Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 12:01:45 -0500
From: James Jordan 
Subject: RE: (urth) Numerological Wolfe


>
>And now we see another significance of "Number Five." By this
>generation (which probably isn't the fifth at all; "that number is
>either far too small or too large"), the Wolfes are not even able
>to make it as far as Number Six ("I am not a prisoner...I am a free
>man!"); they are no longer quite human...
>
>--Blattid

Good thot. Either that, or that an evil No. 6 is coming someday, which is 
how I've taken the last sentence.
         BTW, thematically this feature might be linked to Wolfe's story 
"To the Seventh" in *Stranger Travellers.* Of course, the seventh here 
refers to chess, and when the pawn gets to the eighth after dying on the 
seventh, he becomes a Queen (the bride of Christ). Still, 6 as inadequate 
and stuck in time versus 7 as fulfilling and completing humanity -- the two 
stories make a nice complement. The one thing the "Wolfes" in 5HC refuse to 
do is "die" and be truly transformed.

Nutria


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