{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3295",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 3295,
    "subject": "\"Tracking Song\" notes",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-06-05T16:45:30+00:00",
    "last": "2002-06-05T16:45:30+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0206-1165@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Roy C. Lackey",
        "address": "rclackey at stic.net"
      },
      "date": "2002-06-05T16:45:30+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) \"Tracking Song\" notes",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Re. Robert Borski's theory that Cutthroat is somehow Cain:\n\nRobert didn't bring this up, but it would explain Cutthroat's otherwise\npuzzling lack of concern for his wound. When he first reported the wound he\n\"felt somehow that no serious harm had been done\", and was more concerned\nabout the cold and freezing to death. Again, after he was in the cavern, he\nsaid: \"I feel sure now that the wound in my chest will not kill me, though\nit is more painful than ever, and the feeling contradicts the plain\nreasoning of my mind.\" Yet between those two statements he states that he is\nweak and is afraid he will be unable to rise again if he stops moving. He\nworries about death from the cold, but not from the wound, which Mantru took\none look at and pronounced fatal. Is his lack of concern for the wound due\nto a belief that he cannot or will not die from injury inflicted by men? Of\ncourse it wasn't given by Men, but by Min.\n\nWe are given no hint of any physical injury, no head trauma, to account for\nCutthroat's amnesia. I suggest that his memory loss is due to a\npsychological blow incurred when cast off from the Great Sleigh for the\nmurder of the Sleigh's equivalent of Abel. I also suggest that the unnamed\n\"you\" he refers to on the Sleigh, after he discovers that the recorder is\nalso a communicator, is Abel, not God. He said: \"I hear your breathing as\nwell, though you are far ahead in the Great Sleigh, and I wonder why it is\nyou cannot speak.\" \"Cannot\" wouldn't apply to God, but it does to the dead.\nCutthroat continues: \"Am I being tested? If I pass, do the right thing, if\nonly once, will you talk to me then?\" This echoes Gen.4:7, where God said to\nCain, after spurning his offering, \"If thou doest well, shalt thou not be\naccepted?\"\n\nWhen Cutthroat made the choice to search for Cim Glowing rather than pursue\nthe Sleigh, and when he tried to defend her, he made moral choices he hoped\nwould earn him redemption. It is also why he said to Ketin: \"I am prouder of\nnot having killed you thus far.\" When, at the end, he says: \"I am going to\ntalk to you face to face. Who is that tall man with you? I think he has . .\n. wings?\", he means that he is going to die (the tall man with wings is the\nAngel of Death), and that in death he will see his brother once more.\n\nI agree that Ketin is Adam; Ketin is depicted much as the Adam-like tall man\nat the end of \"Copperhead\".\n\nI can't help but think that the term \"Sleigh\" is intended somehow as a pun\non \"slay\".\n\n-Roy"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}