Hermeneutic Crocagators

Robert Borski · 03 May 2001, 12:30 · from whorl-v0012.mbox · original

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From: "Robert Borski" <rborski at charter.net>
Subject: (whorl) Re: Re: Hermeneutic Crocagators
Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 12:30:03
Message-ID: <whorl-v0012-0763 at digest.urth.net>
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Quoth the newly-monickered Sepia:

<Believing that the inhumi can only breed on Green implies that the Neigbors
have to return to replenish their "stock," or that they have found some
other workaround. (Maybe they didn't want to take inhumi along but ended up
doing so anyway; this would introduce turbulence into other readings.) I'm
reluctant to press this point, but it occurs to me that *if* Green were the
only breeding ground for inhumi, then a number of inhumi infused with
Neighbor-abilities (whatever those are) would likely be running around.
Intriguing notion . . .>

I've always argued this was a distinct possibility--that the inhumi can
breed on Blue in either sewer or stagnant water, the same way leeches or the
albino crocagators of New York do. Horn (who thinks that feathers fall at a
different rate of speed than iron) is convinced it is otherwise and Jahlee
semi-endorses this, but I believe both are lying. And while containing
sewage or designing better waste treatment facilities is well within the
realm of possibility (note Inclito's civil engineering skills), draining
every wetland or pool of muck is not (think "weapon too heavy to handle".) I
believe it was William Ansley who brought up the mosquito parallel and it
remains apposite.

<<Failing evidence otherwise, I see no reason to dismiss the Neighbor's
statement cited earlier. Have you any specific _textual_ reason to doubt
that Q was brought there by the Neighbors?>>

< I must have been confused about the nature of the Neighbor's statement. I
didn't think that they had claimed to have dropped an inhum* off upon the
Whorl. If they did, could someone please cite a page number?>

P. 235, RTTW. Vadsig is talking to Horn about her wish to visit the Whorl.

-----------------------

"To go to the Long Sun Whorl I would like. Always of it you talk, and cook,
and my old master and mistress. In Grotestad they were born, mysire, but
never it I have seen."

I told her it was possible she would.

"There the Vanished People went?"

I nodded.

"To greet us it was?"

"You might put it so, though they were sensible enough to find out a good
deal about us--and infect us with inhumi--

"Bad thing!"

"Before they ventured to greet even a few of us."

"Bad it was," Vadsig agreed with Oreb.

"To leave inhumi among us?" I shook my head. "It was a small price to pay
for two whorls, and it enabled the neighbors to guage much more accurately
the differences between our race and their own."
------------------------

Robert Borski

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