(urth) Inhumi in the Whorl

[Gerry Quinn]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Wynn" <crushtv at gmail.com>
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2011 2:40 AM
Subject: Re: (urth) Inhumi in the Whorl


>
>> Gerry Quinn -
>> Time-travelling Neighbours?  I will confess I only read the Short Sun 
>> trilogy once, but I don't remember any of that.  On what basis do you say 
>> the Neighbours were time travelling?  If they could travel ion time, why 
>> didn't they use this ability against the inhumi?
>
> Dream-travel involves Time travel.
> The Rajan's appearance in the grandmother's tale proves it.
> The appearance of the astral traveling Oreb and the Rajan (as Pike's 
> ghost) proves it.
> The screwed up time-line in 'The Book of the Short Sun' proves it.

Silk's appearance (with Oreb) in the grandmother's tale certainly suggests 
time travel of some kind.

I don't agree that it completely proves it - it was a story told at a table 
where at least one story was false and another was a mythologisation. The 
grandmother could have read the image from Silk's mind and inserted it for 
some reason.  Better still, she may have read the Book of Silk and inserted 
it deliberately in order to see if she could get a reaction from Silkhorn!

But let that pass, we will accept that there is a suggestion that Silk will 
at some point be able to travel in time, at least as a speaking image, and 
bring Oreb along, and that the Vanished People could do the same.  [I don't 
think the evidence from Oreb and Pike is strong, and I think the Short Sun 
timeline is okay.  Indeed I noticed that Silkhorn at one point mentions that 
Quetzal had been living on the Whorl in disguise for "thirty or forty 
years", which is probably intended to eliminate any speculation that it was 
fifty or sixty, which would have caused certain timeline problems.]

But... we still have no real evidence that the VP can travel back in time 
and move physical objects.  And using time travel as an explanation doesn't 
really solve anything.  It makes Windcloud a liar when he says he and others 
boarded the Whorl.  And even if for some reason the Neighbours did not go to 
the Whorl as they said but inveigled some inhabitants to Green by some 
mysterious time manipulation - it still does not explain how Quetzal got 
*into* the Whorl.  (And him flying to it is very questionable too as it does 
not appear to have been orbiting very close to Green.)

- Gerry Quinn