“Them, of course. They give up their humanity deliberately. There are others who lose theirs without intending to, often when they think they are enhancing it, or rising to some state higher than that to which we are born. Still others, like the Ascians, have it stripped from them.” I thought of Baldanders, plunging from his castle wall into Lake Diutuma. “Surely these ... things deserve our sympathy.”

“Animals deserve our sympathy. That is why we of the order care for them. But it isn’t murder for a man to kill one.”

I sat up and gripped her arm, feeling an excitement I could scarcely contain. “Do you think that if something—some arm of the Conciliator, let us say—could cure human beings, it might nevertheless fail with those who are not human?”

“You mean the Claw. Close your mouth, please—you make me want to laugh when you leave it open like that, and we’re not supposed to when people outside the, order are around.”

“You know!”

“Your nurse told me. She said you were mad, but in a nice way, and that she didn’t think you would ever hurt anyone. Then I asked her about it, and she told. You have the Claw, and sometimes you can cure the sick and even raise the dead.”

“Do you believe I’m mad?”

Still smiling, she nodded.

“Why? Never mind what the Pelerine told you. Have I said anything to you tonight to make you think so?”

“Or spellbound, perhaps. It isn’t anything you’ve said at all. Or at least, not much. But you are not just one man.”

She paused after saying that. I think she was waiting for me to deny it, but I said nothing.

“It is in your face and the way you move—do you know that I don’t even know your name? She didn’t tell me.”

“Severian.”

“I’m Ava. Severian is one of those brother—sister names, isn’t it? Severian and Severa. Do you have a sister?”

“I don’t know. If I do, she’s a witch.”

Ava let that pass. “The other one. Does she have a name?”

“You know she’s a woman then.”

“Uh huh. When I was serving the food, I thought for a moment that one of the exultant sisters had come to help me. Then I looked around and it was you. At first it seemed that it was just when I saw you from the corner of my eye, but sometimes, while we’ve been sitting here, I see her even when I’m looking right at you. When you glance to one side sometimes you vanish, and there’s a tall, pale woman using your face. Please don’t tell me I fast overmuch. That’s what they all tell me, and it isn’t true, and even if it were, this isn’t that.”

“Her name is Thecla. Do you remember what you were just saying about losing humanity? Were you trying to tell me about her?”

Ava shook her head. “I don’t think so. But I wanted to ask you something. There was another patient here like you, and they told me he came with you.”

“Miles, you mean. No, my case and his are quite different. I won’t tell you about him. He should do it himself, or no one should. But I will tell you about myself. Do you know of the corpse-eaters?”

“You’re not one of them. A few weeks ago we had three insurgent captives. I know what they’re like.”

“How do we differ?”

“With them ...” She groped for words. “With them it’s out of control. They talk to themselves—of course a lot of people do—and they look at things that aren’t there. There’s something lonely about it, and something selfish. You aren’t one of them.”

“But I am,” I said. And I told her, without going into much detail, of Vodalus’s banquet. “They made you,” she said when I was through. “If you had shown what you felt, they would have killed you.”

“That doesn’t matter. I drank the alzabo. I ate her flesh. And at first it was filthy, as you say, though I had loved her. She was in me, and I shared the life that had been hers, and yet she was dead. I could feel her rotting there. I had a wonderful dream of her on the first night; when I go back among my memories it is one the things I treasure most. Afterward, there was something horrible, and sometimes I seemed to be dreaming while I was awake—that was the talking and staring you mentioned, I think. Now, and for a long time, she seems alive again, but inside me.”

“I don’t think the others are like that.”

“I don’t either,” I said. “At least, not from what I’ve heard of them. There are a great many things I do not understand. What I have told you is one of the chief ones.”

Ava was quiet for the space of two or three breaths, then her eyes opened wide. “The Claw, the thing you believe in. Did you have it then?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know what it could do. It had not acted—or rather, it had acted, it had raised a woman called Dorcas, but I didn’t know what had happened, where she had come from. If I had known, I might have saved Thecla, brought her back.”

“But you had it? You had it with you?” I nodded.

“Then don’t you see? It did bring her back. You just said it could act without your even knowing it.

You had it, and you had her, rotting, as you say, inside you.”

“Without the body ...”

“You’re a materialist, like all ignorant people. But your materialism doesn’t make materialism true.

Don’t you know that? In the final summing up, it is spirit and dream, thought and love and act that matter.” I was so stunned by the ideas that had come crowding in on me that I did not speak again for some time, but sat wrapped in my own speculations. When I came to myself again at last, I was surprised that Ava had not gone and tried to thank her.