# Inhumi secret again *The Whorl list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 29 Aug 2000* > 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. --- ### David Wells *29 Aug 2000, 16:08* I think the idea of a voluntary sacrifice of some kind has all the right qualities to be "the secret". But the details seem elusive - especially as wielding the secret is supposed to return the inhumi to the status of dumb predators. Suppose, however, that the inhumi were to feed from zoanthrops? Like those involved in the melee with the alzabo, Severian and the Little Severian's doomed family in Ch. XVIII of The Sword of the Lictor? Would not the result be exactly what Horn states to be that of wielding the secret - to make them "stop thinking forever"? ...which leaves the question of who is going to "volunteer" to be lobotomised and fed to the inhumi... It's logical, I think, although I can't pretend to believe that it's a very _satisfying_ theory. What do you think? old newt P.S. I also think that the question of what happened to the "wonderful" inhumi who had fed from the Neighbours, and the offspring who presumably inherited some of that wonderousness, is an interesting one. P.P.S. The alzabo, needless to say, as a supernaturally and adaptively imitative predator, is extremely analogous to the inhumi. But the alzabo never got to snack on a zoanthrop, because of the near-100% body count which resulted from their encounter. Hmmm... *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ---