2 quoted lines
From: adamsteph at earthlink.net (Adam Stephanides)
But this would mean that, in introducing inhumi to the Whorl, the Neighbors were actually creating the inhumi as a threat for humans, by restoring their intelligence.
<<From: dd at adobe.com (David DiGiacomo)
The Neighbors of Green sent their slave inhumi to prey on the Neighbors of Blue. Once that source of blood was exhausted, the inhumi turned on the Neighbors of Green, ultimately destroying their civilization.>>
I don't think the inhumi ever lost their intelligence. In OBW it's made fairly clear that the Neighbors left Blue very recently. The revolt of the inhumi on Green could have happened only a few years before the first landers touched down. There could well have been enough Neighbors alive on both Blue and Green to keep the inhumi (or at least a bunch of them) intelligent until the fresh blood arrived.
The more interesting question to me is, why did the Neighbors decide to see what human-inhumi were like before giving us Blue and Green? Couldn't they just look around the Whorl themselves and draw their own conclusions? The motives of aliens, eh?
Dave Lebling
aka vizcacha
*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.