(urth) Severian's skin color

[James Wynn]

Chris speculates
>The relevant question for me here is whether 
>whatever version of Silk is in Silk/Horn had ever had access to fragments of 
>Pas. And I think there's a good chance, or at least a live possibility, that 
>he did - though I won't claim it's not arguable.

Well, after Pas re-emerged and began to purge the Mainframe of the rebel
modules, I'm sure there were plenty of opportunities for Silk to encounter it.
But if an aspect of Pas were hiding in Silk, I can't imagine him agreeing to
Silk's resignation and hermitage. That doesn't sound like any simulation of Typhon.

If Roy Lackey and Blattid are correct in their posts that Silk is a clone
of Typhon, then he would carry Typhon's very face back to the Whorl
to meet Severian. As appealing as that would be to me. I don't believe it. 

Wolfe has said (when asked about Silk's "ancestry"), that Silk is the son of the
Calde and his mistress. The question was regarding his *ancestry*, not his
parentage. I resolved this quandray by asserting that Tussah was Typhon's
clone, and that Silk is a clone of the son of Typhon and Kypris' original ("the
son not of my body shall be Calde after me").  Thus, Tussah and Pas are
murdered about the same time and Silk rises to take both their places.
And that's why Silk meets 2 pairs of parents during his death: Pas,
Kypris, Tussah, and his aknowledged mother.

For a lot of reasons, I would still like to say that Silk's "original" was a clone of
Typhon emplanted in proto-Kypris. But the text suggests that Chenille looked
*very* much like Tussah and Horn told Silk that he and Chenille didn't "really
look that much alike." There's no way around it for me. Silk is genetically the
bio-child of Typhon and proto-Kypris.

Which brings me back to the question of why it was *Silk* who was chosen to
be scanned to repair Pas. I understand why Wolfe did it thematically; I wish
he had justified it narratively. Perhaps it could have been anyone, but they
chose Silk as an honor because of his help against the Ayuntamiento.

>What becomes even more intriguing is the question of where, in the 
>chronology of the New Sun, Typhon scanned himself as Pas. Was it before he 
>ever encountered the Conciliator, or between the first and second times (of 
>course the first visit chronologically was the second from Severian's 
>subjective point of view)...But it has been argued 
>(fairly well) by Roy Lackey that the Whorl had to have been launched before 
>Typhon's first encounter with the Conciliator (ref: 
>http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0303/3073.txt.shtml) so if that holds 
>then this is a dead end.

Well, I consider it self-evident that Typhon's scan occurred after he got his
new body, since Pas has two heads. I don't have my books, but I seem to
recall a suggestion that Typhon had *just* got Piaton's body when he met
the Conciliator. That would place the Whorl's launch just before or very soon
after his confrontation with the Concilliator. In that case, the scan must have
occurred as the capstone to the Whorl project before launching. Since I say
the taking of Piaton's body was punishment for his taking part in the rebellion
with his siblings and mother, there is the very real possibility that Typhon had
himself rescanned with this new body after executing his family. Would Typhon
have permitted his rebellious family to be a worshiped pantheon on the Whorl
after they had betrayed him? Well, look how their are depicted and you tell me.
Pas and Kypris depicted naturalistically. The rest of his family are monsters.
Typhon might have had himself scanned again simply because he wanted Pas to
be knowledgible of his family's potential treachery.   

But this is irrelevant to our discussion since I find it hard to believe Pas was in
Silk when the Rajan entered his body.

~ Crush