Subject: (urth) FREE LIVE FREE (spoilers)

From: adam louis stephanides <astephan at students.uiuc.edu>
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 15:19:05 +0000

[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

This is the first time I've posted to this list, but I've
enjoyed lurking a lot.  As long as FLF is being discussed, 
I'll repeat some questions I posted to rasfw a year ago and 
never got answers to (although it being that long since I
last read the book, the answers may not mean much to
me now):

1) Why are there two Whittens (in addition to "Ben Free")
in 1983?  The younger Whitten (the man in the duffle coat)
is there on his second trip with the gizmo for the government.
What is the older Whitten doing there?

2) When "Ben Free" reappears on January 14, 1983, where did
he come from?  He didn't come from the frontier, because he
left the frontier for the last time before he hid the gizmo
in the wall, and that was presumably before January 14, 1983.

3) A minor point, but in Chapter 52 the witch tells the others
that "Today I defrauded a certain one, the namesake of one who
possesses much authority, below."  Is there a demon named
McAlister?  Or is there some joke regarding McAlister's first
name (which I don't remember ever being stated) which I missed?
Or did she defraud somebody else that day?  (Actually I vaguely
recall getting an answer to this one, but I don't remember
what it was, and I don't think I was satisfied by it.)

--Adam