(urth) Inhumi in the Whorl

[James Wynn]

> We are told [the Neighbors] boarded the Whorl. We are told they 
> infected the humans with inhumi.  We know there were inhumi on the 
> Whorl.  It is reasonable to assume they carried out the infection when 
> they boarded the Whorl.

Except that it is difficult to imagine--based on the information 
available-- how they would do that. On the other hand, it is easy to see 
how they could have done it by infecting humans on Green--based on the 
information available.

>> All they need to do is to influence some portion of humanity to make 
>> an expedition to Green and ensure some of them are fed on by inhumi.  
>> From a technical perspective, that's a much simpler operation.
>
> You're forgetting that they would still have to get the resulting 
> inhumi onto the Whorl.  Also, the time scale doesn't seem to work.  
> Windcloud said he boarded the Whorl before it arrived in their system, 
> which fits a lot better with the apparent length of time Quetzal was 
> in Viron.

IIRC he said "your whorl when it neared our sun".  It is not necessary 
assume this is "before it arrived in orbit".
I don't see why this works better for Quetzal's timeline. They have been 
in orbit for around 40 years. Quetzal has been Prolocuter for sometime 
less than that. The presumption that Quetzal entered the Chapter 
pretending to be a young man and aged as he advanced seems contrary to 
our experience of them on Blue. Quetzal boarded the Whorl the same way 
inhumi assaulted Blue. He pretended to be an old man and was put in 
place by a human in power whom he had tamed--whether or not the human 
knew he was an inhumi is debatable. In the cases of our examples of 
human pets on Blue and Green, the inhumi's pets knew about them.

Still, it is not a problem for the Time-traveling Neighbors to have had 
plenty of contact with humanity on the Whorl and on Urth _before_ the 
ship arrived at the system.

> There's no record of such an expedition, 

But we _do_ have evidence of human landers with return capability. We 
don't have that for Neighbors in contemporary times.

After having extrapolated a complex assault on the Whorl by the 
Neighbors in unobserved spaceships and a complex operation involving 
releasing and recapturing of wild inhumi on the Whorl, one cannot insist 
on explicit citations.

> and no indication that Quetzal in particular was brought back from one.

Quetzal did not need a lander to get to the Whorl.

>   And how would they influence people to do this anyway? 

How did an inhumi influence the resurrected HORN--who hated the 
inhumi--to pass him off as his son? How did the inhumi on Green 
influence humans to passionately work for them on Green? Getting humans 
to send an expedition to Green is not hard to imagine. Why are you 
making me answer questions for which you already know the answer?

> How would they even get to the Whorl to influence them, without having 
> travelled there physically?

Quetzal's irrelevant. He doesn't need a lander to get on the Whorl. 
However, he would probably have needed to be encouraged to make the 
attempt. He had a mission: to establish a thriving human colony on Green.

> We have no indication that dream travel can be used to make a permant 
> relocation, or that dream travellers can bear children to colonise a 
> new planet.

Just because they have cities on Green, does not require that they have 
their children there. If Green is only a dream away, why bother? Of 
course, some Neighbors had a method to physically travel to Green 
initially. But there is simply no evidence that that capability still 
exists.

> Silkhorn knows all about it, and he reckons they used spaceships.

Once upon a time. And if he "knows all about it" and needs to "reckon 
they used spaceships" then they don't have spaceships now.

> Also, you say yourself here that humans cannot leave their bodies 
> behind for long periods  - why would you expect that Neighbours could?

Ummm....because they aren't human?

u+16b9