Derivation of talus

I don't recall anyone posting a possible derivation of the term of talus on this, list,although I remember at one point several posts saying "talus" was still a mystery. Here's my try: I'm re-reading Nightside and came to the passage that describes the painting of Pas creating the Whorl. The message mentions two taluses of a particularly lovely shade of butter yellow. Obviously, they are bulldozers, but a certain kind -- yellow is the brand color of Caterpillar Tractors. So I went looking for associations with caterpillars or butterliesa and such. I needn't have been so devious. According to Webster's, a talus is: "a slope formed by an accumulation of rock debris." So a talus is named after the thing it makes: the slope the bulldozer blade leaves in the rubbled after it pulls back. What do y'all think? Rich Browne

See <http://www.gbso.net/zuki/GREEK.HTM#TALOS>, which says "In Greek mythology, Talos was a bronze man given to Europa by Zeus to guard Crete. He would clutch people to his breast and jump into a fire so that they were burnt alive." Spectacled bear.

The nice thing about "talus" as a term for the bulldozer-guard-robots is that the word also fits nicely within Wolfe's naming scheme, in that talus is rock debris, or a pile of such debris making up a slope. So, we have the resonance with the Talos of mythical Crete (which Wolfe has written about in terms that suggest he "believes" it to have been a robot), and the nice fit with the Whorl's naming scheme, and the definitional parallel that the taluses of the Whorl are, compared to the soldiers, "debris," in that they are somewhat inferior jury-rigged copies of the real thing. -- viz