Stephen said (as to why Avon called Subterrons "creatures"):
3/ Avon's dirty little secret is that he likes to read Patristic Theology and is using the word in it's archaic sense.
I've written a bunch of Catholic Avon stories, so I'm inclined to accept this explanation
Rather regretfully I have to reject option 3/ on the grounds that there's absolutely no evidence for it - unless one assumes that the reason Avon thought that the Sopron was more intelligent than the crew of the liberator, was because it *really* understood the Sabelian heresy.
Occam's Razor suggests a simpler explanation of why someone would think a rock was more intelligent than the crew of the Liberator.
There's another option: "creature" may be the politically correct, non-homo-sapiens-centric description of sentient life forms.
-(Y)