From: William Ansley <wansley@warwick.net>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Reducing the inhumi
Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2001 17:06:03 

At 8:17 AM +0100 4/22/01, Nicholas Gevers wrote:
>One objection to my astral-travel-to-defeat-the-inhumi
>thesis stands out as strong: the point that Horn
>describes the Secret as something that can reduce the
>inhumi to mindless beasts again. How then can
>attacking the inhumi breeding pools on Green be the
>application of the Secret, as this would immolate the
>inhumi, not make them mindless? Well, how about this
>response:
>
>Only some inhumi have access to human blood; remember
>the great variety of them Horn saw on his final visit
>to Green in RTW, some human in aspect, others not. If
>humans from Blue travel astrally to Green in the
>company of (intelligent) captive inhumi, they will
>reach only those pools where human blood has been in
>supply, and will thus annihilate only the offspring of
>intelligent inhumi; the rest of the species, still
>merely animal, will continue in their role as just
>another of Green's mindless predator species.

Nick,

I really don't see how using astral travel to wipe out the inhumi at 
their breeding pools can work.

1) Can we be absolutely sure that the astral journeys are to real 
places and not just "places on the astral plane" that resemble real 
places where one of the travellers has been before? Certainly some of 
the places resemble real places the we have seen before (the Red Sun 
Whorl) but the nature of "reality" during these astral visits seems 
awfully malleable.

2) Assuming astral travel can have physical effects in the "real 
world," I still don't believe that the inhumi could be wiped out. We 
haven't been able to wipe out mosquitos on earth even though the same 
means of attack should theoretically be effective and we have just 
about the same level of motivation to do so as the   human 
inhabitants of Blue have to finish off the inhumi. I think my 
mosquito analogy is a good one, since the inhumi seem to produce 
large numbers of (at least at first) not very intelligent offspring 
which are left to fend for themselves.

3) Since astral travel requires the presence of an inhumi to work, 
this method cannot be used to wipe out their breeding pools without 
inhumi cooperation, at least to some degree. Perhaps the inhumi 
cannot prevent at least a few of their number from being taken 
captive, but they could make it difficult. And surely inhumi are 
capable of suicide upon capture. Of course, since Jahlee was willing 
to betray her kind, the argument could be made the others like her 
could be found. On the other hand, one can argue that Jahlee is a 
unique case.

4) Regarding the argument that only the intelligent inhumi offspring 
need to be killed: as long as their are humans on Green, intelligent 
inhumi can arise again very easily, unless all humans on green are 
completely protected from inhumi predation. The only way to 
absolutely assure that no more intelligent inhumi will arise is to 
kill all of them.

Of course you can say, as you have been, that Silk|Horn didn't 
*really* think the secret could be used effectively, but you talk as 
if your version of the secret can be so used above.

William Ansley

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