Neighbor "Horn"Whorl

I can't sleep. If my genetic recombination theory is right, Horn went through the process of being eaten on Blue when he fell in the vine pit (he fell in a tree) and the genetic recombination process that occurred created the neighbor who would then identify himself as Horn. Perhaps the recombination does not kill the "animal" part of the hybrid ... but maybe it does and that blue glass that Horn picked up had some sort of restorative power that returned him from consumption. (HMM What other BLUE GLASS fragment have we seen before with restorative powers?) I have satisfied all your arguments against Blue as Green many times over with the plant genetic recombination arguement, especially in light of the emphasis on corn genetics and on the release of eggs by the inhumi. I am going to say that the vanished people are not the green men, but are the result of recombination with normal people, eventually replacing them as they did all the animals. I will further say that their original city is on Green, and that they are the terraformed trees that killed the colonizers there and then came to Blue (the city on Green of the vanished people is almost as big as Nessus). They are, in essence, the trees that make up many of the islands of blue, humans live on top of them. That man in the colorless cloak on green still interests me. Heirax still interests me. I will no longer talk about Blue as Ushas or Green as Lune because I have satisfied myself that I have met every complaint against it and now Occam demands that the idea that there are two solar systems instead of one be thrown out. I'm very proud of myself. I'm very impressed by Wolfe once again. Marc Aramini

Sure. Chuck the firecracker through the mail box and run away. You haven't addressed what we know (explicitly, not by assumption or guesswork) of Typhon/Pas and the origin of the whorl. In brief: Typhon was forced back to Urth having lost an empire. He despises the near forgotten home of Man and is using it only as as retrenchment from which he intends to regain what he has lost. He believes that he can be immortal. His resources are immesne, but not what were available to him before coming to earth. The (for want of a better word) galactic technology is part of what has been taken from him in his previous defeat. I make this point because mcuh of what we see in the Whorl is sophicticated concepts achieved by crude means. Thus: Launch the Whorl and place his avatar in command. Quite thorough measures were taken to ensure both the obedience and continuity of the internal population and had not the plan been disrupted there should have been established a colony both thriving and conditioned to obedience to him and his family. Ripe to bolster his recreation of a human empire in space. As a man anticipating (but not yet having achieved) indefinately long life his plans are cast into a time scale of hundreds of years - 300 internaly for the relatavistic Whorl, 1000 externally. He has no need to send into or attempt conquest of "the future": he's planning for the now and the next - he fully intends to experience the future by being it's imortal emperor. This satisfies: The internal chronolgy of the Whorl. The contemporanity of Horn's astral travel and Severian's Nessus. Typhon's motivations. And does so most elegantly only if the Whorl really travels in space and Blue/Green are distinct from Urth/Lune. Matthew