John Watkins wrote:
<br><blockquote type="cite">This seems dead-on to me, except that I can't quite square the black
<br>beans with Apheta's claim that the Hieropeople were behind the black
<br>hole in the sun (or, in my pet Wild Theory, the off-hand comment that
<br>the black panther in Soldier of Sidon is "the thing that eats the
<br>stars.")
<br>
<br>Maybe the Hieropeople gave Cilinia the Megatherian embryos?
<br></blockquote>Apheta's words don't read like a direct confession to planting the black
hole to me: "You know that we have condemned the peoples of Urth, and
why. They now feel that they have earned our forgiveness, and the chance
to resume the places they held of old --"
<br>
<br>The condemnation sounds like something administrative, because is it
tied to "the chance to resume the places they held of old." It may be that the peoples of Urth were condemned because of something
an Urth person did (i.e. ruin their sun). I believe Urth was quarantined
from human-led space travel -- that was the main punishment (this ties
in well with the "resume the places" line). In this view, the help with
Urth's Sun problem was a side-issue, only allowed after forgiveness was
obtained.<br>