(urth) Pike's ghost

[James Wynn]

On 11/22/2011 11:31 AM, Andrew Mason wrote:
> Regarding Mucor, Silk (talking to Mamelta) suggests that it was in
> fact she who summoned Pike’s spirit.

Andrew, I don't know if you saw my response to you on 11/9...
http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2011-November/024264.html
... but at that point I posed that the Mucor traveling with "Pike's 
ghost" is Mucor from Blue on her mission to locate Silk for Horn.

Since I think that the Rajan MUST be able to Time-travel, it technically 
possible for him to bring her back in Time to Silk's room.
Additionally, notice that there is a difference between the way she 
disapperates in Silk's room vs the way she disapperates in the tunnels 
and on the Trivigaunte floater. In those other situations, she slowly 
disappears into a green luminescence. In Silk's room, she dissolves into 
a mist, just as "the ghost" does.

Now, I want to include a another wrinkle I've been toying with and you 
might not have see it. I've always considered it a remarkable 
coincidence Horn was dying on Green just as Silk was killing himself in 
front of Hy's casket. But if dream-travel is Time-travel this would not 
have been a problem for the Neighbors. So is possible that when Horn 
starts his mission, Silk has already slashed his wrists. Consequently, 
when Mucor sets out for Silk the only one she finds is the Rajan. When 
she sees him, she recognizes him as Silk and tell him of her mission. He 
gives her the warning that Mucor will later deliver to Horn. But then he 
dutifully takes her to the past so she can "find Silk". When she sees 
where he has taken her, she realizes that this is not the Silk she is 
looking for ** so she returns to her body as all dream-travelers do, by 
waking up.

** If it seems that Wolfe did not provide enough clues for this, 
remember that this is the same thing as Auk kidnapping Hy for sacrifice 
and then realizing that "she was not the woman he was supposed to 
bring." There was no explanation of _that_internal struggle either.

All of this *does* make it so that it is Mucor who summoned Pike's 
ghost, and it gives the Rajan a reason to do so beyond "That's what he's 
supposed to do."

Finally, it is important to remember that a ghost, strictly speaking, is 
the disembodied spirit of someone who has died. The Rajan denies that 
this is what they are to someone in Nessus. But it was technically true 
for the Rajan (that's the maximum irony) even if one believes as I do 
that Silk's spirit has been replaced by a Neighbor.

PS. I'm so happy to return to this subject. :-D