Marble on Urth

Roy C. Lackey · 02 Jun 2011, 07:34 · from 2011-June.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2011 02:34:45 -0500
Subject: (urth) Marble on Urth
References: <BANLkTinXcJr6aK+XjMj4v8WwjDzWhm8EtA at mail.gmail.com>	<4DE57004.5080703 at gmail.com><006401cc2090$e0468840$d8cd4a0c@rclackey>
	<4DE6B587.8060700 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <007401cc20f7$8ee0a640$bad14a0c@rclackey>

James Wynn
> > Roy C. Lackey wrote:
> > She remembered standing in a sun-drenched field in a line of servants as
> > they and chem soldiers waited for the transport ship that would take
them up
> > to the_Whorl_:
> > ----------------
> >      "Enormous darkness high overhead, blotting the sun-drenched field,
> The above is surely a description of a scene on the Whorl.
>
>
> > the straggling line of servants in which she had stood, and the
soldiers'
> > precise column. She had seen it descend from the sky, at first a fleck
of
> > black that had seemed no bigger than a flake of soot; [...](CALDE, 285)
>
> What is "coming down" here is the line of servants and soldiers.
> Because they are on the Whorl, she can see the very long line descend
> from the skylands.

Not a chance. Even a miles-long line of chems walking on the inner surface
of the _Whorl_  toward a particular sun-drenched field would not, could not
blot out the light from the long sun. Marble and the other chems were
standing in a field waiting for a spaceship to come down. It was the
spaceship that first appeared as a fleck of black. It appeared larger and
larger as it neared the chems, until its giant shadow covered them: "When
had it been, that sun-drenched field? The jokes and the laughter, and the
overhanging, overawing shadow that had made them fall silent?" (CALDE, 282)

> > She remembered when she first woke, naked, in what seems to be a factory
or
> > storage room containing other fem chems, and trying to boot up
> > (EXODUS, 119-20). She was given clothes suitable for a maid (125).
>
> It's from the beginning of chapter 7 for those not using a hardcover
version or Epiphany:

[snip of long quote from talus factory scene]

> The text doesn't really give a clue as to whether this is on Urth or the
Whorl.
> However, if it was on Urth, it doesn't seem she had a job on Urth prior to
> working on the Whorl.

No, she didn't have a job on Urth. Neither did Hammerstone or the other chem
soldiers. They were being stockpiled, like he said, before being put aboard
the _Whorl_.

>She says this is "where she came from". She didn't come
> from the "so-and-so plantation". Her first job was working on the Whorl.

I agree. Her first job was on the _Whorl_ as the maid-of-all-work at the Sun
Street cenoby. Eventually the staff there and at the manteion dwindled to
just four; young Pike, Betel, Rose and herself, Magnesia. Maggie was pressed
into service as a teacher. When people complained that the kids were being
taught by a mere chem maid, she was made a sibyl and traded in her maid's
dress with its shortish skirt for a long sibyl's habit (see wedding scene,
chapter 11, p-231-32, EXODUS), but she continued to do the work of a maid.
With her new clothes came her new name, Marble. No reprogramming was needed
for her to become a sibyl.

> Aside from information about chem psychology, Swallow's analysis reflects
> on Silk as well since his personality was tinkered to make him a leader.

Well, his genes were tinkered with.

Anyway, I want to get back to the old-looking prosthetic hands, which is why
I got involved. You are right that Rose got the first when she was in her
forties, and young Blood saw it. It is not clear whether Betel was still
alive or not at that point. Rose was forty when she gave birth, and Blood
was nine when she lost track of his foster mother. This latter fact suggests
to me that she lost track of the foster mother at or about the same time
that she became Senior Sibyl, which she became upon the death of Betel. As
Senior Sibyl, and with the manteion staff so short of personnel that a chem
maid had been pressed into service as a sibyl, she may no longer have had
the luxury of enough time to indulge herself with her seasonal visits with
her child.

I don't subscribe to your theory that chems, in general, got their
personalities from scans of real people, though something like that may have
happened with Potto, Lemur and other members of the Ayuntamiento. The ship
had been stocked with many hundreds of thousands of chem soldiers and an
untold number of civilian chems. The soldiers had been programmed to be
loyal to Pas and their respective cities, in that order, and not even Incus'
tinkering with Hammerstone's loyalties could alter that. Chem servants were
likewise programmed for their particular jobs. Their personalities seem to
have been the product of personal experiences, meaning those experiences
acquired after being booted for the first time. Sidero was not a chem, but
he is an example of what I mean. He and his kind started out as glorified
spacesuits but eventually evolved into AIs in their own right. Hammerstone
was not at all religious and I believe Marble became religious only  from
living and working in a manteion, the more so after she became a sibyl.

Be that as it may, you have mentioned four entities in conjunction with
those hands; Rose, Marble, Betel and Molybdenum. The two chem maids were
manufactured on Urth. Both Betel and Rose were born more that two-hundred
years after the _Whorl_ left Urth. Therefore, I do not believe that any of
the four had any personal connection to those hands that originated from any
given bio on Urth. As Marble said and you pointed out, chems never look old,
which is one of the reasons artists liked to use them as models, as was the
case with the cenoby painting.

You have asserted that Betel somehow acquired Molybdenum's hands and had
them altered to look old. Whether that is true or not, trying to connect the
hands to a bio on Urth is a needless complication.

-Roy

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