Time, Not Cloning

Lee Berman · 02 Aug 2013, 13:06 · from 2013-August.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2013 09:06:56 -0400
Subject: (urth) Time, Not Cloning
Message-ID: <BLU175-W514247F7A2815481975C8ECF510 at phx.gbl>

>Jeff Wilson: BTW, I cannot find "khaibit" nor "kaibit" at OED.com

I borrowed my definition from this old research document: http://www.masseiana.org/on_the_shade.htm
It is a few paragraphs down from the top. Interestingly, it mentions eidolons also.

>If the coffins are connected to the succession of Severians, who or what
>is in the other two closed coffins?

As mentioned I take the mausoleum and its five coffins to be more of a literary device than a
practical part of the story. I suppose you could contruct some back story which allows the
coffins to contain and preserve Severian DNA, since the funerary bronze does resemble him.

But I take it more along the lines of those who think Wolfe subtly puts himself or parts
of himself into many of his stories. For example, in 5HoC we have the titular five-headed dog
and Maitre's real name revealed as "Gene Wolfe". I don't think  five is randomly chosen for the 
number of coffins.

So if I am granted poetic license to interpret the contents of the coffins, I'd say that in 
addition to Severian, they contain Number Five, Weer, Horn, maybe Latro....I think they 
symbolize the inclusion of Gene Wolfe avatars within his stories. (I include Horn because I
can imagine Wolfe acknowledging that his future works will continue to contain Wolfe avatars).

>David Stockhoff: This makes me wonder what happens to khaibits when their originals die. 
>What happened to Thecla's when she died---was she freed in some way?
>(a rhetorical question, really)

I'm going to guess that khaibits have a shorter lifespan due to their blood donation purpose.
But maybe that's me connecting them to replicants again. (hm, the boy Mamas gives blood to 
Severian...is there any chance he is a Severian khaibit? ah, too speculative). .

So if they are sort lived, maybe there is always another khabit being grown to replace the first
one. Wolfe leaves everything so vague when it comes to khaibits but my intuition is that khaibits
are more likely to run away than be freed. Thea might be an example (what is really meant by 
"half-sister"?). And we have Catherine and her look-alike who is being escorted by soldiers on
the Path of Air, and maybe the corpse with the livid face in chapt. 1.

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