Fish and Caves

Lee Berman · 22 Dec 2010, 15:40 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2010 10:40:26 -0500
Subject: (urth) Fish and Caves
Message-ID: <SNT123-W62CFC26BA9FEE547F571B4CF1B0 at phx.gbl>

>David Stockhoff: Plus, as it has always seemed to me, he might theoretically be able to 
>"swim," in Lovecraftian fashion, between the worlds. There's no textual 
>support for this, just a smell of Cthulhu about him.

>Antonio Pedro Marques: Doesn't Juturna claim the ability? I may be misremembering.

Juturna, Abaia's daughter-bride, does claim to be able to swim between the stars. Since
she is obviously bound by the laws of physics, given her size/water-bound nature I had
always taken this to be a metaphor to explain her alien nature to Severian who, at the
time, didn't have a very clear view of space travel. The presence of immature undine Idas 
on The Ship seems to confirm this. By inference, perhaps we can assume Abaia also has an 
alien origin. 

If not just a metaphor this could also be a lie designed to confuse and disguise
the true nature of Undines and Abaia, as the Inhumi use their lie of unassisted space travel
between Blue and Green. Bu, "swimming between the stars" could reference some sort of dream
travel which is not restricted by the laws of physics on material bodies. I think Wolfe jumbles
all these ideas together, and, as for Short Sun, we aren't meant to know exactly how it all 
works together.

Somehow the image of gigantic Tzadkiel in the mirror book must also be related to the concept
of swimming between the stars. We see him/her on The Ship but perhaps there is a much larger
(and more spiritual?) form which is able to swim unassisted in the void? 

For me, this mirroring of Tzadkiel and Abaia/undines is part of the gnostic aspect of this universe.
God is not One here but expressed as paired opposites.

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