(urth) Father Inire as Dionysus

[Gerry Quinn]

From: David Stockhoff 
> On 10/27/2011 8:37 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
> > *From:* Lee Berman <mailto:severiansola at hotmail.com>
> > **
> > > I think it is a goosechase to think there is more than one ship which
> > > becomes lost in the folds of time. The text hints there is only one and
> > > I take the hint.
> > Where is this ‘hint’? The text TELLS us quite clearly that there were 
> > many:
> > "He came to sell his clothes, and they were the kind worn on the old 
> > ships that sailed beyond the world's rim long ago, and they weren't 
> > costumes or forgeries or even tomb-tender old garments that had lain 
> > for centuries in the dark, but clothes not far from new. He said his 
> > ships—all those ships—became lost in the blackness between the suns, 
> > where the years do not turn. Lost so that even Time cannot find them."
> > There’s also Jonas’s crashed ship. Unless you think that Tzadkiel is 
> > going to crash on Urth some time in his future and Urth’s past. 
> > Because he expects to find a port, and it is gone (that’s why they 
> > crashed).
> > There’s only one Ship. But there are lots of ships.

> Yes. But it also says "all those ships" became lost. So it's ambiguous. 
> Are there STILL any ships other than The Ship?
Probably lots of the old lost ships are still lost and turn up occasionally, like the Fortunate Cloud and perhaps the Quasar (we don’t know how Hethor returned to Urth).
Other ships exist too: the Whorl currently orbits a distant star, which is itself inhabited by spacefaring aliens.  The ships that got away from Typhon’s empire no doubt escaped to advanced planets where interstellar travel remains commonplace. 
Finally, on the subject of multiple ships, Wolfe’s appendix to CotA goes into some detail, and always uses the plural.  Among other things he notes that: “the star-traveling ships appear to be propelled by light pressure on immense sails of metal foil”.
He also indicates that the ships are commanded by the Hierodules but sometimes crewed by human beings, and that Jonas and Hethor appear to have been crewmen on such ships.  [However, it seems improbable that the Fortunate Cloud was so commanded; it seems to me to have been the product of an Asian culture much closer to our own times than the setting of BotNS.]
- Gerry Quinn
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