From: Peter Westlake <peter@harlequin.co.uk>
Subject: Re: (whorl) IGJ <Spoilers> Fava's Second Story
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 11:46:18 +0100

At 18:26 2000-08-24 -0500, Endymion9 wrote:
>Just reread this section and have some observations and questions.
>
...
>"For a time, she ran behind him on all fours like a dog."  So four clawed
>legs?  So does everything on Green have four legs? (Neighbors, inhuma)  I
>see no description of how many legs a grabber has.  Many animals of Blue
>have eight legs.  Why the 4 legs vs. 8 legs difference in the two planets?

They're different planets! They might exchange microbes via meteorites,
but life would have evolved separately. The particular numbers might be
significant to the story somehow; does anyone think there is any more
to this than providing Horn with an eight-legged horse?

>Just by seeing Incanto's leader and not yet having fed on him she assumes
>human form.
>"She stood up as he did, and toddled along behind him, leaving her baby
>footprints in the mud."
>
>And is able to talk in the human tongue.

I wondered about that. It's not unreasonable in this universe,
perhaps, where memory is chemical and replicated throughout the body.
The infant inhumu presumably talk to one another in the Common Tongue?


>It's funny that Incanto suddenly switches from Fava's point of view to his
>own and retells the story.

I took this to be him writing about what had happened after the fact,
not something that he said at the time. But then it's harder to see
how he "got into the story". What was that all about, anyway? If this
is Fava's own childhood, as we must strongly suspect it is, did he get
into *that* and change it? A bit of time travel between sentences? Or
is this the telepathic link that's invoked to explain seeing the trees?

>"'Can You talk?' I shook it.  It swung its head from side to side, then
>nodded.  Already its lizard's face was softening a little, melting."
>
>"'What's your name?' 'Mee.'"
>
>It seems that just by observing a human the inhuma was able to shape itself
>as a human (although maybe a rough version of one) and talk.  Unless all of
>this ability came from its parent feeding off of humans previously??  By
>feeding on humans I would suspect the inhuma can then perfect its imitation.
>
>Question:
>Why did Fava say that what the inhuma were doing in the water was bad?
>
>"As soon as she laid eyes on him, she knew that everything she and her
>playmates had been doing in the river was wrong, and pulled herself up onto
>the bank."
>
>Is she saying that by seeing a human she realized that being a simple
>animal/lizard, eating and surviving as a lizard, is wrong?  That it is
>better to be a human?  What would make an animal feel this way upon seeing a
>human?  Why would this thought even enter an animal's brain?

She has a lot of human in her, though, via the blood supply left
(as I read it) in the egg by her mother.

Sbearo.


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