(urth) Shaving Clones

[Chris]

I was about to playfully suggest as a universal rule that one should not 
postulate clones beyond necessity. (And it still seems like something of a 
good idea, I must admit).

But then it occurred to me that maybe a proliferation of clones actually 
*reduces* the number of entities (by making some people the same as others), 
so maybe Occam would approve. On that note I devised the following theory: 
everyone on Urth is genetically Severian, including Typhon.

We know that Severian, as Conciliator, weaves back and forth through time 
and leads a number of lives (Apu Punchau, etc), sometimes going quite a ways 
back in history. This being the case, all things being equal his genes would 
so dominate the gene pool that it would lead to hopelessly inbred children 
and the degeneration of the human race. To prevent this the Hierogrammates 
implemented a plan which replaced natural reproduction with technology 
similar to that used to resurrect Severian, but with a twist: it creates an 
*embryonic Severian* already in place in the womb. The embryo (and 
subsequent human) is then manipulated through hormones to generate a variety 
of appearances as necessary, including development of male or female 
reproductive organs as needed. And this, by the way, is the capping point 
that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that this theory is correct: people 
on Urth *have* to be clones because they are *incapable* of reproducing 
naturally - despite appearances they are all genetically male!

This also explains how there's always a new Severian-body around for the 
Conciliator to pop into when he dies, no matter what place and time it 
happens to be.

This explains trivially why there are so many clones on the Whorl. All of 
the original passengers were clones of Severian. It's not that we have 
identified too many clones, it is that we have noticed too few.