Loris, Councillor “a member of the Ayuntamiento, its presiding officer in Lemur’s absence” (II, list). Lemur was his brother (IV, chap. 1, 27). First appearing on a poster (I, chap. 1, 26), though this is probably a confusion with Lemur; later met at Blood’s ruined villa (III, chap. 10, 347).
Loris and Potto are at the secret meeting with the rebels when Hossaan’s force of Vironese women spies raids the place. When Mint brings down the room’s wall, Loris snatches up the needler on the table and starts shooting Hossaan’s group (IV, chap. 13, 285). Loris is shot and killed there. While there is speculation that Oosik was the one who shot him, one report is that a Vironese female spy did it (285).
Zoology: slow-moving, nocturnal, arboreal primate found in India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia.
lyrichord a double room at Ermine’s hotel is named after this musical instrument because it has one in its music room. It is a stringed instrument somewhat in the form of an upright harpsichord.
M
Macaque “one of the older (pubescent) boys at the palaestra” (III, list), present at Echidna’s theophany (III, chap. 3, 94).
Zoology: a monkey of the genus Macacus.
Magnesia a chem maid of all work. She seems to be the source of the memory of the earliest days of the Whorl—while waiting to board the shuttle leading to the Whorl, she commented on the vehicle being dirty and the handsome chem soldier said, “Why don’t you dust it?” (III, chap. 8, 282; 285).
There is a mystery surrounding one of the paintings in the Sun Street manteion’s cenoby. It features the goddess Molpe “perfunctorily disguised as a young woman of the upper classes, approving a much older and poorer woman’s feeding pigeons” (III, chap. 4, 126). Silk later notes that “Cassava might have posed for the woman” (III, chap. 4, 126). Marble once told a lie that “she had posed for the painting as Molpe” (III, chap. 8, 283). The truth finally seems to be that the artist’s mother posed, and then Magnesia stood in for her (283). Note that the artist had been a relative of the Senior Sibyl (Betel?) (283).
In the end it seems that Magnesia was a maid at the Sun Street manteion and when a new sibyl was needed, she became Maytera Marble (note all sibyls take new names). But this raises the notion that perhaps black mechanics had tampered with her.
Mineral: a white, powdery compound, MgO (magnesium oxide). Used in industry for high temperature refractories and electrical insulation, and used in pharmacy as a laxative and antacid. Milk of magnesia, Mg(OH)2, deserves mention as it links motherhood (lactation) with the mineral.
Mainframe to the east, at the east pole of the Whorl (I, chap. 3, 59). Like Mount Olympus, it is the realm of the gods (I, chap. 4, 98). Protected from land traffic by Mountains That Look At Mountains.
Silk tells Orchid, “Pas made the whorl. . . . When it was complete, he invited his queen, their five daughters and two sons, and a few friends to share it with him” (I, chap. 10, 248). The friends presumably became the minor gods, and they all live in Mainframe. Mainframe also has the ghosts of the dead.
The east pole is the forward part of the ship and Mainframe is like the ship’s bridge. The Fliers live here and act as scouts and messengers. The ground seems to gradually slope upward toward the axis, perhaps like an Alpine meadow that extends into the sky.
Mainframe is a land of eternal summer, in part because of the computers radiating heat (IV, chap. 16, 350). It is a nearly weightless land since it is located so close to the axis (353). The best description of it comes as the airship is leaving: “Mainframe stood upright as a wall, its black slabs of colossal mechanism jutting toward them and its Pylon an endless bridge that dwarfed the airship and vanished into night” (350). This makes it sound as though Mainframe is shaped like a big tower (where the Pylon is at the top and at a right angle, like a diving board or a bridge) rather than a lifesaver (where the Pylon would be in the center and extend like a radio mast).
Mamelta “a sleeper awakened by Mucor and freed by Silk” (II, list). Mucor is possessing her when she tempts Silk to have sexual relations.
Raven haired (II, chap. 9, 243), she recalls the operation that altered her mind (II, chap. 9, 250). It seems likely she was enslaved on Urth (II, chap. 9, 251) just as Urth’s Harena expected to be (The Urth of the New Sun, chap. 28, 201).
In her dreams about “people like you [Silk]” they did not speak words (II, chap. 10, 261), but it is not clear whether “people like you” refer to normal humans, or to COLD ONE supermen like Silk and Mucor (the latter being one who definitely does not have to speak).
Computer repair is her work, or part of what was downloaded into her (II, chap. 10, 268). She leads Silk to a lander and teaches him that the cards his city uses for money are required for landers to function. After she and Silk escape from the submarine, a great water monster swallows her.
Onomastics: Saint Mamelta of Persia (died c. 344), said to have been a pagan priestess who converted to Christianity, for which she was first stoned, and then drowned in a lake.
Mandrill “Gelada’s cousin, now fled” (III, list). He left Viron during Gelada’s imprisonment (III, chap. 3, 120).
Zoology: the largest, most hideous, and most ferocious of the baboons, Cynocephalus maimon, a native of Western Africa.
manse where the augurs live, as opposed to the cenoby where the sibyls live. A common term for an ecclesiastical residence. In Wolfe’s use, a punning play on “man’s.”
manteion the word for a Vironese temple. Silk says that ideally there is one for each 5,000 residents (II, chap. 9, 227). Adjacent are the cenoby, the manse, and the palaestra.
Greek: an oracle shrine in ancient Greece, the place of a mantis who prophesied the future through reading the omens of a sacrifice.
Manteion Street the route from the market to the Palatine. It seems to have three noted buildings: the Grand Manteion; the Prolocutor’s Palace (across from the Grand Manteion); and the Juzgado (on the flats).
Maple, Maytera youngest sibyl at Jerboa’s manteion (IV, chap. 12, 245).
Botany: any of the trees or shrubs of the genus Acer. The Common Maple is Acer campestre.
Marble, Maytera a chem, she is the middle sibyl at Sun Street manteion. The oldest of her former students is around sixty years old (I, chap. 3, 63), so she started teaching about fifty years ago. There is a mysterious footlocker in the cenoby’s attic, containing her old life (III, chap. 5, 185).
She has memory problems (I, chap. 1, 28), and cannot recall her old name (I, chap. 1, 29).
Marble’s weird dream and Rose’s quiet death (II, chap. 11, 275–78) both happen just after Hammerstone has described robot dreams to Silk in the tunnels. After Rose dies, Marble salvages her prosthetics and becomes, in effect, Marble/Rose. “I’ve integrated our software” (III, chap. 10, 361). But since it is established that Xiphias’s leg came from five different individuals, one can only guess how many sources Rose’s parts came from. An inventory of those parts includes: two arms (III, chap. 4, 130), the eye, since her vision is improved (IV, chap. 11, 214), something in her chest, since she opens Rose’s chest (II, chap. 11, 278), and two legs (IV, chap. 11, 214). Also good ears (IV, My Defense, 380).
For some time later she says her original name was Moly (IV, chap. 11, 231–32), but then she asserts it was Magnesia, maid of all work (IV, list; IV, chap. 16, 359). In this it seems that Marble/Rose lies to Hammerstone that she is Molybdenum, his long lost love, perhaps by building on Magnesia’s memories of the handsome soldier who said, “Why don’t you dust it?” But this seeming incongruity might be resolved if the “Moly” elements were removed to form the basis of the offspring Marble wanted to create with her husband Hammerstone: that is, if a prosthetic from Rose had formerly been a part of Moly, it might also have functioned as the robotic equivalent of an ovum.
Her origins as a maid seem to come clear when she recalls the uniform she was given when she first “woke” (IV, ch. 7, 125).
Marble/Rose is possessed by Echidna, the goddess Rose had always prayed to; inde
ed, the goddess who seems to have possessed Rose for years.
Marble/Rose’s hand is cut off when her son Blood tries to kill her with one of his azoths. She has it repaired at Swallow’s brown mechanics shop. In the end she is with the group on the lander, heading for Blue with her granddaughter Mucor.
Commentary: the “Moly” story must have some basis in Maggie’s change from maid to sibyl with young Pike, Rose, and Betel (IV, chap. 11, 231). There is a possibility that Rose and Pike performed black mechanic work on the chem maid. For example, they might have altered her so that she would work without pay (see MARL in this regard), and perhaps her robotic “ovaries” were tampered with or removed to enforce chastity upon her. If any of this black mechanic alteration took place, it might also further explain Rose’s chem/bio guilt complex that crops up whenever she sees Marble talking with Silk.
market an area of Viron located west of the Sun Street quarter and south of the Palatine. A few of its streets are Saddle, Silver, String (where Master Xiphias lives), and probably Trade.
The market itself seems to be a walled-off open area, with traders selling goods from a blanket on the ground or from stalls. The northern end has the animal sellers, with cages and corrals.
Silk goes here to buy a sacrifice. He sees Tick the catachrest but purchases Oreb.
Marl “Fulmar’s elderly manservant” (IV, list), a chem who recommends to Marble a brown mechanics shop located past the crooked bridge (IV, chap. 2, 53). Marble telling about Marl’s lack of wages makes Swallow suspect he has been modified by black mechanics (IV, chap. 7, 122). Note that Fulmar is a member of the same black mechanic circle that Incus is in. In fact, Incus had helped Fulmar in reprogramming Marl, and Incus gets a kick out of asking Marl about his wages (II, chap. 10, 259).
Mineral: a calcium carbonate or lime-rich mudstone, used as a fertilizer for lime-deficient soils; (verb) to overspread or manure with marl.
Marmot “an unemployed laborer, one of Mint’s volunteers” (III, list), a participant in the big charge on Cage Street (III, chap. 5, 162). See also GIB, GORAL, KINGCUP, SCLERODERMA, and YAPOK.
Zoology: a rodent of the genus Arctomys or sub-family Arctomyinae of the squirrel family, especially A. marmotta, which inhabits the Alps and the Pyrenees.
marriage the text shows marriage customs in a few different cultures. Among the Fliers, marriage is only for begetting children, which requires sacrifice of flight for the mother (IV, chap. 12, 245). Fliers are polygamous, and yet one wife left Iolar. The Trivigaunti appear to be polyandrous, with each wife (potentially) having multiple husbands.
In monogamous Viron there is the stableman whose wife left him (I, chap. 4, 103), and there is Oosik, a married man who consorts with prostitutes. Oosik says to Silk, “a man without a wife is spared a full half of life’s unpleasantness” (IV, chap. 8, 169).
There are two weddings performed in the course of the story: that of Silk and Hyacinth (Kypris?), and that of Hammerstone and “Moly” (Marble). Both couples later have great difficulties.
Marrow the greengrocer who meets Auk the Prophet (IV, chap. 3, 60). Later he is in the group heading for the lander (IV, chap. 16, 368), and ultimately he becomes “a leader of the colonists on Blue” (IV, list).
Anatomy: bone marrow is the flexible tissue found in the hollow interior of bones. (But marrow can also be a vegetable, Cucurbita pepo, related to the courgette, also known as zucchini—thus it is gender ambiguous. See ONOMASTICS.)
Marten Teasel’s father (I, chap. 9, 216). Not on lists.
Zoology: an animal belonging to any one of certain species of Mustela, yielding a valuable fur.
Matar, Private “one of Saba’s pterotroopers” (IV, list). Matar is guarding the door when the unnamed lieutenant searches the gondola for Silk, then the officer has to answer to Hadale when Hadale finds Silk there (IV, chap. 14, 310).
Arabic: rain.
Mattak, Cornet “Oosik’s son, a young cavalry officer” (III, list; III, chap. 6, 252). He is bitten by an inhumu, presumably Quetzal. This bite seems related to the murder of Patera Moray by Sergeant Eft: if the murder came first, the bite may be an act of vengeance on the commanding officer; or if the bite came first, it may explain the murder as a case of mistaken identity (Eft thought he was killing the inhumu who posed as an augur).
Zoology: an Inuit word for dried whale flesh.
maytera the term of address for a sibyl.
Greek: from mitera, word for “mother.”
Mear one of the Fliers in the team sent by Tartaros to find Auk the Prophet (IV, chap. 5, 83), killed by the Trivigauntis shortly after landing. “Mear is a man’s name” (IV, chap. 12, 243), and Mear loved Sumaire (242). See AER, GRIAN, SCIATHAN, and SUMAIRE.
Irish: word for “quick, nimble” or “hasty, rash.” Or m’ear, a word for “finger, digit.”
Measurement Tables
Linear
Cubit = 18 inches.
Chain = 66 feet.
Stade = 607 or 622 feet.
League = 3 miles.
Monetary
Bit = the small change.
Card = the basic unit. See CARD.
Other
Quintal = a measure of grain (100 kilograms in the USA).
men and women Mint tells Spider it is normal for men to think women irrational, and vice versa (IV, chap. 8, 159).
Mezereon one of Orchid’s girls (I, chap. 12, 302). Not on lists.
Botany: the low shrub Daphne mezereum of Europe and Asia, having purplish or rose-colored flowers and red berries. A medicinal plant, as the dried bark of the root is used in liniments. The berries are poisonous to humans.
Milkwort, Maytera a sibyl of an earlier generation, seen by Silk in his enlightenment (I, chap. 3, 62).
Botany: common name for the Polygalaceae, a family including herbs, shrubs, and trees found in all parts of the world except New Zealand and the arctic regions.
Mill Street named for its coffee mills, at the time of the revolution it is a place to buy cheap fabric (III, chap. 5, 197). There is a coffee shop called Mill on Mill near the Alambrera. Mint has her headquarters near there for a while, on a narrow street that opens onto Mill (196–97). One of the Alambrera’s walls is along Mill (197).
Mint (Maytera/General) youngest sibyl of Sun Street manteion. Thirty-six years old (II, chap. 5, 113), she has been a sibyl for twenty years (III, chap. 9, 334). Brocket is a distant cousin (a possible hint for her birth name). When Auk was younger he pretended that Mint was his mother, and she knows it. She never had an older sister, but she considered Maytera Mockorange as one.
Mint accidentally traps a piece of Kypris within her by closing her eyes during a theophany before Kypris could get back out. She closes her eyes out of modesty: “It was the greatest sacrifice that she [Mint] had ever made [closing her eyes], though she had made thousands, of which five at least had been very great indeed” (II, chap. 2, 45). (In an interview, we asked Wolfe what those five things were. “In no particular order: freedom, marriage, the right to own property, the companionship and support of her family, and motherhood.”)
Potto makes a bad pun about Mint being the “GovernMint,” alluding to the dictionary definition, but the fact is that when she trades her “Maytera” for “General” she becomes, in effect, a Spearmint. Silk thinks the goddess of war in Mint is Kypris rather than Sphigx (III, chap. 5, 181), but he wonders. (In the interview we asked Wolfe what changed Mint. “Kypris,” was his reply. “There is more to love than doves and simpering.”)
Perhaps because of her being touched by a goddess, Mint exhibits new mental powers. Fatigued on the streets, she uses a dream-like telepathy to talk with Auk when he is in the tunnels (III, chap. 5, 190; 200), and later she does it again when she is underground and he is above ground (IV, chap. 6, 97). At one point she gets a message from Mucor and mistakenly tries to storm the Palatine to rescue Silk (III, chap. 8, 297).
Mint often thinks of Serval as “that gallant captain” who showed her his sword (III, chap. 2,
39). This incident (II, chap. 13, 322) came just before a theophany where Serval received instructions from Kypris (324), and foreshadows Mint’s activation as “Sword of the Eight Major Gods” (III, chap. 3, 92).
There are strong parallels between Mint and Marble, in that both start the series as sibyls and end by becoming laywomen for love. But note that while there are two passages in Exodus from the Long Sun (IV, chap. 14, 313, and chap. 17, 380) that suggest Mint merging with Marble and Marble merging with Mint, seemingly foreshadowed by an earlier passage (II, chap. 8, 208), they are actually typos according to Gene Wolfe in the postal interview.
Botany: any one of the aromatic labiate plants of the genus Mentha, especially M. viridis, Garden Mint or Spearmint.
Mockorange, Maytera “a sibyl at the Sun Street manteion, now dead” (III, list; III, chap. 5, 197). “Mint’s preceptress long ago “ (IV, list). Mint thinks of her as the older sister she never had. Mockorange’s family had been wealthy, and she spoke of running hot water which Mint found incredible (IV, chap. 10, 196).
Botany: the common Syringa, Philadelphus coronarius; the Carolina cherry-laurel, Prunus caroliniana; the Australian native laurel, Pittosporum undulatum.
Molpe “a major goddess, the goddess of music, dancing, and art, of the winds and all light things, patroness of the second day of the week. She is particularly associated with songbirds and butterflies” (II, list). The second daughter of Pas and Echidna, a fine dancer and skilled musician but subject to fits of insanity. She is one of the rebel gods (III, chap. 4, 156), but she might be making amends.
The kite maker prays to her. She gives him the wind he needs. She might be responsible for the miracle of the flying floater, but Silk hopes it was the Outsider. She might be the source of the wind that aids Silk’s hijacking of the airship. There is also the wind that blows the airship to Mainframe far faster than its engines could have.
Gate of Horn, Book of Silk Page 7
