Subject: (whorl) Codename: Alex

From: Alice Turner <akt at ibm.net>
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 19:07:51 +0000

> No spoilers for after what Alga's read, btw.

You are a gent, Alex, but I suggest that we take off the gloves. People who
haven't read the new book simply shouldn't download the Whorl list for a
while; they can cavort around in Urth if they need a Wolfe fix. We need to
talk!

So say I after blowing off most of my day to steam all the way through it. I
will go back more carefully, but I was carried away.

What Alex was protecting me from was my shock at the live burial of the
inhumi, which seemed a truly inhumane death--of course I didn't know at that
point what would happen later in the plot. And what I suggest to you at
*this* point is that this is Krait's secret, simply that, imprisoned and
deprived of food and stimulus, the inhumi can survive for a long time in a
kind of shriveled hibernation from which they quickly recover when given
fresh blood. We have to assume that Horn almost improbably early on realizes
that he can use this knowledge to his strategic advantage--but why not
assume this? Horn seems to have a natural military bent, like Mint and
Severian. (Well, I guess Mint's is not entirely natural.) He is quick and
decisive and drives a hard but fair bargain with the inhumi when the time
comes. Is it so illogical to think that he foresees how he can do this?
After all, he is perhaps the one person on Blue who can contemplate an
inhumu without complete involuntary horror. David Lebling's funny blurb is
also true.

-alga

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---

From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 19:46:20 +0000

But if this is Krait's big nasty secret, how does it reduce the inhumi to
(inexact quote, I'm at work) "little more than animals."  If the secret
strategic victory over the inhumi is to bury them all alive, I think both
Horn and the inhumi are vastly over-reacting to the threat!  The inhumi
pulled out of the ground are back to their normal nasty selves after a quick
fix of cow, and certainly don't seem reduced to animal level.  Mind you, I
don't think my "intelligent blood" thing is the exact secret either--it has
to be something people could DO to the inhumi (don't let them drink blood?
that's already the goal...  force feed them stupid animals?  also unlikely).

I think the burial is MORE inhumane now, if the inhumi (as seems) are somehow
conscious for a long period/forever.  Horn's approach to this is interesting,
in that it's Silk-like, since he doesn't let them stay that way which would
be monstrous, but (very vaguely) Machiavellian in that he USES his solution
to this moral problem to win his war.  

The intelligent blood idea does present the cruel vision of species that, in
order to remain morally and intellectually aware, must do something morally
repulsive.  Essentially, to have any will, they must exercise their will in
a malevolent way.

"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