About the secret of the inhumi, again (RTTW spoilers)Whorl

In an earlier post, I pointed out this (in somewhat different words): In Return to the Whorl, Jahlee tells Nettle a secret about the inhumi, which, because of the structure of the story, we are led to believe is the secret which has been sketched out in the first two volumes. The only detail new to her revelation is that it is the children of the inhumi who gain intelligence from the blood rather than the predators themselves. A. Am I correct that this detail was not present in any of the earlier open discussions of the secret? B. If I am correct, it seems to me that this detail is supposed to be a major revelation about the nature of the secret, and key to understanding how the humans on Blue and Green could fight the inhumi. But I keep failing to see how this detail transforms what we knew into "a weapon too big to wield". What am I missing? Any responses welcome.

I believe so. I don't recall it, in any case (though iirc a couple of passages can be seen in retrospect to hint at it); nor do I recall any of our discussions of the secret mentioning it.

Whatever you're missing, I am too. The only thing I can think of is that perhaps it would be enough to keep inhumi about to spawn from drinking human blood, rather than all inhumi; but I don't see how this knowledge could be used in practice.

I'm afraid mine wasn't too helpful. --Adam *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

Since my first response, one potentiality has occurred to me. Assuming that there are not enough humans on Green to maintain the population of intelligent inhumi, the Secret implies that to have intelligent offspring, most female inhumi must first go to Blue, and then return to Green to spawn. So if it were somehow possible to prevent inhumi returning to Green, the population of intelligent inhumi would be set on a declining course. But I don't see how this would be possible, any more than stopping the inhumi from coming to Blue. --Adam *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

I actually think I know this now (it just came to me). There were thousands of human corpses in the sewer, all drained of blood. In combination with the Secret, this indicates the tremendous amount of human blood the inhumi need. If the supply on Blue is cut off, they will have to consume their slaves at a greater rate than they can reproduce or be replaced. The fact that the inhumi do have a temporary "cushion" on Green indicates that it's not necessary to provide 100% protection on Blue, just to reduce the supply greatly. So my earlier concerns about the impossibility of protecting everyone are less applicable, though even providing 90% protection would still be a major task. --Adam *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.