What's So Great About Ushas?

Dave Tallman · 13 Jun 2008, 11:07 · from 2008-June.txt.gz

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From: davetallman at msn.com (Dave Tallman)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 05:07:43 -0600
Subject: (urth) What's So Great About Ushas?
In-Reply-To: <484E4968.2090907 at io.com>
References: <484E4968.2090907 at io.com>
Message-ID: <485254FF.8080200 at gmail.com>

Jeff Wilson wrote:
> The worldwide upheavals may have been considered necessary to do away 
> with Abaia, Erebus, and their ilk. It makes sense that something 
> catastrophic would be required, and you'd want to do them as a batch to 
> prevent the survivors of a first strike to grow stronger by taking up 
> the resources of their dead rivals.
>   
The Ushas upheavals probably didn't destroy Abaia. Juturna, speaking as 
the White Fountain arrives, says he is still planning to "tame" 
(enslave) the human race (Urth XLIII). The religion predicted that the 
New Sun would "kill Abaia" (Sword XXI), but that was probably wishful 
thinking. It is unlikely that a flood would kill a being whose element 
is water. (However, it was a setback for Abaia's plans in some way, or 
he wouldn't have sent Idas to try to wreck Severian's mission on the Ship).

Severian accepts this fact a moment later. He realizes that Abaia will 
be left to trouble humanity, like the anvil in the metaphor of the 
aquastor Malrubius (in Citadel XXIV). The existence of an adversary is 
necessary for the advancement of the human race into Heiros. Severian 
finds Juturna is a name to be feared about a century later when he 
returns to Ushas (Urth LI).

I'd like to weigh in on why Juturna saves Sev from drowning. She says 
"It hasn' t yet occurred. It will, because you spoke." The motive for 
saving him can't be in hopes of influencing him not to bring the New 
Sun; she's seen that he will do it.

In Citadel XXVIII, Sev says "I am not the first Severian... thus it was 
that... the undine thrust me up when it seemed I must drown. (Yet surely 
the first Severian did not; something had already begun to reshape my 
life)." Juturna must realize the same thing: even if she doesn't save 
him he will not drown. (Or he may have drowned and become an aquastor, 
as some have theorized about the skull Sev finds underwater -- I like 
that idea). Something kept him on the path of his destiny at the very 
beginning. If the Heirogrammates didn't intervene until they saw him 
become autarch once on his own, then I suggest that divine intervention 
caused that first aquastor.

By planning to save him as he says, Juturna increases her chances of 
getting out of the House Absolute alive. It's the reason Sev orders her 
to be spared. Knowing that Sev owes her something, she can try some 
further temptations later. (One such temptation is showing him the path 
to the past, where he was very nearly killed).

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