Hierodules

Mark Millman, Good summary of the possibilities. Interesting how native lifespan figures into time travellers: OB&F (dog lifespan); Inire (past his years); Father Thyme (physically ages as he travels); Master Ash (hint of Thyme as he walks to answer the door--Severian hears old footsteps growing young and virile). In thinking about the odd trinity of OB&F, working off the idea of B&F being children and/or larvae, and assuming that once they are grown up O will leave them as two, a couple--then I wonder about Adam and Eve, and the naked couple dropped of by Hierodules in the play as well as (repeatedly?) in the reality. (Re-seeding the fairie, as it were.) Or do they just grow up into those silent giant statues that roam the gardens of the House Absolute? They are certainly alike in terms of angelic beauty. =mantis=

With regard to OB&F, I've often wondered about their experience of time generally. I had the impression that they actually lived time "backwards" with reference to Severian's (and everyone else's) motion through time, and only "switched around" briefly (perhaps with Ossipago's help?) to match Severian's time-direction when they needed to interact with him. Are B&F born in the future? Do they then "age" as they pass backward in time (from Sev's point of view)? This would seem to be the case. But then how can they interact, even briefly, with people whose physiological and neurological processes are, time-wise, working backward from their own? Perhaps they use artificial means to briefly sort of "snap" themselves around to Sev's time-arrow direction? Or am I just overcomplicating things (in a Wolfe book?!? <g>)?

Or are the statues perhaps proto-larval forms that miss getting animated with a spark of individual soul? For whose benefit exactly are they prowling the environs of the HA? John

Mantis said: <Or do they just grow up into those silent giant statues that roam the gardens of the House Absolute?> I thought it was pretty well established that those are electronic surveillance devices that Inire uses to monitor the grounds of the House Absolute. I'm sure they are referred to as "Father Inire's pets," or "Father Inire's eyes" somewhere in the BotNS. And he pondered: < I wonder about Adam and Eve, and the naked couple dropped of by Hierodules in the play as well as (repeatedly?) in the reality. (Re-seeding the fairie, as it were.)> I always used to assume that those people were Hierodules, but not necessarily Famulimus and Barbatus. I must comment here, however, that the point of reseeding Urth and giving it back sentient life is so that humanity will be able to create the Hierodules, since there was the chance it was the right Sefiroth at the right time. So, the people dropped in the Garden of the HA are human. The hypothesis lately has been raised that the Meschia and Meschiane of Ushas are actually sailors from the Ship Tzadkiel, but I'm not yet convinced. Christopher R. Culver <crculver at aol.com> http://members.aol.com/crculver/index.html