Travelin' Jahlee

Roy C. Lackey · 11 Aug 2005, 14:39 · from 2005-August.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Thu Aug 11 14:39:08 2005
Subject: (urth) Travelin' Jahlee
Message-ID: <002101c59ebd$17f88e20$483ec6d8 at rclackey.stic.net>

Thalassocrat wrote:
[snip]
>As I mentioned, another possibility for the Jahlee timeline is that
>one of her parents was one of these Whorl-inhumi, returned by the
>Neighbors to Green (and presumably to this region of Green, which
>would explain what the young Jahlee was doing there). If this
>return happened before the first human exodus from the Whorl, it
>would give Jahlee plenty of time to grow & become a void-crosser.

I don't know if the Neighbors were involved or not, but I have been
inexcusably forgetful -- I had just read the passage the other day! Of
course Jahlee traveled by lander -- she expressly said so during that astral
trip to Sinew's village. "I was just a little girl when they put me on the
lander." (IGJ, 369) She also again didn't answer the question about how long
ago it had been, but it was a time when there were fewer humans on Green. It
isn't certain from the surrounding text whether she was coming or going on
the lander, or to or from where.

>One thing to note: I think it must be the case that the Neighbors
>took primitve inhumi to the Whorl, let them drink human blood,
>brought them back to Green, let them breed & then took some of the
>sentient offspring back to the Whorl. How else to explain Quetzal?

I believe that when the _Whorl_ first reached the Short Sun system, landers
were sent down to scout the planets. That could have been the point of
contamination, whether it involved the Neighbors or not. I think that's what
Silkhorn was hinting at in his talk with Abanja. (ibid., 370-371)

Earlier, you wrote:
>Otherwise, you have to get around that "years" comment (which I'd
>forgotten when I posted about this a few days ago). I guess it's
>just possible that "years" = "~2 years", which might give Jahlee
>just enough time, assuming that young inhumi reach maturity very
>quickly.
>
>Do we know how long it takes a inhuma to grow to a point where she
>might be like young Jahlee, yearning to fly to Blue? Maybe it's not
>very long at all. (And of course there's the problem of what
>exactly a "year" is, in Green terms.)

>From scattered comments in SS, it seems that about 23 years elapsed on Blue
between the exodus and, say, Jahlee's death. The same time frame for Green
seems to have been about 25 years, according to Abanja (365). The planets
seem to be too close together for the differences in their solar orbits to
be very great. Certainly any difference in the amount of time between the
exodus and Jahlee's attack on Sinew, say three years as measured by either
planet's calendar, is too small to be significant for our purposes.

-Roy

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