So, this novel was absurdly huge, straight up finishing over break was more important than annotating at the time, unfortunately, but here it goes.
There were lots of interesting facets to this novel, which made getting through it a lot easier, but one of the most interesting parts was the Azi. Cherryh never really explains the process of their creation. We get small snippets over the course of the novel, and can piece together some sort of idea of how they’re made. We learn that they were initially created as filler for too-empty populations, to stimulate economic growth. There were insufficient adults to give the children they needed individual attention, so Resune developed tape-learning, and raised the Azi synthetically instead. They were a solution to a problem initially, a sort of ready-made human, but I didn’t get the feeling that, at least originally, they were anything like slaves.
Tape learning teaches incredibly specific skills, like penmanship and horseback riding, so that method of teaching allowed for the creation of incredibly specific behaviors. Such incredible specificity led to the creation of azi to fill specific roles, rather than general bodies capable of stimulating the economy. The “batches” of azi are defined by their genesets, and have tape designed specifically for each geneset. These batches range from the Rho-class which has an “Rezner [score of] 45 and below” and an “ability to rebound from mishandling and bad tape” and is used for experimentation and general labor, to the alphas which score upward from 150 on the Rezner scale and are generated “only rarely except for specific executive assignments” (29-30). Thus we have selective breeding, as never before seen by humans, performed on humans. The creation of individuals for specific societal roles is not exactly slavery, but it certainly causes some problems with free will. The reasearchers in charge of the tape program reward systems into the azi. Justin’s pet project is changing these systems so that the azi get pleasure directly from the work that the programmers choose that the azi should do. This really seems to be absurdly specific selective breeding. In the initial world-setting stage of the book an educational publication states, “AGCULT-789X, experimental as the X-designation indicates, closely resembles the RYX-20s or the EU-4561s, except that the genetic codes of the RYX-20s and the EU-4561s indicate two feet while that of AGCULT-789X indicates for, and the RYX-20’s and the EU-4651’s codes indicate smooth skin, while AGCULT-789X’s indicates a sleek bay hide and a superlative ability to run” (31). The RYX-20s and EU4561s are azi and the AGCULT-789X are horses, the only difference between the azi and the livestock are number of legs, hide type, and speed.
As disturbing as this all seems however, the azi certainly aren’t unhappy with their programming, and they understand that they are programmed. There are benefits to being an azi. Since they’re programmed for whatever function they perform, they are, generally speaking, impeccable in their performance. All the security in the novel are azi because no one would prefer human body guard with slow reaction times when they could have Catlin instead. And born-men have their own problems. “Excited born-men go to alternate programming sets. Every born-man is a schiz,” Grant says, “And he hates his alter ego” (240). Grant even says that he prefers his “natural” psychset (240).
The problem I think, is being an azi in a born-men world. Azi are superior to born-men in many ways, but the born-men take them for granted. At one point Grant gets incredibly frustrated with the born-men (including Justin) for not listening to an azi’s point of view “There’s listening and listening,” he says “They’ll always listen to me, when they won’t, you. But they won’t listen to me the way they do you. No more than they do Will… they won’t take his word” and its because he’s an azi (429). That attitude of the born men is not only unfair, its stupid. Grant points out at the beginning of the novel that azi and born-men have their strengths and weaknesses. The azi take in every detail, weed out inconsistencies, which is why they can quickly process certain problems that the born-men can’t even hold in their head. He explains to Justin that as a born-man “you’re better at averaging shades than you are at remembering what really happened, that’s how you can process things that come at you fast and from all sides. And that’s what we’re worst at” (154).
So, even though azi are treated like second-class citizens, or even livestock, they aren’t inferior to the men who create them, they are better in certain respects. And they’re happy being azi, when born-men don’t get in the way. So it doesn’t really seem necessarily bad to be an azi.