# Poor Hammerstone *The Urth list — 4 messages, 2 voices, 04 Dec 2002* > 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. --- ### James Wynn *04 Dec 2002, 15:21* 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? --- ### Roy C. Lackey *04 Dec 2002, 19:40 · follows James Wynn* > 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 --- ### James Wynn *04 Dec 2002, 19:51 · follows Roy C. Lackey* Roy said: 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. 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 --- ### Roy C. Lackey *04 Dec 2002, 23:26 · follows James Wynn* > 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. 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 ---