{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3117",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 3117,
    "subject": "The Cumaean",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-04-02T16:56:15+00:00",
    "last": "2002-04-02T16:56:15+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0204-530@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes",
        "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-04-02T16:56:15+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) The Cumaean",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "So...what _is_ the Cumaean? The following evidence is of interest; \nit comes from the scene immediately before the manifestation of \nApu-Punchau, when the Cumaean has cast Merryn, Sev, Dorcas, Jolenta,\nand Hildegrin into a kind of trance (which Hildegrin describes as\nseeing from a perspective larger than a single moment):\n\n     As I had suspected, the Cumaean was not a woman at all;\n     yet neither was she one of the horrors I had beheld in \n     the gardens of the House Absolute. Something sleekly \n     reptilian coiled about the glowing rod. I looked for \n     the head but found none, though each of the patternings \n     on the reptile's back was a face, and the eyes of each \n     face seemed lost in rapture.  (from THE CLAW OF THE \n     CONCILIATOR. I didn't write down the page numbers, but \n     it's about 292-3 of the original Timescape HC.)\n\nOkay, she's reptilian and can fool people into thinking she's human.\nShe appears, to Severian in some kind of trance state, to have many\nfaces.\n\nH'mmmmm...  My immediate response is to think, \"Aha, this proves \nthat there were inhumi on Urth in Severian's time...\" But does it?\nThe Cumaean is said to be centuries old. I have a vague recollection\nthat the inhumi are shorter-lived than humans -- does anyone recall\nfor certain? I almost hope I'm wrong, as it would make Marc's \ntheories one step closer to probability.\n\nOf course I wouldn't suggest for a moment that Wolfe planned the\nCumaean as an inhuma ... but is it possible that in writing the \nLong/Short books he retconned her into one?"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}