The Claw of the Conciliator: Chapter III

The Showman's Tent

“Listen. In coming here, I have passed through all your future. Some parts of it remain with me, no matter how clouded. I told you only the truth—and if you are indeed a friend of the alcalde of this place, I will tell you something further that you may tell him, something I have learned from the questions of those who have come to question me. Armed men are seeking to free a man called Barnoch.”

These are the last words the Green Man tells Severian. In thanks, Severian gives the green man the tool to free himself from his chains that keep him trapped in this time.

For the green man is from the far future, when the sun is much brighter. This gives Severian the belief that a new sun is born, which is almost a religious belief, though it’s also a technological solution to the problem facing this Urth so far in the future that the sun has become bloated and cooler.

This is a background to the entire series so perhaps it’s worth saying a bit about it. Now, I’m not a physicist or an astronomer so I can only give you the gist of this. Someone smarter than me may be able to correct me or speak more fully on this process.

But a star is just a nuclear fusion reaction happening. This fusion creates the many different kind of atoms we know of on earth, which shower down upon us from the sun. For we and our planet were born from the sun, that distant yet so close star.

But eventually, the fusion slows and stops. As it slows, the sun will actually expand into a Red Giant. This expansion may actually cause the sun to swallow the earth or burn its surface away. Gradually, the sun will shrink back down. It’s not massive enough to become a blackhole so it will instead become a white dwarf.

This whole process takes billions of years and scientists estimate that the sun will not begin to die out for a few more billion years.

But Wolfe isn’t going for scientific accuracy. At least not entirely. And he wrote this forty years ago, so how we understood this process may have evolved since then.

Like I said, I’m not an astronomer or physicist.

In Wolfe’s conception of this process, the sun has become dimmer, red and swollen. In the future that the green man talks of, the sun is brighter.

Of course, this may be the same sun, since as the sun expands it will get brighter and hotter. The green man is green because of the lack of material food on Urth in the future. Rather, humanity has begun to photosynthesize, in a way.

“The green color that puzzles your people so much is only what you call pond scum. We have altered it until it can live in our blood, and by its intervention have at last made our peace in humankind’s long struggle with the sun. In us, the tiny plants live and die, and our bodies feed from them and their dead and require no other nourishment. All the famines, and all the labor of growing food, are ended.”

But the sun of Severian’s time is too dim for the photosynthesis to properly feed him.

The green man came back in time to Severian’s age to explore and study but he’s become trapped and only wants to go home.

Severian allows him to.

The relationship between these two is interesting and I’ve always been most fascinated by the green man. Fascinated enough that I wrote a bit of an ode to him in my novel Iron Wolf. A man adrift in time, trapped, but finding connection with only one man: Severian.

But what leads Severian here is his search for Agia, who has disappeared in the crowd. He doesn’t believe she recognized him because he’s dressed differently than normal. And perhaps she wouldn’t, but if he wears his mask, I can’t imagine anyone not recognizing him.

We also learn that he only left Nessus a few days ago. Our first indication of the passage of time between books. Which means Severian must still be quite close to Nessus. Perhaps the Walls can even still be seen in the distance.

We also learn that the Cathedral of the Pelerines has burned and seemed to rise into the air, which hearkens back to the vision Dorcas saw of a castle in the sky.

But what do all these details amount to?

Vodalus’ men may come to Saltus to save Barnoch. The Cathedral of the Pelerines has burned away. Severian and Jonas are only a few days out from Nessus and they’ve spent at least a few days in Saltus. Agia may be following Severian. A green man was caught and is being held captive in a sort of freakshow tent.

Severian has freed him, or at least given him the means of escape.

And where is Dorcas?

Severian is planting seeds and created a foundation for us, his audience, the readers of his tale, but what does all this mean for us? What are we to draw from all these errant details?

Well, time will tell.

And despite the lack of forward momentum in this chapter, it is one of the most evocative. For some reason, the meeting with the green man stands enormous in my memory. I was surprised both times I’ve reread this to discover just how small this scene really is. But, conceptually, it blew the top of my head clean off.

And Wolfe does this over and over again through this series. And, often, that’s enough.