A Point about Astral Travel (was re: The Secret: a new theory)Whorl

...which caused me to note something that hadn't occurred to me before: The Narr is capable of astral travelling only after he's had his whole-body transplant. The dumb explanation would be "it's a power Silk has had all along but never knew about because he never slept around any sleeping inhumi," which is possible but not very plausible. A somewhat better explanation: it's somehow due to the fact that the Narr is not attached as firmly to the body of Silk as most people are to their bodies. *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

That's what I've always assumed--that the Neighborly process of transplanting Horn's spirit into Silk's body infused the resultant person with some degree of the Neighbor's unhuman physical laws, including the different relationship with distance.