Pike's Ghost; Crane's Campaign

Alice Turner · 27 Jan 1997, 18:19 · from whorl-v0002.mbox · original

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From: "Alice Turner" <al at interport.net>
Subject: (whorl) Pike's Ghost; Crane's Campaign
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 18:19:04
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[Posted from Whorl, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

With regard to Quetzal and his possible appearance at "Pike" David Lebling
writes:

However, I don't think aquastors turn into small dark things that fly
out windows, so to me it's not quite an adequate explanation.  On the
other hand, Quetzal never appears in the shape of any human but himself,
at least to my knowledge.

We see him as (1) himself, most of the time, (2) by implication as "an
old man with wings" (Teasel), (3) by implication as a large snake
(Villus), (4) obscurely in winged serpent form when he slithers out the
window into his tamarind tree.  Others?

                     ------

Well, we know that Quetzal (a) wears makeup (b) knew Pike (c) has a reason
to check Silk out (the "Silk for Calde!" graffiti beginning to appear). One
old man in priestly raiment glimpsed for only a second (his face, that is)
looks a good deal like another, and later on during the battle Silk does
mistake Quetzal for Pike for a moment. The creaking in the bedroom would
indicate that Quetzal, in addition to borrowing Pike's calotte as a
"disguise" is also doing a hasty make-up job.

                   ----

3) Who was writing "Silk is Calde" five floors up?  From the context,
early in _Calde_, it might have been Quetzal, or maybe Mucor.

                   -----

I think it's pretty clear that this campaign is started by Crane and his
spy gang, Hossaan and the others. Hossaan operates the floater, five
stories is no problem for him. There are two places where this is
indicated, first when Crane is writing his report to Trivigaunte and says
that the graffiti have appeared "everywhere but the Palatine." He's not
completely sure of this because popular support is snowballing and others
have taken up the slogan, but he's pretty sure because he directed exactly
where the initial writings should appear. The second is when Crane and Silk
are imprisoned by the Ayuntamiento and Crane admits that he has supported
the "Silk for Calde" movement because it will rally the populace to
overthrow the Ayuntamiento and thus divide and weaken Viron.  Sorry I can't
supply page numbers as I'm away from the books.

Alice Turner
al at interport.net

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