what's up with hy? ... plus building fusion reactorsWhorl

Thanks everyone for answering my questions ... sorry mantis ... haven't read Urth yet, but I'm gonna start on Shadow tomorrow ... any ideas on where the whorl gets its power (see last post)? Anyhoop, I've always wondered about Hy ... I mean, Silk is a sophisticated, mild-mannered clergyman, and Hy, is basically still a fourteen years old girl, and not a well educated one at that ... every time the two interacted, starting with the "wee flea" letter, I got this sensation in the pit of my stomach, reminiscent of the one I get when people scratch their fingernails across a chalk board ... basically, I could never shake the idea that the two were ALL wrong for each other ... Any ideas on this? Is it trying to show that love comes in all shapes and sizes, and there is no accounting for it? That Silk, with all his strengths, is still a fool for love? That even if there are better women available, men still gravitate to the hot bods? All of the above? None of the above? Matthew, you bring an interesting point, about the fact that chems should be able to build their children, ergo there should be fusion reactor parts available, especially considering that chems multiplied a lot less than Pas expected (according to Hammerstone) ... so why was it that people couldn't build these reactors ... maybe they didn't know how, but they could ask chems ... they have the plans hardwired in them ... Finally, a mil plus years after all of us are dust ... why are people STILL speaking English? (or is it explained in Urth, in which case, don't ruin it for me ... ) that's all for now ... /\/\ Greg Neyman Greg.Neyman at gte.net ___/____\___ http://www.trailerpark.com/siesta/thehat/ |HE HA| *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

I assume that, just as Wolfe explained that /terminus est/ is not really Latin but a language as archaic to speakers of Severian's language as Latin is to English, just so the languages in Long Sun are not really English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, etc. but languages that have an analogous relationship to each other. -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.