Still mulling over the idea that the inhumi might be able to breed on Blue, my latest thoughts being triggered by the following:
<"Would it be effective for us to dig up one of the recent inhumations and release him to warn the others? The thought recurs. If the inhumas' eggs hatched in our climate, would not our human kind become extinct? What tricks Nature plays! If they are natural creatures at all.>
The idea that Blue-breeding inhumi would soon wipe out their food supply seems contradicted by two notions, however:
(One) The inhumi would use their new intelligence to prevent this from happening, perhaps setting up gulags where penned-up humans could be live-bled, as well as bred (the same way they apparently have on Green).
(Two) According to Jahlee, the inhumi "drink blood. Human blood, mostly. We don't kill you, though. At least very often."
So: is it possible that the inhumi aren't really that dangerous--that while, yes, they do suck your blood and appropriate elements of your persona, they don't typically drain enough to kill, except in the young, the old and the infirm? Horn compares the inhumi to leeches over and over again, but as far as bloodsuckers go, leeches are relatively benign.
Not that I wouldn't be a little bit creeped out to wake up and find a giant alien leech lapping up my life force (unless, of course, she maybe looked like Uma Thurman).
Robert Borski
*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.