# [blue, spoilers] Intelligent inhumi and Neighbors *The Whorl list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 29 Sep 1999* > 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 Rabin *29 Sep 1999, 19:55* I was thinking along the same lines as Alex David Grace--that the inhumi somehow derive their intelligence from their intelligent diet. We've been told they risk a lot in traveling between Green and Blue. An Englishman might *prefer* poulet de Bresse to domestic English chicken, but how many would swim the Channel to get it if boats were expensive high technology? I'm also wondering if the departure of the Neighbors to "a better place" has anything to do with the inhumi. Blue seems to be a pretty nice place except for the Bloodsuckers From The Green Planet (if this were 1953, that's how the movie would be entitled). Perhaps it was the departure of the Neighbors that stepped up the pressure for the inhumi to find another similar race. It's also interesting that Krait has to ask Horn about Quetzal--the latter isn't some sort of famous inhumi hero for bringing a whorl-load of fresh cattle. Come to think of it, the inhumi could only have known of Quetzal's attempt to enter the Whorl, not his role in promoting the exodus, unless there were other spies. Also come to think of it, why does Krait want to sneak aboard the lander? He seems to know of the plot, but he is not regarded as an enemy by the other inhumi on board (which seems to rule out some sort of factional dispute). Or maybe we just can't understand inhumi at all (though "Horn" seems to have made a good start). -- Dan Rabin *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. --- ### Alex David Groce *30 Sep 1999, 12:10 · follows Dan Rabin* I just assumed Krait knew what was going on and was hitching a safe ride back home with the others--they knew who he was and he knew who they were. The trip back and forth is clearly dangerous, and Krait knows there will be blood aplenty for the lander crew when they get back, so he wants to ride along. He wasn't planning on betraying the others beforehand, but when it came down to it his loyalty to Horn did actually mean something (for reasons we can guess at but that aren't clear yet--it seems the inhumi are both more and less human than would have appeared from Long Sun). Also, I see what you mean saying Mucor becomes less creepy throughout Long Sun. I was just stating she's not much less creepy in On Blue's Waters than she was at the end of Long Sun. "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32 ``` Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu) Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department 8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066 http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ``` ---