Pas, Silk and Horn

Adam asked: .> Is there textual evidence from TBOTLS that Silk may be in a two-headed

Near the end of the last book Kypris appears in a Window and says seductively, "Silk, wouldn't you like to be like Pas? We'd be together then....They can scan you in at Mainframe. As I was scanned, Silk, with him. He held my hand....You'll go on with your life, Silk. Just as it is. You'd be Pas too. And he would be you. Look." And she shows him the image of a "bronze-limbed man with rippling muscles and two heads." One is Silk's. But there isn't the least textual evidence that he took her up on it. It would seem most un-Silk-like (though Hy would jump at it--and mantis sometimes seems to think that Hy is an aspect of Kypris--and he'd follow her anywhere). Still, it's intriguing enough to have prompted discussion. And it gives the lupine trickster an out if he wants to put Horn in Silk's body, but still wants to have Silk around when we Return to the Whorl. I don't buy young newt's clone theory: too easy, too trite. -alga *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

You'd be Pas too. And he would be you. Look."

There's no evidence that he didn't either, of course, which is also most lupine. I suppose we'll eventually find out. Given the "theology" of the narrative, which is never far from the surface, I've wondered about this. Silk's ascension to "heaven" (past the "border mountains," to quote an old hymn), following his death and resurrection and preceding his return in the final conflagration of (his part of) the Whorl, closely follows the New Testament narrative. In the cited passage, Wolfe at least alludes to Silk's ascension to "the right hand of the Father," with Kypris as a surrogate for the Holy Spirit. The question raised in my mind is this: Is the Pas of the Whorl the "evil Typhon" of earth? Clearly he originated there, but he actually seems to be the "good god" of the Whorl. If this be the case, then for Silk to allow a transcript of himself to be entered into Mainframe would not be out of accord with his character. On the other hand, this might be something like "The Last Temptation of Silk," which he should reject. I've never sorted this question out. I suspect that time will tell, and we'll find out eventually. "Bronze limbed" is right out of the Bible, I suspect. The ascended Christ appears as a man of bronze in Revelation chapter 1:15, and compare Daniel 10:6. Nutria *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

I don't think Silk had a choice in the matter. It seems like the kind of process that could be done without consent. They might even be able to do it through a sacred window. Sure, Kypris asked Silk how he'd like it, but maybe she'd already done it, and was just teasing, talking to the Silk that had been left behind in the physical world. -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.