Subject: RE: (urth) Poor Hammerstone

From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 15:21:55 +0000

Roy wrote:
To go from Marble's notion of abandonment to the destruction of a child
requires a leap in logic that leaves me in the dust. I can only conclude
that . . . hell, I don't know what to think. You must not have read the SS
series, for one thing. Let me state flat out that no such thing happened to
the child. Fact.

Fine. Does this change that Hammerstone left her? Your point was that
Hammerstone didn't care who Marble was. Then why did she lie?

Roy wrote:
And if Moly had been at Sun Street from Day One, and nowhere else, then he
would have known **exactly** where to find her. He didn't know. That's why
he said: "Maybe I should've gone looking for Moly."

Crush responds:
There are at LEAST two other more likely interpretations of this statement.
(1) Hammerstone went to Sun St. and didn't find her. He was told (maybe by
Rose, maybe by Betel) "She's gone and we don't know where she went." Well,
heck, why didn't she leave notice where she was going? She must not want to
be found. So he didn't look **further**.

This is my preferred interpretation. It infers IMO the motives to
Hammerstone that I can most relate to

(2) Hammerstone woke up after 74 years and saw the changes wrought in Viron
and was too afraid to look for Moly for fear of what he'd find.

But if he NEVER went looking for Moly since he boarded the Whorl. Then I
can't grasp why he would **even consider** looking for her when he woke up.

The fact that he considered looking for her at that time implies he knew
where she was before. And if he knew where she was before, then he would
have known Marble was lying about being at Sun St. since the beginning. And
if Marble had to lie about it, she had to believe it mattered to him (and it
did). Also, Marble had to know all about Moly - at least to the extent that
she wasn't around anymore -- and she had to know who Hammerstone was the
moment she clasped eyes on him so she could immediately say "I'm Moly".

Am I being clear enough here?

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 19:40:46 +0000

Crush wrote:
>Fine. Does this change that Hammerstone left her?

Hint: Hammerstone was a soldier; Viron was at war.

Marble was captured and placed aboard the airship, along with Silk. She
never saw Hammerstone after that, because she went on the lander to Blue.
She didn't communicate with him, either. Mucor's communicative abilities
apparently didn't extend to chems. The one time she needed to communicate
with Marble, she had to do it through the medium of a little kid. Mucor's
words, uttered in her trance state that you quoted yesterday, had nothing to
do with Hammerstone. Her words were: "Wake up." and "Break it." What she was
talking about is explained on pp. 365-66. I'm not going to bother to quote
the text to you. The gist of it is that Silk had asked Mucor to awaken the
strongest "sleeper" she could find, then have him break the glass cylinder
with his fists before the gas inside killed him, so that he could rouse the
other sleepers so that they could show those leaving the _Whorl_ the best
route to the landers. It's that simple.

-Roy

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 19:51:03 +0000

Roy said:

Crush responds:
I'll look it up when I get home, but I must say you are a lovely dancer,
Roy. Please explain **finally** why Marble lied about being Moly when you
clearly believe you have textually established that she didn't need to.

--Crush

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 23:26:03 +0000

>clearly believe you have textually established that she didn't need to.

You keep trying to put words in my mouth that I never said, or even implied.
What I actually said, a week ago, was:

>Moly is your problem, not mine. She doesn't appear in the books. I wouldn't
>say that Marble was impersonating Moly; she was just lying. Marble's
meeting
>with Hammerstone is not related in the books. I don't know what she told
>him, but her name was *never* Molybdenum; it was Magnesia before she became
>a sibyl, just as she told Mint. (LS4, 359)

And, two days ago, I wrote:
>Except for paint, to show rank or which city to whom they belonged, the
>soldiers all looked exactly alike--they were mass-produced by the millions.
>There is no reason to believe that it was any different for the servant
>chems. Molybdenum looked just like Magnesia who looked just like every
other
>femchem. That's what made it so easy for Marble to lie to Hammerstone about
>being Moly--he couldn't tell the difference. She didn't have a faceplate
>anymore, anyway. How was he to know one femchem from another, especially
>since he was so eager to find _any_ femchem available for reproduction.
>Marble could have been a slut from another city for all he cared. She was
>female and would have him; that's all that really mattered to him. He
wasn't
>going to look a gift-horse in the mouth.

In both posts I said that Marble lied. I said she lied because she did lie,
as she admitted to Mint. Silk knew she was lying; he said as much to Horn in
the famous airship conversation. (LS4, 337-38) That said, I don't see how
you can claim that I "clearly believe" I "have textually established that
she didn't need to" lie. I have made some _speculations_, but speculations,
by their very nature, are difficult to establish from the text; otherwise
they wouldn't be speculations, they would be textual facts.

I can _speculate_ on why Marble lied, if you like, and I will.

When Rose's personality was incorporated into Marble's, along with it came
Rose's maternal instincts, such as they were. That is why Marble was so
quick to adopt Blood's adopted daughter, Mucor, as her "granddaughter".
That, plus whatever non-biological urge to procreate obtained among chems,
along with her sense of youthful rejuvenation occasioned by her "new" parts,
and the knowledge that, after three centuries, during which time she had
been forced to accept the probability that she would never have children of
her own, then the realization that she could, all came together at about the
same time that love-sick Hammerstone came along. She saw her chance and took
it, hardly the first female to do so. (Remember the movie _Garp_?) The whorl
was going to hell in a hurry; she might not get a better chance.

-Roy

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