(urth) Faterh Inire Theory cont.

[Gerry Quinn]

From: "David Stockhoff" <dstockhoff at verizon.net>

I'm combining  two of your posts on the same issue:

> It's simple. Jonas recognized the architecture as Urthly architecture much 
> like our own. He recognized technology from a time he was familiar with. 
> He's been around 20,00 years and has touched on Urth many times.
        "We crashed. It had been so long, on Urth, that there was no port 
when we returned, no dock."

I don't remember him saying how often he touched on Urth.  But his last 
journey was very long indeed.  He may well have made multiple voyages early 
on (maybe around AD 3000) but then his ship got stuck near a black hole or 
something and re-emerged closer to Severian's time, probably at least 
several tens of thousands of years in the future.

It's not just drop ceilings that he recognised - he worked the mirror 
transporter.  How was he familiar with that technology?  You would at first 
sight expect it to be wildly futuristic by his standards - but no, he was 
instantly able to operate it.


Something else about the ceiling:
        "You're right. There was an old ceiling above this one, for a room 
much smaller than this. How did you know?"

        "Because I talked to those people. Yesterday."

Not because "I'm a robot constructed as a crewman for a starship but for 
some reason before I left I spent some time working in an office on Earth 
where there were drop ceilings"

There's some connection here and it isn't architecture.


Here's an interesting passage - Severian is half asleep and it leads it 
leads into where he wakes as Thecla.  It could be coincidence - but what is 
he thinking about?  Distances, passages, stairs on a spaceship!
        Three hundred and ninety steps from the ground to our dormitory. How 
many more to the room where the         guns throbbed at the top of the 
tower? One, two, three, four, five, six guns. One, two, three levels of 
cells         in  use in the oubliette.



Here's the entrance to the transporter room:

        We had descended perhaps a hundred steps when we reached a door 
painted with a crimson teratoid             sign that appeared to me to be a 
glyph from some tongue beyond the shores of Urth.

Wolfe is spelling it out!  Okay, an alternative interpretation is that the 
symbol is associated with Inire.  But if you prefer, here's another allusion 
to starflight.  [See, I can play the allusion game too!]



        this wing has always been Father Inire's

Inire grabs the high tech stuff, natch.  A starship is perfect for him.



> If it IS a starship, it would make more sense if the vault was painted 
> AFTER it was grounded.


Maybe renovations do happen in dry dock.  Who knows.  The paint was flaking, 
but that is not necessarily due to a subjectively long voyage, as it has 
been neglected for a long time since anyway.


> The problem with painting a starship interior, which I am surprised no one 
> here sees, is that life support systems would fail if the crew went around 
> renovating the ship. If it didn't fail, the crew eventually would get 
> sick.

I don't see how you can confidently assert that.  Sure, if you tried to 
bring a conventional painting crew into a ramshackle vessel such as the 
current International Space Station, it would probably cause a few problems. 
But we are talking about a much more sophisticated vessel of the future. 
Possibly decorative materials also have advanced so that Sick Starship 
Syndrome is a concern of the past.

Wolfe repeatedly makes a connection between sea-going vessels and starships. 
Could a modern sea-going vessel have a painted vaulted ceiling?  Of course 
it could!

- Gerry Quinn