This is not contradicted by the text, though I thought I read somewhere that only the maker of the gateway can actually create a platform or mess with it. That might mean that everyone else is powerless to alter their situations.


As noted in my subject line, people saw the victims drop, so they did go down. Maybe because someone believed that's how it works, but it still happened.



I wonder why the platforms are even needed if any of this is true. There has to be a sort of spatial coherence to it all, because you have to move through it to get to your destination (and that is fixed after all - since know your destination point well is the sine qua non of Skimming), so it would seem that not moving toward your destination, or going off the direct route to your end point results in a loss of the ability to transverse the skimming place. Once you stop moving in collusion with the one who picked the destination (i.e. "fall" from the platform), you've stepped outside the limitations under which a person can travel through that dimension, like cutting yourself loose from the shore and becoming adrift. Otherwise it makes no sense that one person must know a destination in order to open a gateway to a place between his location and that destination, but then pass through that place merely by an act of will, without regard to his destination, or that others can pass through the gateway that required knowledge of a specific destination to make, but then do their own thing once in the interim place. The Aiel fell for the same reason Moses was punished for striking the rock twice or Peter sunk when he tried to walk on water - in all three cases, the result they hoped to obtain came entirely through another agency. Peter stood on the surface because God held him up and Moses got stuff to come out of the rock because God made it happen and the Aiel was heading to Caemlyn because Rand created a skimming route to Caemlyn and established the protocols of the transportation. When Peter stopped paying attention to God and concentrated on his position and actions, he was attempting to work his own will which was insufficient to keep his weight atop the water. When the Aielman moved out of the range of Rand's delineated transport area, he violated the parameters of the phenomenon and fell because there was nothing to hold him to the route or voyage or whatever (I can't figure out an appropriate noun to articulate the concept of a collective partial violation of space & time under the will of a single individual). Maybe the fall is just the illusion to the OTHER people, and from his perspective, he lost his footing, and suddenly the platform zoomed away (in whatever direction) really fast while he stayed still, or the gholam perceived Mat & the gateway shooting out of sight.