(urth) What's So Great About Ushas?

[Roy C. Lackey]

Dave Tallman wrote:
>I'd like to weigh in on why Juturna saves Sev from drowning. She says
>"It hasn' t yet occurred. It will, because you spoke." The motive for
>saving him can't be in hopes of influencing him not to bring the New
>Sun; she's seen that he will do it.

Right. Because you seem to have done homework in the archives, I assume you
have read what I said on this subject a couple years ago and won't repeat
it. Looking back on that stuff, maybe I was reasoning from a false premise.

>In Citadel XXVIII, Sev says "I am not the first Severian... thus it was
>that... the undine thrust me up when it seemed I must drown. (Yet surely
>the first Severian did not; something had already begun to reshape my
>life)." Juturna must realize the same thing: even if she doesn't save
>him he will not drown. (Or he may have drowned and become an aquastor,
>as some have theorized about the skull Sev finds underwater -- I like
>that idea). Something kept him on the path of his destiny at the very
>beginning. If the Heirogrammates didn't intervene until they saw him
>become autarch once on his own, then I suggest that divine intervention
>caused that first aquastor.

Setting aside for now the part about the first Severian (aka "Sev1" in a
related past discussion) and the drowning stuff, maybe I was wrong to assume
that Juturna experienced time in reverse order, as B, F, & O seem to do.
That is, though our Sev (aka "Sev2") spoke to her in the throne room as the
Conciliator and she had no memory of having saved him from drowning in the
Gyoll, his words may not have been prophesy in the usual sense; in this case
the "future" action of a person living backwards in time.

It is easier to believe that Juturna experiences time in the usual order,
which avoids some otherwise logical difficulties I have pointed out before.
She doesn't remember saving him because she hasn't done it yet, not because
she is living her life backwards; it is because she is experiencing the fact
of Sev having brought the New Sun. With the New Sun a reality that can't be
undone (*), she is bowing to logical necessity. That is, she *will* use the
Corridors of Time to go back to when he was a boy and save him, regardless
of her personal or political inclinations, *because* that is in fact what
happened. The fact that the Conciliator is standing there telling her so is
the incontrovertible proof.

Her action will close a time loop that began that day in the Gyoll, which is
what Sev meant when he said that "those who walk the corridors walked back
to the time when he was young, and my own story -- as I have given it here
in so many pages -- began." (CITADEL, XXXVIII) He meant that literally. His
manuscript begins with that day at the Gyoll, never mind that the first two
chapters are in reverse order of events. The "he" in the quote is Sev1; the
other two pronouns refer to Sev2.

(*) After Ushas is born there cannot be an infinite number of excursions in
Urth's past to try to stop it; at some point all such efforts must cease.

>By planning to save him as he says, Juturna increases her chances of
>getting out of the House Absolute alive. It's the reason Sev orders her
>to be spared. Knowing that Sev owes her something, she can try some
>further temptations later. (One such temptation is showing him the path
>to the past, where he was very nearly killed).

Juturna wasn't worried about dying in the House Absolute; she could have
avoided the whole scene by not going there in the first place at
considerable effort. But it's the other end of the time loop. Questions of
volition become problematic when time travel is involved, but it comes with
the territory. <g>

Back to Sev1 and that day at the river. This business is even more
complicated than it appears at first glance. To begin with, there are at
least four factions who can walk the Corridors; the Hiero-dudes (to use
Andrew's term); Abaia & Co. (including Juturna); the Green Man and Sev1, to
say nothing of Sev2, with each faction having conflicting interests. Part of
it depends on whether Sev1 went to Ushas and won a New Sun or not. Some say
yes, some no. If he did, trying to sort out who did what to whom, and why,
gets hairy. But I think the main when was that day at the river. There is
also a question as to whether Sev1 and Sev2 maintained discreet lives after
their paths diverged when someone intervened in Sev1's life, given that Sev1
became a time walker, or if they were the same person who lived for a week
as the Conciliator in Typhon's time.

This needs its own thread.

-Roy