(urth) Jonas

[Maru Dubshinki]

Jonas bother me on several levels.
First, there is his name: obviously a straight take off of the
Biblical one right down to the spelling, and there is a commonality of
livelihood.  But, I cannot see what Jonas' whale is.  Could it be
Urth, when he and his fellow sailors crashed?  But that is not
satisfactory.
Second,  Jonas, AFAIK, is, from Apprentice Sev's time frame, from the
deep past, who has only now returned, many years later, thanks to time
dilation.  But,  consider:  the only ship we know of, and are given
strong reasons to believe is in fact the *only* 'ship', is Tzadkiels
in TUOTNS. All right you say, what of it?  Well, first Sev doesn't see
Jonas on Tzadkiel's ship, which is fairly suspicious- if such an
unlikely thing as Gunny meeting her younger self could happen,  how
much more likely should it be that Sev meet Jonas again, when the
connections betwixt them are so strong and old?  It would work
perfectly from a novelists perspective, since Jonas could easily be
searching for Jolenta again, or seeking a return to the past.
The problem here is that we know that Jonas couldn't have been on the
Tzadkiel, since his ship disastrously crashed when there were no
facilities to receive them, and the Tzadkiel never crashed.  And it
could not have been one of the minor tenders and in-system vessels,
since those could never acheive the relativistic time warping effects
that plunged Jonas far into his future.
Thirdly, his accent and mannerisms.  He certainly seems to speak as a
sailor, with the mini-parables, and such.  But Jonas was mechanical,
but not like Sidero remember. Sidero was a hollow man, and Jonas was
not.  As well, Sev says that Jonas entire demeanour spoke to him of a
'time when they lived in fear, and sought to alleviate it through
constant joking' (sorry for the paraphrase; can't even remember what
book it is in.) The sailors on the Tzadkiel certainly don't live in
constant fear.

So, we have a dude whose is from the past, shouldn't have been able to
get into the future, who mimics sailors, but is not one, and
mysteriously disapears to who-knows-where - the mirrors of Inire
coulda taken him clear to Briah or even more inscrutable times/places
(remember too that in this relativistic framework, time is space is
time.  Mirrors which serve to catapult/shanghai one through space can
also do thus through time), and never shows up again, despite being so
important.
As I said, Jonas bothers me.

~Maru