Poor Hammerstone

Roy C. Lackey · 04 Dec 2002, 23:26 · from urth-v0212.mbox · original

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From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Poor Hammerstone
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 17:26:03 -0600
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>Crush responds:
>I'll look it up when I get home, but I must say you are a lovely dancer,
>Roy. Please explain **finally** why Marble lied about being Moly when you
>clearly believe you have textually established that she didn't need to.

You keep trying to put words in my mouth that I never said, or even implied.
What I actually said, a week ago, was:

>Moly is your problem, not mine. She doesn't appear in the books. I wouldn't
>say that Marble was impersonating Moly; she was just lying. Marble's
meeting
>with Hammerstone is not related in the books. I don't know what she told
>him, but her name was *never* Molybdenum; it was Magnesia before she became
>a sibyl, just as she told Mint. (LS4, 359)

And, two days ago, I wrote:
>Except for paint, to show rank or which city to whom they belonged, the
>soldiers all looked exactly alike--they were mass-produced by the millions.
>There is no reason to believe that it was any different for the servant
>chems. Molybdenum looked just like Magnesia who looked just like every
other
>femchem. That's what made it so easy for Marble to lie to Hammerstone about
>being Moly--he couldn't tell the difference. She didn't have a faceplate
>anymore, anyway. How was he to know one femchem from another, especially
>since he was so eager to find _any_ femchem available for reproduction.
>Marble could have been a slut from another city for all he cared. She was
>female and would have him; that's all that really mattered to him. He
wasn't
>going to look a gift-horse in the mouth.

In both posts I said that Marble lied. I said she lied because she did lie,
as she admitted to Mint. Silk knew she was lying; he said as much to Horn in
the famous airship conversation. (LS4, 337-38) That said, I don't see how
you can claim that I "clearly believe" I "have textually established that
she didn't need to" lie. I have made some _speculations_, but speculations,
by their very nature, are difficult to establish from the text; otherwise
they wouldn't be speculations, they would be textual facts.

I can _speculate_ on why Marble lied, if you like, and I will.

When Rose's personality was incorporated into Marble's, along with it came
Rose's maternal instincts, such as they were. That is why Marble was so
quick to adopt Blood's adopted daughter, Mucor, as her "granddaughter".
That, plus whatever non-biological urge to procreate obtained among chems,
along with her sense of youthful rejuvenation occasioned by her "new" parts,
and the knowledge that, after three centuries, during which time she had
been forced to accept the probability that she would never have children of
her own, then the realization that she could, all came together at about the
same time that love-sick Hammerstone came along. She saw her chance and took
it, hardly the first female to do so. (Remember the movie _Garp_?) The whorl
was going to hell in a hurry; she might not get a better chance.

-Roy

--=20

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