# A Point about Astral Travel (was re: The Secret: a new theory) *The Whorl list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 20 Apr 2001* > 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. --- ### Dan'l Danehy-Oakes *20 Apr 2001, 10:40* > Also, the astral travel surprises even the inhumi who > participate in it, which makes it even more unlikely that > Krait told Horn about it. ...which caused me to note something that hadn't occurred to me before: The Narr is capable of astral travelling only after he's had his whole-body transplant. The dumb explanation would be "it's a power Silk has had all along but never knew about because he never slept around any sleeping inhumi," which is possible but not very plausible. A somewhat better explanation: it's somehow due to the fact that the Narr is not attached as firmly to the body of Silk as most people are to their bodies. *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. --- ### Kevin J. Maroney *20 Apr 2001, 14:31 · follows Dan'l Danehy-Oakes* > At 10:40 AM 4/20/01 -0700, Blattid wrote: > A somewhat better explanation: > it's somehow due to the fact that the Narr is not attached as > firmly to the body of Silk as most people are to their bodies. That's what I've always assumed--that the Neighborly process of transplanting Horn's spirit into Silk's body infused the resultant person with some degree of the Neighbor's unhuman physical laws, including the different relationship with distance. ``` Wombat, a.k.a. Kevin Maroney kmaroney at ungames.com Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction http://www.nyrsf.com *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ``` ---