<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On Nov 13, 2008, at 6:01 AM, Matt Teel wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" style="position: static; z-index: auto; "><tbody><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><div>I've checked the archives, but don't see that this has been discussed: what do you all make of the enigmatic reference at the beginning of Shadow Chapter X (The Last Year), where Severian and Roche are leaving the House Azure and the white-haired man pulls out something that Severian assumes at first to be an icon, but then discovers is a vial shaped like a phallus?</div> <div> </div> <div>Possible foreshadowing of his becoming Autarch? I don't know. Even if it is foreshadowing, it should make sense within the scene itself, but I can't quite figure it out.</div> <div> </div> <div>Anyone want to guess?</div> <div> </div></td></tr></tbody></table></blockquote><br></div><div>I always *thought* this was the vial full of the alzabo memory-drug that Severian will have to drink in _Citadel_. The phallus....well, it is one of the two active principles required to engender new life (admittedly of dead people), the other being BRAAAAAINS, and of course, the Old Autarch has lost *his* procreative powers.</div><div><br></div><div>Adam</div></body></html>