Subject: Neighborly transmigration and other observations

From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2002 18:17:04 +0000

In response to my theory that Horn is in Babbie, Nutria wrote

>The rest of your post is interesting, and you may be right, but at present 
I'm more inclined to think this was
        a Neighbor calling to Horn as a "baby." I don't see evidence that Horn 
can "transmigrate his soul" in any
        way apart from Neighborly help. Maybe I'm forgetting something. 
Doesn't he only have such astral
        visitations and transportations when in contact with a Neighbor or a 
Neighborly artifact (such as an
        inhumu)?
Well, it seems to me that you answer your own objection, there.  If a Neighbor 
is calling to him as Babbie, then he IS around a Neighbor or one of their 
artifacts, especially if he lays his head upon their knee.  
How else can you read that whole part about the hus being more human than 
scylla in the astral part, and his special treatment of Hoof?  Come on, admit 
that I'm right, just this once.  Remember the dream that Hide had of a doll 
searching for him? he hides under a couch with eight (or ten) legs.  There is 
a two legged soul in the hus, and I'm pretty sure it is, by the end of the 
book, Horn.  Also, look at the prophecy of Marble: the last thing for Horn is 
riding a beast with three horns, after wealth and command.  He had wealth and 
command in Gaon, then he winds up in Babbie.  I really think it fits pretty 
good, and I also think that Brother, Sister, and Cugino (cousin) are all 
somehow related and somehow involved with the vanished people.  Cousin cuts 
his the narrator's staff out of a liana vine, and the vanished people are 
usually associated with trees.  If you don't believe me, re-read chapter 17 of 
Return to the Whorl (narrated by Hoof): He took me with him.  Look at all this 
great evidence for all my theories in that chapter (I shall only quote from 
that chapter now, I think it is a very important one):

on the ring that should be with Sinew unless Sinew (or Auk and Chenille) 
returned to Blue with it and Oreb stole it:
"This was given me by a woman I called Seawrack."
"I held it up to my eye.  The weather was cool and clear, the wind northeast. 
.. I noticed the limb of a tree floating upright to starboard.  The leaves 
were still silver and green, and the limb was so big it looked like a whole 
tree even though I would think there must have been a trunk floating the 
regular way since a floating tree does not stick up like that.  There was 
somebody sitting in one of the branches, and it was one of the Vanished 
People."  The vanished people sit on those trees like the vines do.
Later Hoof says, "There must be a word for the time when we see something we 
have seen before turn out to be something else, like when a stick is a snake 
without moving."  The narrator's stick is one of those liana vines, and there 
is some kind of connection between the sentient vegetation on green and the 
vanished people.  I am inclined to believe that the inhumi are descended from 
an engineered vegetation meant to adapt to its environment and assuming the 
qualities of animals as it fed from them, and people as it fed from them.

And since I am quoting from that chapter, let's look at how Hide talks about 
Lune (if you absolutely despise this Green as Lune of the future then you 
might want to just stop reading my post here, because I am going to put a 
bunch of quotes together that you may or may not see any connection in, but I 
think it's interesting. I myself, as I said, am just fooling with ideas and 
don't take this particular assertion as seriously as I take the Horn as Babbie 
one):
"Green came up, bigger and brighter than we ever see it on blue."
Hoof talks about making an anchor.  An anchor keeps you in one place.  When 
they journey to the red sun whorl, they go from one boat to another, from 
shore to shore:  the environment has to resemble the one they leave from, but 
this is not the case in most of the other astral journeys that have occured.
He talks about how the difference between the Red Sun Whorl and Blue was "in 
the wind" and the water, which had much more salt in it.  He repeats several 
times that the water is much saltier on Urth.  "It was like our sea, and it 
was not.  If you wanted to look for what was the same, there was a lot.  But 
if you wanted to look for what was different, there was a lot too.  The smell 
was different.  The color was not the same, either, but it was hard to say 
just what was changed.  That may have been the dark sky, mostly, and the 
stars.  This sea knew night was cming, when everything would die.  There was 
more foam, and I think this Red Sun Sea had more salt in it."
Why does he keep saying it is more salty?  We all know that if the polar ice 
caps melted, the sea would rise and the salt would be diluted.  If the sun's 
gravitational pull were increased, it could also disturb the orbit of Lune and 
pull it out.  The color would change with a rejuvanted sun.  And that whole 
thing about Seawrack talking about a huge wall underwater is just bizarre.  
All these changes can be eliminated by the coming of a new sun.  
If we read the conclusion of the Book of the Short Sun in light of the 
importance of communicating with the Red Sun Whorl Scylla to learn from Scylla 
(the mother)
how to get to Seawrack, I think it infuses something of the importance of 
keeping an eye on Seawrack and the mother to the entire text.  After they 
return to Blue, Hoof notes:
"Out on the water there were the stars and quite a bit of light from Green; 
for nighttime it was really pretty bright, but there was sort of a shadow 
between the side and the water.  Green was halfway up over to starboard.  So 
to port there was this sadow, and I fel like she was down there, watching and 
listening, adn she could make the bird talk for her when she wanted to." 
Greater Scylla is on the Short Sun whorl as well as on the Red Sun Whorl.  On 
the vanished people, Hoof has a very interesting thing to say while he 
considers Nessus:
"So it was all so big that when I looked at it, it was hard to breathe. 
...Finally I shut my eyes and would not look at it anymore.  I had seen the 
way things really are, and I knew it.  I knew that I was going to have to 
forget it as much as I could if I wanted to go onliving.  After Father left I 
was still curious about the Vanished People, and I asked a man I met one time 
about them because he seemed like somebody who might know something.  He said 
there were things that we are not supposed to know.  I think he was wrong, but 
right, too.  I do not thik that there is anything about the Vanished People 
that we should not know, just a whole lot that we do not.  but the way things 
really are is something that we cannot deal with.  I had to shut my eyes, and 
if you had been there you would have had to shur yours, too."  What do the 
Vanished People have to do with the soon to be submerged city of Nessus?  And 
here are all my time references: In on Blue's Water, the mother sings a song 
of time.  In In Green's Jungles, the narrator says his astral travel is a 
dream in his mind.  In Return to the whorl the narrator says the only way to 
go back in time is through dreams.  Hoof observes "It's been three hundred 
years."  Father says, "It's been much longer than that" (of course I am aware 
of the light speed time distortion)
and in Chapter 19 in Return to the Whorl Hoof says "Father stopped talking, 
and it seemed to me that he had stopped a long time ago someplace a long way 
from where I was."  There are a lot of clues that suggest that Blue and Green 
are the same, including blatantly calling Lune Green and that fact about a 
huge wall of the vanished people, who are also called "The people of that 
Town".  Why can't we handle the truth about the vanished people, as Hoof puts 
it?  Is it something about ourselves (humanity, in any case)?  I really don't 
care so much about this Blue/Green \Ushas/Lune thing at all, but I do care 
about the big symbols: the wind, vines and the narrators staff that might walk 
and talk, and the fate of Horn's soul --> re-read chapter 17 and 19 of Return 
to the Whorl, and you must face up to the fact that Horn is in Babbie.

---

From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at home.com>
Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2002 19:49:09 +0000

>artifacts, especially if he lays his head upon their knee.

Good point.

>that I'm right, just this once.

No problem. You may well be.

>   Remember the dream that Hide had of a doll
>command in Gaon, then he winds up in Babbie.

Good point. The 3-horn business comes after the rule. Now, am I 
understanding you right? Are you saying that Horn's spirit first goes into 
Silk's body, and then when Silk is revived by Severian, Horn enters 
Babbie's body? That's an intriguing thesis. I'd like to hear from some of 
the others on this list, who have devoted more attention to the problem of 
who the Narrator is at various points.
         Now, rather than repost all of your interesting missive, let me 
ask this: Are you suggesting that the Green Man who meets Severian might be 
a Neighbor from Ushas? From what you wrote, I gather you are suggesting 
something like this:

1. Urth becomes Ushas.
2. Intelligent plants, perhaps "descended" from humans, take over Ushas as 
Neighbors/Green Men.
3. Neighbors create inhumi on Green/Lune.
4. Much later, they transcend Ushas and "move on."
5. The Whorl arrives back at Ushas/Lune (Blue/Green), perhaps a million 
years later (because I don't see how all the above could have happened in 
1000 years).

         I'm not trying to be funny, just trying to figure out what your 
thesis is. Perhaps you can unpack it. (BTW, I find your investigations very 
stimulating.)

Nutria