From: "Alex David Groce" <adgroce@eos.ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Bye Silk! ... fusion ... and Escape from the Airship ...
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 12:39:20 

Greg Neyman wrote:
>     Alga- I think (sniff) that's that last anyone will ever see of Silk -n-
> Hy ... Wolfe foreshadowed to that much when silk was on the airship deck ...
> Silk said that if he fell at that moment, he wouldn't really die, not in the
> eyes of the people on the airship ... he'd just disappear, and who's to say
> what that means ... anyhoop, that DID happen at the end of exodus ... silk
> just DISAPPEARED ... an enigmatic ending for an enigmatic hero
>     BTW - silk as the "positively beautiful man?" ... I can see that
> happening.

Yes, it's a nicely evocative connection.  I'm not sure Silk is gone--it's
possible, and the airship suggests it, but it seems at least possible that when
Horn & co. head back to the Whorl, they will indeed find Patera Silk.  But I do
agree it's at not unlikely we've seen the last of him.

>     Rostrum - Hammerstone said in Lake that making a child takes at least
> two years, and maybe as long as twenty (as they get the parts, presumably)
> .... does the couple enter the "love-trance" for twenty years?  there's no
> way they could be productive citizens and produce children simultaneously if
> that were the case.
>     And even if it was the case, I'd imagine that black mechanics would be
> able to find a way to circumvent this.
>     BTW good call on that water vapor bit ... I'm kicking myself for not
> having thought of it.

Well, it wouldn't have to be a "trance"--humans don't necessarily go into a
trance to make a kid, but don't have conscious access to the workings of it.
But it does seem odd the black mechanics can't get at this if they can mess
with programming as much as they seem to be able to (maybe Pas had this a lot
better guarded, especially the fusion pack part--as that would seem to be the
really dangerous part.)

-- 
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce@eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce

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