From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Why the Whorl left early
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 08:53:08 

on 4/13/01 4:55 PM, Michael Straight at straight@email.unc.edu wrote:

> On Fri, 13 Apr 2001, [iso-8859-1] Nicholas Gevers wrote:
> 
>> One point: I think that GW intends us to understand
>> that the Whorl leaves very quickly after Silk and Co
>> return to it after RTW.

Earlier, I posted an argument that the Whorl does not leave very quickly,
but decades after Silk and Co. depart (to be pedantic, we don't know when
they arrive at the Whorl, or if they do at all).

>> Reason: Silk-in-Mainframe and
>> the corporeal Silk don't want Pas descending to Blue
>> with Mainframe and all, for the reasons Silk gave
>> Remora and because the Whorl needs Pas and Mainframe
>> where they are. Thus: emergency departure, far swifter
>> than M'to would have thought possible.
> 
> But if Silk-in-Mainframe is enough in charge that he can get the Whorl to
> leave early, he's probably enough in charge to prevent "Pas" from escaping
> to Blue.

Indeed, how could Mainframe be gotten onto a loader and off the Whorl
without the cooperation of the Whorl's human inhabitants?  (If you argue
that the godlings could do it, then conversely they would also have the
power to prevent the emergency repairs.)

Also, given the level of technology on Blue, it will be a generation at
minimum before the colonists there are capable of powering and maintaining
Mainframe.  If it were to come down now, they might not even be able to
preserve its physical integrity, since they can't stop the landers from
being looted and rendered inoperable.

In fact, I'm not at all sure what Horn means when he says that Mainframe
will come to Blue.  We don't know, either, on what grounds he says this;
it's not in his conversation with the surgeon.

--Adam


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