Subject: (whorl) This little piggie stayed home

From: Robert Borski <rborski at charter.net>
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 12:46:41 +0000

Shortly after Pig, Hound, and Horn reach New Viron, Pig confesses to a
terrible crime: in one of his looting sprees, he's killed an augur. This, he
professes, took place before he was blinded; thus when Silent Silk via a
Sacred Window attempts to possess him, he is successful--and Pig is changed
benignly forever, although he soon loses his "een." It's his hope of
recapturing the peaceful feeling and joy involved that sends Pig in search
of various Sacred Windows--or so Horn incorrectly reasons.

What Pig does not tell us, and Horn does not realize, and we readers must
figure out, is this: the augur Pig kills is none other than Silk in his
manse. Silk, at the moment of expiration, does not die, but rather is
transfused with the spirit of dying Horn, translocated by means of
Neighborly technomagic. Apparently, Hyacinth has recently died (given their
lack of children, and Hyacinth's history of prostitution, it's easy enough
to speculate that some sort of sexually-transmitted disease may have been
involved. At any rate we've been told earlier that she's sick.) Enter
Tartaros--he
"sees" Hyacinth lying in her coffin--so he admits to Hound--but claims Silk
himself is absent, although the very next people he meets are Horn and
"H'Oreb." In my opinion, these are lies, and in this respect Pig
resembles Seawrack, who, at least if we are to believe Krait, is equally
mendacious (she too, in a sense, harbors somebody, but I'm getting ahead of
myself here.) What really happens in the manse is that Pig has killed Silk.
(Silk having a Sacred Window might also help explain how Horn is downloaded
from Green.)

When Horn finds himself relocated on the Whorl in Silk's body, he notices
numerous cuts. These same cuts prompt the nameless farmer at End Road to ask
Horn if he's received his injuries trying to fight off a godling. "A godling
would've killed him," says the farmer's wife. To which her husband responds,
"Big one would've." This implies differently sized godlings, Pig/Tartaros
being, as I've speculated, on the smaller end of these.

When Pig confesses he's killed the augur, he also tells Horn that he's cut
down the augur with his blade--again consistent with Horn's injuries.

But why would Tartaros--or perhaps more properly Passilk/Mainframe--want
Silk killed? And can the Neighbors be totally innocent in all this--out of
all the thousands of people on the Whorl, just very conveniently happening
to merge Horn with the one person he has been attempting to find since
leaving Lizard and Blue at the moment of both their deaths?

Robert Borski

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