Urth Net
Digest whorl.v011.n001
↰ answers Alex David Groce
· by quotation
3 quoted lines
From: Alex David Groce <Alex_Groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
I think it's the same reason why the Neighbors won't tell Horn about their gods: it's better if he comes to figure it out for himself (with some hints).
As far as Hide is concerned, it's logically better for him to figure out who Incanto is. However, from an emotional standpoint, this makes little to no sense. This is a guy who's been apart from most of his family for a couple of years now, lost an adopted son, lost his real son, etc. So, you'd think he'd just come out with it... Does make for suspenseful reading, though.
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That the Neighbors aren't completely forthcoming seems not so much to suggest (as Adam speculated) that they believe each race should stick to its own gods as that they believe the Outsider (by whatever name they know Him) is in the process of revealing Himself to Horn as it is, and that it isn't their place to, say, disillusion him about Pas.
Their reluctance to talk about their own gods goes beyond that. They don't even want to confirm or deny that the Mother was their sea goddess. In that case, Horn did figure it out for himself.
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Adam Stephanides wrote:
I think you're thinking of this dialogue from the last chapter, where just after Jahlee has argued that she is human inside:
"What about the inhumi who destroyed the vanished people, Jahlee? Were they human too?"
"They were dead before I was born." (376)
Jahlee doesn't recognize the irony of Horn's question (or if she does, she doesn't mention it), and I missed it too on my first reading. But what Jahlee should have said was "See? That proves we're human!" I'm sure that from the author of THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS this irony is intentional.
Well, that's a good point. But I was actually referring to the other dialogue, earlier, I believe, when he asked her what it would have been like for the Inhumi that fed on the Neighbors, and she replies "It must have been wonderful."
One other thing. I know that Horn and the folks on Green discuss this, but it didn't make much sense to me (perhaps the lack of sleep, again). How did Quetzal and company get aboard the Whorl? It wasn't from flying there -- the distance was too great. And the humans theorize that some of the landers left and came back up, but Mainframe tells them otherwise. And Horn says that he believes that that particular information was well-intentioned, but wrong. So did the Inhumi reprogram Mainframe? This would be hard with their lack of tool-wielding ability. Did their slaves on the Whorl do it?
Narwhal