# Pike? Auk? *The Whorl list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 11 Apr 1997* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Ranjit Bhatnagar *11 Apr 1997, 11:07* 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. --- ### m.driussi *11 Apr 1997, 20:29 · follows Ranjit Bhatnagar* 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. 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= ---