(urth) Drotte-Roche mixup

[James Wynn]

> Andrew Mason:
> _Epiphany_ certainly diverges from earlier editions at one point: the
> memorable line 'At that moment I burst into the room' is changed to
> the dull 'At that moment Horn burst into the room'..

Okay. That's really bizarre. They 'fixed' that but they didn't fix the 
Marble/Mint mix-up.

>> Why would anyone make prosthetic hands for a woman that look old? On the
>> other hand, whatever one believes about Rose's hands, the fact that they
>> are *old-looking* requires its own speculative theory. She first started
>> wearing them when she was in her forties.
> Can you remember where that is established? If she was actually old
> when she got them, they can have been made to look old just to blend
> naturally with the rest of her. If, on the other hand, they were made
> for a chem, why would they be made to look old? The sense I get is
> that Marble looked young for as long as she had a human appearance at
> all.

It is in "Calde of the Long Sun" during Rose's funeral when 
Echidna-in-Marble takes Musk and burns him in the flames:

    "This fine and living man," she pronounced slowly, "is presented to
    me, to Divine Echidna." Her hands, *the bony blue-veined hands of a
    elderly bio*, glowed crimson in the flames. "Mother of the Gods.
    Incomparable Echidna, Queen of the _Whorl_. Fair Echidna! Smile upon
    us. Send us beasts for the chase. Great Echidna! Put forth thy green
    grass for our kine..."

Whatever you choose to believe about Marble's/Rose's hands, explaining 
them requires that you leave specific textual references. Female chems 
always look like young girls. That is established (although I'd have to 
look it up).  Rose got the hands when she was in her 40s. Blood 
remembers when she had the first one installed and recognized it.

Roy has proffered that perhaps they were mocked to look old so they 
would "age with her". But of course that presumes that she would get old 
enough for the body to match the hands. Others have suggested it was 
done to keep Rose humble.

I say that the hands first belonged to Betel and were mocked to look old 
so it would not be apparent that they _were_ prosthesis. The 
embarrassment was due to the origin of those hands. And where they came 
from was what Marble was reminding Betel of -- shaming her-- when she 
repeatedly asked for shriving by Betel over lying about having posed for 
that picture in the cenoby.  She was implying "Remember Betel? I took 
Molybdenum's identity just as you took her hands."

> That they are, in any case, mechanical and not flesh seems to be
> established by the fact that, when one is severed, the talus workshop
> is thought to be the place to go to have it reattached. .I don't think
> the talus manufacturers would be able to work with flesh. Isn't there
> even a bit about how it's not just a matter of welding, there are
> wires that have to be reattached, or something like that?

Yes. They are definitely not flesh.

>> 3)  They absorbed her personality so readily because that is what
>> chem-technology is designed to do. That's why Marble can remember Urth's
>> short sun.
> I don't follow this - why in any case would Marble not remember the
> short sun? Wasn't she created under it?

Does she recount a single memory regarding her life under Urth's sun as 
does Rigoglo?
I contend her memories are from those of a bio. Additionally, there is 
this from Nightside.

    "Maytera Marble could remember the short sun, a disk of orange fire;
    and it seemed to her that the chief virtue of that old sun had been
    that no list, no menu, ever appeared unbidden beneath its rays."

Either:

1) This makes no sense because until relatively recently no list or menu 
appeared to Marble "unbidden" under the Long Sun either.

2) The reason no such list or menu appeared to her under Urth's sun was 
because she was a bio.

J.
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