bufe a scavenging creature of the tunnels (III, chap. 3, 111). At Silk’s first encounter with one he sees “a creature . . . half dog and half devil” (II, chap. 8, 213). Hammerstone refers to the animal as a “god” because it lives on remains of sacrifices made in temples above (217). When Auk asks later, Hammerstone refers to them as “bufes” and “tunnel gods,” saying that they are “like dogs . . . only not nice like dogs” (III, chap. 3, 111).
The word bufe is a cant term for “dog.” The soldier-slang use of “god” for “dog” is a wordplay involving backwards spelling.
Commentary: the soldiers see the sacrifices as a joke when the meat is not eaten by gods but by dogs—that is, they are strict materialists and deny any kind of non-corporeal essence being consumed by the gods.
Buffo Peeper’s Hoppy brother (IV, chap. 12, 252). Not on lists.
Italian: (with two “F”s) word for “a buffoon.”
Zoology: bufo (Latin word for “toad”) is a large genus of toads, with about 150 species.
Bull, Patera “Quetzal’s prothonotary” (III, list; III, chap. 6, 220).
Zoology: male cattle.
Bustard “Auk’s older brother, now dead” (III, lists). His main claim to fame is that he stole a gold Molpe Cup (III, chap. 3, 118). After Auk’s concussion and near-death experience in the tunnels, Bustard appears to him (III, chap. 5, 184), seeming to pave the way for Tartaros to contact Auk.
Zoology: a large terrestrial bird associated with steppes and dry open country in the Old World. They build their nests on the ground.
C
Caddis, the Devoted two centuries ago this person witnessed theophanies of Echinda, Tartaros, Scylla, and Pas (I, chap. 6, 146). Not on lists.
Zoology: caddis worm, caddis fly (Trichoptera).
Cage Street where convicts were exposed in cages in earlier times (III, chap. 8, 285). This is one of the streets bordering the Alambrera, and presumably the street of the old alambrera. It seems to be west of the Sun Street manteion (III, chap. 8, 285).
Caldé’s Palace located on Palatine Hill only four streets (IV, chap. 11, 206) or a few streets (IV, chap. 12, 247) from the Grand Manteion. Mint recalls having passed it on the way from the Sun Street manteion to the Grand Manteion (IV, chap. 10, 199). For location see the map in PALATINE.
calendar the text only offers the month of Nemesis, which has at least thirty days and is an autumnal month (III, chap. 5, 173). Viron’s calendar is presumably based upon the one in use during Typhon’s Era. A thirty-day month arranged in seven-day weeks (as opposed to Egyptian “decades,” for example) implies a calendar of at most twelve months (i.e., a strictly lunar calendar will have thirteen months of twenty-eight days). The months seem to be named after minor gods, as revealed when Chenille tells Silk, “Except for Pas and Echidna, and the days and the months, I don’t even know their names” (I, chap. 11, 281). With these items in mind, the question becomes: what eleven other names can be associated in a list with “Nemesis”?
Myth: Hesiod’s Theogony lists Nemesis as one of the brood of Night and Erebus. Taken in the order given, we find a group of 14:
To whittle the list down to 12, the Hesperides would be an obvious removal on a world that has no stars, and then either Ker and the Keres or the Moirai could be removed. All of these are pre-Olympic entities, especially fitting for the text’s “cycle of the Titans” aspect.
Campion an artist (I, chap. 11, 283; II, chap. 7, 180). Not on lists. The OED gives this as an obsolete word for one who fights in single combat, a champion. See PAINTINGS.
Botany: the name of certain plants, species of the genus Lychnis: under the name Lyte included the cultivated Rose Campion.
card the basic form of currency in Viron. Each one can be cut up into smaller “bits” (II, chap. 3, 61), rather like the old Spanish dollars which were known as “pieces of eight” for this same reason. The number of bits to a card is one hundred (II, chap. 10, 260). In size, cards are “sharp-edged rectangles two thumbs [wide] by three [long]” (I, chap. 1, 28). This sounds like 2 x 3 inches. One hundred pieces cut from this would be very small, indeed. Perhaps they are more like tiny rods. There are even half-bits, the equivalent of a half-penny.
Ultimately cards are computer components, analogous to our computer chips.
List of valuations
• A half-bit is a good payment to a boy for running an errand (II, chap. 3, 59).
• One bit: the ride to Limna (II, chap. 6, 137); two large cabbages (II, chap. 10, 260); six eggs (260).
• Ten bits: the entry fee for Orchid’s place (II, chap. 3, 76).
• Sixteen bits: a bottle of sauterne at Trotter’s (IV, chap. 11, 224).
• Eighteen bits: Auk’s dinner with Silk (II, chap. 8, 202).
• Twenty bits: what Silk got for selling his copy of the Chrasmologic Writings (I, chap. 2, 46).
• Twenty-five bits: Oreb’s cage is worth twenty or thirty bits (I, chap. 1, 32).
• Twenty-seven bits: a better bottle of sauterne at Trotter’s (IV, chap. 11, 224).
• Fifty bits: Hyacinth’s ring (or at least a silver ring at Blood’s ruined villa) is worth half a card (IV, chap. 11, 219).
• One card: Oreb the nightchough’s price (I, chap. 1, 32); a nice goat (II, chap. 10, 260); a white ewe if the market is depressed (260).
• Three cards: what Silk requests from Blood for a sacrifice suitable for the Outsider (I, chap. 1, 18); rental of deadcoach (II, chap. 3, 55).
• Five cards: Tick the catachrest’s price (I, chap. 1, 30).
• Twenty cards: a modest funeral (I, chap. 10, 269).
• Thirty cards: Crane’s bandage device (I, chap. 13, 325).
• One hundred cards: Orpine’s funeral (I, chap. 10, 269).
• Twelve hundred cards: back taxes on the Sun Street manteion, the price Blood paid for ownership (III, chap. 10, 342).
• Thirteen hundred cards: Blood’s first planned asking price for the manteion (III, chap. 10, 343).
• Twenty-six hundred cards: Blood’s second planned asking price (343).
• Twenty-eight hundred cards: price if Silk sells Hyacinth’s azoth (I, chap. 12, 314).
• Five or six thousand cards: price if Silk were to buy Hyacinth’s azoth (I, chap. 12, 314).
• Ten or twelve thousand cards: what Auk estimates the Sun Street manteion is worth (I, chap. 3, 86).
• Twenty-six thousand cards: the price that Blood, carried away by Silk’s naivete, demands for the manteion (I, chap. 7, 178).
Wages
• A common laborer would be fortunate to earn three cards a year (I, chap. 1, 21).
• Apprentice brown mechanics earn one card a month (IV, chap. 7, 130).
• Five cards a month is a fair wage for a talus (IV, chap. 7, 126).
• The charge for one of Orchid’s prostitutes is one card, half of which goes to Orchid (II, chap. 3, 76).
One fascinating detail is that the card currency is definitely not a part of the Plan of Pas, in fact, it has a side-effect of sabotaging the plan by stripping landers of their computer components. The card currency might have been a human mistake, generated though a garbled understanding of precious metals coming from mining in the ground, or it might have been introduced by the rebel gods to further their agenda. We have no idea what the pre-card currency was.
Cassava “a pious old woman of the Sun Street Quarter” (III, list), briefly possessed by Mucor after Echidna’s theophany (III, chap. 4, 124). Her mother might be the woman who posed for the Molpe painting hanging in the cenoby, and if so, she is related to the artist as well.
Botany: a plant called also by its Brazilian name Manioc. Manihot utilissima (N.O. Euphorbiaceae), two species of which are extensively cultivated in the West Indies, tropical America, and in Africa, for their fleshy tuberous roots.
Cat a client of Orchid’s house, the presumed owner of the dagger used to murder Orpine (I, chap. 10, 251–56). Not on lists.
catachrest name give
n to a type of cat-like little humanoid creature that speaks, but always uses the wrong word, and is sold in the marketplace of Viron (I, chap. 2, 37). See TICK.
This appears to be a Wolfe coinage, a back-formation from catachresis “improper use of words; application of a term to a thing which it does not properly denote” (OED) and catachrestic “of the nature of catachresis” (OED), into, apparently, a person who constantly speaks in catachresis.
Catamitus a minor god (I, chap. 8, 142). Blood’s villa has an icon (142). Catamitus is also mentioned as a god who has possessed men in the past (IV, chap. 2, 48).
Myth: Latin form of Ganymede, the beautiful Trojan prince abducted by Zeus for lustful purposes. Zeus made him immortal and gave him the job of Cup Bearer for the Olympian gods, a role previously carried out by Hebe (also known as Ganymedia).
Cavy “one of the older (pubescent) boys at the palaestra” (III, list; III, chap. 3, 94).
Zoology: a kind of rabbit.
cello see MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.
cenatiuncula a room for dining (IV, chap. 11, 213).
Latin: a small dining room.
cenoby where the sibyls live. The OED gives “cœnoby, cenoby” from Late Latin cœnobium, a conventual establishment.
Chamomile Swallow’s assistant at brown mechanics manufactory (IV, chap. 7, 121).
Botany: (Greek “earth apple”) the name of a composite plant, Anthemis nobilis, an aromatic creeping herb. The flowers are employed in medicine for their bitter and tonic qualities.
Cheese Street a road near the Alambrera, perhaps forming its fourth side (III, chap. 5, 171).
chemical people these are the robots of the Whorl. There are the tank-like taluses on the one hand and the humanoid soldiers, porters, farmers, valets, and maids on the other. The taluses are the only ones being created in the text (at Swallow’s brown mechanics shop), the humanoids being self-reproducing.
The soldiers sleep in storage when not needed for war, but the porters, farmers, and maids have worked for centuries, wearing themselves out. The humanoid robots reproduce by a quasi-biological process wherein a male and a female together construct an offspring. If they are lucky, they can complete the child in about a year, but if they are unlucky it might take twenty years (II, chap. 9, 236). The big problem is that while the soldiers have slept away the centuries, the females, all the maids and perhaps some farmers as well, have dwindled.
Hammerstone tells Silk about soldiers sleeping (II, chap. 9, 229), and even touches on soldiers dreaming (230).
See also: HAMMERSTONE, MAGNESIA, MARBLE, MARL, and MOLY.
Chenille a woman at Orchid’s brothel (II, chap. 5, 122). One of the tallest there, second only to Violet. She is part of a spy network through Dr. Crane for Trivigaunte. Previously bedded by Colonel Oosik of Viron (III, chap. 5, 207). She is illiterate (II, chap. 1, 25–26).
Chenille kills Orpine (possessed by Mucor) while intoxicated by rust (and also possessed by Mucor?), supposedly because Mucor/Orpine made a lewd homosexual proposition.
Kypris possesses Chenille at Orpine’s funeral. Her subsequent dagger-throw attests to goddess skills (II, chap. 4, 83). But later Chenille thinks Auk loves the Kypris in her, not knowing the real Chenille at all (III, chap. 3, 84).
Scylla possesses Chenille at the Lake Shrine (II, chap. 13, 330). In seizing a boat, she gouges a man’s eyes and strikes with her left hand first (II, chap. 11, 274).
The Trivigaunti Generalissimo Siyuf beds her at Ermine’s (IV, chap. 11, 212–14; 226); Chenille, who claimed to have killed Orpine over a lewd proposition, is no longer squeamish about homosexual activity, or perhaps it is the Kypris in her. This action finds a strong parallel with that of Saba and Hyacinth on the airship.
It turns out that Chenille is Caldé Tussah’s natural daughter. She is last seen on the first lander with Auk, Gib, and the other thieves of Auk’s knot, bound for planet Green.
Botany: Chenille Copperleaf (Acalypha hispida), a house plant, native of East Indies. “The red flowers are borne in spike-like drooping racemes. Sometimes it is called the Red Hot Cattail” (Wyman’s Garden Encyclopedia).
Fabric: a kind of velvety cord, having short threads or fibers of silk and wool standing out at right angles from a core of thread or wire, like the hairs of a caterpillar; used in trimming and bordering dresses and furniture.
Commentary: her (dyed) red hair matches up with her botanical name, and the decorations on the knife Crane gave her plays off of the cattail version. Her fabric name is her secret heritage name, and it strongly suggests that her mother’s name was somehow connected to “wool,” since chenille is a mixture of silk and wool.
Chervil “young middle-class woman from Viron, wife of Coypu” (II, list; II chap. 6, 162). She and her husband tell Silk about the long walk to the lake shrine.
Botany: Anthriscus cerefolium, a delicate annual herb related to parsley, considered foremost of the five “fine herbs.”
Chiquito “a parrot once owned by Mamelta’s parents” (II, list). That was back on Urth (II, chap. 12, 315).
Spanish: little boy.
Chrasmologic Writings the bible of Viron, composed of at least twelve books (I, chap. 3, 66). Some passages are written in the foreign languages of French and Latin (IV, chap. 5, 89).
The word “chrasmologic” seems to be a Wolfe coinage, perhaps a blend of “chrestomathy” (a collection of choice literary pieces) and “cosmological” (pertaining to the origins of the universe). It may derive from one or more Greek words: Creiazomai—[Chreiazomai] to need, to require, to be useful; CrhsmoV—[Chresmos] oracle; Krash—[Kraseh] temperament, constitution, idiosyncrasy.
• (first line of the Writings) “How mighty are the works of Pas!” (IV, chap. 8, 149).
• The Writings emphasize that in the beginning the future whorl was just a big rock (IV, chap. 8, 148). (This sounds a bit like the opening of Genesis, the First Book of Moses.)
• “Men build scales, but the gods blow upon the lighter pan” (I, chap. 1, 16).
• The Outsider possessed a man and beat the sellers (I, chap. 1, 17). (This alludes to Jesus. See OUTSIDER.)
• “Sovereign nature, which governs the whole, will soon change all the things you see, and from their substance make other things, and again still other things from the substance of them, in order that the whorl may be ever new” (II, chap. 3, 65). (Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations, VII: 25.)
• “Everything is connected to everything else” (I, chap. 2, 47). (Ibid., VII: 9.)
• “Are ten birds to be had for a song? You have daubed Oreb the raven, but can you make him sing?” (47).
• Outsider worship is located “in the tenth book, or the twelfth” (I, chap. 3, 66).
• Last rites, or Peace of Pas (I, chap. 10, 249).
• “Live with the gods, and he does live with the gods who consistently shows them that his spirit is satisfied with what has been assigned to him, and that it obeys all that the gods will—the spirit that Pas has given every man as his guardian and guide, the best part of himself, his understanding and his reason” (II, chap. 1, 20). (Ibid., V: 27.)
• “Everyone who is grieved at anything, or discontented, is like a pig for sacrifice, kicking and squealing. Like a dove for sacrifice is he who laments in silence. Our one distinction is that it is given us to consent, if we will, to the necessity imposed upon us all” (II, chap. 2, 38). (Ibid., X: 28.)
• It occurred to Silk that a feast blessed by Scylla ought logically to be of fish, as the Chrasmologic Writings hinted it had originally been (II, chap. 3, 60).
• According to one somewhat doubtful passage in the Writings, the Outsider made men and women of mud (II, chap. 5, 111). (This is an allusion to Genesis, the First Book of Moses.)
• “Whatever it is we are, it is a little flesh, breath, and the ruling part. As if you were dying, despise the flesh; it is blood, bones, and a network, a tissue of nerves and veins. See the breath also, what kind of thing it is: air, and never the same, but at every
moment sent out and drawn in. The third is the ruling part. No longer let this part be enslaved, no longer let it be pulled by its strings like a marionette. No longer complain of your lot, nor shrink from the future” (III, chap. 2, 43). (Ibid., II: 2.)
• (Pas’s gammadion) “Great Pas, Designer and Creator of the Whorl, Guardian of the Aureate Path, I acknowledge you the supreme and sovereign . . .” (III, chap. 5, 160–61).
• “Sacred unto Pas are the life and property of the stranger you welcome,” (IV, chap. 13, 273).
• The Writings speak of a rain of blood, plagues, and famine (IV, chap. 13, 274). (This alludes to Exodus, the Second Book of Moses.)
• “Behold us, lovely Scylla, wonderful of waters. Behold our love and our need for thee. Cleanse us, O Scylla!” (III, chap. 6, 226).
Gate of Horn, Book of Silk Page 3
