From: m.driussi@genie.com
Subject: (whorl) Quetzal & Pike
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 97 16:06:00 GMT


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

Reply:  Item #2173915 from WHORL@LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00#

viscacha,

Re: Mucor waking the gods.  Just a guess, based partly on her waking
up the Sleepers, and the fact that shortly after her visits gods and
goddesses appear--they practically spring up like roses in her train.
(Don't forget that Echidna possessed Marble/Rose around the same time
that Mucor was messing with Cassava--didn't Silk "mistakenly" think
at first that Marble/Rose was possessed by Mucor rather than
Echidna?  Also Mucor was poltergeisting the yellow house for months
before Silk showed up, so she has been active since before the book starts;
Hy built her shrine to Kypris before the book starts . . . and I know
this seems a wild stretch, since alga has already told me as much, but I
think Mucor may have awakened Kypris first--by "accident" because Mucor was
looking for love, the love that her adoptive father wasn't giving her--the
same man who owned a whore house that attracted customers and workers also
looking for love.)

This "Mucor waking the gods" notion ties in with (is the solution for) my
other theory which is that Quetzal put the gods to sleep by the same methods
(astral projection to Main Frame or the nearest node, switching the Viron
connection switches off).  So Mucor and Quetzal are sort of a matched
pair, she unloosing (acting like the mischievous
Jahi-of-Talos's-play) what he had bound (in a rather Marduk style).

Re: Pike fending off Quetzal.  Since "fending off" has such a
physical, "hand-to-hand" connotation, maybe I should have writ "warding
off"?  Since Pike taught Silk the warding charm that had worked for him
in years gone by.  If there is or has ever been another inhumu onboard the
Whorl, then of course Pike may have warded off one other than
Quetzal.  However, the timeframe is right (both Pike and Quetzal
being in Viron at the same time), the circumstances are right (the
first inhumu attack or attacks might be connected to the turmoil
following the death of Calde Tussah; maybe even part of the hunt for
his heir), and there is no textual evidence that there is another
inhumu onboard (as helpful as that would be in many ways).  (There is
slight evidence that there are different types of inhumu on Blue and
Green, i.e., "hooded" versus other.)

Re: Quetzal's abilities.  Shapechanging, etc.  Well, it would be
handy if he could go gaseous (like a vampire, or like Mucor but able
to take his physical body along) or enter the corridors of time
(alternate dimension) for teleport-like blinks hither and yon.  We all
agree that he can get small and bat like, since that is how he flit from
Silk's window.  (Now is this form different than the flying serpent
shape he assumes to fly into his favorite tree?)  But how he disappeared
in the dark stairway to a locked cellar, or from a well lit dining room
full of people, remains a bit mysterious.

Re: Q's physical description, don't forget those hinged fangs, just
like our poisonous snakes.  Neat.  Yes, somewhat like E.T., with the
telescopic neck, but Q's head isn't so L-shaped as E.T.  Yes, inhuma
would seem to be chinless in their natural state.

=mantis=