Inire as a hierodule

Roy C. Lackey · 16 Jul 2010, 19:13 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:13:55 -0500
Subject: (urth) Inire as a hierodule
References: <SNT123-W256DB5C8585628C8109423CFB30 at phx.gbl>	<520E36C4-BC0B-4DFE-8F64-BC9EB1D9BF4C at liftingfaces.com>	<4C34A1F4.6030501 at gmail.com>	<F7C7A8D7-66C9-4746-9662-C742E53311FE at liftingfaces.com>	<AANLkTilkfznBstbta55hgfGmNqnPuJiBaxTBg1nk4CNf at mail.gmail.com>	<4C34BDF3.8030308 at gmail.com>	<AANLkTil6i8yexcmK3Jkk5RjoxqDG2em7nmlsFwPMcy8x at mail.gmail.com>	<AANLkTinEm5JG1jqhNfMWoVMP6mRqRduOFsODtbu73kJ_ at mail.gmail.com>	<4C34C23B.2090701 at gmail.com><AANLkTikKWU_l1JMRi-Bjnm8jETRWB_HJiJxwZavYSbXf at mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <008201cb251b$0e215000$d3d24a0c@rclackey>

Ant?nio wrote:
> I finally got around to revisiting the letter.
>
> First thing of, he refers to himself as 'Inire'. That suggests against
> mangling of the name, at least including word boundaries.
>
> Second, he twice mentions his 'cousins'. Not his brothers nor his makers.
I
> suspect he's not a hierodule. Something related to them, but not one. Not
> that it matters terribly.

A holy slave need not be any particular species. BF&O are hierodules. The
former are biological creatures; Ossipago is a machine. The biological
hierodules, at least, were developed by the Hierogrammates to do the grunt
work in Briah, in much the same way that the Hieros had developed the
Hierogrammates. Inire told Severian that the Cumaean was a hierodule,
whether or not she was a member of the same short-lived species as Barbatus
and Famulimus.

There is no doubt at all that Severian believed that Inire was a member of a
short-lived kind -- he said so. I suspect that Inire's use of "cousins" in
the letter was just a generic, euphemistic term for his short-lived kind, in
much the same sense that a Christian may speak of his fellow believers as
"brothers in Christ".

-Roy

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