rajan, food and greenhouse

James Wynn · 02 May 2009, 00:45 · from 2009-May.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 19:45:02 -0500
Subject: (urth) rajan, food and greenhouse
In-Reply-To: <670390.9805.qm at web58208.mail.re3.yahoo.com>
References: <670390.9805.qm at web58208.mail.re3.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <521B12BA452848E981EAF37C14593A4F@eMachinePC>

Marc, you know that I greatly appreciate your speculative attitude, but I 
have significant problems with each of these.

>
> I feel some of us are complicating things, myself included.
>I believe the troubled Chenile is on Blue when Jahlee feeds
>on her drunk.  She and Auk have been freed off camera by
>Silk, and Auk repairs the lander.  Chenille&#39;s children have
>been killed and as in Long sun she is drunk with grief when
>Jahlee feeds on her.  this has nothing to do with jahlee&#39;s
>mother and explains the lander at the end of rttw -
>the same one broken on green.

1) There's no suggestion in the text that inhumi can absorb the souls of the 
people they feed on. The souls are given to the children. Otherwise, we 
would have expected Quetzal's personality to radically change throughout the 
story as he fed on Teasle and others. Not to mention all the people Jahlee 
and Krait feed on. What does adding this extra bit of narrative gain you 
when you already have Chenille *on Green* available to have been fed on by 
an inhuma?

2) There is no lander on camera at the end of RTTW. They are leaving for 
Parjarocu with the assumption that there will be one there since the inhumi 
have a system there for transporting people to Green. There are other inhumi 
in the Whorl so why can't they commandeer more landers to use between Blue 
and Green?

>the trees are tools of instant speciation by consumption and destructive 
>hybridization.

Actually this is not *far* off from my own understanding of the scene of 
Horn's death. But if someone has the least difficulty accepting *my* 
rendition (Horn dies and is resurrected by the inhumi who accidentally led 
him to his death) what would they make of the freely constructed mechanics 
trees that generate new copies. Do you suppose there are any other examples 
of this process in the story?

>The island Horn falls into the pit on is made up of giant trees,
>but this is revealed in a different chapter with horror.

I don't remember this from the detail of your theory. I just went back and 
scanned it, and I still don't see it. Where is this revealed?

> The vines were once plain vines.
>The essence of the trees they lived off of leeched some of
>that ability to interact with living matter to the lianas.
>The vines on the trees have not been introduced to human
>genetic matter yet and as such are still just vines.
>Generations that feast on humans become more human
>and are the sentient inhumi, who birth more inhumi.

I'm confused. Didn't someone (Fava?) clearly state that the Rajan's 
staff --made from a vine-- was an inhumi and that the Rajan conversed with 
it at times? Your explanation seems to suggest that the vines sort of 
Neighbors; that is, Neighbor-Vines in parallel to Horn being a Neighbor-man. 
How do we get to vines being inhumi?

J.

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