Characters
- Mendoza, the narrator, is a "good machine". She obeys her masters except when her heart, mechanical though it may be, says otherwise. Mendoza does not actually know her real name, having been addressed only as "daughter" in her family. The Inquisition calls her Mendoza, the surname of the woman who pretended to be her mother.
- Joseph, the Facilitator who "recruited" Mendoza for the Company, is an ancient operative, a sly old fox who mistakenly believes the world has no surprises left for him.
- Nicholas Harpole is a tall, intelligent, devout Englishman with a dark past. He is reputedly the natural son of some unknown noble, raised by foster parents and supplied with a good education by his mysterious father. Although a man of his time he has unusual ideas which, if shared with the wrong people, are dangerous both to him and to them. In this he is at least 200 years ahead of his time. He speaks several languages, both Classical and contemporary. When not working for Sir Walter he spends his time in intense study, turning the pages of his books with machine-like regularity as he absorbs the text. He seems superhuman in some respects, more like the Company cyborgs than the people he works for. As the saga unfolds, Mendoza and Joseph discover how different he really is.
Read more about this topic: In The Garden Of Iden
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“His leanings were strictly lyrical, descriptions of nature and emotions came to him with surprising facility, but on the other hand he had a lot of trouble with routine items, such as, for instance, the opening and closing of doors, or shaking hands when there were numerous characters in a room, and one person or two persons saluted many people.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)