# Broceliande's forest *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 27 Jan 2005* > 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. --- ### Tony Ellis *27 Jan 2005, 14:24* Broceliande wrote: > 1. What is the evidence for and against the existence of > the Annese, Well, the 'What Abos?' thread tackled this way back when, and hopefully we covered at least some of the key points. The argument starts here, if you can bear it: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0204/816.txt.shtml I should point out that Robert Borski rendered our whole debate largely pointless by quoting Wolfe as saying the narrator of VRT is a Shadow Child. I think 'Shadow Child' was a slip of the tongue for 'abo', but I'm open to persuasion. > 2. Is Veil's hypothesis correct? We're shown people who can use tools, and people who can't, so no, I don't think the Annese can have replaced the human colonists entirely. Quite aside from anything else, if every colonist is an abo, why do they think they are colonists? How can they read? How can they maintain their rich, complex culture, if they were all naked savages three generations ago? If you want to find the Annese, you have to look among the illiterate and the marginalised: the beggars and the slaves. I believe in what I understand to be Liev's postpostulate: that after the war, some of the Annese were able to enter human society under the guise of being French refugees. Victor's mother is one, Cassila is another. > 2. Did Victor become Marsch, or did Marsch become Victor, or > is the prisoner > a synchretisation of the two? The prisoner writes with the same wretched handwriting as Victor: we see the officer look back at Victor's old schoolbook and nod to himself. This, and masses of circumstantial evidence, suggests that Victor became Marsch. --- ### James Wynn *27 Jan 2005, 15:09 · in reply to Tony Ellis* > We're shown people who can use tools, and people who can't, so no, I > don't think the Annese can have replaced the human colonists entirely. > Quite aside from anything else, if every colonist is an abo, why do they > think they are colonists? How can they read? How can they maintain their > rich, complex culture, if they were all naked savages three generations > ago? Well, there is a constant influx of colonists from Earth. So it is possible the soldier reviewing VRT's case has only recently arrived. I've always been secretly attracted to the idea that the Clones are the last native born "humans" alive on the planet. Unfortunately, I haven't a sliver of proof of this. ~ Crush ---