Subject: (urth) 5HOC - no. 5, Marsch, Eastwind and Sandwalker

From: Maclean Jessica <jessica.maclean at nzpost.co.nz>
Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 20:56:58 +0000

Hi all

I have just finished reading 5HOC for the first time- I really enjoyed
it and liked the slightly harder sci-fi edge (tech-wise) of the first
story in particular. I'm just sorting through my impressions and would
love some feedback.

Number 5, and Maitre are two clones of the original Mr Million. Dr Veil
and David are children of clones of Mr Million. Other clones, less
suitable for whatever reason, are sold. 

Marsch is either Sandwalker or Eastwind- when the cat bites Marsch,
either, the cat is somehow Eastwind/Sandwalker, or the cat has bitten
Eastwind/Sandwalker. The ambiguity of the identity of the prisoner, the
many times that his ineptitude with tools is mentioned, the fact that
only one comes back from the trip, and the story that Marsch writes all
lead me to believe this.

Which means that Number 5 is partially correct when he accuses Marsch of
being an abo in the first story, when No. 5 wants to kill Maitre (who he
thinks is his father). Who actually kills Maitre? The text only mentions
No. 5 being left alone with him after goading Marsch into leaving.

Maitre is also the name of the officer in the third book who is reading
"Marsch"'s notes. Is Maitre a clone? He has a slave who I think is a
clone like No. 5- the description of "high hunched shoulders" and
something about a narrow chin rang a bell. I note that Maitre, just like
Eastwind/Sandwalker, prefers to wash himself after being with a woman.

Is Maitre the officer, "Marsch"? Bearing in mind that "Marsch" is half
abo and can change his appearance to a certain degree...

________________________________________ 
Jessica Maclean 
Customer Liaison 
New Zealand Post 
________________________________________ 
Tel: 0800 100 318 Fax: 0800 100 319
e-mail: jessica.maclean at nzpost.co.nz 
customerliaison@ <www.nzpost.co.nz > nzpost.co.nz 
_______________________________________ 
Winners of GOLD at the coveted CRM Contact Centre Awards 2006

Smile, life is good! 
This email with any attachments is confidential and may be subject to legal privilege.  
If it is not intended for you please reply immediately, destroy it and do not copy, disclose or use it in any way. 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20070507/a7de19c5/attachment.htm

---

From: Dan Rabin <wolfe-lists at danrabin.com>
Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 22:39:01 +0000

Jessica Maclean asks,

At 8:56 AM +1200 5/7/07, Maclean Jessica wrote:
>Maitre is also the name of the officer in the 
>third book who is reading "Marsch"'s notes. Is 
>Maitre a clone? He has a slave who I think is a 
>clone like No. 5- the description of "high 
>hunched shoulders" and something about a narrow 
>chin rang a bell. I note that Maitre, just like 
>Is Maitre the officer, "Marsch"? Bearing in 
>mind that "Marsch" is half abo and can change 
>his appearance to a certain degree?

"Maitre" is the French word corresponding to the 
English "Master".  It's actually spelled 
"Ma?tre", where the circumflex, as is often the 
case in French, indicates an original "s" in the 
etymology.  I suspect both words descend from the 
Latin "magister".

It's what servants call the head of the household 
in which they serve--a title or honorific, not a 
name.

   -- Dan Rabin

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 23:32:08 +0000

> in which they serve--a title or honorific, not a 

I believe that it also serves as a double-entendre in the first story; 
Maitre is also Number 5's figurative "mater", or mother, as well as his 
father.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 02:05:06 +0000

> Marsch is either Sandwalker or Eastwind- when the cat bites Marsch, either,
> the cat is somehow Eastwind/Sandwalker, or the cat has bitten
> Eastwind/Sandwalker.
>The ambiguity of the identity of the prisoner, the many
> times that his ineptitude with tools is mentioned, the fact that only one
> comes back from the trip, and the story that Marsch writes all lead me to
> believe this.

I don't *think* so. After Marsch kills the cat (which is an abo), VRT
(who is also an abo) kills Marsch. Then he spends some time in the
wilderness growing a beard and preparing to take on the identity of
Marsch. The "man" in the cell is VRT. So Number 5 was entirely
correct.

The story (so it seems to me) is "abo lore" of when the colonists
first arrived. VRT wrote it.

This is all straightforward with the exception that VRT does "share
dreams" with Number 5 (as abo twins do). I suppose that this is from
his Shadow Child telepathic abilities, but I don't know for sure.

> "Marsch"'s notes. Is Maitre a clone? >

Maaaaybe. The possibility cannot be discounted. However, for certain,
it is another parallel between Number 5 and VRT. They were both
prisoners of "Maitre" to be endlessly and pointlessly examined.

J

---

From: Tony Ellis <tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com>
Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 09:51:23 +0000

> either, the cat is somehow Eastwind/Sandwalker, or the cat has bitten

I don't think the cat bites anyone. When 'Marsch' reports the incident
in his journal, he does so to explain why his handwriting has suddenly
become so bad. But if Marsch is no longer Marsch but one of the
Annese, then of course his handwriting would be bad - he can't use
tools.

> The ambiguity of the identity of the prisoner, the

Only one comes back from the trip, but two set off. VRT is surely the
person who steals Marsch's identity, and no one has to get bitten by
anything for that to happen.

That said, there's no doubt that there's a strong echo of the incident
of the Shadow Child biting Sandwalker, whose identity is thereafter
muddled. But I think the parallel is an artistic one - there are a lot
of such devices connecting the three stories.

---

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 15:32:28 +0000

>Annese, then of course his handwriting would be bad - he can't use

Rereading this passage, I noticed something odd. Like you, I had believed that the Apr. 23 entry, as well as the note preceding it, were written by V.R.T. (as the officer's behavior seems to confirm) and that the cat-bite story was V.R.T.'s invention. But the big change in the entries comes a day later: the Apr. 23 entry could easily have been written by Marsch, whereas the Apr. 24 and later entries were clearly written by V.R.T. Stylistically, too, the Apr. 23 entry and preceding note are more like Marsch's entries than the post-Apr. 23 entries. Moreover, the Apr. 23 entry talks of shooting the tire-tiger, but V.R.T. can't use a rifle. (Of course V.R.T. could have made that up too, but in the rest of his entries he does a very poor job of pretending to be Marsch.)

If the Apr. 23 entry and preceding note are in Marsch's words, then what happened must have been something like this: On Apr. 22 Marsch is bitten by the cat. On Apr. 23 Marsch writes the original version of the entry we see: the cat's bite affects his handwriting, though it doesn't look like V.R.T.'s handwriting. Sometime after that, Marsch is either killed by V.R.T. or dies in an accident. On June 1 V.R.T. decides to continue Marsch's journal, writing as Marsch, and the note preceding the Apr. 23 entry shows him how he can do this. So V.R.T. copies the note and Apr. 23 entry, and cuts the original out of the notebook (as the first three pages were cut out). In doing so he also cuts out any entries Marsch may have written between the Apr. 21 entry, where he says he would shoot V.R.T. and the girl if he caught them having sex, and his own death.

I'm not very happy with this, as it's the sort of elaborate scenario with no direct evidence that I generally dislike. But the difference between the Apr. 23 and "Apr. 24" entries is so striking (to me, anyway), that it requires explanation. An alternate explanation would be that Marsch's altered handwriting just happens to look like V.R.T.'s, but this would be too much of a coincidence.

(Apologies if this has been discussed before, though I don't remember it having been.)

--Adam

---

From: Tony Ellis <tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com>
Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 20:48:10 +0000

Adam Stephanides wrote:
>Rereading this passage, I noticed something odd... <snip>

I take your point that the April 23 entry reads a lot like a normal
Marsch entry. But the idea that the reader is supposed to infer VRT
copied out an entry in someone else's bad handwriting in his *own* bad
handwriting is a step too far for me - especially as it also requires
us to infer that he cut out the original entry when Wolfe gives us no
indication of any such mutilation to the journal. (And that's another
thing: the officer notices when pages have been removed expertly, but
not when it's done by hamfisted VRT?)

Perhaps the cat bit Marsch and Wolfe doesn't think it's such a big
coincidence that his altered handwriting looks like VRT's. After all,
VRT's handwriting is what writing looks like when you hold the pen
wrongly, and that's what Marsch would be doing.

But I don't think so. For me, it's simply too much to swallow that
just before Marsch's handwriting changes because he's been replaced by
an alien that can't write properly, it changes *anyway* because he was
bitten by a cat. I suppose it's just down to personal taste.

Coming back to the April 23 journal entry... on balance I think VRT
wrote it. The curious business of preceding the entry with an
out-of-sequence note seems to indicate that something is up. And more
importantly *why does Marsch wait until he has killed the ghoul-bear
to tell us he killed the tire-tiger the day before?* The man loves
shooting wildlife, and is hugely proud of his kills. If he was so
excited about killing the tiger, as the entry says he was, why didn't
he excitedly write about it in his journal at the time? His cat bite
certainly wasn't a handicap.

Also: "The boy had enticed [the cat] into his lap and was sitting - as
he always used to when he wasn't cooking - with his back to the
fire..."

Why "as he always used to"? Why write as if that's something that used
to happen, but doesn't now? Because the writer is VRT, and the
expedition ended a month ago? That would be my guess.

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 22:19:39 +0000

Ummm.

I've never believed the cat really did bite Marsch. I've always
assumed that was something VRT made up to explain his
handwriting.

On 5/9/07, Tony Ellis <tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com> wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
-----
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
http://www.danehyoakes.com
Soon, where Toon Town once stood will be a string of gas stations,
inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire
salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards
reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful.

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 14:06:16 +0000

> assumed that was something VRT made up to explain his

Perhaps _VRT_ imitates the cat to bite Marsch, then waits a day or two 
to make sure the sample takes and he can now imitate Marsch, then kills 
him? The other accounts of abo imitations that come to mind seem to take 
a cerain amount of time and involve blood being drawn, or at least don't 
rule it out.

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 17:07:26 +0000

Adam said:
>I had believed that the Apr. 23 entry, as well as the note preceding it,
>were written by V.R.T.

I have always presumed the April 23 entry was written by Marsch. That was why
I presumed VRT had murdered Marsch for some reason relating to this event.
Otherwise, it just seemed too coincidental.

>the cat's bite affects his handwriting, though it doesn't look like V.R.T.'s
>handwriting. Sometime after that, Marsch is either killed by V.R.T.
or dies in an
>accident.

Once again, the idea that Marsch died by accident seemed way to coincidental,
however (something about the way Adam put this timeline together)
it does seem reasonable that the cat's bite killed Marsch and so VRT
took up his identity to hide the nature of Marsch's death.

I like this idea very much.

---

From: Daniel D Jones <ddjones at riddlemaster.org>
Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 11:37:01 +0000

On Saturday 12 May 2007 13:07, James Wynn wrote:
> I have always presumed the April 23 entry was written by Marsch. That was
> why I presumed VRT had murdered Marsch for some reason relating to this
> event. Otherwise, it just seemed too coincidental.
>
> >the cat's bite affects his handwriting, though it doesn't look like
> > V.R.T.'s handwriting. Sometime after that, Marsch is either killed by
> > V.R.T.
>
> or dies in an
>
> >accident.
>
> Once again, the idea that Marsch died by accident seemed way to
> coincidental, however (something about the way Adam put this timeline
> together)

To my mind, it only seems too coincidental if you assume that VRT intended to 
assume Marsch's identity from the beginning.  If, however, you assume that 
Marsch died and VRT seized the opportunity, then it doesn't seem like a huge 
coincidence.  It's been awhile since I read the story, so I don't know how 
well this interpretation jibes with the text.  It's something I'll keep in 
mind the next time I read it.