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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis@sirius.com> Subject: (urth) Pelerines must disband Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 18:32:42 >> >> We can side with Ava, and think "Godless communist Ascians are something >> less than human." >> >> Or we can side with Severian, that the Ascians are human, and cannot be >> killed in the guilt-free manner that butchers kill cattle or dwarves kill >> orcs. >> >> But there's a harsher side to the whole exchange. Because even though >> neither one knows it, the Conciliator has returned to the Order founded in >> his name, upon his relic, and he has found it quite in error. And the >next >> thing you know, <SHAZAM!> the order has been destroyed on the battlefield, >> never to rise again. >> >> Just a coincidence? > >Could you enlarge on this a bit? I'm not quite following. > >-alga En-LARE-giing . . . now! "Mountain out of mole hill: death, doom, and distraction; take two!" Okay. Severian talks with Ava. Severian doesn't scold her or anything, but he has (I suspect) a different opinion (even as a torturer, he would). Then in the next chapter he hears the translation of an Ascian tale, and that cements it (for readers at least): Ascians are human; they cannot be killed like animals. This attitude of Ava casts a bad light upon the pelerines. Ava doesn't know she is talking to the pre-Conciliator himself; nor does Severian realise the Order's relation to himself. And yet, as if in grim confirmation of Dostoyevski's "Grand Inquisitor" scenario, Severian has a niggling different notion, and from an "objective" standpoint as readers, it seems that the pelerines have strayed somewhat (I mean: it seems to me that they should think all people as human, regardless of whatever cultural brainwashing; zoanthrops are not "human" [hardware issue] but Ascians certainly are [software issue]). Next thing you know, the order has been wiped out on the battlefield, the Claw lost forever (well they thought it was lost before, but now it is =really= lost). Nah . . . the order was destroyed, true, but it had nothing to do with that. It was simply the fact that Severian, fresh from his mission to Master Ash, was about to sell himself to the pelerines and be their slave, like Winnoc; which would be a bad move, apparently! =mantis= *More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/