(urth) Father Inire theory cont (Jonas)

[Gerry Quinn]

From: "Andrew Mason" <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com>
> Gerry Quinn wrote:

> > But is Jonas the representative of Near Future Urth? He is a robot built 
> > to
> > serve on a starship; he may well have been carried aboard in a box along
> > with Hethor's paracoita. (Here's a thought - did Talos use bits of the
> > paracoita to make Jolenta? Jonas's love explained at last!)
> >
> > Jonas might well never have seen Urth before his spaceship crashed 
> > there.

[Note: as has been pointed out, by you I think, Jonas seems to have been on 
a different ship from Hethor, so that paracoita theory becomes even more 
doubtful!]

> Jonas speaks of his childhood on Urth. He says that 'Kim Lee Soong'
> was a common name in his youth 'in lands now lost beneath the waves'.

Does he actually speak of his childhood?  He was a robot, after all. Still, 
I take your point that he seems to have known something of the Urth of his 
youth.


> And his exclamation 'I know where we are - on Urth', hard though it is
> to understand, seems to make most sense if he has seen it before.

That one is easy, I think.  Remember, it is in the context of them having 
found the transporter.  All that matters to Jonas is that he is on the wrong 
planet, and he's just found his ticket out.


> One other thing - we do know something about the ship Jonas was on.
> After reading a book 'I asked the ship and she gave me another'. So it
> seems the ship was run by a computer with a personality. That doesn't
> seem to fit Tzadkiel's ship, as far as I can remember. (And we know,
> of course, that computers were important during the first empire.)

Indeed.  I don't think it makes any sense to conflate Jonas's ship with 
Tzadkiel's.

> (I agree that Jonas has met Hethor before, and I think it likely that
> Hethor was on Tzadkiel's ship during at least part of his life, but
> they may just have met in ports from time to time, or something.)

Agreed.

- Gerry Quinn