Subject: (urth) Again: Mirrors, Apports

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.geis.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 03:35:00 +0000

[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

Reply:  Item #8489663 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET02#

Kieran,

Re: entering the circle, the "circle" I allude to is the circle of
magic mirrors looking at each other.  Octogon, what have you.  I
believe Odillo calls it circle in "The Cat."  The teleporter pad that
Jonas stepped onto--the same as which the household cat was tossed
onto.

Re: the one apport we really know.  I believe that we see apport Zak
long before it is in the cargo hold.  Chapter one, in fact, while
Severian is flying up like a rocket: "Once I seemed to see, suspended
(as it appeared) in the space between two sails, an indistinct golden
shape veined with crimson."

(Before you discount this as a mere vision of the cross, recall that
when Zak becomes the "improved, glossy" Severian, Zak is quite
golden.)

Also note that the apport appears rather close to Yesod, i.e., on the
nebulous border of Briah whereon are scattered all the atoms of
mirror walkers.

Re: the light source for Inire's teleporter.  I know that we are
meant to think "laser," but I sense that it is more like "Yesod
light," for example the sunlight at worldship Yesod.

Re: what drives the sails of the starships, well, it ain't likely to
be sunlight or starlight, Severian's understanding notwithstanding.
Unless, by mirror magic, each light point is replicated upon the mirror
surface as a minute stellar emission, giving one sided thrust with
zero additional mass.  Otherwise gamma rays, cosmic rays, tachyons,
aetheric vibrations, the ray of propulsion . . . hard to say.

=mantis=