(urth) Dorcas and Fechin (and Catherine)‏

[Dave Tallman]

b sharp wrote:
> Dave Tallman,  keep the ideas coming. I think some of your veins of thought are very fruitful!  
> /From what I see, Catherine (and Severian and  Jolenta) are tall but shorter than exultants, 
> /marking them as belonging to the armiger class.  Only the lower classes sometimes think Severian
> might be an exultant, due to his height. But I do see many clues that suggest hidden connections 
> between witches, Pelerines and exultants, especially the Autarch's inner circle of concubines. We have 
> the red garb found in the Stone Town, the Cumaean's artificial beautification skills, the artificial 
> beautification of exultant women, Merryn's ageless face, the hints of the powers of the Pelerines, the 
> Chatelaine Somebody's hairless rats and the Cumaean's creatures contained in an artificial environment, 
> etc. etc.
In Shadow XI, it says, "She was tall and slender, though not so tall nor 
so slender as Thecla, dark of complexion, dark of eye, raven of hair." I 
don't see that being shorter than Thecla excludes her from the 
exultants; there must be some height variation in that class.

My take on the exultant/armiger distinction is that exultants are 
descendants of space colonist stock, and their families probably had 
power under Typhon. That explains their intrigues against the new source 
of power, the autarchy. The armigers are probably descendants of 
high-ranking military officers of Urth stock. I don't remember the text 
saying they have an intermediate height between exultants and commoners.

The exultants probably have superior genetic engineering and/or alien 
blood. The legend of the Boy Called Frog shows that those with off-world 
blood are believed to have special powers. They also use high-tech means 
for longevity and beautification, as you mentioned.
> My impression is that Wolfe is a bit horrified by the potential of biological science more than physical 
> science.  The mysterious machinery in Master Ash's time travel house is not nearly as scary and 
> forboding as the biological science equipment found in the witches' tower, Typhon's round building and 
> Baldanders' Castle.  I think this fear of stuff like human cloning (and advanced plastic surgery) produced 
> Fifth Head of Cerberus and some of the subtext of this story also.
>   
At least he is horrified by such science in the hands of evil people 
like Typhon and Baldanders, who seem to practice brutal vivisection on 
humans.

> Severian has his bloodstream linked to the boy Mamas by the old leech. It isn't explained how this is done but
> I always assumed the kaibit-exultant blood sharing must be done in similar fashion. Is there any way a blood
> bat could be involved? Seems implausible; but maybe.  Perhaps the blood bat patch is meant to be symbolic 
> and that dream and others  are meant to symbolically represent the cloning and blood sharing and alien 
> admixture that produces Thecla and her ilk.
>   
Anti-coagulants extracted from the saliva of blood-bats would be useful 
in blood-sharing, but that would be a crude way of getting it. The 
memory of the women may not be a dream, at least not totally. Sev says 
"I sat up, uncertain of the point at which memory had become dream." 
(Claw XXVII).