The Falls - Characters

Characters

Two example biographies follow.

Bwythan Fallbutus is the 42nd victim of the Violent Unknown Event listed in the VUE directory. Bwythan Fallbutus was Betheda Fallbutus' eldest son. He was the officially-appointed VUE Commission's linguistic expert. He lived just off the Goldhawk Road within a three-minute walking distance of his mother, whom he visited every day. The VUE had given Bwythan a bone-marrow deficiency, wattles and cobs along his backbone, and a foot disease that shredded his toe-nails. He could drink salt water without harm but felt listless and debilitated away from the influence of chlorophyll, which is why there were always several plantpots in his office, and even on his desk. Bwythan could speak fourteen VUE languages and interpret successfully in nine of them at a diplomatic level. It was Bwythan who had organised the examination of Agropio Fallaver, the sole speaker of the language named after him. Although Bwythan had come to the private opinion that Fallaver was somehow a fake manoeuvred by FOX, the Society for Ornithological Extermination. Bwythan has privately researched the ten-thousand most popularly used words in forty-three of the main VUE languages and has produced a comparative dictionary. From this research he wrote a book, View from Babel, to explain, or attempt to explain the gift of tongues and the fragmentation of language. In trying to do this, and in his associated search for a common linguistic denominator, he successfully demonstrated that the names of birds were important key words. It was rumoured that it was because of the conclusions of his research that Bwythan was run down by a white van, registration number NID 92, on a zebra crossing in the Goldhawk Road. A van with the same registration had been seen outside Bwythan's house an hour before the accident. The police later found the vehicle responsible on a deserted airfield. It was supposed that the assailant, or assailants, had escaped by air.

Catch-Hanger Fallcaster is one of the victims of the Violent Unknown Event listed in the VUE directory. Her biography, number 49 in the movie, is one amidst several interrelated biographies concerning different members of the Fallcaster family. Catch-Hanger Fallcaster had been a teacher. She had taught Russian to Germans. And certainly before the VUE, she would never have admitted to a great knowledge of ornithology. The VUE had made Catch-Hanger three inches taller, paraylsed her index fingers and improved her eyesight. She now taught Abcadefghan to anyone who wanted to learn. Catch-Hanger has translated Tulse Luper's Some Birds of the Northern Hemisphere, establishing a definitive pronunciation of the Abcadefghan equivalents for the Falconidae. She has also started work on an Abcadefghan-English language primer that is based substantially on the three nursery rhymes, "Goosey, Goosey, Gander," "Who Killed Cock-Robin?," and "I Shot a Little Duck."