Subject: (whorl) Pas[sing] as Urthling

From: Robert Borski <rborski at charter.net>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 17:00:59 +0000

First Alex Groce wrote:

<Fine and well, but you still haven't dealt with the fact that when Severian
meets Typhon in SWORD, Typhon doesn't remotely resemble a Neighbor, in any
way, form, or fashion. Indeed, if he's a Neighbor, the grafting of a human's
head onto his shoulder seems unlikely in the extreme.>

Then batting second Kevin Maroney added:

<Pas's second head is artificial. This is explicitly stated in _New Sun_.
Typhon doesn't show any evidence of having any other attribute of the
Neighbors, including a long nose, an excess of limbs, etc. I wouldn't
presume to call something that obvious a "coincidence", but I think that the
connection is more subtle than that.>

Gentlemen, you both need to reread SWORD or increase your dosage of gingko
biloba because your memory apparatus is slightly skewed.

Observe what Typhon tells Severian near the end of Chapter XXV:

"No, I was not born as I am, or born at all, as you meant it. Nor was Piaton
grafted to me. _I was grafted to him._"

So no, of course, Piaton-Typhon doesn't resemble a Neighbor in any way, form
or fashion because Piaton is a human and Typhon's head is grafted to him,
not Piaton's head to Typhon's body.

For all we know Typhon's body--the part we never see (although I hear the
autopsy photos may soon appear on FOX)--could have any number of limbs, or
even one hundred heads, like the Typhon of Classical Mythology.

Factoring in the "I was not born as I am, or born at all" leaves even more
wriggle room, no?

Robert Borski

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---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:06:58 +0000

> For all we know Typhon's body--the part we never see (although I
> hear the autopsy photos may soon appear on FOX)--could have any
> number of limbs, or even one hundred heads, like the Typhon of
> Classical Mythology.

Some of us, as it happens, _have_ reread SWORD recently. My copy
isn't here at work with me, but... Do you recall _why_ he did a
head transplant instead of just putting his brain into Piaton's
body?  "The face." One. People were accustomed to obeying this one
face. Reasonable conclusion: Typhon-pre-surgery had one face and
thus, most likely, one head. 

Supporting evidence: A race with two or more heads (in, at least,
the usual meaning of this phrase) and only one personality would 
_not_ have the personality "stored" in a single head. Either it
would be distributed among heads, or it would be somewhere else
(cf. Pierson's Puppeteers). But Typhon is a single, apparently
normal human, head, grafted onto Piaton's body.

> Factoring in the "I was not born as I am, or born at all"
> leaves even more wriggle room, no?

Yes, but not for the "Typhon is a Neighbor" theory. (When 
a theory starts needing wiggle room, it's probably time to 
abandon it.) Much more plausible (particularly given the 
level of biotech that produced Silk and Mucor) is the idea 
that he was a gengineered in-vitro "birth." 

Actually, I picture him as looking like Ricardo Montalban...

---

From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 03:05:32 +0000

Robert said:

> Gentlemen, you both need to reread SWORD or increase your dosage of
> gingko biloba because your memory apparatus is slightly skewed.

> "No, I was not born as I am, or born at all, as you meant it. Nor
> was Piaton grafted to me. _I was grafted to him._"

OK, you (sort of) have us here.  Kevin & I were thinking of Piaton's
head being the graft-on, but of course it's the other way around
(otherwise Typhon doesn't get a studly young body out of the deal, and
the nervous system isn't in Piaton's control so Severian can kill
Typhon).  BUT, this doesn't really change things much.  Is your claim
that Neighbor's faces look human enough that Severian notices nothing
odd?  That "The _man_ had two heads, like an ogre..." is notable, but
that one of these heads is alien is not?  Severian mentions both heads
when he discusses the corpse in chapter XXIV, and the distinugishing
feature is hair color.

Blattid gives a pretty strong rebuttal of the idea that old Typhon had
two heads (if Neighbors have two heads) and the explanation of the
"born as I am" he gives seems dead-on to me.

> Sorry, but I still don't understand how the Mother, Silk or Seawrack
> comprehends the language of the Vanished People.

Well, again, there is a question of what is meant when Urth Scylla
tells Silkhorn how to contact the Mother, but that's a question about
Scylla's knowledge of the language(*).  It would be pretty strange if
the Mother, who is a goddess of the Neighbors and has been on the
planet before the arrival of the Whorl, I assume, did NOT know their
language.  From that to Seawrack's knowledge is obvious.  Now, why
Horn has to ask Urth Scylla, if Seawrack has taught him something of
this language (which the translation in IGJ indicates) is a bit
puzzling, but I'm not sure that "how to communicate" necessarily means
"how to speak her language."  If I give you someone's email or phone
number, it could be said I'm telling you how to communicate with them,
even you already share a common tongue with them.

(*) Well, she's her "sister."  I take it that Abaia, Erebus, Scylla,
etc. are all definitely space-travelers.  So if it is a common
language that's the issue here, they might have both learned Neighbor
from their "Fodor's Blue/Green System for Great Old Ones" or Neighbor
may be linguistically derived from the tongue of the Space Monsters.

--
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)
Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department
8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce