Urth Net
Tracking Song (and other stories)
Roy C. Lackey · 08 Jun 2007, 07:22
· from 2007-June.txt.gz
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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey) Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 02:22:53 -0500 Subject: (urth) =?iso-8859-1?q?=93Tracking_Song=94_=28and_other_stories=29?= Message-ID: <000c01c7a99d$d7e1af40$a0c85a42 at rclackey.stic.net> Matthew Groves wrote: >I've recently read "Tracking Song" (_The Island of Doctor Death and >Other Stories and Other Stories_), along with Borski's blurb in _The >Long and Short of It_ and an enlightening discussion in the old >archives (does Alice "alga" Turner still subscribe?), and I wanted to >throw out a few questions in hope of stimulating some discussion. I don't remember what I may have said about this story in the past, but I read it again, along with Borski's comments. It's hard to argue against his interpretation of a bastardized rehash of the Fall, and if not everything matches up with _Genesis_, that's not necessarily a mark against his theory; Wolfe always changes things when he retells something. Cutthroat's "birthmark" is otherwise hard to account for, as is the tall winged being at the end. Still, it's also hard to see that cold planet as Edenic, and it is Man who is returning to it to make it more paradisiacal. And the little we learn about the men of the Great Sleigh seems to make them out to be do-gooder, holier-than-thou types out to transform not just the planet but the beastmen, to make them over according to a moral code they brought with them. If they aren't 'bad guys' (in the eyes of the jealous, vengeful God of the O.T.), then how is it that they have usurped the role of God in this little drama? If the Great Sleigh represents a type of Eden, and if Cutthroat was cast out of it for some reason, then we have a reversal of the _Genesis_ situation. Adam sinned and gained knowledge; Cutthroat sinned and lost knowledge -- his memory. Cutthroat made a sort of moral progress during his brief sojourn. He came to regard the beastmen as too near human to be killed and eaten. Was he rewarded for that change by being healed of his wound? Or was he rewarded by being allowed to die after less than three weeks of exile? Or was he further punished by being healed but left in exile? 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. But maybe their prime directive was corrupted by their bits of flesh. (Poor Jonas.) >Why does the number fourteen seem significant to Cutthroat? (After he >records the fourteenth day's log, Cim leaves her recorded parting >message to him, which he apparently never listens to.) Best I can tell, it was an almost-remembered bit of knowledge, like bears and plastic and other planets with higher gravity. 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. -Roy
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