Subject: (urth) Tracking Song

From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2007 23:02:52 +0000

Thanks, Roy for taking the time to reread and post on "Tracking Song."

Roy wrote:

"If his "birthmark" was a mark like Cain's, then it did him little good. He
was mortally wounded (in the dark!) by one of the "Min" from the cave, who
should not have been able to harm a true man."

...which I had failed to notice. (But why is "in the dark" significant?)
It's true that the "three laws" or something analogous should have prevented
the Min from wounding him (*if* Cutthroat is a true man), but Cain's mark
would not prevent it; it merely signifies that "whoever kills Cain shall
suffer sevenfold vengeance." No-one killed Cutthroat, but if the Min
Cutthroat killed in the undercity was the same that wounded him when they
took Cim, then Cutthroat was avenged.

And Cutthroat's birthmark does help him a little like the way Cain's mark
protects him: it prevents the Wiggikki from harming Cutthroat by causing
them to suspect he is under an enchantment that will seek a new home in
anyone who kills him. But I don't think Cutthroat got his "birthmark" from
the Great Sleigh, since they don't seem the type to use leashes. That's more
of a Mantru thing.

About the winged man at the end: It seems clear to me that, even if he
represents one of the cherubim guarding the entrance to Eden, he is also
bird-man -- a beast-man like the Wiggikki, the Pamigaka, and all the rest.
Here is what Robert Alter says about "cherubim" in a footnote at the end of
his translation of Genesis 3: "The root of the term either means "hybrid"
or, by an inversion of consonants, "mount," "steed," and they are the winged
beasts, probably of awesome aspect, on which the sky god of the old
Canaanite myths and of the poetry of Psalms goes riding through the air."

About the fourteenth day, Roy wrote:

"I think that, deep down, he understood that if he had simply stayed where
he was on day one, that the Sleigh would complete its leisurely
circumnavigation of the small planet in two weeks."
This sounds like a plausible explanation to me, and its better than anything
I have (which is nothing). However, note that Cutthroat says it is the
*number* fourteen that seems significant.

Matt G.

P.S.:  When first reading "TS," I believed that Cutthroat's wound resulted
from him having tried to hang himself, or having been hanged. This belief
persisted even after reading the scene where Mantru has Cim Glowing chained
by her neck. It took reading through the old archives for me to realize
Cutthroat's true nature, and the actual source of his "birthmark." The crux
(as it were) of Wolfe's story is always eluding me.
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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2007 07:30:43 +0000

>(as it were) of Wolfe's story is always eluding me.

I don't buy the Cutthroat-as-dog theory. This story smacks of moral and
religious overtones that have no relevance to a dog. Even granting genetic
manipulation that transformed animals into human-like beings with
intelligence comparable to a man, it happened so long ago that the only
extant artifacts of that ancient race of men have fallen largely to rust and
dust inside a hollow mound. The tribes of animal species have fire and
language and simple tools, but they are little better off than the natural
animals. Most of their waking hours and energies are consumed in the basic
daily task of staying alive. If they ever had a greater store of abstract
knowledge, it is not evident in the story; presumably it was lost long ago.

Cutthroat has knowledge of things that are unknown to the beastmen. He
understands the reflective metallic dust that begins warming the planet. He
knows of other planets with varying gravity. He wears a high-tech thermal
suit, with boots, that came from off-world. He has a pocket knife,
firestarter and voice recorder. Those material objects must have come from
the people on the Great Sleigh.

It can be argued that those objects were taken from the Sleigh by a beastman
who came to be called Cutthroat, but the people on the Sleigh don't seem to
let the natives come aboard. If he killed a crewman and stole his stuff, the
Sleigh people should have missed the crewman and turned back to find him,
which didn't happen. And if Cutthroat were not truly a man, the machines in
the cave would not have obeyed him.

At the end of the story the Sleigh was moving rapidly, and it had already
exceeded a complete revolution of the planet. The recorder was also a
transmitter, and it was during that last broadcast that Cutthroat mentioned
he was dying. I don't think there is any doubt that the Sleigh was coming
for him. That being the case, I don't think that the winged man was simply
another variety of beastman. I think it was an angel of some sort, whether
come to bar him from the Sleigh or to carry him off to wherever.

-Roy

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From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 00:30:03 +0000

Just one more observation, and I hope it won't get me in trouble:

It's just my opinion, but...

I think Wolfe does LeGuin better than LeGuin.  Way better.

*runs away*
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From: Tony Ellis <tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 22:09:28 +0000

1) Cutthroat's amnesia doesn't seem to be the result of a head injury
- he has none. The implication is that the people on the Sleigh have
deliberately wiped or suppressed it.

If this is the case, there was nothing accidental about his leaving
the Sleigh: it was orchestrated. If it was orchestrated, it was done
so in the full knowledge that the Sleigh would be back in a couple of
weeks.

2) "This is the fourteenth day. I do not know why that number should
seem significant to me, but it does."
The Great Sleigh catches up with Cutthroat after 19 days, but only
because he has spent days unwittingly putting more distance between
himself and it. Could the fourteenth day seem significant to Cutthroat
because that's when the Sleigh was scheduled to pick him up again?

Tying this together: climatic engineering is about to change the way
of life of the peoples of this world dramatically, and forever.
Suppose one of the people on the Sleigh wanted to experience this way
of life, to actually live among these people, while there was still a
little time. Perhaps he's an anthropologist, perhaps he's just someone
who wants to shrug off the burden of civilised life for a few days. A
tourist zoanthrop.

"Blank my memory," he tells his friends, "I want to go there with a
clean slate, not as one of us. And don't talk to me on the damn
radio."

Just a thought.