"Goodbye Old Buddy" -- Pirate Freedom murder mystery, take two

Dave Tallman · 03 Dec 2008, 16:22 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

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From: davetallman at msn.com (Dave Tallman)
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2008 09:22:12 -0700
Subject: (urth) "Goodbye Old Buddy" -- Pirate Freedom murder mystery,
	take two
Message-ID: <1bf4dd40812030822h1a655088p921c97d124ae76e4 at mail.gmail.com>

Henry Eissler wrote:

>     Others on this list postulated, and I happen to agree, that there
> are at least 2 Chris2's.  Jaime being the other.  I read this spoiler
> theory while I was still reading the book, and so noticed 2 things:  One
> is that Chris does his musing about this world being either heaven or
> hell right after Jaime burns to death horribly.  The other is Father
> Chris asking God to please help him past the temptation to warn away
> young Chris and his father (presumably to have Sabina all to himself).
> I believe that Mr. Wolfe feels that, though there can be multiple
> futures, there can be only one past.  So the Father Chris that did not
> rise above the temptation (and must have left the monastery as soon as
> he hit the past), must have gone insane when he saw Sabina's sketches of
> young Chris.
>
>
I don't read the temptation paragraphs that way. "What if my father decided
not to go to Cuba to run the casino? What if he did not enroll me in the
monastery school because of something I... happened to say to him? Novia
would be lost. Everything would be lost. *None if it would ever have
happened*." (p. 226) He didn't want to warn away young Chris and his father
in order to have Sabina all to himself. On the contrary, he was afraid that
he would change the past and end up not knowing Sabina at all. The
temptation was simply to see himself as a young man, and to see his father
again.

The idea of multiple alternate Chris's accessing a common past is plausible
but not supported by the text IMHO. If true, it would mean no treasure for
poor Ignacio, since Chris3 would have had to dig it up to become the rich
Senor Guzman.

In any case, there is a physical clue showing Jaime wasn't Chris. Page 302:
"Novia had been married to Jaime Guzman for thirty-four months and had never
been pregnant, so it had seemed to us that there was a good chance she never
would be. Now I knew it had been him. Maybe he had known it too, and that
was why he was so jealous." In other words, Jaime was sterile and Chris was
not. Also 34 months is nearly three years -- Chris3 didn't have enough time
to do this, even if he left as soon as wristwatches disappeared at the
monastery.
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