(urth) 5HC

[Richard Simon]

I'm not sure how this email appears to others on the list, so as an aid to comprehension I've put the comments I've replied to in quotes.

>
>On Sunday, 31 August 2014, 21:22, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:
"But then who is Victor?  He is apparently not a Shadow Child, and he imitates Marsch."

Victor is a Shadow Child imitating an Annese imitating Marsch. More correctly, he is a Shadow Child who believes he is Marsch. He is also, probably, his own mother; I wonder if old man Trenchard ever saw his wife and his son together at the same time.

"I don't put any faith in business of a random girl being said to have long legs or a random guy having head scars. Could be they arose in ordinary ways, or perhaps one or both paid a visit to Maitre's operating table.  If the legs or scars were odd enough for No. 5 to notice as remarkable, they must be unusual."
You should put some faith in them. The explanations you suggest for them are possible, of course, but they lead us nowhere. This is a novel, not real life. Everything in it exists to serve the author's purpose. And Gene Wolfe is a very accomplished writer: there is very little (I would almost hazard 'nothing') in his works that is not there for a reason. I'm not talking about the kind of symbolic justifications favoured by other correspondents here, though Wolfe obviously deploys symbolism constantly; I'm talking about information, obliquely presented, concerning the plot, the characters and the subtext or back-story.

The girl's legs may certainly have been artificially lengthened; Cave Canem is a brothel in which genetic engineering and surgery are used to provide for the special tastes of some of its patrons. But if such was the case, they were lengthened because disproportionately long legs are a sign (in women, at least) of Annese ancestry, which appeals to some rich men on Ste. Croix. The Annese, remember, are not native to Ste. Croix; they were brought to the planet as slaves, though in modern Ste. Croix 'Annese' and 'slave' are not synonymous; there are human slaves, as well as free Annese or semi-Annese. The Annese on Ste. Croix still keep some of their old customs and rituals, like the head-scarred secret policemen who arrest 'Marsch'. By the way, what do you think was the real reason for his arrest? The justifications given by the secret police – both at the time of his arrest and in their internal correspondence about him – are obviously specious. I
 offer my own speculations toward the end of this mail.

If Number Five notes the unusual length of the demimondaine's legs, it's because, as a little rich boy who has lived a sheltered life, he hasn't seen many Annese (real or surgically faked) before. Though my own feeling, reading the text, is that he is both familiar with that kind of thing but aware that it is unusual.

"And starcrosser technology as understood by the Old Wise One seems to be identical to that of modern-day Earthlings."
>
>Very likely. There are probably not many ways to skin that particular cat. Though, in my opinion, the tiny amount of information offered by the OWO really isn't enough to make a definite statement about it.

Now:


There are Shadow Children on Ste. Croix. I don't know about Marc Aramini's trees in the front courtyard of Cave Canem, but the animals that pester the officer looking through 'Marsch's' records are SC, as is the 'woman' with whom he has sex (if sex is really what he has with her). They probably came over from Ste. Anne in disguise, just like 'Marsch'. Here is an intriguing speculation: understanding the danger they pose to human society, the secret police may be operating against the Shadow Children. In that context it would make it logical that many of their operatives are Annese descendants or assimilates from Ste. Anne. It would also explain the officer's 'prophylactic' shower: drug-filled SC saliva that had 'streaked his body'. Perhaps it has mild, pleasurable and temporary hallucinogenic (or aphrodisiac) effects when absorbed through the skin, but severe and long-term or permanent ones when ingested or directly injected, for instance through a 'cat'
 bite. As I say, this is speculation, so don't expect me to defend it with any great fervour.

The condition of the 'abos' on Ste. Anne and Ste. Croix are respectively analogous to the condition of the victims of European colonization in, respectively, South and North America. In Latin America, there has been considerable interbreeding and assimilation between the native inhabitants and their Spanish and Portuguese conquerors, and while social distinctions in those countries still replicate ethnic ones, the latter are not so clearly drawn or insisted upon any more. In North America, there has probably been less interbreeding, and certainly less assimilation, between the European settlers and the slaves they imported to serve them. Ste. Croix is a slaveholding society like the United States was before the Civil War.
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