A new mystery ...

Roy C. Lackey · 04 Dec 2008, 07:05 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 01:05:57 -0600
Subject: (urth) A new mystery ...
References: <W2285920035277921228323544@webmail26>
Message-ID: <00b301c955de$c555b940$a0ce4a0c@rclackey>

Son of Witz wrote:
> Regarding the Aquastor body Tzadkiel makes.
> I'm not sure this reading is necessary.
> No one else finds that dead Severian.  Gunnie says Zak found him, and
since Zak is Tzadk, he would have been the one to 'hide' the body.<<

Zak is just a splintered-off piece of Tzadkiel, like the tiny Tzadkiel
beside the Brook who didn't know Severian's history because she was cut off
from the main entity. Zak started out as a fur-ball, then evolved through
stages over time on the Ship, to eventually become the false Epitome. It
probably wasn't Zak who made Sev the new body.

At any rate, it is a textual given (URTH, chapter L) that Sev got a new
aquastor body on the Ship from Tzadkiel that, over time, became solid.
Tzadkiel, the mighty Hierogrammate, did not have the ability to simply raise
the dead that Sev had. (ibid.)

>> BUT, when he is awakened by Gunnie and Zak, he still has all the other
injuries he sustained in the fall/fight with Sideru in the spiracle, EXCEPT
the compound fractured leg. His arm is still burned and he is in agony.
> Why would his brand new body have some parts 'fixed' and others not? why
the pain?<<

The pain came with the injuries, and it would have seemed mighty queer to
Gunnie and Sidero and the others if Sev had survived that fall unscathed.
The injuries made his survival at least plausible. Besides, I don't think
Tzadkiel wanted Sev to know then (maybe ever) that he had died and was just
an aquastor. I don't know where the dead body went.

>> Perhaps the Severian that closes the eyes of the Dead Severian is the
Form Severian closing the eyes of the Instance of Severian before that body
is fixed.  a possibility, I guess, but its' a bit out of sequence. He sees
Tzadkiel clap and has a vision of a new face, then he's back in the airshaft
with the body. I would expect them reversed if this idea is true.<<

The mind, for want of a better term, of an aquastor comes from the memories
of another entity. "You were reflected thought in your dead mind. He
[Tzadkiel]  fixed the image, made it whole, mended the fatal wound [compound
fracture?] you'd borne." (ibid.)

Severian died on that Ship and got another body. Just after the above quote
is when Sev complained to Hierodules BF&O: "Why couldn't Tzadkiel have
called me back as I called back Zama? Healed me as I healed Herena? Why did
I have to die?"

An aquastor was the only way Tzadkiel could bring Sev back from death.

-Roy

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net