(urth) At risk of getting in over my head . . .

[Mr Thalassocrat]

On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 2:16 AM, Matthew King <automatthew at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 8:51 AM, Eric Ortlund <eortlund at briercrest.ca>
> wrote:
> > Namely: how did
> > Patera Quetzal get into the Whorl?
>
> IIRC, the Neighbors intentionally infected the Whorl, the idea being
> that the behavior of the inhumi would provide insight into the human
> condition.
>
As SilkHorn explains to Vadsig in RTTW, while they are sailing from Dorp to
New Viron.

There's a lot to think about in this. Just reviewing the conclusions I came
to and seeing how they look now on reflection ....

Inhumi can only breed on Green. Just drinking a human's blood doesn't turn a
primal inhumu into a self-aware being: only its children. The Neighbors must
have taken primal inhumi from Green to the Whorl, gotten them to drink human
blood, taken them back to Green to breed and then selected some of the
offspring to re-introduce to the Whorl.

The Neighbors also took inhumi with them to their new world (also according
to SilkHorn), and it must be the same kind of process, except on-going (as
the infestation of the Whorl may not have been). Neighbors monitor
themselves periodically by letting inhumi take some of their blood,
transporting them back to Green to breed, and examining the nature of the
offspring.

Everything suggests that the transportation of the inhumi must be
*physical*, not astral travelling. An astrally-transported inhumu is no
longer an inhumu. The Neighbors need space ships to do it. I believe that
the low, domed building SilkHorn sees on top of the great mountain on Green
is such a spaceship, and that the Neighbor he meets there is a
Neighbor-naut, the source of his information about the inhumu infestation of
the Whorl etc. The Neighbors select inhumi for transportation to the Whorl
and their new world by choosing from those who manage to fly to the top of
the mountain - the strongest-willed, the ones who care about having sentient
children and so on.

Jahlee was once one of these. She never flew from Green to Blue; no inhumu
does - that's a lie they tell themselves. Any inhumu on Blue came there from
Green on Auk's captured lander, or on a lander from the Whorl (as with Fava,
I think), or was transported there by the Neighbors. I don't know which of
these methods Jahlee used.
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