Subject: (whorl) The Secret

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 14:54:38 +0000

I'm guessing that the secret has something to do with how Horn seems to
have given Jahlee a human soul.  Or that all of the inhumi whom Horn has
shown kindness to have found themselves unable to kill him, or even fully
devoted to him.  

There's also that bit in IGJ where Horn mentions that the Vanished People
made the inhumi their slaves and that that led to their downfall.

Maybe the secret is that the humans can enslave the inhumi by loving
(showing kindness to?) them.  That seems slightly more practical and
unsettling than the idea we rejected before that maybe if humans changed
their nature and all loved each other, the inhumi would cease to be
monsters (why would the inhumi fear that?). 

-Rostrum

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From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at home.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:16:49 +0000

Maybe I'm having a Senior Moment (more and more since I passed 50), but did 
we ever "decide" what the Big Inhumi Secret is? Surely it's not what Jahlee 
tells Nettle, that they get their intelligence from our blood; we've known 
that all along.
	My guess would be that The Secret is the actual and true way that inhumi 
get from Green to Blue, though we're never told what that is.
	But what have I forgotten.

Patera Nuttier and Nuttier

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 21:37:38 +0000

> tells Nettle, that they get their intelligence from our blood; we've known

Though Jahlee's words aren't entirely clear, it seems to be a little more
than just that: each inhumu/a derives its "mind" from a specific human whose
blood its parent drank.

I agree it's a disappointment, and somewhat inconsistent; but I think we're
stuck with it.  The theory that Horn substituted a fake secret to protect
Nettle from the inhumi doesn't hold up: the inhumi know that Horn knows the
secret, and they would be able to figure out what he had done.  If he
thought he would be endangering Nettle by writing down that she had been
told the secret, he would have omitted it completely.  (When he wrote these
words, he would have expected to be able to excise anything dangerous from
the manuscript if it ever was published.)

> But what have I forgotten.

This doesn't work any better as the secret.  It doesn't fit the revelation
scene with Krait in IGJ.

--Adam