Subject: (whorl) Pike? Auk?

From: Ranjit Bhatnagar <ranjit at gradient.cis.upenn.edu>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:07:55 +0000

[Posted from WHORL, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

Mantis, congrats on the good review of Q&D from the one
critic who really counts...

> Personally, I think the explanation for the appearance of ghostpike

I really like this explanation (by the way, to whomever
asked, I think the way we know that Pike has fended off a
demon is that Silk did it by copying Pike).  But I think
that another pretty good explanation is that It Was All A
Dream.  That entire passage is written in the same run-on
sentence style that Wolfe uses elsewhere only for dreams and
for dazes induced by fatigue, getting whomped on the head,
or overheating of one's central processor.

> Mucor (in the buff) in Silk's room and flies back out; then [thank you for
> your patience] ENTER PIKE, just like how Bustard wanders back from the land
> of the dead following Auk back, or like how Silk meets his four parents in the
> same way.

I figured Auk was just a bit delirious. Or perhaps Tartaros
implanted Bustard's ghost there -- no, Bustard appeared
*before* Tartaros, yes?  Anyway, whether or not Auk was out
of his head, Bustard was in it, not manifested as an
aquastor.  And Silk had a vision of his parents, but they
weren't projected into the whorl for him.  Maybe not the
same sort of thing as Pike's appearance.

Still don't see the connection between Mucor and sleeping
gods.  She woke sleeping humans by possessing them.  Wonder
if she could possess/wake a sleeping soldier?  But I don't
remember any hints of her having a rapport with chems or
Mainframe.

> Re: how did Silk kill Hierax the bird.  Well, as I understand it, the
> bird's wings were clipped so it couldn't fly away.  As Silk was
> losing conciousness he managed to push the bird off the roof and it
> fell to its death.

Silk insisted that he wasn't directly responsible for its
death, even inadvertently -- maybe in its excitement the
white-headed one leaped up to fly at him, accidentally
flinging itself off the roof.  This was probably Silk's
first time killing anything outside of a sacrifice, and he
must've felt guilty about it, but later in his prayers to
Heirax the god he boasted of killing the sacreligious
bird...

-r.

---

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 20:29:00 +0000

Reply:  Item #1489788 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00#

Ranjit,

Re: "It Was All A Dream."  I agree with you entirely.  And likewise
with the way you link the dream sequences to the fatigue and
post-concussion sequences.  Now what I'm asking you to do, and
this is a very small step, is to see these semi-conscious states (dream,
fatigue, etc.) as a single state of mind (a form of trance) that is
super-conscious, rather than disparate forms of muddled, delusional,
less-than-fully-consciousness.

In Severian's narrative, the corridors of time are pretty much Dreamland.
Sure, the place is also the (closest) other dimension, too; but the logic
and the reality of the corridors is about as dreamy as anything Little
Nemo deals with. And things look different in the corridors, showing
either their true natures, or, if the corridor is purely subjective
to Severian's point of view (as I believe Peter Wright argues--and
maybe somebody around here has said the same), then this dream form
is only a "true" form in the sense that it represents what Severian's
unconscious mind thinks.  So Dorcas looks like Dorcas, but the
Cumaean looks like a reptile coiled around a rod, Hildegrin looks
like a monster (I think), and the Old Autarch looks like a Bull or a
Minotaur.  At the sorceror's duel, Severian tried to make light of it
all until, what do you know, the magic works!

(In the Soldier series, ghosts remain invisible, i.e., essentially
eidolons, until Latro touches them, at which point they become
visible, i.e. aquastors.  But since those books are sword and sandal
fantasies we don't apply the same rules to them.)

Likewise, I'm saying, on the Whorl.  When Auk or Mint get fatigued,
they really =do= manage to telepath with each other.  And so on.  Mucor
is ghostgirl, Quetzal is inhumu, Silk is something special, aquastors
and eidolons caper and cavort around for the Deus Ex Machina
puppetmasters that create them, BUT Auk and Mint are two normal human
beings for all we can tell.  (Oh shoot--did Auk only start
telepathing =after= meeting Bustard and Tartaros?  And Mint, only
after being possessed?  Argh.)

Re: Bustard not an aquastor, right--I should have written he was an
eidolon.  Same difference, though, in that both are computer
genrated--just that one requires 1.5 and the other 9 volts. <g>

Re: possessing sleeping soldiers.  There is that curious observation
by Horn that Hy was strongly flirting with the chem soldiers whenever
Silk wasn't around.  Spooky thought, huh--Kypris (or whichever goddess
is riding Hy) possessing a war machine!  Maybe she was thwarted by
hardwiring that makes them open only to Pas?  Well, IMHO, she was
still trying it out!

=mantis=