Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 16:14:31 -0800 (PST)
From: Jerry Friedman 
Subject: Re: (urth) Quetzal in orbit


--- Charles Reed  wrote:
...
>  From CALDE, Chapter 1 (The Slaves of Scylla):
> "For some while he [Quetzal] remained before the window, motionless, 
> cosmetics streaming from his face in rivulets of pink and buff, while he
> contemplated the tamarind he had caused to be planted there twenty years
> previously.  It was taller already than many buildings called lofty; its
> glossy, rain-washed leaves brushed the windowframe and now even, by the 
> width of a child's hand, sidled into his bedchamber like so many timid 
> sibyls, confident of welcome yet habitually shy.  Their parent tree, 
> nourished by his own efforts, was of more than sufficient size now, and 
> a fount of joy to him: a sheltering presence, a memorial of home, the 
> highroad to freedom."
...

Thanks for this quotation!

I see three striking things about it.  One is that it seems to support
Marc's contention that the trees are significant to the inhumi (as he
just noted).  And this is an Urthly tamarind tree, not a tree native
to the Groon system!  Unless... hard though I find it to believe...
Ushas is Blue, tamarinds are native there, and a presumably Urth-
descended tree can remind Quetzal of home.  Or is it just that any
sizable tree reminds him of Green?

The second striking thing is the questions it raises.  Sufficient
size for what?  How the highroad to freedom?  Quetzal can fly (right?);
he doesn't need the tree for climbing out the window.

The third is that Horn made up this passage.  I can hardly believe
Quetzal ever told him these solitary thoughts.  So what does Horn
know about trees and inhumi, years before he sets out to look for
Silk, and is he hiding his knowledge from us?  Or are we supposed to
forget that Horn is the narrator and take this as coming from the
omniscient author, or believe that Horn is divinely inspired?

Unlike Marc, though I see "their parent tree" as just "the tree that
is the parent of those leaves".

Jerry Friedman

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