(urth) Some Pirate Freedom thoughts and questions

[paul witcover]

thalassocrat at nym.hush.com wrote:    On Sun, 02 Dec 2007 07:34:56 +1100 "Fernando Q. Gouvea" 
wrote:
>>
>6) What is the chronology of Chris's story? How long does Brother 
>Ignacio wait? I agree that it might be interesting to see if we 
>get any 
>clues as to what he was doing. Of course, he may well have simply 
>been 
>slaving away, doing the proper penitence for his acts at last, and 

>
>learning that patience, too, is a virtue.

Here's what I think "Chris2" was doing in Cuba, before the time-
slip. I think he was working for his father, or at least getting 
close to him. His father would like the man he's become. He'd feel 
good about sending young Chris to the monastery if "Ignacio" was 
there to keep an eye on him and teach him stuff. He'd say to Chris: 
"You do what that tall priest with the beat-up face tells you to 
do. He's a stand-up guy, for a priest. He doesn't get you down the 
way abbotts do." 

And while Chris and Ignacio are working away in the Dominican 
fields, Ignacio would be telling Chris stuff, hinting about girls, 
and how everybody else in the monastery is a leccacazzi, and how 
much the outside world has to offer. How everything is OK if you 
love God and he is your friend. How it's OK if you just do what you 
can do.

Chris speaks of Ignacio many times to Novia - so she says. She says 
he told her Ignacio was a second father to him. She says he told 
her he would trust Ignacio more than he'd trust himself. 

But I don't think he reports *any* conversation with Ignacio, from 
the monastery time. Nothing that was said, nothing that he learned 
from him, nothing of what must have been his greatest intimacy in 
that place. 

Why is that? Well, I think the answer is pretty obvious.

***
   
  I'm not sure I agree that Chris2 meets his father (who may, after all, be himself, if he is a clone); at least, I don't see any definite evidence for it.  But otherwise I think you're spot on as to the relationship between Chris1 and Chris2.  It's when trying to figure out who came first, 1 or 2, and thus who bears primary moral responsiblity for what follows, that the time travel paradoxes really kick in.  
   
  My fantasy of what happens after Chris2 has Novia all to himself is that, when he spills his story to her, she grabs the nearest knife and eviscerates him.
   
  The similarity of "wiseguy" and "Lesage" led me to wonder if that pirate is really another iteration of Chris, and whether Chris's father is Lesage -- and there might be more than one temporal loop involved -- but when I saw Wolfe at the World Fantasy Convention, I asked him explicitly about this, and his response was "No, I hadn't thought of that.  You're smarter than I am."  I protested the contrary!  
   
   


       
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