On top of the airship

Peter Cash · 02 Jan 1997, 13:56 · from whorl-v0001.mbox · original

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: Peter Cash <cash at convex.convex.com>
Subject: (whorl) On top of the airship
Date: Thu, 02 Jan 1997 13:56:30
Message-ID: <whorl-v0001-0023 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0001/0023.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

[Posted from Whorl, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

CoxRathvon at aol.com wrote:
> Subject: on the airship
> Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 19:38:52 -0500

>    If I'm not mistaken, somebody has asked about the conversation between
> Silk and Horn on the top of the airship.  I'm not sure how many replies h=
ave
> been posted.  But I do feel that that conversation is key, and I find it =
very
> enigmatic.  Why is Silk suicidally depressed?  And what happened at the e=
nd
> of that conversation--did Horn begin to fall and did Mucor save him?
>    Let me suggest that among other things Silk has begun to suspect
> corruption in Pas's plan.  He may not specificaly suspect alien involveme=
nt
> in the plan.  But certainly--as he points out to Horn--he suspects that t=
he
> cities of the Whorl have been separated and pitted against one another to
> prevent them from uniting against Pas.  I think that in this late hour of=
 the
> story, Silk has despaired of all the Whorl gods, and it takes a mighty ef=
fort
> for him to retain his faith in the Outsider's more remote designs.

Perhaps insight into the true amount of corruption in the Whorl--and
Pas' plan--had a role in driving Silk to the point of suicide. I don't
think that was was the whole of it, though. After all, Silk's faith
should have been in the Outsider, who "enlightened" him, and not Pas;
the corruption of Pas and the other Gods is something Silk has had more
than a glimmering of by this time.

No, I think what really drove Silk to the edge was something more
personal. But I'm not clear about what it was.

>    But I do not understand the implications of Hycanith's falsity--that s=
he
> overpowered a soldier and betrayed an ability (or something about her pas=
t)
> inconsistent with her claims about herself.  What am I missing here?  Can
> anyone help? =20

I wish someone would--I'm as puzzled as you are. There was also the bit
where Hyacinth and Chenille reminisce about a fight they had when they
first became acquainted. There's some import to this that I can't
fathom.

Is Hyacinth perhaps an agent of the Trivigaunti? --That would put her
relationship with the Trivigaunti general on the airship in a different
perspective, and explain her hand-to-hand combat skills. Surely she
would have been an ideal operative, considering her charms and her
access to the ruling class of Vir. She was also in a position to work
closely with Dr. Crane, without exciting suspicion.

> And again, what is the culmination of this scene, when Horn
> appears to fall?

Yes, I'm still totally mystified by that scene. I originally got the
impression that Horn was pushed--by Mucor, and Silk grabbed him at the
last instant. But that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Was it
really Silk who fell (or jumped)? Then why does Horn hide this fact?=20

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                 Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist.  =20
                  (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein)   =20
        email: cash at convex dot com (sorry, spam prevention)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net