{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/195",
    "note": "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.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 195,
    "subject": "Fat Puppy, Bermuda Triangle",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-04-11T01:14:00+00:00",
    "last": "1997-04-11T01:14:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0004-0041@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-04-11T01:14:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Fat Puppy, Bermuda Triangle",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #5536428 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01#\n\nHey Everybody,\n\nHere is a fat puppy compilation of three messages I sent that were\nlost in the Bermuda Triangle.  They're a bit dated now, but maybe not\ntoo stale.\n\nGE Mail on Apr 09 17:52\nTo: WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01#\nSub: (whorl) coo coup/fish & fowl\n\nReply:  Item #7776624 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01#\n\nalga,\n\nRe: Thecla/half-sister Thea(/Catherine?--if she's a khaibit of\none or the other) coo, good point.  Re: Church of the Conciliator,\nanother good point.  (Maybe I'm just remembering them from you telling me\nbefore, but I was about to mention them for you anyway.)\n\n(You know, I'm becoming more convinced that you would really\nappreciate Peter Wright's essays in that \"Foundation No. 66\"--now\nI'm down to wondering if you would have anything to argue against\nthem beyond simple quibbles!)\n\nVance,\n\nRe: ghost of Pike, you are right, of course--a third possibility\nis that \"things are really what they seem\" and thus the ghost is a\n\"real\" ghost rather than a computer generated eidolon or\n\"techno-ghost\" (from New Sun and end of EXODUS THE LONG SUN).\nBut I think that, even if this is true, it has pretty much the same\neffect as if it were an eidolon--in other words, it has a greater\nreality than the forgery of Quetzal disguising himself as Pike.\n\nThere is definitely a tie between Quetzal and Pike.  For\nstarters, Quetzal is most likely the same devil/vampire that Pike fended\noff so many years ago.\n\nPersonally, I think the explanation for the appearance of\nghostpike is that Quetzal accidentally brought Pike down from Main Frame.\nThe sequence goes like this: Silk is summoned to fight vampire; Silk\ncarves his name five stories up [Talon's note: \"five,\" but that's\nanother story!], along with Pike's name, as a talisman against vampires\n(I've seen this sort of thing in vampire lit, too--sometimes the cross is a\nswastika, I think); Quetzal returns for more young blood, sees the names\ncarved there, and \"goes wide\" by his own account to Remora (so the magic\nworks--go figure); Quetzal, obviously thinking of old times with Pike, maybe\neven checking therecords at Main Frame (\"Isn't that old codger =dead= yet?  Oh\nyeah, here it is--died last year.  Go back to sleep, ghost.\"), flies\nover to Sun Street manteion for a peek at this presumptive heir to Pike;\ncatches ghostgirl Mucor (in the buff) in Silk's room and flies back out; then\n[thank you for your patience] ENTER PIKE, just like how Bustard wanders back\nfrom the land of the dead following Auk back, or like how Silk meets his four\nparents in the same way.\n\nSee, Pike followed Quetzal back to the land of the living for a\nquick visit and was happy with what he saw. OR psi-magically, having\nboth Quetzal and Silk thinking about Pike made mischivous Mucor go\nwake the ghost up for a visit, in the same way she seems to activate\nthe other \"sleeping\" gods of Viron.\n\nRe: Rose having a daughter (1, p. 69).  Nope.  I think that\npassage is referring to Scylla, the daughter of Echidna, rather than any\nmortal daughter.\n\nRe: how did Silk kill Hierax the bird.  Well, as I understand it,\nthe bird's wings were clipped so it couldn't fly away.  As Silk was\nlosing conciousness he managed to push the bird off the roof and\nit fell to its death.\n\nRe: Urus and the Triv at the tavern.  One thing this suggests is\nthat Urus was not previously employed by Trivigaunte--otherwise he\nwould have brought this up.  Urus is the one that Mint says is Evil.\nThe information he gives leads to the attempted assassination of\nSpider, doesn't it?  (I'm trying to remember.  Eland is killed, mistaken\nfor Spider--and a lynx dies, too.  Ordered by Siyuf, presumably\ncarried out by Willet/Hossaan.)  Silk puzzled it together about that far,\nI think, and told somebody who told Horn.\n\n=mantis=\n----------\nGE Mail on Apr 10 09:02\nTo: WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00#\nSub: (whorl) Idyll on a quaestor\n\n\nWhoops--in my previous message, \"coo coup/fish & fowl,\" I used\nthe word \"eidolon\" when I should have used \"aquastor\" (even though I\nthink that they might be used interchangably by the commonality\nof the Commonwealth, for my own sense of mental cohesion I like to\nkeep them separate: \"eidolon\" as beam-to-the-brain ghost, and\n\"aquastor\" as physically manifested ghost of hologrammic silvery dust).\n\nThe ghosts of Main Frame seem to be eidolons, by our man\nSciathan's description and the experience of Silk's friends.\n\n[Since \"quaesitor\" in early Roman times was a criminal\ninvestigator (mainly homicide, I think), I continue to wonder if\n\"aquastors\" are ghost detectives--that is, investigators of the\nliving on behalf of the dead.  Or there are the \"quaestors,\"\ndeputies of magistrates, that grew through the years of the Republic\nfrom a population of two to forty until Augustus reduced them to\ntwenty: this job was the entry-level magistry sought by ambitious\nyoung men.  In context of \"aquastor\" this suggests a hierarchy and\ngovernment of the dead.]\n\n=mantis=\n----------\nGE Mail on Apr 10 13:10\nTo: WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01#\nSub: (whorl) more Wolfe on Q&D\n\nReply:  Item #2545266 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01#\n\nHere's the latest from Gene Wolfe:\n\n\"Your own THE QUICK AND DIRTY GUIDE TO THE LONG SUN WHORL has\nbeen very valuable to me in the writing of THE BOOK OF THE SHORT SUN.\nI owe you thanks and offer them.  You may quote me. [Yay!]\n\n\"Auk is not a member of \"Blood's Gang.\" [Wolfe is probably\nreferring to the Power Groups Table, p. 34-36]  As a member of Viron's\nunderwhorl he knows Blood, naturally.  Orchid, on the other hand,\nis clearly and simply a subordinate of Blood's; he is the real owner\nof the yellow house, and sends Silk there to exorcise it. [I put Auk\non the Blood list because he seems to have lied to Silk about his\ncontacts with Blood--Blood's monitor knows Auk quite well.]\n\n\"To the best of my memory, that azoth has a hyacinth in the hilt,\nwhile the demon (the stone one presses to turn on the force beam)\nis a bloodstone (p. 3).  [This shoots down my speculations that the\nstone, thought to be a bloodstone, was actually a tawny hyacinth\nstone--linking the azoth-as-gift to Hyacinth rather than Blood.\nI'll have to look for the hyacinths on the hilt, but offhand that\nsounds more like the needler Crane gave to Hy.]\n\n\"The Prolocutor's Palace, the Grand Manteion, and the Calde's\nPalace are all on the Palatine, that is to say, on a single hill which\nthey all share with Ermine's and the mansions of the commissioners and\nsome other rich people; thus the streets are narrow, and the buildings\nare tall but not wide.  Everything uphill is necessarily quite close\ntogether.  Note that neither the Juzgado nor the Alambrera are up\nthere.\" [referring to the map on inside back cover. I meant to suggest\nthat the Juzgado was at the base of the hill, but maybe my \"hill lines\"\nwere too sketchy.  Granted there's too much room on the hill as I've\ndrawn it--but there are physical limitations, as well as conceptual\nones! <g>  \"But which street has the proper position for =Gold= street?\nAnd where, oh where, is the Alameda?\" I silently whine.]\n\nColor me quite the happy camper.\n\n=mantis=\n\nP.S. vizcacha--glad to have you onboard the \"Pike Aquastor\"\nbandwagon. Alga won't come onboard anytime soon since she's the one who came\nup with the very interesting Quetzal-as-Pike theory.\n\n=m=\n\nRight.  Well that's it for this trip down memory lane!  I'll try to\nkeep up with the rest of the pack now.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}