From: James Jordan <jbjordan4@home.com>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Teleporting inhumi
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 16:26:38 

N. Gevers objected to my mooted tweak of his proposal:

>Patera Nutria: no, I don't think the inhumi are
>teleporting from Green to Blue and then back again. If
>that were the case, Blue would be infested with them
>to a far greater degree than it is. I stick by my
>hypothesis, which is simply that the inhumi have been
>given a passive astral travel capacity, activatable
>only if a biological or honorary Neighbour is also
>present. This makes perfect sense textually; and
>teleportation adds nothing to my explanation of the
>Secret, the first explanation which is both fully
                    ^^^^                                         ^^^^
>accountable to the text and a sensible adumbration of
                                                   ^^^^^^
>the Secret as an offensive weapon.

         Nothing humble about you, Nick!  ;-)

         Yeah, I don't suppose my thought adds to the Secret, but I'm not 
sure (yet) that I'm wrong. If inhumi can only teleport (on my supposition) 
in the presence of others who've been to Blue and returned, perhaps not 
that many would have made the trip. And after all, there are lots of humans 
on Green.
         I agree with the other objection that there does not seem to be 
any indication in the text for my hypothesis. Problem is, since flying 
through space is out of the question, where is there any indication of 
anything else at all?
         But back to your thesis. You're saying only Narrator can do astral 
travel, not just any human, because of his Neighborliness. Well, is it the 
ring? I'm not going to search 1000+ pages to find the allusions to the 
ring, but as I recall Horn left the first ring on Green with his corpse. 
But then he gets another. Is it the ring? And if so, maybe it's not inhumi 
+ Neighbor that enables the travel, but inhumi + ring.
         And how about magic rings in traditional literature?
         I like your thesis, since it integrates the astral travel business 
with the nature of the inhumi.

Nutria


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