plus building fusion reactorsWhorl

But we're also told that chems have to go through a lot of trial and error to build their children, and that each chem has only -half- the knowledge necessary to build children; i.e., no "clon- ing" for chems--they have to be married (or at least in a rela- tionship) to reproduce. So it might not be so easy just to ask chems how to build convenient little fusion plants. Also, the Ayuntamiento's chemical duplicates, which I think we can all agree aren't quite kosher, must use chems' fusion powerpacks. This suggests to me that not only should the chems' inherent reproductive rate be lower than that of bios (something mentioned in the books), it's possible it was slowed even further because they couldn't find the necessary parts to build their children, because all the parts have been used up by black mechanics' circles and the like. The fact that we haven't seen a lot of obvious fusion packs out in the Whorl is far from a suggestion that they're not actually out there. The Lake Limna sub is a good candidate for fusion power, as are the Flyers' powerpacks (though those are clearly legitimate). Nacre *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

Perhaps the program for reproduction is not consciously accessible to the chems. Try asking a computer that runs an automobile factory how to make a combustion engine. A chem may not know how to make a fusion reactor any more than I know how to make a human stomach (other than by making a baby with my wife, that is). -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.