Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 16:31:02 -0700
From: maa32 
Subject: (urth) vanished people and mirrors

Here is a quote that at least links the mirrors of Fr. Inire from Shadow of 
the Torturer with In Green's Jungles:

"The vanished People are like that at times, a single individual counting as 
many, and many coalescing into two or three.  Or one.  At such times it seemed 
to the nman with the black sword that they stood between mirrors that they 
carried with them.  Or rather, that they had stood so once but had stepped 
away long ago, and that the doubled and redoubled images they had left begind 
had taken on lives of their own." (pg 263 SFBC BOTSS, In Green's Jungles ch. 
4)

He then talks about "cruel saw grass" and "twisted bushes" that obscure the 
city and tunr it into an illusion.

Here is another example of the low G of green cathcing up with the narrator:
"They came to a steep stairway after long walking, and the man with the black 
sword, who had supposed that he trod level ground, was amazed to behold a 
lower city beneath the City of the Inhumi ... there was a walkway beside the 
river, narrow in places and narrower yet in others.  And in some wholly 
crumbled away, leaving only small stones that rolled beneath the feet of the 
man with the black sword, threatenting to carry him into the water." after he 
gets washed away, he sees trees whose "topmost leaves were among the stars" 
(266).  these are very tall trees, taller even than California's. Small stones 
that roll don't seem very passable for a man of horn's stockiness, unless they 
aren't as treacherous as they sound.

Also, "The man who had been leader lay beside him, and it seemed to him that 
the TREES AND VINES LEANED TOWARD THEM TO OVERHEAR THEIR TALK, and wept.  I 
will not tell you how tall those trees are, or their thickness through the 
trunk; you woulnd not credit anything I said.  But I will say this.  The trees 
you have seen are bushes, and the roots of many of the great trees on Green 
could geave the soild of this big farm from one end to the other and from one 
side to the other making hills and valleys of its flat land." (300).

Later, "Horn" in fava's story threatens "Mee" with a tree: all he has to do is 
swing her into one to take care of her.

Also, describing Fava in astral travel: "I had said that she could no longer 
fly, but she seemed to fly as she raced back to me. 'some men' she dropped 
breathless to the floor. ' Are coming. They saw me kiss you. ...'" (346)
Doesn't this sound like low G stuff? Does she say "some men" before she lands, 
or does she actually drop to the floor?  Later a slug gun is fired and the 
bullet "ricocheted again and agin, echoing and re-echoing up and down the 
sewer as it screamed through the reeking air." (361) How much can a slug 
ricochet in normal gravity?  
I've really tried to find a definitive reaction that will indicate that 
gravity is not normal on Green, but I can't seem to for sure if you won't 
except the astral travel cliff incidents, even though Silk claims that the 
staff he creates gains substance and real "weight". (and no scenes on Green 
are directly narrated except through astral travel -> a few memories, and the 
third person stories of Incanto, but no coherent narrative thrust in the first 
person like we get in On Blue's Waters for Blue, so if you don't accept astral 
scenes it is very hard to prove anything about the gravity of green at all)
Marc



--