{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3478", "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": 3478, "subject": "Tussah's children", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2002-10-10T02:29:42+00:00", "last": "2002-10-10T02:29:42+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2002-10-10T02:29:42+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Tussah's children", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Crush wrote:\nSo the list of characters and places should not be viewed as decisive." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "of textual evidence? I can't at this point name the page, but at one\npoint\nSilk's remembers seeing a picture (or image?) of Calde Tussah and he's\nwearing makeup. We know men don't wear makeup in Viron because Quetzal\nhad\nto justify his use of it due to a \"skin condition\". What reason would\nTussah\nhave for wearing makeup if he were not an inhume? If he's an inhume, then\nhe\ncan't have a natural human daughter." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think you should read that passage again. It's in the last chapter of\nCALDE (pp. 335-36 of the paperback), at the point where Silk is being\nbrought up from the cellar of Blood's house by Potto. Silk is sick,\nwounded, sleepless, and exhausted; he's not thinking clearly. He is\nmentally comparing himself to Sand, which leads to thoughts of his\n\"mother's\" desire for him to enter politics, then to thoughts of the old\ncalde. He spends a paragraph on the calde's bust his mother had shown him,\nwhich concludes with, \"The calde's carved countenance rose again before\nhis mind's eye, and it seemed to him that he had seen it someplace else\nonly a day or two before.\"\n\nAnd he _had_ seen it, on Chenille's face. He continues:\n\n\"Streaming sunlight, and cheeks that were not smooth wood but blotched and\nlightly pocked. Was it possible he had once seen the calde in person,\nperhaps as an infant?\n[. . .]\n\". . . had seen the calde outside, because even without his lost glasses\nhe had noticed the powder on the cheeks and the flaws that the powder\ntried to cover--had seen him, in that case, under the auspices of the\nOutsider, in a sense.\"\n\nNote the lost glasses, which he didn't have as an infant, or need to see a\ndivine vision. The powder was on the imperfect face of Chenille. Men\ntended to look at her tits, not her face, which wasn't really pretty. She\nprobably had acne scars. Silk finally makes the correct connection a few\npages later (340).\n\n \"'You're sunburned!' Inwardly, Silk reproached his own stupidity.\n'I've been looking at you--gaping actually, I suppose. I hope you'll\nexcuse it, but I couldn't imagine how your face had gotten so red, so\nclose to the red-brown color of a wood-carving my mother used to have.'\n \"'She wore _nothing_ on the boat,' Incus interposed. 'Then my robe.\nMaytera _forced_ them to give her that gown'\n \"Loris snapped, 'Is this germane?'\n \"'Perhaps not,' Silk admitted. 'It's just that Chenille has reminded\nme of a childhood incident, Councillor.'\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Also, Chenille exhibits stunning visual acuity and manual dexterity when\n(while talking to Remora in LS2) she was able pull a knife from the wall,\nthrow it from across the room and stick it exactly in the slot she from\nwhich she pulled it. I realize that she was possessed by Kypris at the\ntime.\nBut there is no reason to believe possession grants the possessee with\nany\npowers he would not have while unpossessed - any more than Mario Andretti\ncould win the Indy 500 in an '85 Toyota Sentra. Anyway, proficiency with\nknives is a province of Kypris. That trick required physical powers\nnormal\nhumans could not perform after any amount of practice." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think the knife-throwing bit was all due to Kypris. Recall that when\nScylla possessed Chenille at the lake, Chenille had been exhausted. After\npossession, Chenille dove off the cliff into the lake \"a hundred cubits or\nmore\" below (LS2, p259, paper). And, later \"A moment later Auk saw her\nleap--flying in a way that he knew would have been impossible had she not\nbeen possessed--to land with a roll upon the deck of the fishing boat.\"\n(263) And \"she had an alarming habit of remaining immobile in attitudes no\nmere human being could have maintained for than a few seconds\" (LS3, p15,\npaper). So, possession does grant extraordinary abilities." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Remora himself knew this to be true. He told Gulo that she was the\nbiologically engineered heir of Tussah (\"son not my son\" this is another\nhint of why Chenille's name is sexually ambivalent although I have not\nunraveled the puzzle yet). Remora was a \"whorlly-wise\" political\noperative;\nknowledgeable about, and usually involved with all occult (in the old\nsense)\nactivity in Viron. His deductions should not be casually dispensed with." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Remora did not say that to Gulo. He may have suggested it, and certainly\nGulo jumped to that conclusion, but he was wrong. Pages 268-71 (LS4,\nhardback) establish Chenille's parentage about as clearly as Wolfe ever\nmakes anything. In that section Silk says, \"Chenille's mother had recently\ngiven birth to the calde's child, or if she had not, she was carrying that\nchild--and it was her child, too. She must have guessed, or known, that the\ncalde had been murdered. At that time the Ayuntamiento was searching\neverywhere for the adopted son mentioned in the calde's will; and she would\nhave supposed, as I believe most people did, that it would kill him if it\nfound him. She needn't have been an educated woman, or an imaginative one,\nto guess what would happen to another child of the calde's, if it learned\nthat she existed.\"\n\nThat section makes clear that 1) Tussah was not an inhumi; he was a man who\npreferred big, amazon-like women, such as his mistress, Chenille's mother.\nLoris called her a \"virago\", and it was from her that Chenille inherited her\nphysique. Also, as on p. 270, the inhumu, Quetzal, is often described as\n\"lipless\", while the bust of Tussah has a \"generous mouth\"; 2) the \"son not\nmy son\" you mention must be the \"Though he is not the son of my body, my son\nwill succeed me.\" from the calde's will. That seems straightforward enough\nto me. The expensive, enhanced, frozen embryo (and Remora mentioned only the\none to Gulo) Tussah bought was implanted in the woman Silk calls his mother.\nThat embryo was Silk, who had been born about three years before Chenille.\nThus Silk is biologically unrelated to either his \"mother\" or adoptive\nfather, Tussah. Which, of course, is why Silk saw two sets of parents when\nhe \"died\" and went to Mainframe. And, of course, he and Chenille are\nunrelated, biologically\n\n-Roy" } ] } ] }