(urth) Cassie's Mobile Home (AEG spoilers)

[Dave Tallman]

I wrote:

> Even with different laws of physics I doubt Gil would think they could
> resurrect the dead. But if she got far enough away and could send an
> ethermail she might be able to send Bill messages back in time, and
> might hope to change the past. From the point of view of an object
> moving relative to us a long distance away, events that are in the past
> to us can be present or future to it. The paradoxes involved are one
> reason that relativity does not allow FTL travel or messages. Wolfe
> instead allows FTL and the time paradoxes.
>
>
I'd like to expand on this theory, which I think may be a key to the book.
When Cassie asks to drive Gid's hopper, she says "I want to be -- I want to
matter. I want to be somebody, not because I'm Wallace Rosenquist's woman or
because I'm Gideon Chase's woman. Because I'm Cassie Casey."

On a superficial reading Cassie is a poor protagonist. She's dragged along
from event to event and she seems to have very little control of the
outcome. But what if she were able to use a hopper to send a message though
time to warn Reis away from his fatal mistake? Then she's the heroine after
all. It's a self-sacrificing move because she will wipe out herself as she
is, but if it works she and Bill will be together again, and happy.

Can the past be changed? Cassie gets a clue that it could be possible when
she receives the response ethermail from Chase in Woldercan. She realizes
she could either send or not send the ethermail being responded to. "If I
don't send mine, his will have to be accounted for in some other way and
it's liable to get complicated." (p. 298). Her message could warn Reis that
even if he changes his actions in response to the warning the ethermail must
still be sent. She may have consulted with Chase on Woldercan and determined
that she had to travel far out in space in order to have a chance to get a
message back in time to make a difference.

It would be a violation of "Chekov's gun" principle to allow a powerful
story element like time paradoxes without giving them a more important role
in the plot than an early birth announcement (p. 19) and an early response
to a travel message (p. 298). Perhaps the many subtle continuity errors I
found were the result of Cassie's message attempts as she tried to hit the
range. She had to be careful what she wrote, since Bill's enemies could
monitor ethermail (p. 18). It might be much easier to produce subtle changes
that make no ultimate difference, like changes of address, the existence of
hotel safes, and the careers of fellow actresses, than big changes that
completely alter one's own past. Cassie, with her enhanced powers and her
connection to her future self, may sometimes be able to dimly remember a
different version of how things happened when everyone else cannot. This
would explain why things often seem dreamlike to her, and why she can spot
the waitress who was once the actress Alexis Cabana.

By the end of the book she has not succeeded in saving Bill. But if she
keeps it up she may eventually win. That's what I'm going to hope, because
it turns the whole book around. Brava, Casey! Oh, brava!
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