{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4844",
    "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": 4844,
    "subject": "Tracking Song",
    "messages": 4,
    "voices": 3,
    "first": "2007-06-08T23:02:52+00:00",
    "last": "2007-06-19T22:09:28+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<39ed084f0706081602g1b96c78bsff0953f06c1b115c@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Matthew Groves",
        "address": "matthewalangroves at gmail.com"
      },
      "date": "2007-06-08T23:02:52+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Tracking Song",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
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          "text": "Thanks, Roy for taking the time to reread and post on \"Tracking Song.\"\n\nRoy wrote:\n\n\"If his \"birthmark\" was a mark like Cain's, then it did him little good. He\nwas mortally wounded (in the dark!) by one of the \"Min\" from the cave, who\nshould not have been able to harm a true man.\"\n\n...which I had failed to notice. (But why is \"in the dark\" significant?)\nIt's true that the \"three laws\" or something analogous should have prevented\nthe Min from wounding him (*if* Cutthroat is a true man), but Cain's mark\nwould not prevent it; it merely signifies that \"whoever kills Cain shall\nsuffer sevenfold vengeance.\" No-one killed Cutthroat, but if the Min\nCutthroat killed in the undercity was the same that wounded him when they\ntook Cim, then Cutthroat was avenged.\n\nAnd Cutthroat's birthmark does help him a little like the way Cain's mark\nprotects him: it prevents the Wiggikki from harming Cutthroat by causing\nthem to suspect he is under an enchantment that will seek a new home in\nanyone who kills him. But I don't think Cutthroat got his \"birthmark\" from\nthe Great Sleigh, since they don't seem the type to use leashes. That's more\nof a Mantru thing.\n\nAbout the winged man at the end: It seems clear to me that, even if he\nrepresents one of the cherubim guarding the entrance to Eden, he is also\nbird-man -- a beast-man like the Wiggikki, the Pamigaka, and all the rest.\nHere is what Robert Alter says about \"cherubim\" in a footnote at the end of\nhis translation of Genesis 3: \"The root of the term either means \"hybrid\"\nor, by an inversion of consonants, \"mount,\" \"steed,\" and they are the winged\nbeasts, probably of awesome aspect, on which the sky god of the old\nCanaanite myths and of the poetry of Psalms goes riding through the air.\"\n\nAbout the fourteenth day, Roy wrote:\n\n\"I think that, deep down, he understood that if he had simply stayed where\nhe was on day one, that the Sleigh would complete its leisurely\ncircumnavigation of the small planet in two weeks.\"\nThis sounds like a plausible explanation to me, and its better than anything\nI have (which is nothing). However, note that Cutthroat says it is the\n*number* fourteen that seems significant.\n\nMatt G.\n\nP.S.:  When first reading \"TS,\" I believed that Cutthroat's wound resulted\nfrom him having tried to hang himself, or having been hanged. This belief\npersisted even after reading the scene where Mantru has Cim Glowing chained\nby her neck. It took reading through the old archives for me to realize\nCutthroat's true nature, and the actual source of his \"birthmark.\" The crux\n(as it were) of Wolfe's story is always eluding me."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<000c01c7aa68$19c7e580$0ec85a42@rclackey.stic.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Roy C. Lackey",
        "address": "rclackey at stic.net"
      },
      "date": "2007-06-09T07:30:43+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Tracking Song",
      "in_reply_to": "<39ed084f0706081602g1b96c78bsff0953f06c1b115c@mail.gmail.com>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
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          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Matthew Groves wrote:\nP.S.:  When first reading \"TS,\" I believed that Cutthroat's wound resulted\nfrom him having tried to hang himself, or having been hanged. This belief\npersisted even after reading the scene where Mantru has Cim Glowing chained\nby her neck. It took reading through the old archives for me to realize\nCutthroat's true nature, and the actual source of his \"birthmark.\" The crux\n(as it were) of Wolfe's story is always eluding me."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I don't buy the Cutthroat-as-dog theory. This story smacks of moral and\nreligious overtones that have no relevance to a dog. Even granting genetic\nmanipulation that transformed animals into human-like beings with\nintelligence comparable to a man, it happened so long ago that the only\nextant artifacts of that ancient race of men have fallen largely to rust and\ndust inside a hollow mound. The tribes of animal species have fire and\nlanguage and simple tools, but they are little better off than the natural\nanimals. Most of their waking hours and energies are consumed in the basic\ndaily task of staying alive. If they ever had a greater store of abstract\nknowledge, it is not evident in the story; presumably it was lost long ago.\n\nCutthroat has knowledge of things that are unknown to the beastmen. He\nunderstands the reflective metallic dust that begins warming the planet. He\nknows of other planets with varying gravity. He wears a high-tech thermal\nsuit, with boots, that came from off-world. He has a pocket knife,\nfirestarter and voice recorder. Those material objects must have come from\nthe people on the Great Sleigh.\n\nIt can be argued that those objects were taken from the Sleigh by a beastman\nwho came to be called Cutthroat, but the people on the Sleigh don't seem to\nlet the natives come aboard. If he killed a crewman and stole his stuff, the\nSleigh people should have missed the crewman and turned back to find him,\nwhich didn't happen. And if Cutthroat were not truly a man, the machines in\nthe cave would not have obeyed him.\n\nAt the end of the story the Sleigh was moving rapidly, and it had already\nexceeded a complete revolution of the planet. The recorder was also a\ntransmitter, and it was during that last broadcast that Cutthroat mentioned\nhe was dying. I don't think there is any doubt that the Sleigh was coming\nfor him. That being the case, I don't think that the winged man was simply\nanother variety of beastman. I think it was an angel of some sort, whether\ncome to bar him from the Sleigh or to carry him off to wherever.\n\n-Roy"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<39ed084f0706121730l5e20e927v980db9391b1212cb@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Matthew Groves",
        "address": "matthewalangroves at gmail.com"
      },
      "date": "2007-06-13T00:30:03+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Tracking Song",
      "in_reply_to": "<000c01c7aa68$19c7e580$0ec85a42@rclackey.stic.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
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          "kind": "text",
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          "text": "Just one more observation, and I hope it won't get me in trouble:\n\nIt's just my opinion, but...\n\nI think Wolfe does LeGuin better than LeGuin.  Way better.\n\n*runs away*"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<9a33123d0706191509s6cad8b89wabf9211b064271d@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com"
      },
      "date": "2007-06-19T22:09:28+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Tracking Song",
      "in_reply_to": "<39ed084f0706121730l5e20e927v980db9391b1212cb@mail.gmail.com>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
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          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "1) Cutthroat's amnesia doesn't seem to be the result of a head injury\n- he has none. The implication is that the people on the Sleigh have\ndeliberately wiped or suppressed it.\n\nIf this is the case, there was nothing accidental about his leaving\nthe Sleigh: it was orchestrated. If it was orchestrated, it was done\nso in the full knowledge that the Sleigh would be back in a couple of\nweeks.\n\n2) \"This is the fourteenth day. I do not know why that number should\nseem significant to me, but it does.\"\nThe Great Sleigh catches up with Cutthroat after 19 days, but only\nbecause he has spent days unwittingly putting more distance between\nhimself and it. Could the fourteenth day seem significant to Cutthroat\nbecause that's when the Sleigh was scheduled to pick him up again?\n\n\nTying this together: climatic engineering is about to change the way\nof life of the peoples of this world dramatically, and forever.\nSuppose one of the people on the Sleigh wanted to experience this way\nof life, to actually live among these people, while there was still a\nlittle time. Perhaps he's an anthropologist, perhaps he's just someone\nwho wants to shrug off the burden of civilised life for a few days. A\ntourist zoanthrop.\n\n\"Blank my memory,\" he tells his friends, \"I want to go there with a\nclean slate, not as one of us. And don't talk to me on the damn\nradio.\"\n\nJust a thought."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}