(urth) Mamelta is Kypris?

[Roy C. Lackey]

Crush wrote:
>>>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.

What continuous action? He also described himself and Hide and Oreb in the
present tense a few pages earlier. And Oreb still looked just like a night
chough, "smaller than a hen", not the puffed up thing he was during astral
travel. Jahlee was a wicked inhuma. She looked as desirable as she could
make herself look just to tempt Hide and Silkhorn and any other man she
could. She was an animal.

>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?

No. That seemed to me to be what _you_ were trying to establish with the
sorrel hair and the quotes about how Jahlee looked during astral travel.

>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.

The inhumi don't have vocal cords anymore than they have hair. Fake voice or
fake face, what's the difference? Part of the problem here is that I don't
concede Jahlee contains Chenille's "soul", and I have yet to see proof she
does. Was it the Chenille in her that caused her to try to kill Nettle?

>>>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.

Not quite. Either Silk died and went to Mainframe or he didn't. If he did
(ignoring the how of it), the data went to the computer. When he came back
to life, what happened to the data? If it was erased, who erased it? If it
wasn't erased, the computer contains invalid data which, given Silk's
importance to the plans of Pas, should have caused major ripples in the
schemes of the ship's gods. If when he died he didn't go to Mainframe,
things would go on as before, which is what happened, as I see it.

>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.

I don't think Silk went to "Heaven". His soul just left his body briefly.
Somewhere someone in LS said something to the effect that gods can only
communicate with people by using symbols and terms that they can understand.
The only concept of an afterlife Silk was familiar with was what he had been
taught about Mainframe afterlife. So that's how the Outsider communicated
with him.

>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.

If he did, he was wrong. Sometime after his wedding night, while on the
airship, Silk saw Kypris again, when she made him that famous offer to
become Pas. (EXODUS, 346) So, yes, I believe Hy could see Kypris.

-Roy