(urth) 5HC

[Andrew Bollen]

Gerry wrote:









*"You can argue that the Old Wise One is confused at one point as to which
of the two peoples in the story is which, but it can be explained in a
straightforward way.  Or you can argue that he is lying or otherwise
incorrect, or that neo-Marsch is a better SF writer than he is an
anthropologist.  But it is simply not the case that a variety of origin
stories are presented in the text for the reader to choose between.  The
text tells exactly one story, involving a landing by humans, who were
imitated by the aborigines, and who devolved into the Shadow Children.
Right or wrong, that's what we are told."*

I prefer a reading on which the OWO becomes less rather than more confused
as the Shadow Children are killed off.

The OWO subverts his star-traveller-origin story from the start: he has no
historical memory of when they were supposed to have arrived on St Anne or
where on Earth they were supposed to have come from. "We either came
recently or a long, long time ago ... Sometimes we try to recall the name
of our home ... But we hear also the mind-singing of our brothers ... as
they pass up and down between the stars .... but these thoughts come into
our songs. It is possible that our home was named Atlantis or Mu - or
Gondwanalnd, Africa, Poictesme, or The Country of Friends. I, for five,
remember all these names."

The origin names come from listening in to the thoughts of contemporary
star-travelling humans, not from any historical memory; listening to
stories, with no capacity for judging fiction versus fact.

So the text establishes that whatever he's going to say about origins has
little if any credibility; likely enough his tale includes elements pieced
together from cheesy space-operas and so forth. It certainly has that kind
of tone: "But we walked among you in power and majesty and might, hissing
like a thousand serpents as we splashed down in you sea, stepping like
conquerors ... " etc etc.

As he talks, he rocks back and forth and "his jaws moved vigorously as
though he were eating". Why? Because the group of which he is the "norm"
has serious substance issues and this story he's telling is the fantasy of
addled SC chewing away on their drug-leaves.

As the SC are killed off, Sandwalker's influence in the mix generating the
OWO becomes more important and the junkie-influence lessens. After the
first deaths, the OWO seems "fainter than ever, but taller", and younger  -
taller  and younger, presumably because tall young Sandwalker has
relatively more influence now. And the OWO says: "We had no names before
men came out of the sky ... We were mostly long, and lived in holes between
the roots of trees ... I am confused ... There are so many of you now and
so few of us."

His "confusion" is the confusion of a drug wearing off. Now there's a
"first" and a "second" race, but he's no longer sure which is which.

Finally there's only one SC left, and it seems to me that this SC's
drug-wad is all used up; at any rate, he is sharply focused and rationally
intent on saving his own life. Now the OWO says: "Since they [ie the non-SC
people] first came here. Now I know that we were always here listening ...
Or it may be that all are one stock ..."  So the OWO's final, least-addled
guess is it that SC and the hill folk and the marsh folk all have the same
origins.

Anyway, that reading makes most sense to me. But I don't see the text as
presenting the OWO's word even at this point as authoritative: he doesn't
know anything more about origins than the folk who generate him, and they
don't know very much - a dim memory of having been worms, and stories the
SC concoct from listening to the thoughts of contemporary space-faring
humans.

In the context of "Story", I think it's quite reasonable to guess that no
sentient being existed on St Anne before humans started travelling between
the stars ("we either came recently ..."), when the ancestor-worms picked
up on space-farers' "mind songs" and started to produce copies. Some of
these turned into drug-addled SC; some into the hill folk and marsh folk.
They've only been around for perhaps a couple of hundred years or so at the
time of first French landing.

Of course, in the context of the novellas, "Story" is just a story and
doesn't necessarily reflect the "real" situation ...
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