From: "Mitchell A. Bailey" <MAB@lindau.net>
Subject: (urth) Alternate Explainations for the Aborigines of St. Anne
Date: Fri, 09 Apr 1999 20:28:20 

Re the nature and fate of the St. Anne aborigines, including the Shadow
Children, we could argue with nearly equal justice a number of alternate
scenarios, e.g.:

(1) both races were of native pleiomorphs; an earlier iteration of the
presumed mass
murder/imposture of Veil's Hypothesis having taken place.
(2) both races were descendants of "atlanteans" ; native pleiomorphs
never existed or became extinct ages ago.
(3) the whole notion of ancient colonization by a race from the stars
was not "genuine" abo lore in the first place, but invented by persons
(abo or earth-human or crossbreed) since the original French landings,
possibly by Roy or Victor Trenchard.
(4) The abos died out sometime soon after the war, due to disease,
famine, loss of habitat, or deliberate pogroms by colonists.
(5) Abos exist, but Shadow Children are altogether figments of abo
legend, the leprechauns of the abos, if you will.
(6) St. Anne harbors no intelligent natives of any sort, period. Reports
of a native humanoid population in the wilderness could be attributed to
human vagabonds and fugitives, who probably abounded during and just
after the war, and various other factors attributable to the strangeness
of Sainte Anne to the new colonists. Victor is a gifted storyteller
working with fiction passed to him by his parents. 
(7) See (6); with the wrinkle that Victor sincerely believes, falsely,
in his father's lifelong con game, and considers himself a secret,
'passing' abo. 
(8) Veil's Hypothesis is correct. Every "human" residing on St. Anne,
and now a substantial number of those on St. Croix, are Annese
pretending to be human. The Trenchards are Annese pretending to be
humans pretending to be Annese. Victor, then, would be Annese pretending
to be human pretending to be Annese pretending to be human. 
(9) The abos existed but disappeared as such, not because they died off,
but because they all began to "pass" as colonists from Earth. Either
they live "among us", or they did The Veil Thing.
(10) When the French arrived, there were only the wormy primal
pleiomorphs, no humanoids.
Reports of a drowned humanoid on the beach are erroneous. Since the p's
had to react quickly to possible threats, they probably assumed humanoid
form very shortly after the landing. Before the war, abo-pleiomorphs
which had not perfected their impostures were at large, hence all the
tales of weird humanoid natives. Their purported culture likewise was
invented by imaginative colonists, and sometimes these invented cultures
were adopted as fact by unsophisticated true Annese natives. Later, many
assimilated with the humans... 

These are just what I could come up with in two afternoons.

And on it goes. Really and truly Mr. Wolfe has given us a canister of
literary Tinkertoys which can be reassembled in nearly any permutation
to come up with any theory you like.


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