Subject: (whorl) tincture of Pas

From: Dan Parmenter <dan at lec.com>
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2001 15:42:38 +0000

> 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?

I don't know if it's so cut-and-dried as all that.  I guess I'm on the
side that takes note that in a sense, Horn has had something of Silk
in him since LAKE OF THE LONG SUN, where he mimics Silk.  Remember,
those who imitate the gods may start to become them.  It's very
difficult for me to say when each spirit entered another body and when
it became aware of it.  One of these days I, or someone (probably
Mantis!) will come up with a Short Sun timeline that make help make
some sense of what happened when.

Rostrum writes:

> 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.

That seems par for the course, with the precedent of Severian, even if
as you point out earlier, it's not quite the same.

Shellac

p.s. Can anyone find the place in the text (I'm pretty sure it's OBW)
where a prophet (Gaonese I think) predicts that Horn will lead three
cities to victory?  Horn denounces him as a charalatan (!)  I thought
that this was very significant the second time I read the series as
further proof of Horn's status as possibly the least reliable Wolfe
narrator of all, but I can't seem to find the place in the text to
triple check on it!

D

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2001 09:01:14 +0000

> as you point out earlier, it's not quite the same.

Too late!  I recant.  I'm convinced that vizcacha's interpretation is
correct: Incanto means that since "Pas" now refers to Pas+Silk that "Pas"
is present because Silk is present (I guess this is sufficiently eliptical
that Incanto can say "Pas is here, in a sense" without admiting to himself
that he is Silk).  So I go back to my original assertion there is no
evidence that Pas or the Silkgod or Pigsilk have been downloaded into
Silk's body.  The narrator is just human Silk + Horn's spirit.

-Rostrum

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2001 21:15:05 +0000

on 4/4/01 8:01 AM, Michael Straight at straight at email.unc.edu wrote:

> that he is Silk).

I'd like to be able to agree with this, since I don't believe Silk-in-Pig
has been downloaded into Silk's body either.  But I can't.  Just because the
divine Silk is linked with Pas, it doesn't follow that Pas is present in the
human Silk.  And even if it did, I don't think Horn would say "Pas is here"
based upon Pas's presence in the human Silk unless he consciously recognized
that he was Silk.

--Adam

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2001 08:59:02 +0000

> based upon Pas's presence in the human Silk unless he consciously recognized

You misunderstand.  Vizcacha is not saying that Incanto has any of Typhon
downloaded into him.  Incanto is 0% Typhon.  But "Pas," as he exists now
on the Whorl, is at least partially and perhaps principally Silk.  So if
the human Silk is present, then Pas is present in a sense because Pas is
now based on the human Silk.

Thus the first part of the quoted passage, where Incanto says that Pas
doesn't exist on the whorl anymore either.  The original Pas who was equal
to Typhon is gone.   The new Pas is Passilk.

-Rostrum