the prime calcula/his citadel and other quotes

Roy C. Lackey · 18 Jan 2011, 10:00 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 04:00:38 -0600
Subject: (urth) the prime calcula/his citadel and other quotes
References: <609292.90378.qm at web161801.mail.bf1.yahoo.com><00c201cbb68c$7229a680$b5cf4a0c@rclackey>
	<AANLkTiniSUTWsqUn3K-26WfmJeBXHQLhLm4YRLtWZh5o at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <004601cbb6f6$94a14c80$7bd04a0c@rclackey>

Dan'l quoted and wrote:
> Roy C. Lackey wrote:
>
> > That quote is from the end of chapter 15 of EXODUS, p-346, when Silk was
> > shown an image on the airship's glass. That image was almost certainly
> > photoshopped to show him what Kypris wanted him to see -- Silk's head on
> > Pas/Typhon's body. My point here is that only one of the two heads he
was
> > shown looked like his own. So there are two possibilities. Silk saw his
own
> > head and Pas' head, or Silk saw his own head and Piaton's head. If Silk
saw
> > his own head and Pas' head, then he does not look like Pas.
>
> Contrariwise, if the two faces seen are Silk's and Piaton's, then
> Silk's may _be_ Piaton's -- the passage in question could easily
> support the theory that Silk is a clone of Pas.

Hardly. Silk saw one head that looked like his own, and in the other passage
I quoted Piaton is portrayed during a theophany as "gaping and gasping",
just as Severian had described him on Mt. Typhon. Silk did not look like "a
species of idiot", as Severian said of Piaton (SWORD, chap. XXV). One of the
heads Severian saw had "yellowish" hair, the other "black" hair (chap.
XXIV). Typhon's head was the one with yellowish hair, Piaton's the one with
black hair. Silk's hair is often described in LS as yellowish. It is
impossible that Silk looked like Piaton.

If you mean only that Silk's head took the _place_ of Piaton's head in the
image he was shown, then you are back to the other possibility that Silk saw
his own head beside the head of Pas/Typhon and failed to notice any
resemblance.

In the cases of the only known examples of clones we see in all of the Sun
books, the khaibits, they look very like the original people they were
supposedly cloned from. That is how they could pose as the originals in the
House Azure.

> Naturally, the devout Silk would not have previously noticed any
> resemblance between himself and the Father of the Gods.

But Mint also saw the face of Pas and saw no resemblance to the face of the
augur she had seen daily since Silk had come to the Sun Street manteion.

-Roy

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