Subject: (whorl) Fat Puppy, Bermuda Triangle

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 01:14:00 +0000

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

Reply:  Item #5536428 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01#

Hey Everybody,

Here is a fat puppy compilation of three messages I sent that were
lost in the Bermuda Triangle.  They're a bit dated now, but maybe not
too stale.

GE Mail on Apr 09 17:52
To: WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01#
Sub: (whorl) coo coup/fish & fowl

Reply:  Item #7776624 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01#

alga,

Re: Thecla/half-sister Thea(/Catherine?--if she's a khaibit of
one or the other) coo, good point.  Re: Church of the Conciliator,
another good point.  (Maybe I'm just remembering them from you telling me
before, but I was about to mention them for you anyway.)

(You know, I'm becoming more convinced that you would really
appreciate Peter Wright's essays in that "Foundation No. 66"--now
I'm down to wondering if you would have anything to argue against
them beyond simple quibbles!)

Vance,

Re: ghost of Pike, you are right, of course--a third possibility
is that "things are really what they seem" and thus the ghost is a
"real" ghost rather than a computer generated eidolon or
"techno-ghost" (from New Sun and end of EXODUS THE LONG SUN).
But I think that, even if this is true, it has pretty much the same
effect as if it were an eidolon--in other words, it has a greater
reality than the forgery of Quetzal disguising himself as Pike.

There is definitely a tie between Quetzal and Pike.  For
starters, Quetzal is most likely the same devil/vampire that Pike fended
off so many years ago.

Personally, I think the explanation for the appearance of
ghostpike is that Quetzal accidentally brought Pike down from Main Frame.
The sequence goes like this: Silk is summoned to fight vampire; Silk
carves his name five stories up [Talon's note: "five," but that's
another story!], along with Pike's name, as a talisman against vampires
(I've seen this sort of thing in vampire lit, too--sometimes the cross is a
swastika, I think); Quetzal returns for more young blood, sees the names
carved there, and "goes wide" by his own account to Remora (so the magic
works--go figure); Quetzal, obviously thinking of old times with Pike, maybe
even checking therecords at Main Frame ("Isn't that old codger =dead= yet?  Oh
yeah, here it is--died last year.  Go back to sleep, ghost."), flies
over to Sun Street manteion for a peek at this presumptive heir to Pike;
catches ghostgirl 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.

See, Pike followed Quetzal back to the land of the living for a
quick visit and was happy with what he saw. OR psi-magically, having
both Quetzal and Silk thinking about Pike made mischivous Mucor go
wake the ghost up for a visit, in the same way she seems to activate
the other "sleeping" gods of Viron.

Re: Rose having a daughter (1, p. 69).  Nope.  I think that
passage is referring to Scylla, the daughter of Echidna, rather than any
mortal daughter.

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.

Re: Urus and the Triv at the tavern.  One thing this suggests is
that Urus was not previously employed by Trivigaunte--otherwise he
would have brought this up.  Urus is the one that Mint says is Evil.
The information he gives leads to the attempted assassination of
Spider, doesn't it?  (I'm trying to remember.  Eland is killed, mistaken
for Spider--and a lynx dies, too.  Ordered by Siyuf, presumably
carried out by Willet/Hossaan.)  Silk puzzled it together about that far,
I think, and told somebody who told Horn.

=mantis=
----------
GE Mail on Apr 10 09:02
To: WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00#
Sub: (whorl) Idyll on a quaestor

Whoops--in my previous message, "coo coup/fish & fowl," I used
the word "eidolon" when I should have used "aquastor" (even though I
think that they might be used interchangably by the commonality
of the Commonwealth, for my own sense of mental cohesion I like to
keep them separate: "eidolon" as beam-to-the-brain ghost, and
"aquastor" as physically manifested ghost of hologrammic silvery dust).

The ghosts of Main Frame seem to be eidolons, by our man
Sciathan's description and the experience of Silk's friends.

[Since "quaesitor" in early Roman times was a criminal
investigator (mainly homicide, I think), I continue to wonder if
"aquastors" are ghost detectives--that is, investigators of the
living on behalf of the dead.  Or there are the "quaestors,"
deputies of magistrates, that grew through the years of the Republic
from a population of two to forty until Augustus reduced them to
twenty: this job was the entry-level magistry sought by ambitious
young men.  In context of "aquastor" this suggests a hierarchy and
government of the dead.]

=mantis=
----------
GE Mail on Apr 10 13:10
To: WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01#
Sub: (whorl) more Wolfe on Q&D

Reply:  Item #2545266 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01#

Here's the latest from Gene Wolfe:

"Your own THE QUICK AND DIRTY GUIDE TO THE LONG SUN WHORL has
been very valuable to me in the writing of THE BOOK OF THE SHORT SUN.
I owe you thanks and offer them.  You may quote me. [Yay!]

"Auk is not a member of "Blood's Gang." [Wolfe is probably
referring to the Power Groups Table, p. 34-36]  As a member of Viron's
underwhorl he knows Blood, naturally.  Orchid, on the other hand,
is clearly and simply a subordinate of Blood's; he is the real owner
of the yellow house, and sends Silk there to exorcise it. [I put Auk
on the Blood list because he seems to have lied to Silk about his
contacts with Blood--Blood's monitor knows Auk quite well.]

"To the best of my memory, that azoth has a hyacinth in the hilt,
while the demon (the stone one presses to turn on the force beam)
is a bloodstone (p. 3).  [This shoots down my speculations that the
stone, thought to be a bloodstone, was actually a tawny hyacinth
stone--linking the azoth-as-gift to Hyacinth rather than Blood.
I'll have to look for the hyacinths on the hilt, but offhand that
sounds more like the needler Crane gave to Hy.]

"The Prolocutor's Palace, the Grand Manteion, and the Calde's
Palace are all on the Palatine, that is to say, on a single hill which
they all share with Ermine's and the mansions of the commissioners and
some other rich people; thus the streets are narrow, and the buildings
are tall but not wide.  Everything uphill is necessarily quite close
together.  Note that neither the Juzgado nor the Alambrera are up
there." [referring to the map on inside back cover. I meant to suggest
that the Juzgado was at the base of the hill, but maybe my "hill lines"
were too sketchy.  Granted there's too much room on the hill as I've
drawn it--but there are physical limitations, as well as conceptual
ones! <g>  "But which street has the proper position for =Gold= street?
And where, oh where, is the Alameda?" I silently whine.]

Color me quite the happy camper.

=mantis=

P.S. vizcacha--glad to have you onboard the "Pike Aquastor"
bandwagon. Alga won't come onboard anytime soon since she's the one who came
up with the very interesting Quetzal-as-Pike theory.

=m=

Right.  Well that's it for this trip down memory lane!  I'll try to
keep up with the rest of the pack now.

=mantis=