AEG: Rian's mother

One more try. I'll make it brief. Cassie goes to Woldercan and gets Gideon to make her look good again. She comes back to Earth about 20 years before she left. She is still in her early thirties; Reis should then be in his twenties. She knows his tastes and uses her knowledge and looks to meet and marry him. She gives birth to Rian. After a number of years, her looks start to fade and Reis strays. He leaves her for another beauty, Pavlatos. Pavlatos goes to Woldercan with him when he is appointed ambassador. Reis dumps Pavlatos after a number of years, but it costs him plenty. Meanwhile, Cassie knows about Gideon, knows that he can and will fix Rian's heart. He does so. Cassie otherwise stays in the background. She knows the future but cannot change it and dares not try; because otherwise Rian would not exist. When the time is ripe, she contacts Pavlatos and persuades her to rescue her younger self from the island. Younger Cassie goes to Woldercan . . . etc. Everything happens just as it happened in the book. Cassie changed nothing by going into the past. She went to Woldercan and found her lost love again, if only for a while. She gained a child who is a little bit of the man she loved. -Roy

I agree this is as plausible as the Pavlatos case. I'm still troubled that Sharon Bench knows both Rian and his mother fairly well. (She knows that Rian is "too brave" for example, and charges Cassie to protect their privacy (pp. 25-26). If Cassie/Rian's Mama is keeping in the background, why reconnect with anyone who knew her in the past? It seems like a risky thing to do.

Not to pick on your Margaret-as-Cassie theory <g>, but it's not as risky as Margaret going to work for her younger self. I doubt that Sharon knew Rian's mama well enough to sit down to tea and biscuits. She was a celebrity reporter in a smallish city. Cassie may just have wanted to use Sharon to keep tabs on her younger self. -Roy

Furthermore, if Sharon Bench knows Ms Pavlatos, is it believable she would not say "Hey! Cassie looks almost just like Pavlatos"? I mean, Ms Pavlatos cannot be Cassie at more than 20 years in the future. This makes her 55 at the extreme. I really don't consider this a big deal on it's own, to tell the truth. I mean, it is clear to me that Wolfe did something very similar in "The Book of the Long Sun" (with a slightly greater age differential). But it is one more hard pull at a hypothesis that is already dangerously stretched. Just sayin' J.

In this version of a time-travel theory, Cassie is Rian's mother and Pavlatos Bill's second wife. Sharon seems to know or know of Rian's mother, but I know of nothing to indicate that Sharon knew Pavlatos. -Roy