Verse:Qu: Difference between revisions

The word 'Qu', also spelled ''U'' or ''Oo'' in English, is a transcription of the Iliaqu word ''qu'' pronounced [ʔú] which means simply 'world'.  

As the known parts of Qu are only home to one main cultural and linguistic group, they have no traditional endonym to distinguish themselves from outsiders. With their relatively recent and scant knowledge of outsiders, the people of Qu have started creating endonyms. Their world is generally simply termed ''''qu'''' and their language is ''''iliaqu'''' ('language of Qu') where they had previously only used the word ''ilia'' ('language'). ''Utaia'', Earth, is not regarded as part of their world and ''taia'', Earthlings, are not always regarded as ''golu'' [ŋolú], 'ordinary people'. Thus ''golu'' may also be used as an endonym and some terrestrial authors use the transliterated word 'Ngolu' for both the language and the people, while others use the word 'Qu' or 'Oo' for both.

=== ''Xuoho'': passages between tubes ===

[[File:Qu_tube_long_section.png|500px|thumb|right|Fig. 2. Long section of two consecutive ''vuqu'']]Travel between tubes is possible thanks to a network of tunnels called ''xuoho'' [ʃwòhó] in the interstices between parallela, as seen in figure 2. These tunnels connect the hubs of consecutive tubes and tunnels branching from these nodes radiate out towards the hubs of parallel tubes.  

Nearing the hub, the attachment of the ''ukana'' can be clearly seen. There is a stretch of ukana near each wall that does not emit light at all. Nevertheless, most climbs occur around dawn on the eastern walls, while the ukana beams its light away towards the west. Sunlight first hits the eastern wall at midday. With the hub in sight, the opening to the tunnel can usually be located by watching for bats or swiftlets which migrate between the tubes. The opening is usually reasonably wide, although some tubes have very tight holes to squeeze through.  

At certain times of the day, the wind races through the ''xuoho''. Consecutive tubes are apparently always out of phase in their day-night cycle and as one tube warms up and its air expands, the tunnels act like valves on a pressure cooker, allowing the air to rush into the neighbouring tube, where the cooling air is beginning to take up less space. Because of this wind and the lack of gravity, those who lose their grip in the tunnels may end up blown out away from the end wall, gradually begin to fall and end up thrown diagonally against the outside of the tube by the rotational forces.  

==== Navigation within ''xuoho'' ====

[[File:Qu_Tube_Matrix.png|700px|thumb|right|Fig. 3. External lateral view of the ''vuqu'' matrix; artist's impression.]]When heading straight ahead to a consecutive tube, the path is generally short, only a few hundred metres long and fairly easy to navigate owing to the tell-tale breeze and thick layers of bioluminescent fungus on the walls giving off a dim blue-green glow. Travelling to a parallel tube is much more difficult. To get there, one must find the 'node' half way between the consecutive tubes. Six additional ''xuoho'' radiate away from a node. The closest parallel hubs are around seven kilometres away. In these long ''xuoho'', there is less wind, less fungus and thus less light. Knowing which path to take to get to a particular tube is also challenging, as the rotation of the tubes shifts the apparent orientation of the six tunnels radiating away from the node, making it very difficult to know which ''xuoho'' leads where. Furthermore, after many kilometres of awkward weightless travel, a tunnel may turn out to blocked and be a dead end.

Although the tubes have never been seen from the outside, the knowledge of the structure of the ''xuoho'' leads to the conclusion that the ''vuqu'' are arranged in a vast matrix of both parallel and consecutive tubes as illustrated in the figure 3. at right. The number of parallel tubes in any one parallelum is not known, nor is the number of consecutive parallela, and many Goqu believe that this matrix is infinite in all directions.

[[File:Qu_tube_access.png|250px|thumb|right|Fig. 4. Access to ''vuqu'' to the west of nodes in the ''xuoho'' network, a hypothetical map designed by an artist.]]Figure 4. shows a hypothetical map of access points to 'vuqu' to the west of the ''xuoho'' network within a particular interstice. Black lines represent known ''xuoho''. Yellow dots represent nodes with access to their western ''vuqu''. Red represents nodes with no access a ''vuqu'' to their west. While it is logically possible that there may be gaps in the matrix of ''vuqu'', there is no way that the absence of a ''vuqu'' could be proven and many instances where a gap was presumed have later been found to contain a ''vuqu'' to which no one knew the way before. Many ''vuqu'' are inaccessible from one end but accessible from another. For example, the 'vuqu' behind a red node on the map in figure 4. may be accessible from the other end and a similar map drawn for the interstice at its other end could have an entirely different layout. Some ''vuqu'' may have an unscalable wall (''makio'') at one end. In others, climbing the ''makio'' is possible, but there is no apparent opening into the network of ''xuoho''. The ''xuoho'' themselves are blocked in many places. In some cases, the only way to travel from one tube to one of its immediate parallel neighbours may be to travel through several consecutive ''vuqu'' before shifting to a parallel ''vuqu'' and travelling all the way back through consecutive 'vuqu'. The Goqu summarise parallel ''vuqu'' of this nature as ''ei mie kuaqa'', 'close yet far' and new routes and new 'vuqu' are occasionally discovered, making it clear to all within Qu that their world is much larger than what they know of it.

Virtually all of the tubes of Qu have a warm, humid climate Most tubes have a pronounced wet season, in which masses of water are expelled from the ukana as mist, typically heralded by a dramatic light-show from the ''ukana'' in the late afternoon which seems to mimic the lightning display of a tropical thunderstorm. The 'lightning' display is, however, completely silent and somewhat more extravagant, with dramatic flashes and changes in direction of light, causing various parts of the tube to be brightly illuminated while others are in darkness, as though spotlights are cast on the ground. The mist ejected by the ''ukana'' billows and swirls in the near-weightlessness of the central atmosphere, trapped by the tight swirling of the coreolis effect. When the ''ukana'' is surrounded by dense cloud, fog or rain, its whole length is visible as a bar of light in the sky and the flashes of the 'lighting show' can look a little like a straight bolt of lightning through the sky. As ''ukana'' continues to expel mist, the atmosphere around it becomes overloaded. The mist swirls in tight eddies and collides, builds into larger and larger droplets which gradually whirl their way down in rolling, swirling cylinders of cloud that strike the surface of the tube as heavy downpours. Even in the ‘dry’ season, the constant high humidity creates natural showers and frequent fog and the ''ukana'' augments this natural water cycle with ejections of mist, which mostly occur during the night. Quite notable at night time are the billowing clouds that seem to erupt from the openings near the hub of the end walls of the tubes. These result from the warm breeze coming through the passageways from the neighbouring tubes in their daylight phase.