(urth) planetary problems

[Jeff Wilson]

On 12/27/2010 11:55 AM, Marc Aramini wrote:
> I am going to re-read the entire cycle, but I have a feeling there is
> some cosmic event in Urth of the New Sun that can shed light on that -
> either a transplantation of Yesod, a movement of Urth itself, or maybe
> something that will reveal the New Sun is a hoax, that the orbit of the
> planet was altered or something. I am really not sure and want to look
> at the descriptions of Apheta's planet, because there is a scene in Urth
> where Severian looks up and thinks Apheta is looking at him from the sky
> or something. Need to find that quote.

URTH XXIII: "Somewhere behind or before us, above us or below us, was a 
wide circle of light, spinning, frantically spinning, a thing like Lune, 
if such a thing as a moon of the most brilliant white can be imagined. 
Gunnie fluttered across it once or twice before she was lost in the 
diamond-decked blackness. (And once it seemed to me—and still seems when 
I call that frantic memory forth—that I saw Apheta's face as she leaned 
from that moon.) "

Urth XLVIII: "I had thought never to behold Apheta again. In that I had 
been mistaken, for I saw her that night, looking down from the sky just 
as she had looked down at me when I had left Yesod with Burgundofara. I 
blinked and stared, but soon saw only the green disk of Lune."

> Any hints that Yesod could have been altered or moved?

URTH XX: "I thought about it while I relieved myself and washed, and 
when I returned to Apheta, who lay on one of the divans with her naked 
loveliness pulsing through a thin sheet, I kissed her and asked, 'Are 
there no other worlds, my lady?'
'There are very many,' she murmured. She had unbound her dark hair which 
floated about her shining face, so that she seemed herself some eerie 
star, wrapped in night.
'Here in Yesod. On Urth we see myriad suns, dim by day, bright by night. 
Your day sky is empty, but your night sky is brighter than ours.'
'When we require them, the Hierogrammates will build more—worlds as fair 
as this, or more fair. Suns for them too, should we require more suns. 
Thus for us they are there already. Time runs as we ask here, and we 
like their light.'

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >