From: "Roy C. Lackey" 
Subject: Re: (urth) Poor Moly
Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 21:54:47 -0600

>Crush responds:
>If one femchem was as good as another to Hammerstone, why did he leave
>Marble and have the child they were making broken up when she revealed that
>she was Magnesia?

I probably shouldn't even ask, but **where, in or out of the whorl, did you
get such an idea???**

>Whether femchems **looked** the same or not (and I contend there **must**
>have been **some** visual difference so bios could tell who they were
>dealing with and so they could locate chems who ran away without paying
>their building indenture), surely Hammerstone knew **something** of the
>particular femchem he was married/engaged to like say... ***where she
>worked.****  You aren't denying I presume that Hammerstone and Moly ever
>met??

Sure, he met her, but not at Sun Street. Moly didn't work at a cenoby. She
was a **housemaid** (LS3: 3), according to Hammerstone, and is so described
in the list of characters, as distinguished from a "maid-of-all-work", which
is how Marble, nee Magnesia, is described in the list of characters in LS4.

>"I have heard it said that she was the oldest biochemical person in this
>quarter, and it may well have been true. _She belonged to the last of those
>fortunate generations for which prosthetic devices remained_, devices whose
>principles are lost even to our wisest." (emphasis added)

>Roy continues:
>The question of whether or not prosthetics can still be made, or are being
>made, becomes moot for purposes of this argument. The quote establishes,
>once again, that Rose got her prosthetics many years ago (two generations),
>when they were still readily available. That suffices to undermine your
>theory that they came from Betel, who had taken them from a
>murdered/martyred chem maid. There was no need for that.
>
>Crush responds:
>Where are you getting this? We know Rose got her parts about 40 years ago
>(probably less). Actually you have argued that she got *most* of her parts
>more recently.

Nope. What I actually said on the subject was: "Rose didn't receive all her
prosthetics at the same time, that's all; she would have scared the hell out
of that boy if she had. Much of her face was prosthetic, both arms and both
legs, her "ears", one eye, and a host of internal organs."

And, actually, Rose got her first prosthetics (the hand and arm Blood saw as
a boy) **more** than forty years ago. Blood was born when she was 40. She
lost touch with him when he was 9. She was about 94 when she died.

>That is NOT **many** years ago by any stretch, nor is it the
>time period typically associated with "two generations."

Two generations _is_ many years, in terms of a human life span.

>The only reason I have for saying Betel got the parts first, is the flags
in
>the **text**. Marble insisted on continuously being shriven of her "lie" to
>**Betel**. Marble inherits from **Betel** yellowed ivory beads (which I
>assure you are remarkably like betel nuts in color and shape) on a silver
>chain (the color of molybdenum). Not from the text, but also significant
IMO
>is that "betel" is a narcotic made from the leaves of the betel vine mixed
>with mineral lime. I'd love to drop the Betel connection if I could. It
>would make everything so much more tidy.

You have an analogy. Not even a slingshot, much less a smoking gun. I'll
grant you that Wolfe doesn't always leave a smoking gun in plain sight, but
I want to at least smell the smoke.

-Roy


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