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Parts of this message can be found in the following threads:
>From: Lesley Grant <lgrant>
>Subject: Re: C. J. Cherryh List
>Date: Mon, 19 Oct 92 10:04:19 BST

> >From: seth@cie.uoregon.edu (Seth Scott)
 
> An off-color question:  does anyone, in any of Cherryh's books, cry?
> The hani never do; perhaps they can't.  I wonder if this is generalizable to
> all of Cherryh's characters.

	People rarely cry, but there are examples, quite a few from _Cyteen_
(which is not exactly a happy book...). Azi cry. Children brutalised by adults
cry (_Cyteen_ is *really* not a happy book). People all alone in alien worlds
cry (_Chanur_, _Cookoo's Egg_). Generally it's people in a position of
weakness and alienation who break down. Other people may want to cry, but are
physically unable (the race in _Cookoo's Egg_, for example).


 
> I'm still unsure as to how much actual power hani males wield.  Khym had a lot
> of legal knowledge, but I had thought that it was Rhean and Pyanfar that made
> all the actual decisions; Kohan was described as sharply intelligent, but
> we never get to see much of him :(  If Cherryh was trying to portray a
> plodding legal system and a merciless social structure (hmmm  ... ?),
> then she succeeded.

	Hani clan lords have (it seems) a lot of authority _de jure_, but little
_de facto_ power. In other words, what a clan lord says ultimately goes, but
what he is told about to help him decide what to say is utterly at his
financial advisors (sisters and aunts) discretion. Clan lords also seem to
have absolute  power of life and death over other related males and no-related
males found trespassing (in _Legacy_ Hilfy mourns over her unfortunate "cousin"
-- I think he could have been a half-brother -- who has his brains dashed out
by the new lord; in the trilogy Pyanfar remembers her first meeting with Khym,
who risked his neck by trespassing on Chanur land -- and Mahn was one of 
Chanur's oldest allies, for heaven's sake!).


From Jo Jaquinta:

> 	Back to Tully's mission: I beleive he was definately on a military
> vessell. Probably on a spook mission. Then they met what they weren't 
> expecting. That's not to say that the people who sent them weren't expecting
> them to meet the aliens. Remember Cooko's Egg?

	There is a reference to Earth exploring on the other side of Sol system
and "getting their fingers burned". I really don't think Earth expected to
find aliends in their back yard -- remember the nearest aliens were found
10? 20? light years away. The Compact seems to be literally breathing down
Earth's neck!
	I wonder where the ship in Cookoo's Egg came from -- there aren't
really any clues to saay if Thorn was EC, Union or Alliance (I suppose I
should say Thorn1).

				Lesley