{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/815", "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": 815, "subject": "abo profile", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1998-06-16T18:57:12+00:00", "last": "1998-06-17T09:02:11+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice Turner", "address": "al at smtp.emailserv.com" }, "date": "1998-06-16T18:57:12+00:00", "subject": "(urth) abo profile", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan'l doubts that there any abos left---that's not surprising since all the\ninformation we have about them is tainted. Early on, David says they're all\ndead as part of the debate Mr. Million sets up. John V. Marsh (and I'm in\nthe camp that says that V. is for Victor--what else would it be for?) is an\nunreliable narrator (and mythologizer). OTOH, there's VRT, who isn't\nreliable either. Do we think that \"A Story\" was written by Marsch alone or\nby the JVM/VRT amalgam? If it were placed last in the sequence, surely the\nlatter. As it is, still probably the latter. But it's still a kind of fairy\ntale, not anything we can really rely on.\n\nThe stories about the abos do make them sound like fairies or brownies:\nsupposedly they shapeshift, their eyes are green, they cannot manage tools\n(remember the fairies' aversion to \"cold iron?\"), they can sometimes\ninterbreed with men (lots of fairy wife stories, from many countries), they\nhave an affinity with animals, there are no relics or remains of them (we\nsee nothing but fakes, though both David and #5, as students, give good\nreasons for no implements--though not for no bones).\n\nOn the other hand, the older Annese, like Mrs. Blount and the Culot\ngrandfather, speak of them as though they were around until fairly recently.\nThat \"shovel test\" (Orb 159) sounds awfully authentic, not made-up. VRT and\nhis mother do have green eyes as does JVM--bright green, a color never seen\nnaturally in humans (not by me, anyway, though I've seen pale greenish)--and\nhis mother did take him off to the back of beyond as a child, and she did\nhave a remarkable ability to change her appearance. VRT does seem to have a\nsort of relationship with the creatures in the wild, though the ones that\nJVM kills and eats seem to be real animals (could be why no bone remains).\nVRT/JVM says the abos are animals and so is he, by half (Orb 227). In \"A\nStory,\" they seem distinguished from animals only in that they speak, not by\ntheir actions. Liev's Postpostulate makes out that they are still in the\noutback, though I don't think we have what we could call \"proof.\"\n\nI'm going to go with Liev's Postpostulate (clap if you believe in fairies!).\nI don't think Veil's Hypothesis could possibly be true by evidence of VRT\nhimself. Assume that he really is half-abo, and that in some way I can't\npretend to understand, his personality has merged with that of JVM. Perhaps,\nlike his mother, he can change his appearance--that thick black beard would\nhelp--but he also seems to have absorbed a good deal of JVM's learning,\nvocabulary and curiosity (he knows what Mr. Million is, for instance, a\nmachine and tool if ever there was one, and about clones), and I find it\nhard to believe that, as #5 accuses, he learned everything from books on\nSte. Anne. His physical abilities, however, have deteriorated. He can write,\nbut only clumsily (VRT started as half-human, and the JVM addition would\nmake him more so, I speculate), he can read books; the only physical thing\nwe actually see him do (I'm pretty sure) is to give #5 a card, though JVM\nattests to his willingness and ability to do simple tasks around the camp.\nPresumably no shovels are involved--though a half-human could probably\nmanage a shovel. Clumsily.\n\nSo we've actually seen how an abo or half-abo came to impersonate (or merge\nwith) a human, and the way he did was imperfectly. So imperfectly that #5\nsees through it (though I'm damned if I know how). If Mr. Million ordered me\nto argue the other side of the case, citing Veil, I'd point out that the\nimpersonation or merger was imperfect because VRT was only half abo.\nHarrumph.\n\nSo, as to Aunt Jeanine (yes, mantis, I'm addressing your point), well, there\njust isn't any evidence other than the withered legs that's she's anything\nother than what she is presented to be: a sister (of whatever generation) to\nMaitre and #5, an aunt or great-aunt of David, the manager of a brothel that\nhas been run by her relatives for several generations on St. Croix, and, as\nan amusement or sideline, \"Dr. Aubrey Veil,\" author of a pseudo-scientific\nhypothesis that she doesn't believe herself. Those legs don't seem like\nproof of anything to me. There could be any number of reasons why they\nweren't regenerated, including lack of money (or the fact that GW, the\nauthor, loved the image of her floating along), and she seems to manage just\nfine without them. Why wouldn't the key serve as evidence as a tool? Wolfe\ntells us it has \"an edge like a saw,\" just the sort of thing you'd expect\nVRT to injure himself with.\n\nAnd with that I'm exiting the Aunt Jeanine/abo controversy for good.\n\n-alga-\n\n-alga-" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "1998-06-17T09:02:11+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: abo profile", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Alga wrote:\nSo we've actually seen how an abo or half-abo came to impersonate (or merge\nwith) a human, and the way he did was imperfectly. So imperfectly that #5\nsees through it (though I'm damned if I know how)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I've never thought that #5 sees through VRT's impersonation. I've always\nassumed that he was just being offensive. As he says: \"I had come to\nkill my father, and it was necessary that Dr Marsch leave.\" The fact\nthat by a million-to-one chance he hits on the truth would be just\ntypical Wolfe.\n\nI have no clever proof of this, except for your own point that that\nthere doesn't seem to be any way that #5 _could_ have seen through\nMarsch's impression. But wouldn't he have been at least a little bit\nexcited if he really thought he was sitting next to an abo?" } ] } ] }