“You know when August
will have his first tape?”
“Today. Right Now.
They put him in a cradle and it has a kind of tape going, so he can hear
it.”
She was impressed. Jealous, even. August was a threat if he was going to be
that smart.
“Why didn’t I do that?”
“Because you were going
to be a CIT. Because you have to learn a
lot of things the old-fashioned way.
Because tapes are good, but if you’ve got a maman or a papa to take care
of you, you learn all kinds of things August won’t learn until he’s older. CITs get a head start in a way. Azi learn a lot about how to be good and how
to do their jobs, but they’re not very good at figuring out what to do with
things they’ve never met before. CITs
are good at taking care of emergencies. CITs
can make up what to do. They learn that
from their mamans. Tape-learning is
good, but it isn’t everything. That’s
why maman tells you to pay attention to what you see and hear. That’s why you’re supposed to learn from that
first, so you know tape isn’t as important as your own eyes and ears. If August had a maman to take him home today
he’d be a CIT.”
“Why can’t Mary be his
maman?”
“Because Mary has too
many kids to take care of. She has five
hundred every year. Sometimes more than
that. She couldn’t do all that
work. So the tape has to do it. That’s why azi can’t have mamans. There just aren’t enough to go around.”
Chapter
5 – Cyteen by C.J.
Cherryh
About
this time, I was getting a real Where the Sweet
Birds Sang vibe. While it
took a good deal of time before Cyteen got any
good, once it developed, it was real
good. Nothing like Downbelow Station.
Grammar cleaned up a lot. Fewer,
but more interesting characters. More SF
goodness.
I
know, I know this should have been a really late post for last week’s book, Ender’s Game. I
finished EG last week,
but I went right into hitting Cyteen
with everything I had and I’m happy to say there is a high probability I will
finish it this weekend. I had actually
attempted to write my review for Ender’s Game earlier this
week and it turned into garbage so I abandoned that and just went to bed with Cyteen instead.
If all goes according to my evil scheme, this weekend I will finish my
review For Ender’s Game AND finish
reading Cyteen AND
shortly after that hopefully get a review for Cyteen up. Of
course this meant that I put off Speaker for the Dead but that is
okay, because it’s another audiobook and I’ll listen to that in the car and
while running and read next week’s book at night. Hey, I might actually be caught up in another
week or so!
Also,
if I ever had two cats, I think I’d name them ‘Cyteen’ and ‘Ender’. For it?
Against it? Other good SF related
pet names?
You will never have two cats, let alone one cat to debate over its name. One less thing to worry about right?
ReplyDelete"Mama, I want a wittle dog. One that has pointy earus. Do you wike wittle dogs?"
"No, i do not like dogs, and you will never have a little dog unless you live with Daddy alone."
"Daddy would let me get a dog?!?!"
Bwahahahaha! I've been wondering when she would start asking that. You are going to have her asking me to move out so she can get an animal. But...She's scared of dogs anyway!
DeleteI guess you don't have any good SF pet names huh? :)
DeleteI started Cyteen multiple times and just had a hard time getting in to it. I was also thrown a little bit by the masochistic sexual stuff at the beginning. But I finally got about 150 pages in, and got more and more intrigued. By the end, I was so glad I'd persevered.
ReplyDeleteI sat on the first 100 to 200 pages for about a week. I just couldn't get interested and frankly, I thought Justin and Grant were a both overly dramatic AND boringly insipid (is there any other way to be insipid?). But it was the same with me, my interest grew and now I'm really happy to have stuck with it and to now be nearly finished!
DeleteCyteen is a pretty awesome name for a cat, me thinks!
ReplyDeleteRight?! Geez, I was starting to think maybe I was crazy or something :)
Delete