Shadow Children and Inhumi

Lee Berman · 30 Nov 2010, 18:17 · from 2010-November.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:17:58 -0500
Subject: (urth) Shadow Children and Inhumi
Message-ID: <SNT123-W22E4F7289D0FE684C3FA40CF250 at phx.gbl>

>James Wynn- In an interview, Wolfe referred to Sandwalker as a Shadow Child, which is not 
>surprising considering their psychic connection. But if the Shadow Children are human then 
>Sandwalker is human too, and then surely all the abos are human and that is a step I cannot take.

Yeah, on first reading of 5HoC I assumed Veil's hypothesis was a bit of silly sophistry. But then 
evidence of Dr Marsch's replacement by VRT forced me to reconsider- maybe Veil is correct and everyone 
on the two planets is an abo. But what is the original form of the abos? I thought Shadow Children
made a good candidate but they (and Gerry Quinn) assert that they are human and thus not native.
Maybe chewing on an herb can make human beings psychic and short and take away all tool-using ability.
But how could it make humans become indeterminate in shape and numbers? 

I don't negate the potential validity of Gerry's theory. A surprise ending that the the human beings are 
really aliens and the weird looking creatures are really human is a recurring plot in SF-Horror stories.
I can think of a few examples of it.  But I just get the sense that Wolfe goes beyond that in 5HoC.

In my view, the original lifeforms on St. Croix are predatory, psychic shadowy things that call spaceships 
down. Once humans arrive, a Lamarckian evolution takes place. The Shadow Creatures' first attempt to 
imitate humans are Shadow Children. They have sort of a human form but are still very psychic, can't use 
tools and blend into each other like shadows. The next attempt is abos. They are human in form, a little 
psychic, have some but not full use of tools and can still shapeshift a bit. Their best attempt is a full 
imitation of the civilized French immigrants who are not at all psychic, have much better (but perhaps not 
full?) tool use and have lost all memory of their shape-shifting past and latent abilities. Thus Veil is 
correct. The only humans we see in the story are Dr.Marsch (at first) and maybe Number Five's family
(have they escaped replacement via isolation, cloning and the vigilance of Mr. Million?).

P.S. I may not have been clear about something in the last post about Inhumi. We are openly told a bunch of 
times that they are reptilian in nature, but in the finale of RttW they are revealed to have an amphibious
reproductive system with external fertilization. Perhaps I am over-emphasizing a minor zoological error 
by Wolfe but I think it is purposeful by him. One of the defining features of reptiles is sexual 
intercourse and internal fertilization. I think this may serve to additionally illustrate the multiple levels 
of deception the Inhumi operate on.

The reason for this relentless deception is a recurring Wolfean theme, specifically outlined in UotNS- 
the deepest instinct of an imitative species would be to avoid detection by another species. We see this 
illustrated when Zak runs from Severian after he recognizes that he is the previously animal creature. 
Also when Number Five manages to drive off Dr. Marsch by insisting that he is really an abo.

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