Sylveste is the archaeologist whose 50-year investigation into the Amarantin extinction drives the novel’s plot, while his complicated relationship with Calvin Sylveste gives him a doubled relationship to every scientific question he pursues. He is the figure through whom the novel tests The Hazards of Knowledge-Seeking, since the Inhibitor device on Cerberus is designed to detect exactly the kind of curiosity that defines Sylveste.

What makes Sylveste more than a conventional obsessive is his awareness of his own obsession as a possible pathology. When Pascale asks him to promise he will not enter Cerberus, he answers by comparing his appetite to hunger itself, through Calvin’s voice: “knowledge makes you hungry, and it’s a hunger you can’t resist, even if you know that what you’re feasting on could kill you” (452). The admission is damning, since he grasps the risk analytically yet proceeds anyway. The novel uses this gap between insight and action to build a character whose intelligence is the problem, rather than the solution.

Sylveste’s treatment of other people follows a similar pattern. His ultimatum to his workers during the razorstorm, his manipulation of Pascale during their marriage, his threat to detonate antimatter if the crew harms him—each decision treats other human beings as obstacles between himself and information.