Tzadkiel's ship

Jeff Wilson · 28 Nov 2007, 21:12 · from 2007-November.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 15:12:13 -0600 (CST)
Subject: (urth) Tzadkiel's ship
In-Reply-To: <9a33123d0711280610g2ebe9adbte27022bd9af837ca at mail.gmail.com>
References: <9a33123d0711280610g2ebe9adbte27022bd9af837ca at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <9093.24.119.55.228.1196284333.squirrel at webmail.io.com>

> "Tony Ellis" <tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com>
> And Jeff Wilson:
>>Do you have a cite supporting this? A bas relief of the Tzadkiel
>>(polygon cross-section, with masts on all sides) would not really
>>resemble a single water vessel.
>
> Ah, but it doesn't have to resemble a water vessel, does it? In
> TBotNS, the word 'ship' is used interchangeably for sailing vessels
> and spacecraft. A ship on a coat of arms could be either.

But it has to visually resemble *some* kind of ship to be recognizable as
such, and...

> The whole "The Captain says there is only one ship" business, on the
> other hand, has never made much sense to me, as we've been told of at
> least two different (space)ships previously. The idea that humanity
> forged their great space empire solely by hitching a lift on someone
> else's spacecraft doesn't exactly sound plausible, either.

Apparently, there is only one capital-s Ship, distinguished from other,
lesser ships by its Inire-mirror sails that propel it through the void and
between Briah and Yesod. These sails resemble conventional rigging, but
sprout from all outer surfaces of The Ship, so that a picture of The Ship
would look more like a bottle-brush than a sailing vessel, or any of the
other airborne or spaceborne craft described.  Severian-the-Autarch might
still call such a picture "a ship" in his writing of the incident, but the
actions and thoughts he attributes to Severian-the-boy are consistent with
seeing a drawing resembling watercraft visible nearby or in books and art
available to him.

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