Tony,
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Interesting! Can anybody confirm that Saltimbanque =3D counterfeit for us?
It's related, but a noun. It means mountebank or quack (cked OED)
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The strongest parallels I can see are with Australian aboriginal culture, and more specifically with its destruction at the hands of white settlers.
Me too. Which is why when I read Paul Park's -Celestis- it seemed to me to be written almost as an homage to Fifth Head (the collection, not just the title novella).
Rostrum,
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And since this message has no Wolfe content anyway, I'll continue with the observation, after reading Cordwainer Smith's "A Planet Named Shayol," that where at one time people wrote gory descriptions of Hell with the purpose of putting a genuine fear of God into people, several modern science fiction writers have written gory stories about Hell with the (seemingly intended) effect of making the reader say, "surely this cannot be."
Who else? I'm curious.
Sarge,
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I hate to be always the contrarian (lie: I love it)...but I think "Cim" is an electrical phenomenon, like St. Elmo's Fire or ball lightning. Either could fit the description of a "soft star" moving from tree to tree. In addition there is Cim's weapon: perhaps the totemic naming conveys an analogous power on the named one, and thus Cim's weapon is electrical.
That's definitely an interesting take, though I still think that it we could ever find what language Wolfe was using, it might refer to something on the snowy side. That's a question (the language, not Cim specifically) any of you who plan to go to a convention to see him, etc., might ask. A one-word answer would suffice, and so would "I made it up."
-alga-