(urth) heartburn was: Re: travelling north

[Roy C. Lackey]

Jeff Wilson wrote, quoted, wrote:
> >> Why couldn't the eidolon stay at the stone town and the strangled meat
> >> go back to the future?
> >
> > The strangled meat didn't know what the eidolon knew; all that had just
been
> > learned from BF&O in the tomb. The eidolon had to get away from him or
die.
>
> okay - so there seems to be a fairly short distance limit on BFO's
> method of branching off an eidolon, so normally they are only made of
> dead people for practical and safety reasons (poor badger!).  Severian
> has a habit of coming back from the dead, so they want to make the
> eidolon and send him on his way before the light of the White Fountain
> revives the strangled body and causes a merger hazard. Sound right so far?

Close enough, except that eidolons are always of the dead.

> So...why do they wait until the White Fountain's light is almost there,
> instead of showing up a week early?  Perhaps because the new eidolon
> still needs the White Fountain's light to enter the Corridors of Time
> again?

Yes, the eidolon must have the WF's light to use the Corridors.

> And they don't know for sure that the WF will revive the
> strangled meat, and they can't spare a week farting around the Stone
> Town keeping Sev from getting strangled again, so they cut it close,
> hoping the anxiety at escaping horrid death and being faced with it
> again almost immediately will motivate Severian to head back uptime
> right away?

They weren't interested in keeping Sev (as Apu, Head of Day) from being
strangled by the townspeople, if that's what you mean. That tomb had to be
built and a body put in it for future history to pan out as it had panned
out. The strangled meat, a sun god, had to rise again to make the myth
(358-59). And he did rise again and leave the tomb (365-66). He also had a
future (the revived strangled meat's personal future) date with young Sev
and Hildegrin in the stone town.

Eidolon Sev didn't need much more motivation to head back uptime. Besides,
his new eidolon body looked exactly like that of the guy on the funeral
bronze in his boyhood mausoleum, and Sev (from his personal perspective) had
not yet been laid to rest there. He had places to go, things to do.

-Roy