{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1076",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1076,
    "subject": "The Secret",
    "messages": 3,
    "voices": 3,
    "first": "2001-01-29T14:54:38+00:00",
    "last": "2001-03-12T21:37:38+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0088@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Straight",
        "address": "straight at email.unc.edu"
      },
      "date": "2001-01-29T14:54:38+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) The Secret",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I'm guessing that the secret has something to do with how Horn seems to\nhave given Jahlee a human soul.  Or that all of the inhumi whom Horn has\nshown kindness to have found themselves unable to kill him, or even fully\ndevoted to him.  \n\nThere's also that bit in IGJ where Horn mentions that the Vanished People\nmade the inhumi their slaves and that that led to their downfall.\n\nMaybe the secret is that the humans can enslave the inhumi by loving\n(showing kindness to?) them.  That seems slightly more practical and\nunsettling than the idea we rejected before that maybe if humans changed\ntheir nature and all loved each other, the inhumi would cease to be\nmonsters (why would the inhumi fear that?). \n\n-Rostrum\n\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0433@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "James Jordan",
        "address": "jbjordan4 at home.com"
      },
      "date": "2001-03-12T16:16:49+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) The Secret",
      "in_reply_to": "<whorl-v0012-0088@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Maybe I'm having a Senior Moment (more and more since I passed 50), but did \nwe ever \"decide\" what the Big Inhumi Secret is? Surely it's not what Jahlee \ntells Nettle, that they get their intelligence from our blood; we've known \nthat all along.\n\tMy guess would be that The Secret is the actual and true way that inhumi \nget from Green to Blue, though we're never told what that is.\n\tBut what have I forgotten.\n\nPatera Nuttier and Nuttier\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0439@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Adam Stephanides",
        "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-03-12T21:37:38+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (whorl) The Secret",
      "in_reply_to": "<whorl-v0012-0433@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "on 3/12/01 4:16 PM, James Jordan at jbjordan4 at home.com wrote:\nMaybe I'm having a Senior Moment (more and more since I passed 50), but did\nwe ever \"decide\" what the Big Inhumi Secret is? Surely it's not what Jahlee\ntells Nettle, that they get their intelligence from our blood; we've known\nthat all along."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Though Jahlee's words aren't entirely clear, it seems to be a little more\nthan just that: each inhumu/a derives its \"mind\" from a specific human whose\nblood its parent drank.\n\nI agree it's a disappointment, and somewhat inconsistent; but I think we're\nstuck with it.  The theory that Horn substituted a fake secret to protect\nNettle from the inhumi doesn't hold up: the inhumi know that Horn knows the\nsecret, and they would be able to figure out what he had done.  If he\nthought he would be endangering Nettle by writing down that she had been\ntold the secret, he would have omitted it completely.  (When he wrote these\nwords, he would have expected to be able to excise anything dangerous from\nthe manuscript if it ever was published.)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "My guess would be that The Secret is the actual and true way that inhumi\nget from Green to Blue, though we're never told what that is.\nBut what have I forgotten."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "This doesn't work any better as the secret.  It doesn't fit the revelation\nscene with Krait in IGJ.\n\n--Adam\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}