From: stilskin@sff.net
Subject: (whorl) Oreb/Pas
Date: 17 Aug 2000 18:47:24 

Continuing with my thoughts/questions about Oreb's death and resurrection.  Again apologies if this is old hat.

I wondered before whether Oreb, following his death prior to Silk's sacrifice, might not have been possessed by one of the gods of Mainframe, or perhaps even the Outsider.

This from pp. 91-92 of the hardcover Lake of the Long Sun:

   Oreb dropped onto Silk's shoulder, startling him into looking up; as he did, Oreb caught a lock of his straying hair and tugged at it.

    "He knows what you're feeling," Chenille said quietly.  "He would like to make you laugh, if he can."

     "He's a good bird -- a very good bird.  This isn't the first time he's come to me of his own accord."

     "You would take him with you, wouldn't you?  Even if you were sent to that administrative position?  Silk.  It isn't against some rule for augurs to keep pets?"

     "No. They're permitted."

     "So everything wouldn't be lost, even then."

Now Chenille in this passage has been possessed by, and is speaking as, Kypris.  Kypris, a minor goddess of love, who was, in Severian's Urth, the favorite mistress of Typhon/Pas, and who thus, by his favor, was invited aboard the Whorl as a disembodied goddess.  Chenille/Kypris's final line here is odd.  Why should she care so much if Oreb accompanies Silk?  Because Oreb is a good bird and a good friend to Silk?  That's hardly enough.  Recall that the other major gods have banded together to overthrow and destroy Pas.  Could it be that a portion of Pas has been preserved and downloaded into Oreb . . . all the better so that Pas can keep an eye on Silk, who as we know was genetically augmented and designed to serve as Pas's new body in Blue or Green (such, at least, is my memory of later developments or suppositions I've read on this list pertaining thereto).

So:  Oreb is a shard of Pas, perhaps not even fully conscious, the better to hide from his patricidal family, his only ally Kypris, his favorite on Urth, and a goddess equally detested by his family on the Whorl.

A final piece of evidence:

Later in that same conversation, Silk says:  

     "I even like Orchid, and every god" -- He would have stopped, but it was already too late -- "knows I felt sorry for her this afternoon."

     She [Chenille/Kypris] laughed softly.  "All the gods don't know.  Silk. . . .  One does.  Two."

Now who are those two gods?  One is surely Kypris herself, who manifested in the window of the manteion during the funeral of Orpine, Orchid's previously unacknowledged daughter.  But then who is the other?  On first reading I simply assumed it was the Outsider.  But now I'm not so sure.  Perhaps after all it refers to Pas . . . and if Pas is present in some way within Oreb, then the statement is literally accurate, for now Oreb/Pas, too, knows what Silk was feeling.  And of course, Chenille/Kypris began the conversation by noting that Oreb "knows what you're feeling."

Well, any thoughts/comments appreciated.  This is the third time I've read the first 2 books of the Short Sun, and the scales drop off more and more with each reading, but I've got a long way to go.

Falcon




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