From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: (whorl) The Secret: Equine Overkill
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 15:38:57 

On Mon, 23 Apr 2001, David Lebling wrote:

> Still doesn't make "a weapon too heavy to wield." That's the sticking point
> for me on all these ideas.

I am still unable to read "a weapon too heavy to wield" as anything but "a
weapon fraught with (moral?) danger to the wielder."  Or maybe "a weapon
you can't control (that will destroy more than you wish?)."

Because if it literally means "a weapon humans and Neighbors don't have
the power to use," then I don't see why Horn would even think of the
Secret as a weapon.  It would just be an interesting but academic fact
about the inhumi.

Inhumi would die if you could teleport them into the corona of a star, but
unless I think the colonists might be able to do that, I wouldn't call
that fact a weapon.

Given Silk|Horn's (and, I think, Wolfe's) concerns about the moral health
of the colonies on Blue, I think the Secret is something the colonists
could do, but that would corrupt them morally (which is why I think it has
something to do with taking advantage of the inhumi's desire to be human).  
The Neighbors were able to do it, but declined and left the Blue/Green
system entirely rather than become a race that could do such a thing to
the inhumi (or perhaps they started to do it--making the inhumi their
slaves in the process--then left when they realized how bad it was).

-Rostrum




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