(urth) Travelin' Jahlee

[thalassocrat at nym.hush.com]

On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 23:42:55 -0700 "Roy C. Lackey" 
<rclackey at stic.net> wrote:

>But Silkhorn was also sure that landers *had* been sent out before 

>Auk's.

Maybe: in this conversation with Abanja, Silkhorn is still thinking 
in the context of Horn's three hypotheses from OBW. He knows enough 
about the inhumi now to dismiss the hypothesis that they built a 
lander for themselves. Jahlee has just confirmed that the Whorl is 
too far from Green for inhumi to fly there. So by elimination he's 
left with the pre-Exodus lander hypothesis. It could be a 
conclusion he's come to *right now*. But this is before he 
discovers that the Neighbors were responsible; he's missing a 
hypothesis.

Seems consistent, anyway.

>Who cut that big cable down at the Pole? When did it happen, and 
>why? Was
>that the reason for Mainframe's and the Crew's ignorance of the 
>comings and
>goings?

Excellent question! Isn't it the cable running from 
Mainframe/bridge back to the drive? In other words, a very major 
trunk. Pure speculation: Pas did it as he was being killed by his 
family, to prevent them from making the Whorl leave the SS system 
(or divert from it, if he's killed before insertion). 

>
>Yes, but . . . the way it's phrased, "We found a way to leave and 
>we left,
>seeking a new and a better home." "Found a way" doesn't sound to 
>me like
>they just boarded their spaceships and went elsewhere. There would 

>have been
>nothing novel about that if they had had a high-tech civilization, 

>which
>they apparently once did, judging from the ruins on Green. I think 

>there
>must be something more to it.

More speculation: it could just be that the Neighbors discovered 
(physical) FTL travel, something not available to the humans in the 
SS system. 

Actually, there's at least one big hole in the Neighbor-naut 
theory: if Neighbors have spacecraft in the SS system, why don't 
Silkhorn & party just beg a lift to the Whorl with them, at the end 
of RTTW? I guess there might be just one, which is travelling 
between the Neighbor Whorl & Green on a long journey at this point -
 but it all starts to look a little too thin for comfort :)

On the other hand, it's a consideration which also tends to rule 
out any magic matter-transfer ability for the Neighbors.

OK, so next unanswerable question: where do Talus-brains come from? 
In the long Talus factory scene in LS, we get a discussion of 
different head designs etc etc but nothing about this, which would 
seem to be the most crucial part of making a Talus. A guess: 
they're swiped from the stores which chems have access to for 
making chem babies, or more disturbingly, extracted from chem 
foetuses.