Like a good Neighbor

David Stockhoff · 20 Nov 2011, 00:59 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2011 19:59:11 -0500
Subject: (urth) Like a good Neighbor
In-Reply-To: <002001cca714$e3ec4b00$abcf4a0c@rclackey>
References: <002001cca714$e3ec4b00$abcf4a0c@rclackey>
Message-ID: <4EC850DF.2040609 at verizon.net>

my 2 cents ...

On 11/19/2011 6:42 PM, Roy C. Lackey wrote:
> Both Marc and James hold that Horn died in the pit. Marc says that Horn was
> somehow eaten by a tree that left behind a body that looked just like the
> Horn who fell into the pit, with the spirit of Horn intact. James has it
> that Horn's spirit died in the pit, along with the body, but the body was
> repaired and a Neighbor's spirit replaced Horn's. In the latter case, who
> brutally raped Seawrack, soon after getting out of the pit? A good Neighbor?


Any male human body would respond to Seawrack's singing with rape. 
That's what it does to the male of the species. So it matters less what 
is actually animating that body. Maybe Silk would have found a way to 
avoid it (Ulysses did) but if he didn't he would have killed himself 
afterward out of guilt. Lucky he wasn't there.
>
> While staying at Inclito's house, Silkhorn was yet again contacted by Mucor,
> sans body, to tell him that Babbie had come back to her and Marble. She
> greeted Silkhorn with, "There you are, Silk. There you are, Horn. I've been
> looking everywhere for you." (IGJ, 146-47) Did she not know who she was
> talking to, close to two years after sending her spirit to the Long Sun
> Whorl to search for Silk at Horn's behest?

Seems to rule out her being involved in transferring Horn to Babbie. But 
even if that happened, there must be enough Horn in Incanto to be 
visible to her extrasensory perceptions. It suggests that she doesn't 
see the face at all, but rather the alpha persona followed by the beta.
> At the end of IGJ, Silkhorn was visited by two Neighbors. He asked them,
> "Will the inhumi really drive us away as they did you?" He was answered
> with, "You cannot go where we are." (381) At this point, Silkhorn had made
> astral trips to both Green and Urth. If Silkhorn was being animated by a
> Neighbor at that time, one implication is that the Neighbors had not gone
> away to either Green or Urth when they left the Blue-Green solar system,
> regardless of whether or not Silkhorn possessed an innate Neighbor's assumed
> ability to travel astrally and/or in time.

I think they went either sideways or up, whatever that means. One way to 
leave the system physically is via the Whorl.
> Another implication is that those two Neighbors didn't know that they were
> talking to a fellow Neighbor, which strikes me as strange since Neighbors
> knew where to find Horn in the pit, on Green and, apparently, Silk on the
> LSW, and Silkhorn there in Blanko territory and still later in Dorp. I
> suppose they could have been lying or just bad guys, but Oreb, generally
> taken to be a good judge of character, greeted those two Neighbors with,
> "Good things. Things come."

I don't think they were talking to a fellow Neighbor any more than Silk 
was the ruler of Urth. I think the Neighbor who resurrected Horn gave of 
himself but not all of himself; that the Horn that went back to his boat 
was Neighbor but not 100% Neighbor (difficult to parse the practical 
distinction between 100% Neighbor/100% Man and 50% of each), and that 
the Neighbor who later said "I am Horn" was the same Neighbor, meaning 
only "I created the (then-?)living Horn out of myself."

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