(urth) First Exodus theory revised

[António Pedro Marques]

Gerry Quinn wrote (11-02-2011 03:04):
>
> From: "António Pedro Marques" <entonio at gmail.com>
>> Gerry Quinn wrote:
>> > As for Silk, we are told he is a special snowflake, but it's not
>> exactly
>> > clear where his powers lie. There seems to be general agreement that it
>> > is something to do with leadership, which makes sense in terms of
>> Tussah
>> > wanting such an embryo. Of course, leadership was a characteristic of
>> > Typhon too, which makes it harder to answer questions about whether
>> Silk
>> > is genetically related to Typhon.
>
>> (How does it make it harder? It's an argument for kinship, a weak one
>> but still one.)
>
> Yes, but if Tussah was motivated to get an embryo with leadership skills
> to drive out the corrupt Ayuntiamento, then great leadership skills are
> not much of a pointer to Typhon, as they might be if they appeared in a
> random embryo.

But then again corruptness is a personality matter, which hasn't been shown 
to be determined/determinable by biological parentage.
How do we know Tussah's goal was to drive out the corrupt Ayuntamiento? How 
do we know the Ayuntamiento was considered corrupt by that time? How could 
Tussah know about Typhon's personality?

>> And now I must ask.
>> What the hell is the purpose of Tussah.
>> I mean, would the story fall apart if that character didn't exist?
>> Would Gene Wolfe create such a character if there were no purpose for
>> him?
>>
>> I think the answers are 'yes' for the first and 'no' for the second.
>> Ashley's theory points out a possible reason for Tussah's existence -
>> his actions provided the means for Quetzal to get on board the Whorl.
>> I think further debate on just how much of the story really depends on
>> this character we only hear about fragmentarily would be interesting.
>
> He provides some of the backstory for the political situation in Viron,
> and he explains how a special embryo came to be implanted in an ordinary
> woman. He also provides Silk with a claim to the caldeship.

...all of which aren't really necessary. Enabling Quetzal aboard is necessary.

>> Silk is
>> *someone-unknown-but-important-enough-to-have-their-offspring-preserved*'s
>> son,
>
> Not really - Mucor's parents are unknown, and I don't think anyone
> believes there are clues to their identity in the text.

Then maybe the next question is who are Mucor's parents.
But as you point out, Mucor stands by herself as engineered - she's got 
'special abilities' - while Silk doesn't - at most he's got large 
quantitites of normal abilities.

> As for Typhon, if he wanted a child with Kypris he could have had him
> born on Urth, and it seems the most obvious thing for him to do!

That would be a competitor. We're told he wanted an heir, it doesn't follow 
that he wanted the heir around.

>> Silk is blond, people follow Silk. If he's not Typhon's son, why have
>> him be someone unknown's child? There comes a point when one must make
>> a little leap to reach a conclusion - otherwise there's nothing in the
>> text. The text will never explicitly unfold its secrets, or they
>> wouldn't be secrets. And if not to unfold them - and for that, little
>> leaps are needed - then what use is analyzing it?
>
> I can see your point, certainly. If he had some unique superpower like
> Mucor, there would be no reason to ask the question - the superpower
> would be enough to justify him being an engineered embryo. The problem
> is that Silk's powers are seemingly not special enough that he needs to
> be engineered, so we ask why couldn't he simply have been the biological
> offspring of his mother.
>
> We would lose Tussah's naming of him as calde - but presumably Wolfe
> could have changed the charter of Viron to make this unnecessary for the
> storyline.
>
> Now I agree there is a shortage of candidates for his biological parents
> - but that is to be expected, really, of a frozen engineered embryo.
>
> But are Typhon and Kypris good candidates, really? Typhon's sons and
> daughters by Echidna didn't have superpowers, and Echidna presumably
> came of good stock. Kypris was Typhon's favourite concubine - a worthy
> achievement, certainly, but it hardly suggests that her children would
> be especially genetically equipped to rule whorls.

Maybe one of the competencies of the favourite concubine is to be able to 
produce a son that is more like the father than those by his lawful wife - 
the concubine erasing herself - her only claim to existence being being a 
lover/producer of heirs for someone - may even be the most important role, 
but is always in referral to the person the concubine is a concubine to, not 
autonomous.
There are concubines who become autonomous and even rulers, but Kypris never 
does - granted, her only chances for survival don't seem to have lain down 
that route.

> Tussah was apparently
> looking for an embryo with special powers, probably of leadership, and
> he paid a lot for Silk. Would he really consider Typhon's son the ideal
> candidate?
>
> Of course there is the possibility that the story of Tussah buying the
> embryo was a cover-up and the plan of Typhon was for his son to be born
> to lead the people onto the new whorl(s), with Tussah acting as his
> agent in this scheme. However, this seems to perish on the rock of
> timing. Pas was alive and in charge when the Whorl entered the
> Blue/Green system. He was killed shortly afterwards, thirty years before
> the events of BotLS. Silk was born about a decade later. But if Pas
> wanted Silk to lead the colonists, he'd have arranged for Silk to have
> been born around twenty years before arrival. An adult Silk (or Silks)
> would have been around before Pas's death. So it doesn't really seem to
> make sense for Silk to be somebody special to Typhon, whether his son,
> his clone, or his favourite slave!

I'm not sure Typhon could have predicted with absolute accuracy the timing 
of arrival on Blue/Green.
One might also argue that the reason the Plan of Pas wasn't put in march 
before Pas was taken out was that Pas didn't have Silk available yet.
But this makes the Plan of Pas contingent on Silk, which I don't like.

> I don't think the above argument has been posted before - it seems quite
> strong to me. It could be argued, I suppose, that Echidna had all the
> adult Silks killed when Pas was killed, and none of them were in or near
> Viron. But then there is the problem that Echidna wasn't bothered at all
> when she met Silk while she was possessing Marble.

I also don't like the idea of multiple Silks or Silk-like figures. For one 
thing, Horn travels a lot through Blue and always has to explain why Silk is 
important to him, and nobody says 'yeah, we had someone like that also'. Of 
course, that lack of mention could be down to Silk/Horn. But like with the 
Silk-as-clone theory, it's not only that nobody mentions it, it's that 
nobody behaves accordingly.