Numbers on the Seal of Pas

[Jack]

In chapter 9 of LotLS, Silk encounters doors secured with the seal of Pas on which appears the following:

5553 8783 4223 9700 34
2221 0401 1101 7276 56
SEALED FOR THE MONARCH


Does anyone know what these numbers mean? There are 10 numbers with 8 4-digit numbers and 2 2-digit numbers. All 10 Arabic numerals are represented. But I can't find any meaning in them.

If it were some lesser writer, I would assume that the numbers don't mean anything. But Gene Wolfe packs everything with meaning. These numbers have to be a clue, but I'm clueless.

[bsharporflat]

I'm mystified also but I have given it a shot. Perhaps some of what I've found can be pooled and we can come up with something. My first stop was to the Moonmilk/Urth archives. Surely someone had addressed this question in its 13 year history. Only Borski (of course) had a hint of a guess. His post-

In _Nightside the Long Sun_, on p. 29, Wolfe has Maytera Marble presiding over a mathematics lesson, "watching the children take nineteen from
twenty-nine and get nine, add seven and seventeen and get twenty-three."This, however, is only possible in a base 9 numbering system, and a strange
one at that, since a conventional base 9 system would only include the digits 0 to 8 (there should thus no 9, 19, or 29).

The following questions therefore ensue:

Since the number 9 is present, are we to assume that one of the other numbers has been retired? (If so, it's not evidenced in the Seal of Pas,
which contains all ten digits from 0 - 9. But could these sequences be artifacts of the pre-launch numbering system?)

Equally possible, I suppose, is the notion that the Whorl, like the ancient Romans, uses no 0 --meaning that the sequence after the first and second
enneads runs ...8, 9, 11, 12... and 18, 19, 21, 22. But can this be supported by text citings: i.e., do the numbers 10, 20, 30, etc., occur
anywhere in the narrative?

Also, if we accept the validity of the base 9 system (doubtless enacted by the Whorl gods to reinforce their sanctity, just as Pas's children have
co-opted the days of the week), how does this change the facts, figures and chronology of the Long and Short Sun books--from ages of the characters to
lengths of the year--or even, say, the hypothetical distance between Blue and Green at apogee and perigee?

Robert Borski

Well, it is an attempt. Are the children's math results errors or an odd version of Base 9 as Borski suggests? Since he doesn't pursue the idea in the archive or in his books I have to guess he was unable to crack the code (if there is one). If it is Base nine it would seem to suggest The Nine gods of the Whorl. Perhaps 1-9 for the regular gods and the extra digit Borski notes is the zero (0) for The Outsider? The Seal of Pas is found in Chapter Nine. There are nine groups of digits. That numeral does seem especially conspicuous.

Now I will ramble a bit-

For me, base 9 automatically invokes the idea of being nine-fingered (as our normal base 10 is based on the usual # of fingers). And this, of course, calls to mind LOTR and Tolkein as both Sauron and Frodo become nine-fingered. I know Wolfe was a great admirer of Tolkein. A foreword to LOTR by Tolkein has always made me wonder if the author was missing a finger:

..it had to be typed and re-typed: by me; the cost of professional typing by the ten-fingered was beyond my means

I've looked and not found any mention of a missing finger on the web. He was in the war. I"ve scoured Tolkein photos..he might have a piece of his left ring finger missing but impossible to say for sure.

This brings back my long wondering on whether Gene Wolfe is lame in one leg. Again no mention of it in web bios. He also was in a war. There is a mention of a bad childhood leg injury from a bike accident in an interview with Larry McCaffrey. Many of the photos of Gene Wolfe show him with a cane...but they are all recent photos. Nothing from the 70's when BotNS was being written. I must continue to suspect leg and finger are important for similar reasons in the works of Wolfe and Tolkein.

[Jack]

This brings back my long wondering on whether Gene Wolfe is lame in one leg. Again no mention of it in web bios. He also was in a war. There is a mention of a bad childhood leg injury from a bike accident in an interview with Larry McCaffrey. Many of the photos of Gene Wolfe show him with a cane...but they are all recent photos. Nothing from the 70's when BotNS was being written. I must continue to suspect leg and finger are important for similar reasons in the works of Wolfe and Tolkein.

Lameness does seem to appear often in Wolfe. Severian and Silk are prominent examples. Also the ending of "The Hero as Werewolf", a story which is strange and chilling. With Wolfe, the physical lameness probably suggests moral and spiritual disabilities. I would also like to know if Wolfe suffers from a lame leg.

[colomon]

I'm mystified also but I have given it a shot. Perhaps some of what I've found can be pooled and we can come up with something. My first stop was to the Moonmilk/Urth archives. Surely someone had addressed this question in its 13 year history. Only Borski (of course) had a hint of a guess. His post-

[i]In _Nightside the Long Sun_, on p. 29, Wolfe has Maytera Marble presiding over a mathematics lesson, "watching the children take nineteen from twenty-nine and get nine, add seven and seventeen and get twenty-three."This, however, is only possible in a base 9 numbering system, and a strange one at that, since a conventional base 9 system would only include the digits 0 to 8 (there should thus no 9, 19, or 29).

Well, it is an attempt. Are the children's math results errors or an odd version of Base 9 as Borski suggests?

Actually, Borski is just wrong here. In base nine (with weird 9s in the first case), 29-19=10 and 7+17=25. (Okay, I guess you could get the first one to work if you argued it's base 9 with the additional digit 9, so that 20 (= 2 * 9 + 0) is the same number as 19 (= 1 * 9 + 9). But the second example just doesn't work.)

Shame, I like all the pretty nine-based theories....

[colomon]

The second example does work in base eleven, however...

[Jack]

In _Nightside the Long Sun_, on p. 29, Wolfe has Maytera Marble presiding over a mathematics lesson, "watching the children take nineteen from
twenty-nine and get nine, add seven and seventeen and get twenty-three."This, however, is only possible in a base 9 numbering system, and a strange
one at that, since a conventional base 9 system would only include the digits 0 to 8 (there should thus no 9, 19, or 29).

Robert Borski

A base 9 system would not use the numeral 9 ("10" would stand for our base 10 numeral 9), and since all the Arabic numerals 0 thru 9 appear on Pas's Seal, I think we have to conclude that the Whorl uses our base 10 system. Besides, base 9 would be a weird system. Binary (base 2) is useful because binary arithmetic has simple rules and binary numbers are easily represented by on/off electric currents in computers. Base 8 (octal) and base 16 (hexadecimal) are also used in computers because they are powers of 2. I don't think base 9 has anything to recommend it. The fact that there are 9 major gods could be a reason for a base 9 system, but in that case I think Wolfe would have given us a clue by not using the numeral 9 on the seal of Pas.

I have a different and simpler explanation of Maytera Marble's math lesson. Wolfe is making a joke and expects us to laugh at the errors in arithmetic. Marble is old and is losing her--I've got to say it--marbles. It's always funny when a teacher makes a mistake. (I've been a teacher and my students always found it hilarious when I made a mistake.)

[bsharporflat]

Oops. Didn't mean to focus so much attention on the Base 9 thing. Still seems like 9 gods, chapter 9 and 9 groups of 4 digits might be significant.

I tried approaching it as a numeric cryptogram (though I am not terribly good at such puzzles), adding the four digit groups (since Silk makes the sign of addition over the Seal) in various combinations. They all seem to add to numbers between 1-26. I tried using the alphabet code where 1= A ......26= Z. Got nothing. Then I tried the code where 9= A, 10= B..... wraparound to 8= Z . I even tried 11=A. Didn't get anything, even in anagrams.

I tried working backwards, from the solution. What 9 letter sequence might Wolfe have hidden above "Sealed For The Monarch"? I felt clever in thinking it might be "GENE WOLFE". But I couldn't make it work. Nor did the idea of the first initial of each of the major Whorl gods. Soo...I guess I am stumped. :- ( I wish someone could get it!

[timbot]

This is probably pure coincidence but the third result of a Google search of 5553 is the following page:

http://www.genome.jp/dbget-bin/www_bget?hsa:5553

It was the reference to homo sapiens in brackets that interested me.

Does anyone know what this page is describing? I assume it is one of the genes in the human genome in which case it is probably totally irrelevant but is there some class of scientific notation in which homo sapiens are designated 5553? In that case then the first 4 numerals may indicate the sleeper species.

[Peter_Jeavons]

And this, of course, calls to mind LOTR and Tolkein as both Sauron and Frodo become nine-fingered. I know Wolfe was a great admirer of Tolkein. A foreword to LOTR by Tolkein has always made me wonder if the author was missing a finger:

..it had to be typed and re-typed: by me; the cost of professional typing by the ten-fingered was beyond my means

I've looked and not found any mention of a missing finger on the web. He was in the war. I"ve scoured Tolkein photos..he might have a piece of his left ring finger missing but impossible to say for sure.

I know this reply is awfully late, but I've just been scanning John Garth's Tolkien and the Great War (which I will have to read properly soon) and can find no mention of a missing finger. I've always assumed that the reference is to JRRT's own status as a "two-fingered" typist - (something that academics of that generation seemed to take something of a perverse pride in). Of course, it's possible that he lost it at some other time ...