(urth) Mamelta is Kypris?

[James Wynn]

I said:
>>Later the Rajan described Jahlee when she is an inhuma again:
>>*******************************
>>"The third member of our party is my daughter Jahlee. She is of medium
>>height, red-haired and attractive, with a smooth almond-shaped face and a
>>sly smile many find captivating."
>>~ RTTW pg 20
>>*********************************
>>Is he describing her soul or the way the way she looks to others? Well, I
>>don't think he considers an inhuma to be his daughter, so I think he
>>himself is describing her soul, but it may be one in the same. Likely it
>>is.

Roy responded:
>He was describing her as she looked to any humans they encountered while
>traveling, the same as other inhumi trying to pass as human. It was her
>disguise, an illusion. And even then she wasn't tall, like Chenille. She
>looked different at different times, as in Gaon and at the farmhouse.

I disagree. The Rajan didn't describe her at this point has having *many*
faces. He is describing an event in the past but describes *her* in the
present tense suggesting continuous action. Kind of like the difference
between "esta" and "es". Not "sometimes she looks like..." but "she looks
like...". Furthermore, he described her using her explicit appearance of her
soul during dream-travel. You're welcome to any opinion you wish, but I'm
not going along.

And why on earth would you think Jahlee would have to physically look like
Chenille to have her soul? We don't agree on much, I know, but I know you to
be a careful reader. Do you really *really* believe the inhuma *actually*
looked physically like the persons whose souls they inherited? Physically,
she didn't look anything like Chenille. Physically, Krait didn't look
anything like Sinew. Unless they chose for humans to see them that way
(which btw is exactly the people see the gods in the Mainframe, according to
Tartaros). In the dark bar, the Rajan heard the tenor of her voice and for a
moment believed it was Chenille. I don't think there is any other reasonable

explanation for that.


I said:
>>Sooo...what did Kypris/Silk's mother look like in the mainframe? She
looked
>>the way she saw herself. Not as she truly looked.

Roy responded:
>Do you really think there was a computer terminal under all that rubble,
>probing a dead man's eyes and reading a dead man's thoughts, and sending
>the data to Mainframe? Silk was dead, as all those present believed. The
>gods of Mainframe have no power to raise the dead, and Quetzal said so.
>He didn't believe the Outsider's powers to be any different from the
>computer gods. He was wrong. Silk's resurrection was a miracle
>orchestrated by the Outsider. His death vision came from the Outsider,
>not Mainframe. So the people Silk saw in his death vision looked exactly
>as the Outsider portrayed them -- unless the Outsider deceived him.

1) As for "reading a dead man's thoughts" Wolfe doesn't explain how the
Mainframe reads the thoughts of dead people to permit Remora and Hyacinth
and Silk talk to their mothers when they go to the Sun's end. That ship has
sailed. Whether you find it believable or not (I find it tough to swallow,
myself), it is really beyond hand-wringing as far as the novels go.

2) Someone else also recently asserted that Silk was not in the Mainframe
but actually in Heaven. This is how the scene is described:
*************************
     The Trivigante airship was a brown beetle, infinitely remote, the
Aureate Path so near he knew it could not be his final destination.
     He lighted upon it, and found it a road of tinsel down a whorl no
bigger than an egg. Where were the lowing beasts? The spirits of the other
dead?
************************
The text here supports the reading that he was in Heaven, that Silk was not
*merely* in the Mainframe.However, it also supports the naturalistic reading
as well. Silk IS on the Mainframe's "Aureate Path" as the text says (unless
you think Wolfe is suggesting there is a tinsel road to Heaven) but from
where he is he can note that it is not the ultimate goal or even much of a
goal at all. It is tinsel...phony. Like the "clockwork" nature he discovered
the Whorl to have when he was enlightened. So are these people in the
Mainframe or are they from the true afterlife? It seems to me that Wolfe is
having it both ways.

Anyway it doesn't really matter as far as the current question is concerned.
"The Short Sun" segment makes it clear that the appearance of souls is the
same for *real* human souls.


>I'm not following you. Mint's hair was cut short, like a nun's, to
>deliberately look unattractive to men. Hy was doing the opposite.

I don't consider that relevant.


>The exact
>quote from Kypris is: "I was there last night. Yes. But not for you. Only
>because I play with Hy sometimes. Now she reminds me of the way I used to
>be, but all that will be over soon. She's twenty-three." The "Now" implies
>there was a time when Hy didn't look so much like her. Before the boob job
>and whatever other cosmetic changes were made in a deliberate attempt by Hy
>to conform her looks, so far as possible, with the image of the goddess she
>saw in the monitor.

a) Your theory about what Kypris meant by "now" is interesting. I'm not so
sure that's what she meant, nor what "soon" meant to her (as in "that will
be over soon"), and Kypris doesn't elaborate.

b) Do you think Hy could see the goddess although she was not a virgin? I
think Tartaros stated unambiguously that that was it was not possible for
men who had slept with women or women who had had sex with men to see god or
goddess.


>>Sorrel is reddish brown color. Chenille's hair, as Roy noted in his other
>>post, was not red or reddish. It was dark. How dark I can't say right now;
>>I don't believe black, but dark. But her image of herself was having
>>reddish hair mingled with dark brown roots. Sorrel.

>This is how Silk described Chenille's hair: "her tightly
>curled hair was the color of ripe raspberries." (NIGHTSIDE, chap. 10) He
>also called it "fiery". The cat on the hilt of the dagger was "scarlet". I
>don't think any woman's idealized self-image includes dark roots showing
>under hair dyed her preferred color. And I've never seen a horse the color
>of raspberries. I believe her hair was short as well as curly, not long
>like Jahlee's in the above quote, but I'm not sure.

I don't consider that relevant.

J