An Evil Guest: tone, and clones

James Wynn · 04 Jan 2010, 15:04 · from 2010-January.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2010 09:04:41 -0600
Subject: (urth) An Evil Guest: tone, and clones
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> 2. if they are of her old starry self, she would take some more time
> to recognize them but certainly not weeks

I think I'm missing something.
Cassie Casey takes 1 and a half steps into the stateroom and sees herself in 
a mirror (presumably) even before she sees the pictures of Pavlatos. 
Assuming Cassie = Pavlatos why would she need the portraits at all? She 
looks at Pavlatos and herself in the mirrored walls of the yacht and 
realizes instantly that they are the same person. And then she breaks down 
into tears.

>Pavlatos is really rich - far richer than Cassie's bracelet could have
> made her.

Well, maybe. Maybe not. Chase *did* promise to make Cassie wealthy out of 
their gambit. He didn't just promise her a major "score". He promised her 
wealth. Perhaps the bracelet is worth a great deal....ala the Hope diamond. 
For the sake of argument, lets assume it isn't. Now we're moving corners 
Wolfe (once again) did not delineate for whatever reason. Exactly how Chase 
could have promised her "wealth" is still unresolved.
Perhaps it is simply that Cassie is wealthy because Pavlatos is wealthy. 
Palvatos has already become wealthy and knows how it is to be done. She 
stakes Cassie with a certain amount of money and sends her to Woldercon with 
instructions telling what to do to build their empire. Heck, it could be 
simpler than that. She could just send her with half the money or more into 
the past.
Ergo, Chase can promise Cassie wealth because she will "inherit" it, after 
she pays a debt Pavlatos owes him by doing this little service.

----------

As long as we are pointing out the endless plots that might be plugged into 
Wolfe's crazy-quilt story, I want to put another log on the fire. Why 
Cassie? Why did Chase pick her? Because he saw her on stage? The clone 
theories are based on a trivial reference to cloning at the end of the book. 
We assume this is referring to Ries because there seems to be more than one 
and then there's Rian. Fair enough. But the cloning reference was to Cassie 
herself. It is entirely possible that Cassie is a clone of Pavlatos. And 
more infuriating, there is nothing to prevent this from being combined with 
the Time travel theory I posted above (if Pavlatos is presumed old enough). 
Pavlatos could have created a clone (Cassie) who she sends back into the 
past to become herself.

J.

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