Subject: (urth) ES Question

From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 16:26:52 +0000

For you Crowley experts:

	Dumb me, no doubt, but a mystery left in my mind from Engine Summer is
that the people never seem to eat any food and seem to be sustained
entirely on St. Bea's Bread smoke. Okay, okay, allusions to marijuana
maybe. But as this is an SF tale, something other than magic must be at
work. Rush and his buddy seem to last a whole winter with no food, in a
trance. 
	I'm sure someone has this figured out. So do me a favor, whydoncha, and
lemme in on the answer.

Nutria

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at sirius.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 15:01:55 +0000

>	I'm sure someone has this figured out. So do me a favor, whydoncha, and

Not that this is a final answer, of course, bfwiw I thought the allusion
was to hashish rather than marijuana.  And "hash" is the name of a
foodstuff, too.

As for the sfnal rational, the stuff was brought back by an interstellar
probe.  Like you said before, mana from heaven.

The winter they spent in a trance, that was due to a different substance,
wasn't it?  (Probably one of the daughters of medicine: those four little
pots.  One was birth allowance, one was lighten the load, one was near
immortality)  Because the St. Bea's Bread was something they smoked three
or four times a day, no big deal; but that winter in the treehouse was
something different for Rush That Speaks, iirc.

Go Ask Alice, I think she knows.

=mantis=