{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/39",
    "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": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 39,
    "subject": "Silk's standing orders?",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-01-22T09:28:06+00:00",
    "last": "1997-01-22T09:28:06+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0002-0064@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "CoxRathvon",
        "address": "coxrathvon at aol.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-01-22T09:28:06+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Silk's standing orders?",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "While we are all pondering Quetzal, Hyacinth, voided crosses, and other\nmysteries of the Whorl, allow me to mention one other tantalizing matter.\n\nIn \"Lake\" (p. 223), Hammerstone reveals to Silk that the soldiers have\nstanding orders.  \"You've got them too,\" Hammerstone tells him; to\nillustrate, Hammerstone fakes a punch to Silk's face, and when Silk\nreflexively protects himself Hammerstone explains, \"Your standing orders say\nyour hands got to protect your clock, just like ours say we've got to protect\nViron.\"  Hammerstone adds that the soldiers' orders ultimately come from the\ncalde.  (And this, of course, is why the soldier Sand shoots Potto instead of\nSilk at the end of the third volume; Sand is reflexively protecting the\ncalde.)\n\nBut what about Silk's deeper instincts?  In the first book, we are surprised\nto see him duel expertly with Xiphias without any prior training.  How is\nthat possible?  As Wolfe tells us in the prefatory lists of \"Exodus,\" Silk is\n\"grown from the frozen embryo purchased by Tussah.\"  We've already seen that\nthe sleeper Mamelta had technical abilities pre-loaded into her brain and\nthat Mucor (also grown from a frozen embryo) came with some very peculiar\nabilities indeed.  Evidently Silk has some \"standing orders\" of a special\nkind.  On p. 345 of \"Calde,\" Silk looks at the soldier Sand and ponders: \"His\nown [name] and Sand's were similar--each had four letters, each contained a\nsingle vowel, and each began with an S.  They could not be related, however,\nbecause, Sand was a chem and he a bio.  Yet they were related by the\nsimilarity of their names.  Not inconceivably... Sand was a cognate, a\nversion of himself.\"\n\nSo if I've got this right, the frozen embryo purchased by Calde Tussah and\nraised quietly out of sight of the Ayuntamiento is likely to have been\nextraordinary.  Silk probably has \"standing orders\" that give him instinctive\nmilitary capabilities, that enable him to duel and fly airships and plan\ncampaigns.  They may even contribute to his extraordinary endurance and\ncapacity to recover from wounds.  He is, in other words, a born leader.\n\nDoes this sound right to the rest of you?\n\n--Henry Rathvon\n\nQuestions or problems to whorl-owner at lists.best.com"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}