# Silk's Abilities

*The Whorl list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 27 Jan 1997*

<https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/44>

> 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.

---

### David_Lebling
*27 Jan 1997, 09:05*

> Doug Eigsti wrote:
> Mucor, Pike, Quetzal and
> perhaps Silk's uncanny abilities would fall into the supernatural, in
> spite of the conclusions arrived at by Silk. Silk has a pawn's 
> whorl-view, he is not privy to the machinations of the Marvelous Brass

> Chess Playing Automatons that inhabit mainframe.

I think Silk's abilities are explicable.  He is a genetically engineered
natural leader or even superman.  This is made fairly explicit in either
_Lake_ or _Calde_, in a conversation between Quetzal and Remora. 
Quetzal tells how people would buy frozen embryos with special abilities
emplaced by Pas' scientists.  He states explicitly that Tussah bought
such an embryo, although Remora jumps to the conclusion that the
resulting adult is Chenille.  He also states that they don't always work
out as promised, which explains Mucor; she has a parapsychological
ability, but is at least currently crazy.  (Though one must also assume
this may be due to her treatment by Blood.)

> How do you suppose Horn sees things? Is he intentionally
> misleading the reader by having Silk come to the wrong conclusions >
> time
> and again?

My guess is that Horn is trying to be an accurate and reliable narrator.
He's trying to show us Silk, "warts and all."

      Dave Lebling
      (david_lebling at avid.com)

Questions or problems to whorl-owner at lists.best.com

---