(urth) Short Sun Notes: Chems

[Andrew Mason]

>> This is a small thing, but I think an interesting one. The question
>> has been raised in the past why, apart from Marble, there appear to be
>> no chems on Blue.
>
> It may be that the plan of Pas is to send bios to Blue, not chems. Chems seem to have started off as slaves - in the sense that they need no sustenance and their roles are determined by others. They are well suited to the Whorl, where the conditions are not too rough for their mechanical nature. But Blue or Green have no roads, nor controlled humidity, so even a possible function for them as heavy workers would seem to be limited.
>

That's possible, but my point was that we didn't really need such an
explanation, given that there don't seem to be many chems on the Whorl
either. Actually, my impression is that Pas was fundamentally pro-chem
- Hammerstone says he is the chems' god (understandable, perhaps, if
he was artificial in some way himself). While on Urth they had been
treated basically as machines, he wanted them to be more than that -
chemical persons - and for this reason devised the quasi-sexual method
of reproduction (which seems to be new: Marble's account of her origin
implies she was mass-produced). There's a suggestion somewhere that
his plan has gone wrong, because the gender rations are wrong and so
not enough children have been produced.

I wouldn't have thought Pas intended the chems to be abandoned when
the expedition reached Blue, but if, as it appears (though it's not
entirely clear) he intended the voyage to continue further, he may
have meant them to stay with the Whorl.

>> Later (RTTW 9), again wondering about who might be an inhumu/a, the
>> Rajan says ?Hide, Vadsig, Aanvagen, Beroep, and Azijin can be
>> dismissed; I have been too close to all of them far too often to be
>> thus deceived. In my judgment Cijfer can be dismissed as well.? Why,
>> if not because of closeness? But if she is a chem ? which presumably
>> an inhuma couldn?t imitate ? this would be an explanation.
>
> But shouldn't the wording then be more like 'of course' or even 'if I'm correct' rather than 'in my judgement', which, to me, suggests it is a complex matter?

Well, I say presumably, and the Rajan would have to presume it as well
- I guess the question 'can an inhuma imitate a chem?' has never
actually been put to the test. (How distinctive do chems look? The
soldiers certainly have a distinctive appearance, with skin of unusual
colours; and Marble has lost her skin, so looks like a conventional
robot. But ordinary civilian chems seem to look like humans at first
glance - Marble, when young, was able to pose for Molpe. I take it one
can work out they are chems quite easily, from the way they move,
etc., but it wouldn't be obvious at first sight.)
>
>> If Cijfer is a chem her husband, Wijzer, must be as well. In the light
>> of this it may be significant that in the final battle he killed five
>> inhumi, ?twice strangling one with each hand?.
>
> That one is immensely suggesting (suggestive?), agreed.

Thank you!