(urth) Inhumi in the Whorl

[Jack Smith]

Thanks for all the good ideas.  I need to re-read BotSS with these in mind.



On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 9:30 PM, Mr Thalassocrat
<thalassocrat08 at gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 9:50 AM, Jack Smith <jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Quetzal has been Prolocutor for 33 years when Silk is enlightened.   I
>> assumed he had come aboard the Whorl only a year or two before he became
>> head of the Chapter, and then, as a shape-shifter, Quetzal took the place of
>> a promising human augur who was already in line to become Prolocutor.
>>
>> The way Quetzal gets to the Whorl is, as far as I can tell, not explained
>> in the text.
>>
>> I have a related question.  How do the inhumi travel from Green to Blue?
>>  At conjunction, the two planets are 105,000 miles apart (In Green's
>> Jungles, chap. 15).  This means most of the distance would be a vacuum, and
>> so the ability of inhumi to fly like bats would be of no help.  After all,
>> birds can't fly from the earth to the moon.
>>
>> But if the inhumi use some sort of mysterious astral projection, then why
>> do they need to wait for conjunction to invade Blue?
>>
>
>
> Couple of points.
>
> - The Neighbors first entered the Whorl as it approached Blue's sun, before
> it went into orbit. (Testimony of one of them at SIlkhorn's trial in Doorp.)
>
> - The Neighbors seeded the Whorl with inhumi (Silkhorn to Vadsig, on the
> way from Doorp to New Viron). By comparing human-ish inhumi with their own
> Neighbor-ish inhumi, they would get to understand humans better.
>
> - As far as I can understand the process, it must have involved the
> Neighbors first taking some "wild" inhumi to the Whorl, letting them feed,
> taking them back to Green to breed, returning with some of the human-ish
> offspring to the Whorl, and observing them in a human context.
>
> - I think it's a fair assumption that Quetzal was one of these human-ish
> offspring. He could have been placed in the Whorl some years before it
> reached orbit - I don't think there is any precise info on exactly when the
> Neighbors first made contact, only that it was when the Whorl was
> approaching the Blue/Green system.
>
> - Note that the same is probably true of Jahlee, when you think about it.
> And also Fava, who seems to have spent time ont he Whorl. (Interesting to
> speculate on whether we meet either of these or their "blood parents" in
> BOTLS - I haven't managed to identify anybody.)
>
> - My theory is that the inhumi don't actually fly between Green and Blue.
> This story is just a lie they have propagated to conceal their reliance on
> Auk's lander, the real means of transport. Anyway, I think the theory is
> consistent with what we know, explains (umm spaced on name - the inhumu Horn
> adopts) desire to board the lander, and avoids the physical impossibility of
> the flying story.
>
> - My other theory goes like this: The Neighbors used physcial spacecraft to
> transport inhumi to and from the Whorl, and that we actually see one such
> spacecraft in the squat, dome-like structure astral-SilkHorn encounters at
> the top of the cliff on Green. The stiff, cloaked figure he sees is the
> Neighbor-astronaut & from him SilkHorn learns about the seeding of the Whorl
> etc. The Neighbors have selected human-ish inhumi to transport to the Whorl
> from those who have had sufficient sentient determination and strength to
> fly all the way to the top of the cliff, an arrangement illustrated from the
> inhumi's point of view by Jahlee's story about her younger days.
>
>
>
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-- 
Best wishes,
Jack
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