From: "Robert Borski" <rborski@charter.net>
Subject: (whorl) Re: changelings
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 01:36:11 

alga:

Here's another plot-point perhaps for your changeling theory.

From p.42 of OBW: "Have I said how closely Sinew resembled me? Perhaps not?
There was something devilish about it."

Given that the Gaonese call Green the Devil's Lantern and the Vironese had
to borrow the name inhumu from another town, "because we didn't know they
existed in Viron and had no name for them but 'devil,'" devilish seems a
rather interesting choice here.

But I'm also still puzzled by chronology. Are you suggesting that Krait's
mother, already gravid, makes the long swim through space to Blue, and then
takes sup on little Sinew? Because again this makes little sense
reproductively, especially if the inhumi are oviviparous and must return to
Green to lay their brood nests. What would be the point of such a trip if
she's already gravid? And since in nearly all oviviparous species, once an
ovum has been fertilized, the time between fertilization and the actual
egglaying is very brief, it's hard to believe an inhuma would have the time
to twice undergo the hazardous journey between planets (let alone the
energy).

<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.>

If and when you have the chance, I'd love to have said pages pointed out to
me. Because unless there's something Wolfe hasn't told us yet, I will always
maintain such notions are strictly the stuff of either older, more lurid,
science fiction or the latest issue of the National Inquirer. ("Vampires
Invade Stratosphere--Fly Here from the Moon!)

Robert Borski





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