Spiral Dance
Shift Change
In which the crew give thought to the future.
The tree has a lot to say for itself in this chapter. (I kind of wish I’d thought to tag for the chapters where the tree speaks. Too late to go back and find them all now.)
Spiral Dance
Shift Change
In which the crew give thought to the future.
The tree has a lot to say for itself in this chapter. (I kind of wish I’d thought to tag for the chapters where the tree speaks. Too late to go back and find them all now.)
Why do M soldiers (or any design) get old and die at 40? It seems wasteful to lose hard-earned experience and wisdom so soon. Maybe you can’t keep a soldier in his prime strength any longer? Maybe you don’t want a soldier who (truly) knows better than his superiors?
It could be a trade-off for all the enhancements: on the one hand, you’re faster and stronger and take damage better and have all kinds of useful immunities, but on the other hand, in the long run you wear out sooner.
That said, with the picture we’ve been given of High Command, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was policy-driven planned obsolesence instead of an inherent limitation. Surely in forty years there’ll be newer, shinier models that we’ll want to clear barrack space for!
(And now I’m wondering whether they still make new Ms, or if they stopped production as soon as they’d developed a strain that suited them better. Jela’s line, like Cantra’s, is more enterprising and self-reliant than its owners would always prefer.)
M-strains probably live 45 years, because Jela is “something over 44 common years” at this point.
I liked this chapter, too.
Not sure, but I think X-strains do replace Ms, but M-strains might eventually became Troop Explorers. Nelirikk is of Jela’s line, so that might mean he is an M. It makes sense, for an explorer to be a generalist, knowing a little about everything. Cantra will be given Jela’s gene map, so it should be easy to find out whether Nelirikk is of Jela’s line.
We see the Korval luck here. Jela was the only baby to survive the enemy attack of the nursery wing of the lab.
Some thoughtful meditation on what duty requires of him now that his consolidated commanders are likely disbanded, “since success was not within his grasp.”
Contra sheds a tear. Now, that’s a rare occurrence.
Sweet invitation to make love, largely prompted by all those images Tree has so willfully been transmitting — and perhaps also fueled by something Tree put in the seed pods.
I don’t think it can be as simple as Explorers being a particular strain, because surely there’d have been interbreeding over the centuries. (Assuming that there was breeding, come to think of it, I don’t think we’ve ever been told where baby Yxtrang come from.)
Yes, surely there would be interbreeding, either through mating or lab processes. But even so, it is possible the Explorer model is based on the M-model, much like we say an English Lop rabbit is based on an old French Lop and Flemish Giant — or some such ancestry.
I believe we find that Xs and Ys are completely different from Ms…more likely to obey orders to the letter, for instance.
I wonder if the dramliz developed by the sheriekas don’t have at least as much clairvoyant abilities as the Tree, and if so: was the attack that Jela survived intentionally aimed at him, in the sense that there was precognition that an M would do something to thwart their plans for total destruction of humans?
@Ed8r
The Luck’s results are imho invisible to dramliz talent – and confused the enemy. So all the dramliz might have seen was a strong gathering of the Luck – but no intention.
It might have been just that enemy attack which drew the Luck to Jela.
So which was first, the enemy attack or the gathering of the Luck wich made the enemy attack?
Ah, yes…the chicken or the egg, indeed.
The Tree is determined to keep Jela alive long enough to complete his mission.