Tracking Song

Roy C. Lackey · 09 Jun 2007, 07:30 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2007 02:30:43 -0500
Subject: (urth) Tracking Song
Message-ID: <000c01c7aa68$19c7e580$0ec85a42 at rclackey.stic.net>

Matthew Groves wrote:
>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.

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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