(urth) Like a good Neighbor

[Gerry Quinn]

From: James Wynn 

  On 11/20/2011 7:17 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
  > [Seawrack] nows nothing about human life except that humans 
  >> die easily and are eaten.  She saw it happen her human, and she 
  >turned away without investigating.  She didn’t go down in the pit. 
  >How *could* she have known he was dead?

> Well, if say his head were turned at a wrong angle. 
> Yeah, she's no doctor. And yet she doesn't seem to doubt her assessment even 
> when Horn comes marching back alive.

She’s rationalising her guilt, I think.

Here’s one scenario I think possible:

Horn fell in and was badly concussed.  [As with Auk before him, this was the prelude to a mystical evolution, but that’s not germane to the episode, it’s just a trope that Wolfe recycles.] The Neighbours did their best to help him but they live in another dimension and can’t move anything physical or bring him water.  What they did was touch his forehead with a mental amplifier that temporarily gave him the ability to astrally travel and get help.  Unfortunately he went to Nettle who could not help him and indeed became frightened, thinking I suppose that he was a ghost or inhumu.  

The only other human or quasi-human entity on the island at that time was Seawrack (Krait may have been hanging around already, but even if the Neighbours knew that, they wouldn’t have expected him to help).  It is possible that they didn’t recognise Seawrack as human.  It’s also possible that they tried to communicate with her but she fled.  We know she is terrified of Neighbour constructions at least – it’s probable that she is even more terrified of Neighbours.  

It was this abandonment of Horn due to her fear that she is rationalising.  Of course the simple scenario that she is ignorant of human life and ordinary death – everyone she has met has quickly died and stayed dead – is also perfectly possible.

It was his experience with the mental amplifier that initiated Horn’s subsequent development of extraordinary psychic powers.  We already see that he has changed when he is going with Krait to find Seawrack – he sees the world with “a sharpness of detail born of a consciousness of detail”.  He’s changed – but nothing about the change is the sort of thing we might particularly expect to associate with a Neighbour psyche – affinity with trees, consciousness of other dimensions, feeling he’s missing limbs, whatever. 

He doesn’t develop superpowers just like that, it requires other events and experiences – his experiences on Green, his death, his experiments on inhumi which he is *contemplating carrying out in the future* during his time as Rajan of Gaon.

Anyway, that’s my working theory for the moment.  I think it fits the facts and involves the swallowing of fewer camels than scenarios in which Horn died in the pit.

  > Get real.  She didn’t get within twenty feet of him.  
  >Silk thought Oreb was dead when he had him right in his hands, 
  >and he’s a professional animal sacrificer.  Do you think Oreb was dead then?  
  >Smart bird!  Play dead.  No cut!


> > I believe Oreb was possessed. Whether he was clinically dead for a short time 
> > is beyond our ability to discern from the text. I believe he was close enough to 
> > dead that even an experienced augur could not tell the difference. Pas (or whatever
> >  other god was possessing him) did not want to be sacrificed. You're right that it 
> > doesn't make sense that he was faking or fainted. 
> > Are you saying that a god or Neighbor was possessing Horn so he could escape 
> > from, uh, Seawrack?

No, I’m saying that an experienced observer thinking someone is dead when they’re not is a scenario that has already happened in the story, so you can hardly discount it as ridiculous!  And in Silk’s case the observer was better experienced and had the dead person in their hand, instead of looking down twenty feet over a dangerous drop in a place that terrifies the observer.

  On 11/20/2011 7:29 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
  > >  When the long-nose man bent over him, he was already suffering thirst,
  > >so if he died then it happened *after* this time, in which case Babbie saw him alive.
  > > How do you make sense of that?  The long-nose man bends over a Neighbour?  
  > > Who and why?
  > >When does Horn die?


  ************************
  I threw my slug gun to my shoulder and was able to get off one quick shot. The greenbuck broke stride and stumbled to its knees, but in less than a breath it had bounded up again, cutting right and running hard. It vanished into brush, and I sprinted after it, all my fatigue forgotten, guided by Babbie’s agitated hunck-hunck-bunck!
  Very suddenly I was falling into darkness.
  ************************

> Ambiguity is inextricable from Wolfe's stories, but I am going to posit that he dies 
> right here.
> I posit that the rest of the memories are during the time Horn's body was being 
> repaired by the Neighbor. Thus they are memories from Horn's perspective. But 
> he is not truly revived yet.

So all this time while he’s opening and shutting his eyes, and watching stuff going on around him like Babbie’s appearance.... he’s dead?

  ***********************************
  Sunlight warmed me. I kept my eyes closed, knowing that it would be painful to look at the sun. It vanished, and I opened them to see what had become of it, and saw Babbie’s familiar, hairy mask peering at me over the edge of the pit. I closed them again, and the next time I opened them he had gone.
  I think it was not long afterward that I came to myself. I sat up, cold, full of pain, and terribly thirsty.

  [...]

  This is what I least wished to write about last night, but I am going to try to write it down this evening. Once, as I lay there at the bottom of the pit, it seemed to me that a man with a long nose (a tall man or an immense spider) stood over me. I did not move or even open my eyes, knowing that if I did he would be gone. He touched my forehead with something he held, and the pit vanished. 
  ******************************


> This fellow with the prominent nose is our narrator. When this scene occurs is 
> not stated. Perhaps it occurred in the seconds before Horn died. It might have 
> occurred after Horn was repaired but just as the Neighbor took the final act to 
> reanimate him. For the sake of argument, I'll say the former.

Ah, but we *do* know something about when it happened – that was the very point I was making in my post!  When it happened Horn went to Nettle (in his mind at least) and told her he was dying of thirst.  So it must have happened *after* the events of the previous paragraph above!

It happened *after* Horn came to himself and sat up.

That seems like a very serious problem for any ‘Horn died’ scenario, IMO

- Gerry Quinn



 
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