From: m.driussi@genie.com
Subject: (urth) 5HC: abo debate
Date: Fri,  5 Jun 98 18:38:00 GMT

Thesis (official colonial): there are no abos (never were or they
were killed by the French)

Antithesis (from behind the mask of "Veil," i.e., mystery, hidden,
occult): the French were killed by the abos, and said abos have since
blended among the subsequent French colonists as faux-French.  (Which
comes perilously close to saying that there are no "French.")

Synthesis (Liev or something else?): the excluded middle of the above
arguments? I.e., maybe, yes and no, some but not all.

Personally I think the texts weave in and out and around through
these three points.

It might not be possible to apply any one to the trilogy with a
hermetic fit.  It is proving quite difficult to apply it to
characters who appear in more than one of the novellas.

Perhaps we can narrow the range down to one character and one
novella.  For example, the "Maitre" reading and judging in "V.R.T."
He is presumably not an abo, nor a brainwashed clone of 666, and he
is filtering through a criminal case--he is probably the most
reliable character we have.  What is his attitude towards abos
(official, Veil, or other)?  How many theories does he have about
the prisoner, and do any of them include a notion that the prisoner
is an abo?

The assassin theory seems to be that the prisoner got his
training and instruction from "the junta" of Sainte Anne and came to
kill somebody important, but not Number Four.  With a heavy rifle at
long range with one shot.  A sort of Lee Harvey Oswald scenario.

The attitude toward Number Four revealed in the interrogations seems
to be that he was secretly in league with the government of Sainte
Croix, as spy and surgeon.

But the officer also seems to notice the shift in handwriting from
Marsch to V.R.T.  This by itself does not mean that the officer
believes in abos, since impersonation by humans exists; V.R.T. as a
human can still murder and replace Marsch.  Does the officer think
that V.R.T.'s abo-ness is just a symptom of insanity in a human man?

What about the officer's reaction to the Poe visitations?  When was
he at a graveyard?  Who was buried, what was his involvement such
that the cat has followed him back?

And what about that damn book, the Field Guide?  Is it one of the few
books Marsch brought from Earth, or one of the many he bought when he
first arrived at Roncevaux (and then presumably listed in the excised
section of the journal)?  V.R.T./Marsch implies that he brought it
from Earth--the officer responds by saying he doubts the prisoner has
ever been to Earth.  The officer =doesn't= say, "This book was
published on Sainte Anne," which would be the answer to the
prisoner's implication that the book originated on Earth (and by
analogy so did the book's owner); the officer refutes the analogy
rather than addressing the implication.

(Robert, re: the scarred prostitute in Roncenvoux, thanks for the
note.  I sense that this was during the second visit to Roncevaux,
when V.R.T./Marsch was living there for a year before going to Sainte
Croix.  If Marsch was homosexual [well gosh, what, 100% gay I guess]
and V.R.T. was not [say 100% hetrosexual], then Marsch wouldn't have
hired a female prostitute, whereas V.R.T. might have [re: mom caught
me with that girl; the love-object-women of "A Story"]; this might
also help to explain the sexual confusion suffered by V.R.T./Marsch
as a sort of "50% bisexual dysfunctional" as per the prostitute of
Roncevaux, the tea and sympathy chats with Dr. Veil "I'm looking for
a mature man to talk Plato with . . . a mentor to provide a role model
I could grow into . . . " <g> and the nasty remarks about C.E.)

=mantis=

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