On p. 373 of the Tor paperback edition, Ritzer Brugel, sadistic Podmaster, is pondering how much the main (human) protagonist, Ezr Vinh, knows about Pham Trinli, who we, the readers, know to be Pham Nuwen, one of the founders of the modern Qeng Ho empire.
Brugel says (then thinks):
Zamle Eng? Huh? Is that a person’s name? I can’t remember who that is, and flipping through the preceding four hundred pages hasn’t turned anything up. Is this someone/something the reader isn’t supposed to know, and which will be expanded upon later? Is it one of Pham Nuwen’s aliases? Something true the Brugel knows? A misconception of Brugel’s? “Traded in flesh?” Buh?
Help! But please be kind with spoilers!!! I’m just a few pages past the point when the mindrot spreads through the zipheads during the “Children’s Hour of Science.”
As far as I can figure, the point of that sentence was to point out the abhorrance the Peddlers had towards trading in flesh (slavery, etc). The “Zamle Eng” reference was, imo, put there for a few reasons I can think of:
Vinge was working on as a separate project when he completed Deepness, and therefore threw in the “Zamle Eng” name to add a bit of continuity between his works.
Got edited out, except for this sentence.
Was just thrown in there, to add a bit of mysterious “depth” to the backstory (not everything has to be explained, of course).
As time passes, #1 looks increasingly unlikely. I’m voting on #3.
(I had the same question when I read the book. I even (quickly) referenced Fire Upon the Deep to see if Zamle Eng was mentioned and didn’t notice anything.)
Mmph. I remember Zamle Eng the slave trader being an alias that Pham Nuwen had made up and left for the Emergency to find so they’d find his betrayal of the Qeng Ho believable. Reading JohnT’s post makes me wonder if I made that part up, though.
Google knows all, tells all, … wait, no it doesn’t. But Amazon lets you search inside A Deepness In the Sky. It gives these three hits up to p.373 (I’m reproducing these here so you don’t have to go and be potentially spoiled by seeing any later lines):[ol][li]on Page 306:[/li]"… founding the new Qeng Ho. Pham ended up with a fleet of three starships. There were setbacks and disasters. Treachery. Zamle Eng leaving him for dead in Kielle’s comet cloud. Twenty years he was fleet- less at Kielle, making himself a trillionaire …"
[li]on Page 326:[/li]"… relate to and think to use as a lever against him. What? Pham felt a smile steal across his face. Zamle Eng, may your slave-trading soul rot in Hell. You caused me so much grief. Maybe you can do me some posthumous …"
[li]on Page 373:[/li]"… infected with mindrot. He cycled through the highlighted incidents. “Hmm. Do you suppose he’s figured out that Trinli is really Zamle Eng?” The Peddlers were crazy; they tolerated almost any corruption, but had blood hatred for one of their own simply because …"[/ol]
Aside: does this mean that some poor bastards at Amazon have to type each book into the Amazon database as it’s released? I’d have hoped that they’d use an electronic copy of the book, but one of the later results for that search has a typo, so…
Well, at worst I’d imagine they’d do OCR. The Publisher’s FAQ at Amazon seems to indicate that they want only a physical copy, not electronic, so maybe that’s what they’re doing.
That typo is not present in Amazon’s Search Inside for the hardcover edition, BTW.