penny wrote:At any rate, the notion is no longer discussing the reality of the MA's difficulty of having to deal with a captured treecat, but one who has decided to go willingly. And for it to be an impact on the current timeline it had to be something that happened long ago. I'd say long before the Yawata Strike.
Means, motive, opportunity.
Before the Strike, treecats were passing themselves as little more than particularly smart pets. The SFS knew better and so did the Crown, but even they didn't know enough. Why would the Alignment have taken an interest? They already had tissue samples, but no idea that treecats were that intelligent and hadn't managed to reproduce the telepathy.
After the Strike, even lone treecats would have known of the suffering that their brethren had felt. It would need to be a particularly insane and masochist treecat to take the side of those who caused the death an entire Clan. It's highly unlikely such a treecat was alive at the time -- treecats tend not to survive alone, especially not those who are effectively ill, and they may get killed by other treecats as they would have been a threat to existing Clans. And their world-view, as warped as it might be, may not include the concept of choosing to find those who launched the attack.
Even so, a lone treecat who wished to exile himself off planet would find difficult to find passage. They are not citizens of Manticore, they don't have money, they can't buy passage. The SFS is still monitoring the planet for kidnapping. And if this lone treecat is also that insane, what's the likelihood that they can hold themselves in check long enough to, effectively, defect?
But tell me this, why shouldn't cloned treecats not be able to communicate telepathically? Especially if celery is grown on Darius or their own native root is synthesized, or the providence of a plant that is just as good or better.
Celery is not the necessary component to telepathy. It's something Sphinxian that got spliced into Terran food to make it grow there. But that's neither here nor there.
The point is not that they'd lack the physical and biological capability. It's that they'd lack the skill and learning. Every human who is not physically impaired can perform brain surgery, write Hamlet, program a recursive AI training algorithm, and assemble the avionics of an aeroplane cockpit, all in the space of a single week. But has anyone who has ever been alive done that? More importantly,
could Tarzan without being taught? Could Tarzan even assemble a bookshelf using IKEA instructions, which are entirely pictographic?
The problem is not the biological ability, it's that they'd have to reinvent language first. That's a learned skill, not instinct. They'd have to realise that what they're feeling is external to them in the first place, and understand how to control it. At the basic biological function, the treecat may feel "warm and fuzzy" around some people or "ill at ease" around others, to the point of attempting to attack some of the researchers around them.
That brings an interesting point: just how are you going to breed treecats if the researchers to work with them are the ones most likely to abscond with them? If a researcher gets adopted, they will not want the treecat to see any harm, so the research becomes difficult. You'd have to confine the treecats so they don't hurt the researchers with lower moral qualms, at which point you don't have good specimens for treecats in the first place.
A treecat with cloned sons is just as possible as cloning a human. However, who is to say that this insane treecat(s) did not have a bonded mate(s) who chose to go with the MA willingly. The treecat Adam(s) and Eve(s) of Darius.
If they were "insane" they could have been wandering outside of the far regions of treecat territory and happened upon MAlign agents/handlers by providence. If a bond happened immediately, then "Bob's your uncle" and "Fanny's your aunt." As the Brits say.
We don't know of any insane treecat with a mate, because mating reduces the likelihood of insanity in the first place. Exiled pairs have been known to happen for illness reasons, but see above for means, motive, and opportunity. Plus, now in the scenario you posit, there's one
sane treecat in that pair with regular morals and who may oppose leaving Sphinx, going with those who they can read to have ill and duplicitous intent. You'd have to convince two of them now, and by your construction one is not insane.