From: maa32 <maa32@dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Subject: eureka: Proof that trees are neigbors and overview
Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2002 09:01:06 -0700

Now that I have proven that plants can double limbs and that it is a common 
occurence,  I will provide a final bit of evidence that seals everything 
together.  When I first posited that Horn left Silk's body at the end of On 
Blue's Waters, Nutria replied that neighborly contact was necessary.  Look at 
the last couple of pages of On Blue's Waters.  Where does the narrator go to 
sleep before that section where Babbie is the narrator shows up? He falls 
asleep on a large tree, "just like we had on Green".  This is the neighborly 
contact we sought.

The trees create the neighbors and all life by recombining with them.  The 
woodsman in On blue's Waters pissed off the neighbors when he went and cut a 
tree down.  The vine at the beginning of In Green's Jungles that Cugino cuts 
down is from one of these huge trees and is an evil liana (which I think is 
the primitive form of inhumu before they consume any animals - remember the 
epiphany of Hoof in chapter 17: that moment when you realize that "a stick is 
a snake without moving".  Look at how often Krait and Jahlee are compared to 
snakes: indeed, when Jahlee and the narrator first go to Urth, she clings to 
him "like a liana".  In real life, a liana vine (there is also a liana snake) 
is hollow and holds a ton of water, which enters through its funky holes.  The 
liana staff has been feeding on Silk and making him sick, either depriving him 
of water because some part of Horn became neighbor-like and vegetative when he 
fell in the hole (which MIGHT account for the narrator's poor apetite: the 
exchange of DNA has left some remnant of photosynthesis (or perhaps he feels 
himself becoming what he eats: that part still needs some development.)

So: it is the far future after the flood.  Silk returns to the past to restore 
Cillinia to her grave because a human must do it or it comes undone (like the 
clearing of the sewers Horn had to do [also, note the parallels between Horn 
in that scene and Severian: carries a sword and a light which he loses in a 
flood just like Severian lost Terminus Est and the Claw in the battle at the 
lake; when he completes his task a huge flood washes all human traces away 
except a blind man] and in return finds out from The mother's mother (or 
perhaps the mother herself) or arranges for the return of Seawrack so that the 
Mother will no longer seek to destroy mankind in the future.  The inhumi 
boarded the Long Sun Whorl from the beginning, and they are possibly the 
witches, and as someone so cogently pointed out, the Cumean who has some 
relationship with the moon where, low and behold, the inhumu come from in the 
form of terraforming gone awry and too successfully adapting to the 
environment.  Remember that eerie scene where he sees her in the moon and 
thinks she has a totally different form (i think it is in shadow of the 
torturer --> he says she is wearing a body not her own or something: the 
witches ARE inhumu, and the Cummean is from the moon)
Also, note that scene when Silk climbs up the cliff in Return to the Whorl and 
meets the man in the colorless cloak on Green when he retreives Jahlee: he is 
"much lighter" than he had ever been before and doesn't have any problem 
climbing up that huge cliff and fighting off all those inhumu with one hand.  
Typhon has arranged for his return after the flood, and will rule Blue through 
his downloaded aspect of Pas, and had perhaps sent some of the sleepers 
programmed to seek out the conciliator (what was Rigoglio thinking when they 
transported to that particular place? something about eponyms...) Also, 
remember what happened to the sleepers that came down with the landers? Silk 
won't tell Rigoglio - he breaks it off.  They are the slaves that Marrow and 
the others employ because they are confused and lived to serve Typhon.
and that strange four armed man in the sea who boards Horn's ship in On blue's 
waters, who he posits might have requested eternal life ... could a tree have 
gotten a hold of some of Severian's DNA?  I don't know, but that man on green 
who walks "in a stiff bird like fashion" wrapped in a colorless cloak seems 
pretty familiar to me.  Who walks in a stiff, bird like fashion?  Is it 
someone we know? Remember how the narrator keeps referring to Severian as his 
young "friend",(in fact, he refuses to name Severian) and then how Jahlee 
casts out the bones in the tower and tells him they belong to his "friend"?  
How long would someone like Severian live?  Can he never die? 
The question was not "where is Silk", but "where is Horn?". 
And read the very very first letter from Pajarocu: something about a gray man 
speaking to "us".  Is Heirax ever represented as gray?  He's involved 
somehow... and he has to die, too --> but not entirely.

I think I've done a pretty good job making sense of the Masterpiece that is 
The Book of the Short Sun.  There is still a lot to do.  Remember who did all 
this.
Marc Aramini