(urth) An Evil Guest: tone, and clones
James Wynn
crushtv at gmail.com
Mon Jan 4 07:04:41 PST 2010
> 2. if they are of her old starry self, she would take some more time
> to recognize them but certainly not weeks
I think I'm missing something.
Cassie Casey takes 1 and a half steps into the stateroom and sees herself in
a mirror (presumably) even before she sees the pictures of Pavlatos.
Assuming Cassie = Pavlatos why would she need the portraits at all? She
looks at Pavlatos and herself in the mirrored walls of the yacht and
realizes instantly that they are the same person. And then she breaks down
into tears.
>Pavlatos is really rich - far richer than Cassie's bracelet could have
> made her.
Well, maybe. Maybe not. Chase *did* promise to make Cassie wealthy out of
their gambit. He didn't just promise her a major "score". He promised her
wealth. Perhaps the bracelet is worth a great deal....ala the Hope diamond.
For the sake of argument, lets assume it isn't. Now we're moving corners
Wolfe (once again) did not delineate for whatever reason. Exactly how Chase
could have promised her "wealth" is still unresolved.
Perhaps it is simply that Cassie is wealthy because Pavlatos is wealthy.
Palvatos has already become wealthy and knows how it is to be done. She
stakes Cassie with a certain amount of money and sends her to Woldercon with
instructions telling what to do to build their empire. Heck, it could be
simpler than that. She could just send her with half the money or more into
the past.
Ergo, Chase can promise Cassie wealth because she will "inherit" it, after
she pays a debt Pavlatos owes him by doing this little service.
----------
As long as we are pointing out the endless plots that might be plugged into
Wolfe's crazy-quilt story, I want to put another log on the fire. Why
Cassie? Why did Chase pick her? Because he saw her on stage? The clone
theories are based on a trivial reference to cloning at the end of the book.
We assume this is referring to Ries because there seems to be more than one
and then there's Rian. Fair enough. But the cloning reference was to Cassie
herself. It is entirely possible that Cassie is a clone of Pavlatos. And
more infuriating, there is nothing to prevent this from being combined with
the Time travel theory I posted above (if Pavlatos is presumed old enough).
Pavlatos could have created a clone (Cassie) who she sends back into the
past to become herself.
J.
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