(urth) What's So Great About Ushas?

[Jeff Wilson]

Roy C. Lackey wrote:
> I have always thought that the Ship really was there to stage the eclipse
> that saved Sev's bacon. The eclipse was not a coincidence. Obviously, it is
> a physical impossibility for any vessel to transport or even come near a
> black hole, so if the Hierogrammates are the ones who put it in the sun, and
> regardless of when it happened, how was the deed done?

We don't know this is true within the context of the books. Several 
examples of antigravity (the throne room and the fliers to name two) are 
provided that might be parleyed into protection from the hole's gravity. 
   there are numerous techical work-arounds suggested in popular science 
literature of the time, like using electrical charges and magnetic 
fields to move the collapsed mass without touching it.

( Black holes, btw, can come in all sizes, and the gravity at a distance 
is no greater than it would have been for the original object. It's just 
that the collapsed state allows one to closely approach the total mass 
all at once, instead of having it distributed over thousands or millions 
of miles. )


> And that brings up the complementary question: If they could put a black
> hole directly in the sun (obviously no black hole traveled through the solar
> system wrecking havoc like the white hole later would),

Again, we don't know this for sure. *Something* moved the moon 100,000 
miles closer to Urth than it is to Earth, and an incoming black hole is 
as plausible as many other explanations posited here.


 > then they could have
> put the white hole directly in the sun, too. But they didn't. Why? Because
> they couldn't, or because they didn't want to? If they could not, that may
> put the blame for the black hole back on Typhon. But if they *chose* to send
> the white fountain by the scenic route (as they chose to send Sev back to
> Typhon's time instead of his own), why?
> 
> One answer may be to stretch the range of Sev's time-walking ability from
> the era of the Stone Town all the way to Ushas, said range delineated by
> light from the white fountain reaching Urth, all in furtherance of the
> Conciliator legend. Another answer is that they needed Urth destroyed to
> bring about Ushas.

The worldwide upheavals may have been considered necessary to do away 
with Abaia, Erebus, and their ilk. It makes sense that something 
catastrophic would be required, and you'd want to do them as a batch to 
prevent the survivors of a first strike to grow stronger by taking up 
the resources of their dead rivals.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >