# homeopathic doses of Typhon *The Whorl list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 30 Mar 2001* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Dan Parmenter *30 Mar 2001, 17:44* > From: William Ansley > 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 > 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 *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. --- ### Michael Straight *01 Apr 2001, 16:43 · follows Dan Parmenter* > On 30 Mar 2001, Dan Parmenter wrote: > "In one sense he wasn't there, either. In another he is here > with us at this moment, because I am." > > 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: 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 *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. --- ### Adam Stephanides *01 Apr 2001, 21:38 · follows Michael Straight* > on 3/30/01 4:44 PM, Dan Parmenter at dan at lec.com wrote: > 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." 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 *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ---