From: "Robert Borski" <rborski@charter.net>
Subject: (whorl) Pas, on disembarking: Howdy Neighbor
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 12:14:36 

Gamemeister Maroney (Unplugged) having asked:

<Why would we believe that Pas is a Neighbor?>

Well, as I've been arguing for some time now, I believe this notion answers
more questions than it generates.

For starters, it explains why the Blue-Green system was targeted by the
Whorl. Pas/Typhon is simply going home. Doubtless, other habitable systems
much closer to Urth could have been targeted, but they haven't--why not? To
argue otherwise--that the Whorl arrived at Blue-Green by accident or
malfunction--leaves a rather hollow core at the center of the Long Sun
series. ("Why did we come here, Silk?" "It appears, students, that the Whorl
took a wrong turn at Alpha Centauri. Whoops!") I also find the idea that the
Whorl has been programmed to temporarily stop at Blue-Green while it flushes
its bilge tanks and reboots untenable because it takes away the impetus for
the Mainframe rebellion. As Horn notes, "[Scylla] and her mother and some of
Pas's other sprats had tried to kill him because they did not want people
leaving the old whorl to come to Blue where they would not be the gods." But
if the Whorl's prime directive is as seed ship or long range voyager, why
wouldn't Echidna et al still be aboard as its gods? Surely, they don't need
the colonists of Blue to worship them if they have other congregants.

Secondly, Pas and the Neighbors both have two heads. Coincidence or plot
point? For the most part the twice-normal biology of the Blue-Green systems
seems utilized more for exotic color than anything else (love those
eight-legged crocodiles of the Nadi). And as for Pas not having multiple
limbs, there's evidence that the Neighbors know how to bioengineer
shape-shifting in the inhumi, so perhaps Pas knows how to do this himself.

Thirdly, who is the little girl in Hide's dream (RTTW, pgs. 22-24) who is
being pursued by the talus-like doll and why are there also "tall men with
too many legs" in some of the rooms Hide looks into? Isn't she Scylla, who
we know is on the run from Pas? And why would there be Neighbors present?
Wolfe's dream sequences are almost always meant to be revelatory.

Fourthly, at one point during IGJ, Horn sings in and translates from
Neighborese--and not amateurishly, but well enough so that it completely
discombobulates poor Colonel Terzo. When and how did Horn learn the language
of the Neighbors? From darling one-armed Seawrack? But isn't Seawrack a
minion of the Mother--Greater Scylla's clone on Blue? How, in turn, has
Scylla come to learn Neighborese? Personally, I favor the idea that the Pas
aspect of PassilkHorn is the one who's providing the translation skills
because it's the least complicated. As a Neighbor, he's simply speaking his
native tongue.

And these are just off the top of my much-scratched  head.

Robert Borski






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