFollet amid the foliage thirty meters above her head.
First off, how did LaFollet get up the tree?
Secondly, what is he guarding against?
The logical answer to the second would be that Andrew is paranoid to the nth degree, or as I concluded at the time, "only Andrew LaFollet would be insane enough to stand guard in a thirty-meter tree."
The answer to the first is more puzzling. Does the Grayson Army teach High-Altitude Tree Climbing? Were there ropes available so he could climb up in steps? Palms don't have branches like other trees, after all, so perhaps it was only palm-like in leaves and not in branch types. Did those Peep shuttles have some sort of portable anti-gravity device aboard? There were vines, but were they strong enough to be climbed? LaFollet may be a teensy person, but he was carrying a full pack. I have no doubt he could have did it, but he needed equipment to do it. What exactly did the StateSec ships carry for supplies, especially on shuttles? I don't think the Honorverse contains malletspace. Unlike in anime and manga, stuff has to come from somewhere.
I enlisted a friend to help me out here. She wasn't familiar with Honor Harrington, but is quite familiar with various peculiar goings-on in manga, and I wanted a different insight to the situation. Her thoughts: "Maybe this amazing alien palm-like tree-thing has convenient hand holds in its trunk. All thirty metres up. Maybe LaFollet jumped off a mountain somewhere . . . Are there mountains to be jumped off of so he could conveniently land in the thirty-metre tree?" She also inquired if jet packs were available.
I suppose we quite overthought the issue; it's a typical symptom of discussing literary anomalies at 0230. I decided to go to the source for my information, and on 17 December 2002, my question was answered. If David Weber says it's a personal anti-gravity device, it must have been. Unfortunately, the mental imagery behind floating up a tree isn't quite as vivid as the alternative.
At least this small scene does illustrate one thing: no matter what, Andrew LaFollet is one determined and highly paranoid individual.