The inhumi's secret: another clue and a speculation

William Ansley · 02 Aug 2000, 23:23 · from whorl-v0011.mbox · original

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From: William Ansley <wansley at warwick.net>
Subject: Re: (whorl) The inhumi's secret: another clue and a speculation
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2000 23:23:39
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>Now for the wild speculation.  What if we take "inhumi are killers
>because humans are killers" a step further?  What if the choice of
>specific victims is determined by humans' conscious or unconscious
>desires?  That is, when an inhumus/a attacks a human, it's because some
>other human consciously or unconsciously wants the victim to die.
>
>One advantage of this theory is that it's the only thing I can think of
>which could serve as a weapon against the inhumi (whether wieldable or
>no), explains why the inhumi drink human blood, *and* connects with
>Krait's mother feeding on Sinew.  This last bit works out rather nicely,
>in fact.  On p. 157 Horn has a "flashback" to Krait's death on Green,
>which leads him to recall that Krait's mother had nearly killed Sinew;
>he then, seemingly irrelevantly, tells Mora the story of how Nettle's
>being pregnant with Sinew cost her and Horn the animal they should have
>had, and so contributed to their extreme poverty; made worse by the need
>to buy milk for Sinew.  In such circumstances, Horn may well have wished
>the baby Sinew dead.  (One could go further and speculate that Horn's
>belief that Sinew wishes him dead is a projection of Horn's guilt over
>this.)  My hypothesis also fits neatly with one of the themes of OBW and
>IGJ: that the inhumi are cruel, but no more so than humans are to each
>other.

I think you may have something here. But surely, "not wishing each=20
other dead" is included within the Golden Rule?

--=20
William Ansley

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