The face of Pas

Roy C. Lackey · 15 Sep 2010, 04:44 · from 2010-September.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 23:44:12 -0500
Subject: (urth) The face of Pas
References: <001d01cb5172$d6967fa0$9bd14a0c@rclackey>	<4C8E5FF5.1060109 at gmail.com><003101cb53c3$556e2100$b5cf4a0c@rclackey>	<4C8FA25B.5040409 at gmail.com><00bc01cb5440$ba4c6500$88d04a0c@rclackey>
	<4C8FDC45.4090600 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <00a001cb5490$a87d5140$82d14a0c@rclackey>

> >> James Wynn-
> >> There are downsides to chem bodies as the Ayuntamiento discovered.
Being
> >> downloaded into a chem body might reasonably give Typhon no more actual
> >> legal status than uploading his personality into a computer.
> > Roy-
> > Legal status!? What would an egotistical tyrant care about legal status?
Was
> > he going to be voted out of office or something?
>
> A tyrant must induce people to obey him. Would anyone obey a robot?

Obviously so. People obeyed Potto and Lemur and the fake Siyuf. People
didn't know they were robots.

> >> The child Cilinia could not have designed all the traditions of the
> >> Chapter. No way. Typhon's committees did that on an ad hoc basis-- the
> >> same way they put together the Writings. When Lemur say she "founded"
> >> the Chapter and Viron and other cities, he is talking about a titular
> >> role--with little more input than a suggestion here and there. That's
> >> why Lemur stipulates that she was little more than a child.
> > Regardless of who designed the traditions of Viron, the fact remains
that
> > the city, complete with its scores of manteions, was already built when
the
> > first people came aboard -- Marble was there at that time and said so;
she
> > was working as a maid at the Sun Street manteion. The Sacred Windows
were up
> > and running with Viron's Chapter in charge of daily operations in the
> > manteions. And like it or not, the city's Charter was said to have been
> > written by Scylla: "The Charter, eh? Written in-ah-deity by Scylla and
> > corrected by Pas." (LAKE, chap. 7, 188) Thus, her role in the founding
of
> > Viron and its institutions was not just titular.That she was a girl of
about
> > thirteen at the time she was scanned is not my problem to explain;
that's
> > the way Wolfe wrote it.
>
> You need to read that text a little more carefully, Roy. What Remora
> says is:
>
> "The Charter, eh? Written in-ah-deity by Scylla and corrected by Pas. So
> it-um-asserts."

I did read the text carefully, James. That's why I wrote "the city's Charter
was **said** to have been written by Scylla".

> Even Remora, retains skepticism regarding what the Charter says
> regarding its own history.
> But even then, what Remora and Lemur think about the founding of the
> Whorl should be taken with the same degree of skepticism: "So he
> asserts". And that's the way Wolfe wrote it.

Yes he did. And if you don't like it that Hoof described the astral Cilinia
as looking like "a girl old enough to take care of other sprats but not old
enough to get married" (RTTW, 347), or that Cilinia herself, while looking
at her remains on Urth, said "I died young. It can't have been long after I
was scanned for the _Whorl_." (392), you can claim that it was only Hoof who
made the assertions and it doesn't mean what it seems to mean if it doesn't
suit your notion of the founding of Viron or its Chapter or whatever point
you really wanted to make.

Look at your above assertions about what Cilinia could or could not have had
to do with the founding of the Chapter, and that it was done by "Typhon's
committees". Where did you get that? I stated what the text had to say about
it, along with corroborative indications that the infrastructure for the
Chapter was in place from the get-go. Which position merits more skepticism?

-Roy

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