From: akt@attglobal.net
Subject: (whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v011.n032
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 20:59:21 


> At 14:44 2000-08-29 -0500, Robert Borski wrote:

>>>Your question about reproduction is one I've pondered myself, but
mainly in
the Green-Blue-Green transmission route. Do I have this right? An inhuma
flies to Blue from Green during a conjunction and then spends the next
seven
years attempting to slake her blood thirst. During the next conjunction
(or
the following one?), she returns to Green, where she mates with an
inhumu
(or might this happen while still on Blue?), reproduces, and the
resultant
egg incubates in the uv-rich climate of Green until it hatches. (Are
there
no equatorial hot zones on Blue? Is Green that much closer orbitally to
the
sun?) This seems to me like an extremely awkward reproductive
strategy--even
if the inhumi lay multiple eggs. It also means in Krait's case that he
must
undertake the hazardous hejira to Blue probably during the first
conjunction
he witnesses, but if he wants to reproduce go back again later. ("Hmmm.
Food
or sex? Well, you can never be too thin.") Also: how exactly does the
blood-to-egg core personality transfer work? If I'm an inhuma, does the
first, middle or last person I dine on imprint my offspring? And do the
male
inhumu's sero-victims contribute nothing?>>>

No, not exactly. Please, some other people look at IGJ 81-83 when Krait
is actually telling the Secret. Let's agree: Events of 20 years ago are
a big clue; it says so right here. Sinew is, let's say, between 21 and
25. An inhuma bit him as a toddler, dangerously, enough so that he
nearly died, maybe because he was so little and she didn't realize that
she had taken too much blood. My assumption has always been that
conjunction lasts long enough (weeks, months?) that an unhuma(u) could
make a round trip, which cuts out the 7-year thing. (And yes, there's
plenty of evidence--I'm not going to look up page numbers just now--that
they can make the trip at conjunction. Neighbors predated landers.)  No,
I am sure they can't reproduce on Blue; if they could there would be far
more of them on Blue, and it's necessary to the plot to have to have
them return.

The other evidence we have is Fava's second tale. But this is puzzling.
The baby vampires' birth seems almost exactly like that of baby turtles.
How would Krait have the least notion of who Mom was? Is some kind of
weird DNA instinct at work, the kind of thing that sends salmon
upstream? I had originally thought that the reason Krait seemed so like
Sinew to Horn was that Sinew himself was very like Horn--hence the
enmity--and that Krait, patterning himself as a younger Horn, became
very like Sinew. And this is still an attractive thought. But, reading
over p 81-83 again. I realize it must be more than that. Horn seems to
think it is more than that, too, though the last sentence of IGJ (such a
lovely sentence) soars it into metaphor.

The Secret has something to do with a fertile or gravid inhuma and a
human child. Of course, I don't really know that it has to be a child,
but it was in this case. Maybe an odd take on the changeling idea?

-alga


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