(urth) 5HC

[Richard Simon]

I begin to weary of this...
On Wednesday, 3 September 2014, 18:38, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:
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>For millenia, apparently this didn't occue to them, while they were imitating Sandwalker's people who you argue were an ancient race of humans, who for some reason all have green eyes.  
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>It didn't occur to them, they just imitated the eyes. Why do they all have green eyes? Why not? Perhaps they were all lactose-tolerant, too. Evolution and genetic drift in a small population make such things extremely likely.


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>Then suddenly, as soon as the French land, the Shadow Children put away their drugs, and become perfect imitators of, not the new humans, but of Sandwalker's people.  If the landing is the proximate cause, why do they not imitate the French instead?
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>They were always imitators of Sandwalker's people, as is made very clear in 'A Story'. There just weren't that many French, compared to Annese, so they continued to imitate the Annese. The French on Ste. Anne interbred with the native population (like the Portuguese and Spanish in South America) on Ste. Anne. The fact is that most if not all of the Ste. Anne population has Annese blood, the same way most 'white' Americans have Indio or African blood, but don't acknowledge it.

Sandwalker's people (the vast majority of the pre-Landing population: we are told "there are so many of you now and so few of us") just disappear into the human population. 
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>Other way round.


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>The Shadow Children, now suddenly successful in looking like Sandwalker's people, become persecuted abos.
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>With that comment – apart from the 'suddenly' – you answer your own question.

It still doesn't explain why green eyes are a signifier - if the ancient humans vastly outnumber the Shadow Children, why is the signifier anything special?  If a race of ancient green-eyed humans merged with the colonists, you'd expect green eyes everywhere among the ordinary folk of Sainte Anne.
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>Green eyes are a genetic rarity even on Earth.


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>And why on Earth would there be two levels of imitation anyway? Why does a Shadow Child have to imitate and ancient human before he imitates Marsch. 
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>Really, this is silly. He lived for many years as Trenchard's son, perhaps before that as his father. He may even – it is hinted in the text – have been all those other people Marsch interviewed and wrote about in his journal. Just before he imitated Marsch, he was imitating Victor, supposedly a half-Annese boy. That's all I meant.

Why is he unable to change his eye colour to that of a modern-day human (after taking such care to have green eyes when imitating - for some reason - a poor downtrodden 'abo')?
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>There are plenty of people on both Ste. Anne and Ste. Croix that have green eyes. As there are on Earth. Why need Marsch not have had green eyes himself?

How did the Shadow Children kick their drug habit?  
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>Did they? How do you know?


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>Why does Victor know he is type 2 alien imitating a human, but has no idea he was previously type 1 alien imitating type 2?
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>Type 1 alien? Type 2 alien? There is only one alien species in the book, known as the Shadow Children.


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>Why does the imitation take time to master sometimes, and at others is completely immediate?
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>When and where is it immediate? A person can make herself look older or younger, more or less attractive, in moments, but a complete transformation always takes a long time in the book.


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>Switching the origin of the Shadow Children and the abos just creates an expanding wave of inconsistency!
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>Not as I see it. And this, if you will forgive me, is my last word to you on the subject. You may reply or not, as you see fit.
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