Gate of Horn, Book of Silk
Page 9
Mucor’s “haunting” of Orchid’s place suggests that she is looking for something. Her possession of prostitutes seems to follow a specific pattern that ends in Orpine. Taken together, it seems likely that Mucor suspects that Orchid is both Mucor’s surrogate mother and Orpine’s biological mother.
Botany: succulent herbaceous plant Sedum telephium, which has the popular name “live-long.”
Outsider, the “the minor god who enlightened Silk” (II, list); “the god of the broken and disparaged, whose realm lies outside the Whorl” (III, list); “the god of gods” (IV, list).
He is not one of the Nine (I, chap. 1, 12), yet he was worshipped in the Short Sun whorl (I, chap. 3, 66), and the fact that the prayer beads are called “decades” makes Silk wonder “had the Nine been the Ten once?” (I, chap. 4, 111).
Some of the details suggest that the Outsider is Jesus, or at least a heretical version of Jesus:
• “the Outsider was known to esteem [the sellers] last among men already—that according to the Writings he had once (having possessed and enlightened a fortunate man) beaten them severely in person” (I, chap. 1, 17). This combines the episode of Jesus and the Money Changers (Mark 11:17) with the Gnostic notion that Jesus was a mortal man possessed by a god.
• execution of a criminal: “There was a naked criminal on a scaffold, and we came back to that when he died, and again when his body was taken down. His mother was watching with a group of his friends, and when someone said he had incited sedition, she said that she didn’t think he had ever been really bad, and that she would always love him” (II, chap. 11, 285). This echoes the crucifixion of Jesus.
Other details suggest that the Outsider is God:
• He created men and women from mud “according to one somewhat doubtful passage in the Writings” (II, chap. 5, 111).
• Silk’s post-surgery vision: “Someone he could not see was seated beside his bed” (III, chap. 5, 166).
• Ah Lah (“Allah”) is another name for the Outsider.
• In Silk’s vision by the fish pool, the Outsider claims Kypris because love always proceeds from him (III, chap. 7, 266).
But then, lest we become too comfortable with the similarities between the Outsider and Jesus and God, there are other details from a completely different tradition. When Mint and Remora are held prisoner in the tunnels, Mint has a brief dream she believes was sent by a god (IV, chap. 6, 93–94). Remora, trying to interpret the dream, keeps pressing her for animals in it, and finally they return to the fact that the name of the man in the dream was Rook. Mint then says that rooks are not sacred to any god, but she associates rook with night chough, and night chough with the Outsider because of Silk’s Oreb (96–97). Already Silk with Oreb is seen as an avatar of the Outsider.
This becomes tricky. There are a few crow/raven gods, but God is not generally counted as one of them. There is Badb, the Celtic war goddess; Odin, the Norse god with two ravens; and there is Cronus, the Greek Titan who became father to the primary Olympian gods.
Within The Book of the Long Sun, then, the most likely one is Cronus, first because it fits with the Titan cycle. After Zeus seized the throne, he exiled Cronus to the outermost edge of the earth: the outside, in other words. Thus it might be that Pas usurped God within the Whorl and “exiled” Him to the outside.
The etymology of the name “Cronus” is obscure, but some authorities say it may come from “horned.” While this curious detail immediately reminds us of how Hyacinth’s infidelities put “the horns” on Silk, we cannot forget the narrator’s name, either.
P
Paca “the dead man in the tunnel” (IV, list; IV, chap. 6, 104, 112).
Zoology: a genus (Coelogenys) of large dasyproctid rodents, nocturnal in habit, native to Central America and South America; the common species is called also the “spotted cavy” and “water hare.”
paintings a sight-seeing guide to art works and their locations:
• Campion’s celebrated painting of Pas enthroned—two taluses are still at work upon the whorl “planting a sacred goldenshower in back of Pas’s throne” (I, chap. 11, 283).
• At Orchid’s brothel, a crude mockery of the above (I, chap. 11, 283).
• In Remora’s office at the palace, a painting by Campion (II, chap. 7, 180).
• In the cenoby of the Sun Street manteion, three paintings (III, chap. 4, 126).
• Pas, Echidna, and Tartaros bringing gifts to a wedding.
• Scylla spreading her mantle over a traveler drinking from a pool in the southern desert.
• Molpe approving a poor old woman’s feeding pigeons, painted by a relative of the senior sibyl’s (III, chap. 8, 283). The old woman looks like Cassava. Magnesia participated in the painting as a stand-in.
• At Blood’s villa:
• A gray and gold painting of Pas condemning the lost spirits, one head livid with rage while the other pronounced their doom (I, chap. 7, 176–77).
• A ceiling painting of Molpe playing bagatelle with/against Phaea (I, chap. 7, 183).
• A misty landscape painting that is probably by Murtagon (III, chap. 10, 338).
palaestra the schoolhouse part of the manteion, from an unusual word meaning “exercise gym” (Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary).
Palatine, the a quarter of Viron located on a hill to the north or northwest of the Sun Street manteion. It is the richest part. Gold Street goes straight up the hill. Manteion Street crosses it, with the Grand Manteion and the Prolocutor’s Palace on the hill, and the Juzgado on the flat land at its base to the west.
Ermine’s hotel is located here, as is the Caldé’s Palace.
Onomastics: the most important of ancient Rome’s seven hills, the Palatine was the site of many imperial palaces.
Palustria first mentioned regarding Oreb (I, chap. 4, 96), a city located more than 50 leagues away from Viron (I, chap. 4, 102). Initially it seems to be south of Viron (I, chap. 2, 41), but later it is said to be to the north. Ruled by a prince-president (II, chap. 13, 329), the inhabitants had turned their swamps into rice fields (IV, chap. 15, 335).
Mucor’s brain surgeon was from Palustria (II, chap. 8, 283). Patera Remora offers Patera Gulo a high-ranking religious post in Palustria (II, chap. 7, 184) in the belief that, since Palustria has fewer chem soldiers than Viron, Viron will annex Palustria within the next ten years (183–84).
Latin: from palustris, meaning “boggy/marshy.”
Pard, Patera Rose mentions him as the next nearest augur after Silk, to help with Teasel (I, chap. 8, 213). It seems likely he is at the Hat Street manteion.
Zoology: a panther or leopard (archaic or poetic term).
Pas “the father of gods and ruler of the Whorl, which he built. The god of sun and rain, of mechanisms and much else, pictured with two heads. He is particularly associated with cattle and birds of prey” (II, list).
Kypris-as-Chenille, remembering Urth, says, “Someone said once that he was always in a cold fury. . . . It wasn’t true. But almost. And he came to rule the whole [short sun whorl] . . . so fast. All in a few years. No one could believe it” (II, chap. 4, 91). She tells of his technological advancement, “he had his people study [reprogramming techniques used on AIs]. And they found out that you could do something like it with people through the terminals, through their eyes” (II, chap. 5, 116–17).
It turns out that the rebel gods had turned against Pas and killed him. “Pas is dead and the sun has no master” (III, chap. 4, 136). Yet Pas had hidden a fragment of himself in Jerboa, the piece for Viron (IV, chap. 6, 101).
In addition to the sacrifice of Sand, there were a number of sacrifices made at the time when Pas was being revived (Jerboa dying; Mint staying awake; Silk losing his virginity), suggesting perhaps that all of them were required.
Myth: Gene Wolfe, in a letter contained within an article, writes,
Perhaps someone should point out that this god’s name [Pan] meant all in everyday Greek. That is to say, the word-form is
pas in the masculine nominative singular, pasa in the feminine, and pan in the neuter, strong evidence that ‘Pan’ once designated the Supreme Being (“The Pirates of Florida and Other Implausibilities,” Castle of Days, 438).
Having established the connection between Pas and Pan, next consider “Mighty Pan is dead.” This famous line from antiquity is a nice key to The Book of the Long Sun. As Robert Graves puts it:
Pan is the only god who has died in our time. The news of his death came to one Thamus, a sailor in a ship bound for Italy by way of the island of Paxi. A divine voice shouted across the sea: “Thamus, are you there? When you reach Palodes, take care to proclaim that the great god Pan is dead!” which Thamus did; and the news was greeted from the shore with groans and laments.
The Egyptian Thamus apparently misheard the ceremonial lament “Thamus Pan-megas Tethnece” (“the all-great Tammuz is dead!”) for the message: “Thamus, Great Pan is dead!’” (Greek Myths, sections 26.g and 26.5).
Tammuz is a dying god not unlike Osiris, bringing us back to that clever Wolfe trick of having Typhon (Set) forced to play as Osiris. (The Thamus episode also recalls a mysterious bit at the end of The Book of the New Sun, too.) The Book of the Long Sun seems in part to be about the redemption of Monarch Typhon.
patera the title for an augur.
Greek: from pateras, word for “father.”
peach-colored Blood’s handkerchief (I, chap. 1, 18; III, chap. 5, 181) and bed sheets at Ermine’s (III, chap. 8, 300).
Peeper “a turnkey at the Juzgado” (IV, list). He gets along well with Auk (IV, chap. 12, 251).
Zoology: a small tree-frog of the genus Hyla, especially H. crucifer, found in eastern North America.
peritime “a peritime in which the god speaks to you” (II, chap. 1, 25), meaning something like “a moment outside of time” or “the unmoving axis of time.” It seems to be a Wolfe-coinage, using the prefix “peri-” meaning “about or around.”
Phaea “a major goddess, the goddess of food and healing and patroness of the sixth day of the week. She is particularly associated with swine” (II, list). Black lambs are sacrificed to Grim Phaea (I, chap. 2, 36).
Myth: (Greek) the name of the sow of Crommyon, which ravaged the countryside on the Corinthian isthmus until slain by the hero Theseus.
phantom black bird Silk awakens from a dream in the night and sees Oreb hop out the second story window and fly away (II, chap. 1, 28). But Oreb can’t fly yet, having a dislocated wing. Silk questions Oreb, who denies it all. Then Silk sees the ghost of Pike (33).
At first it seems the phantom black bird might have been an inhumu. And perhaps Silk convinces himself that Oreb hopped out and dropped down rather than flying away. But maybe it was a sign of the Outsider as a crow-god. (See ROOK.)
Pike, Patera “an augur, Silk’s predecessor at the manteion on Sun Street, now deceased” (II, list). Silk sees him during his enlightenment (I, chap. 1, 9). He fought against a devil or two (inhumi) some years before. The glass in his room was “out of order and had been for decades” (III, chap. 11, 127). He is the biological father of Blood by Maytera Rose, but somehow he never knew. He died in the spring the year before (II, chap. 1, 31). Silk sees his ghost (33).
He often told Silk that Pas himself had “once congratulated and encouraged him, urging him to prepare, to stand ready for the hour (soon to come, or so Pas had appeared to intimate) when this present whorl would vanish, would be left behind” (I, chap. 2, 43). On the day Silk arrived at the Sun Street manteion, the Outsider enlightened Pike, telling him that Silk was the help the Outsider was sending (I, chap. 3, 62).
Zoology: the fish, Esox lucius.
Commentary: it seems likely that Pas possessed Pike during the time when Rose became pregnant.
Poppy “one of the women at Orchid’s, small, dark, and pretty” (II, list; I, chap. 11, 287). She had been possessed in the past by Mucor. She is first seen with torn chemise (I, chap. 10, 251), and later we learn that Mucor rips up clothes (I, chap. 12, 259). Poppy’s name is first mentioned by Orchid (I, chap. 12, 264).
Poppy is the woman from the same quarter to the east as Hyacinth (II, chap. 9, 127). Poppy attends Orpine’s funeral (II, chap. 2, 39).
Botany: a plant or flower of the genus Papaver, comprising herbs of temperate and subtropical regions, having milky juice with narcotic properties.
Pork “the owner of the restaurant at which Silk dined with Auk” (III, list). Auk plans to take Chenille there (III, chap 7, 264).
Zoology: swine. See PHAEA.
Pork’s the restaurant is located in the old alambrera, probably at Cage and Sun. The private rooms are former cells. For location, see map at entry for MARKET.
possessions whenever a god invades a mortal, that is a possession of one form or another. Some possessions are obvious, while others are very subtle.
Silk makes it sound as though in the past, most possessions were of men by Pas, Tartaros, Hierax, the Outsider, or Catamitus (IV, chap. 2, 48). At least one case of a man possessed by the Outsider is mentioned in the Chrasmologic Writings (I, chap. 1, 17). Here is a list of possessions by the gods of Mainframe. For possessions by Mucor, see MUCOR.
Echidna
• Echidna enters and leaves Marble at Sun Street (III, chap. 3, 92–101). She is murderous, killing Musk and wanting to kill Auk.
• Echidna seems to enter Mint at Sun Street (III, chap. 3, 92), but this is a clever fake-out by Mint, who manages to hide her Kypris fragment from Echidna, as well as prevent its escape into the Window.
Kypris
• Kypris almost certainly enters Hyacinth at Blood’s house (I, chap. 6, 155–62; chap. 12, 298). We never see clear evidence that she leaves.
• Kypris becomes trapped in Mint at Sun Street (II, chap. 2, 45), meaning that Mint has an accidental (or unshaped, “raw”) Kypris fragment. This seems to be the source of Mint’s newfound super powers: her commanding voice, her military genius, etc.
• Kypris enters Chenille at Sun Street (II, chap. 2, 45) and leaves her presumably at Limna manteion sometime before Chen starts drinking heavily (II, chap. 8, 207). Kypris leaves a shaped fragment in Chenille.
Pas
• Pas hides a fragment of himself in Jerboa. Jerboa seems to have no idea that it is there, and shows no unusual signs.
Scylla
• Scylla seems to enter the clerk at the Limna Juzgado, a “plump, middle-aged woman” (II, chap. 6, 156) who, after looking baffled and blank (157), gives Silk information on the Pilgrims’ Way (161). Later, Scylla’s features on the boulder at the start of this path “bore a chance resemblance to those of the helpful woman in the Juzgado” (161).
• Scylla apparently lures pilgrims into walking off the cliff, becoming accidental human sacrifices to her. She nearly succeeded with Coypu (II, chap. 6, 164–65), perhaps selecting him because of his aquatic name.
• Scylla enters Chenille at Scylla’s shrine (II, chap. 10, 258) and leaves her at the Lake Limna shrine (III, chap. 1, 32).
Tartaros
• Tartaros enters Auk at the tunnel altar (III, chap. 6, 244) and leaves him at the Sun Street manteion (IV, chap. 3, 65).
These possessions differ. Kypris apparently slips in and out of Hyacinth from time to time (although an argument can be made that it was just that one time when Silk first met her). Auk seems to be in control of his senses and actions while possessed (except, perhaps, when he kidnaps Hyacinth), but Chenille and (presumably) Marble are completely taken over, by Kypris and Echidna respectively. The Mint situation is completely different from the others.
Potto “a member of the Ayuntamiento and its expert on law enforcement and espionage” (II, list); “who (with Sand) interrogated Silk after his second arrest” (III, list); “a surviving member of the Ayuntamiento” (IV, list). As the Vironese councillor in charge of security (I, chap. 6, 319), he is the real ruler of Viron, an individual with several chem bodies.
Potto is a sadistic bully. His preparation to pour boiling water
into Mint’s eye is one clear example.
Zoology: West African lemur.
power groups a listing of the different groups in the text:
Ayuntamiento
• Councillor Lemur (Secretary/Ruler)
• Councillor Loris (#2)
• Councillor Potto (Law Enforcement/Espionage)
• Spies
• Spy catchers: Spider group (Spider, Bison, Guan, Paca, Sewellel, and Titi)
• Councillor Tarsier (Architecture/Engineering)
• Councillor Galago (Diplomacy/Foreign Affairs)
• Commissioner Simuliid (a key bureaucrat)
• Commissioner Trematode (diplomacy, ceremony, protocol)
Senior Priesthood
• Prolocutor Quetzal (hooded inhumu)