From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: (whorl) The Secret
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 21:37:38 

on 3/12/01 4:16 PM, James Jordan at jbjordan4@home.com wrote:

> Maybe I'm having a Senior Moment (more and more since I passed 50), but did
> we ever "decide" what the Big Inhumi Secret is? Surely it's not what Jahlee
> tells Nettle, that they get their intelligence from our blood; we've known
> that all along.

Though Jahlee's words aren't entirely clear, it seems to be a little more
than just that: each inhumu/a derives its "mind" from a specific human whose
blood its parent drank.

I agree it's a disappointment, and somewhat inconsistent; but I think we're
stuck with it.  The theory that Horn substituted a fake secret to protect
Nettle from the inhumi doesn't hold up: the inhumi know that Horn knows the
secret, and they would be able to figure out what he had done.  If he
thought he would be endangering Nettle by writing down that she had been
told the secret, he would have omitted it completely.  (When he wrote these
words, he would have expected to be able to excise anything dangerous from
the manuscript if it ever was published.)

> My guess would be that The Secret is the actual and true way that inhumi
> get from Green to Blue, though we're never told what that is.
> But what have I forgotten.

This doesn't work any better as the secret.  It doesn't fit the revelation
scene with Krait in IGJ.

--Adam


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