Subject: (whorl) homeopathic doses of Typhon

From: Dan Parmenter <dan at lec.com>
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 17:44:47 +0000

> It is an easy mistake to make in the SS books. I felt that Horn or
> Horn/Silk or Silk or whatever you want to call him bore a very close
> resemblance to the Heinleinian omnicompetent man, especially in IGJ
> and RttW. He can beat up men half his age, armed only with a rotten
> stick, plan, fight in and win battles and give advice to lovesick
> teenage girls. And that's not the half of it!

I've often wondered where the Hornsilk "military mind" comes from,
particularly in IGJ.  SilkHorn himself seems to provide the answer on
page 252 with the following exchange.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	"This better work, Incanto," Inclito said, studying them as
they leaned against the earth-filled bags or crouched in the snow to
eat.

	"Will Pas drive us from this Whorl if it doesn't?"

	He looked around at me, surprised.  "I don't think he's even
here.  We left him up there with the Long Sun.

	"In one sense he wasn't there, either.  In another he is here
with us at this moment, because I am."

	Inclito said nothing for a tiume, but I am not at all sure how
long a time it was; I was lost in thought.  At last - "Because you
pray to him, that's what you mean.  He hears you praying."

	I nodded.  "I hope so at least."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I suppose the "how much Pas?" question remains, and is not unlike the
"how much Horn?" question by the end of the series.  I tend to favor
the view that there's something of Horn left, along with Pas and Silk,
indeed, as Rostrum noted:

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>

> So what about Pas?  I've speculated before that the reason Silk was
> uploaded was to that there weren't enough fragments for Pas to be
> put back together on his own.  To use Kypris's metaphor, Pas needed
> another head to be complete.  And I submit that Silk is the 'Typhon'
> head - the one in charge, while the shards of Pas are the 'Piaton'
> head, that is, the bits of code that run things, the code that makes
> Pas ruler of Mainframe.

Certain Pas traits remain.  Aren't we told somewhere or other in LS
that Pas tended to favor the weaker side in a conflict?  Isn't this
what Incanto did in the Blanko/Soldo conflict?

> To put it another way, Silk is now Autarch of the Whorl because he
> has consumed Typhon and knows all the passwords.

Right.  And consider, if the "Horn lives" hypothesis is correct,
you've got SilkHornPas running around on the old Whorl: the body and
mind of a superhero with the "love vibe", the mind of a tyrant and the
mind of an expert propagandist.  A terrifying thought.  

Shellac

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---

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2001 16:43:31 +0000

> indeed, as Rostrum noted:

If it weren't for the passage you quote, I would have said there is no Pas
in the Narrator.  Pig probably has some Pas because he's been posessed by
the Mainframe version of Silk, which is Passilk.  But the the human Silk
was never posessed by Pas that we know of, so why would the Narrator have
any Pas in him?

The passage you quote makes me want to reconsider mantis's theory that the
Narrator got a download of the god version of Silk at some point (At the
West Pole?  Via Pig?  During the sacrifice at the manteion?  Talking to
the monitor on the lander going back to Blue?).  But then we have to start
thinking about the Narrator as an alloy of multiple versions of Silk (Free
Live Free?), as well as Horn, Typhon, and who knows who else.

-Rostrum

---

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2001 21:38:44 +0000

> page 252 with the following exchange.

Horn can't be literally saying that Pas is in him, because if he knew that
Pas was in him, he'd know that Silk was in him, and he doesn't.  Inclito's
gloss is accurate as far as Horn's conscious meaning goes.  Still, I agree
that this passage is suggestive of Pas being present in Horn, more so than
anything anyone else has put forward, though I remain unconvinced.

If Pas was downloaded into Horn, it was presumably along with the Divine
Silk, when Pig got his eye.  So do you hold with mantis that Silk's spirit
was completely absent from Horn until then (which I'm convinced is wrong)?
Or do you think that after receiving the Divine Silk Horn had both the human
Silk and the Divine Silk in him?

--Adam