(urth) Tzadkiel's ship

[Jeff Wilson]

> "Tony Ellis" <tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com>
> And Jeff Wilson:
>>Do you have a cite supporting this? A bas relief of the Tzadkiel
>>(polygon cross-section, with masts on all sides) would not really
>>resemble a single water vessel.
>
> Ah, but it doesn't have to resemble a water vessel, does it? In
> TBotNS, the word 'ship' is used interchangeably for sailing vessels
> and spacecraft. A ship on a coat of arms could be either.

But it has to visually resemble *some* kind of ship to be recognizable as
such, and...

> The whole "The Captain says there is only one ship" business, on the
> other hand, has never made much sense to me, as we've been told of at
> least two different (space)ships previously. The idea that humanity
> forged their great space empire solely by hitching a lift on someone
> else's spacecraft doesn't exactly sound plausible, either.

Apparently, there is only one capital-s Ship, distinguished from other,
lesser ships by its Inire-mirror sails that propel it through the void and
between Briah and Yesod. These sails resemble conventional rigging, but
sprout from all outer surfaces of The Ship, so that a picture of The Ship
would look more like a bottle-brush than a sailing vessel, or any of the
other airborne or spaceborne craft described.  Severian-the-Autarch might
still call such a picture "a ship" in his writing of the incident, but the
actions and thoughts he attributes to Severian-the-boy are consistent with
seeing a drawing resembling watercraft visible nearby or in books and art
available to him.