Some thoughts on the latest podcast: You'll probably mention this is the discussion podcast of this section, but the incident where Marsch,. Trenchard, and the boy see the enormous shark-like military airship is interesting: "The beggar [Trenchard] said, “Do not wave,” then whispered something to the boy of which I caught only the beginning and end: “Faites attention … Français!” I think the meaning must have been, “Remember that you are French.” The boy answered something I could not hear and shook his head."
I'm not fluent in French, but my daughter is, and she said the meaning is more: "Watch out! (or "Be careful!", literally "Pay Attention")...French!" He could be warning him of the French people, which doesn't make sense in the context of what this and earlier sections reveal of the history of the French on St. Anne, where they are unlikely to be in control of the airship. Rather than the apparent presumption by Marsch that this is an reminder of ethnic pride, it seems more likely that he is reminding Victor that he is supposed to be French, or act like he is French, if they are being viewed or later questioned, not the Abo or part-Abo that Trenchard apparently knows him to be. Incidentally, the elder Trenchard reminds me quite a bit of Monsieur Thénardier in Hugo's Les Miserables, another French conman and scoundrel - who is also quite abusive to his own daughter, Fantine, and teaches her his conniving ways. The three novellas dip in and out of references to world literature throughout, as you've mentioned. Proust, of course, Capek, Dostoevsky (and maybe Solzhenitsyn, by way of "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", which may have influenced #5's prison camp narrative in the first novel - the English edition of "The Gulag Archipelago" would not be released until about two years after "Cerberus"), Rousseau, Greene, Poe, and in this section, definitely Kafka and Orwell. If there is a meld of #5 and Marsch/Victor, among others, instead of breaking out of the cycle of stagnation, the doubled melded consciousness in the prison is doomed on St. Croix to be under the thumb of another Maitre (who could even ironically be David), where he is again known as a number, as #5 was. "And I wondered why so much of what was being said was in numbers: TWO TWELVE TO THE MOUNTAINS … Then I realized that they, we, call ourselves usually by our cell number, which gives the location and is the most important thing, I suppose, about a prisoner anyway." As the Johnny Rivers song went, "They've given you a number / and taken 'way your name." "Dendritic Culture" is an interesting neologism - in Wolfe's story "Christmas Inn", one of the odd visitors to the B&B of the title refers to the Christmas tree in the lobby as "dendrolatry", which means the worship of trees. Good podcast!
I think we have to take a Story with a pinch of salt, I don't believe that the Shadow children have cast a force field over planet, so that it becomes invisible to the space ships, also as Saint Croix is responsible for tides over Saint Anne, Saint Anne must be doing the same thing to Saintt Croix, so even if the shadow children were able to hide the planet, this phenomenon of tides would surely stuck as odd to the space faring french colonizers who settled their first.
My theory is that the French indeed discovered an sentient species on St Anne, and the contact shaped the species, now we don't know for how much time the French were there before they got attacked. But that time was enough for the abos to start taking human shape and learn the language, but during the war, the English speaking colonists just did not care, and destroyed whoever they found on the planet.
This exodus led the abos to escape St Anne to St Croix, where the french at least occupied some positions of power, slowly but surely the French have started consolidating their power on St Croix, and as can be seen from the government employees, the abos have infiltrated that society.
Now probably they have assumed some positions of power in St Croix society, and they haven't forgotten about the war, they just blindly follow the path set to them, and so have started preparing for next war with St Anne.
Here's an odd possibility...if Vail's Hypothesis is correct and the Abos impersonated and killed the French astronauts they met at Frenchman's Landing and assumed their shapes...did they lose their ability to mimic (at least broadly) and are only the (apparent) French in the novellas the descendants of Abos? This would require the reinterpretation of much of the information Marsch receives from his French informants, as well as what Constant says of the history of St., Croix. I don't know if that's correct, but it would explain the antipathy of the anglophone settlers, toward the French, the extreme violence and hostility of the war between the anglophones and the French (which was actually between humans and the shape-shifting natives they feared), the destruction of any historical records of the war, and the apparent existence of a clandestine French resistance organization hinted by #47. There is internal evidence pointing against this, though - I think what Marsch sees in the silvered mirror in his boarding house is a broad hint that at least some of the St. Crucian bureaucracy are Meadowmere people. There are also the comments that at least some French seemed to be determined to identify any Abo imposters in their ranks, as with the test of the shovel. Another thought: If an Abo meeting the French colonists were to simply assume the form (and presumably, the internal physical structure) of a human, they would still be unable to speak French, to pilot spacecraft, to know enough of human ways to fool humans. It would seem that the Shadow Children would have to facilitate the imposture by melding or switching the consciousness of the Abos and the settlers. If there was the kind of switching of consciousness that would result in two swapped minds, would that mean the surviving outback Abos described in "V.R.T." have the consciousness, or be the descendants of those with swapped consciousnesses, of the original French, now harried and hunted by those who displaced them.
We didn't talk at all about the French here because I took this to be an indication that Marsch doesn't understand spoken French very well and that he has misheard and misunderstood what the Trenchards are saying to each other.
I am really interested in analyzing, why did the ship arrive so fast after they went past the four mast ship, also the sailor cursed them.
So my theory is that from Marsch's story we concur that only military has the kind of resources on Saint Anne where they able to afford such huge ships, so they were definitely some kind of patrol ships, and the now the question is what exactly where they patrolling ?
Also what did our trio Marsch/Victor/Trenchard trespass that a flying ship came down as a warning to them, and I agree with your conclusion that Trenchard says to Victor Pay attention....the french, now we know that the french don't rule Saint Anne, so why did he say the same ?