Humanity Prime. Bruce Mcallister
it that way. You see it as a fearful thing—as a big inconvenience. You cannot run well with a big stomach! Perhaps a monkey-bear will catch you!
(On that far away planet there will be a kind of monkey that doesn’t have much hair—God will make him special, will give him less hair than the other animals—and the female of that unhairy monkey will find herself big of stomach too, but her male will stay with her to protect her.)
Hah! Your male doesn’t stay with you. He hopped away a long time ago, no?
But soon you find a big worm in one of the dry rivers. You have seen this kind of worm often—its hugeness, its thick scales like armor plates. At first you are afraid, but soon you learn that the worm only eats plants and very small animals, and it does it quietly. You learn that there is a certain kind of crab-spider which lives on the body of this worm, and crab-spiders, as you know full well, are good to eat.
You go to any big worms you can find. You eat the crab-spiders off of them. It is easier for you to pick this food off of worms than to find other food out in the sands, and it is safer than chancing a look for food near the forests and monkey-bears—since you are burdened with such a large belly.
Although you don’t know it, you have started a wonderful relationship between your kind and the big worms. Scaly females and huge quiet worms.
Maybe you die with your big belly anyway. Maybe a monkey-bear does capture you and rips you and your unborn children to pieces. After all, it has to happen to someone—and it has to happen a million times in your prehistory.
But one of you—one of the millions of mothers like you— survives with your big belly. You stay by a big worm; you eat the crab-spiders; and one day you have an accident. Or perhaps you do it on purpose somehow. You get rid of what is in your belly too soon—just as if you were getting rid of what is your bowels. And the big worm is nearby.
You have your children too soon, and the big worm moves only a few centimeters and finds them. It swallows them whole. It digests them. So much for you and your children!
But there is another female like you, much later, somewhere else. She has her children too soon, and her big worm swallows them too. But it doesn’t digest them. It cannot digest them.
Some chemical in you makes your premature babies undigestible. Hooray? No, not yet.
Even though they are undigestible, your babies die inside the worm.
But other babies of another mother—much later, somewhere else—do not die inside their quiet worm. They survive, and then one day they are born. An odd way of doing it, but they are born.
So the millions of mothers like you work it out over a hundred million years. Coincidence? No, because it takes a hundred million years to work it out—and anything can happen in a hundred million years.
When the hundred million years have passed, and you are another scaly female, the situation is clear:
You have a big belly, but this does not disturb you. A big stomach was not disturbing to your mother, so it does not disturb you either.
You are not so primitive now. You still must be quick, but to add to your quickness of mind and body you have developed some tools now too, and you have made huts of cactus-tree materials. You have the first roots of civilization.
Your male has built a hut around a big worm. You go now to that big worm; you eat the crab-spiders on it; and now you bend down to deposit your premature babies (who are in a tough sack) in the worm’s indifferent mouth.
It does not bother you that the worm seems to be eating your babies. All of this is natural for you...and besides, the worm is not chewing, but rather swallowing the babies and their membrane sack whole.
You cannot see it, but something is happening inside the worm. Your sack full of babies (with a yolk inside the sack) is traveling down its long throat, into its long stomach, where the sack comes to rest. There is a chemical in the sack’s membrane which will cause the worm’s body to make a wall of tissue around your babies. The tissue will protect them from gastric juices. Hoorayl
The worm is called a “hermaphrodite”; it has an “androgynous” way. The presence of your babies in its stomach causes it to start making its own baby—yes, a single baby, since nothing in your world has teeth or claws terrible enough to rip through the plates of a young worm, and since each worm is male and female both—so that only one worm baby will still keep the race of worms going strong.
The wormling inside the mamma-papa worm will eventually take one of your babies as its own yolk. But don’t worry: there will be four or five of your babies left. And your babies—when they have used up the yolk inside their sack—will have as their first meal during birth—the big mamma-papa worm herself-himself. They will eat their way out of the big worm. Again, hooray for your kind!
So your children and the wormling will be born in the hut built by your male. And for all this time—since the distant day when you first deposited your babies in the worm—you have been free to do what you wanted or needed to do.
A fair deal, no? Worm takes your babies, allows you to run around and protect your scaly self. Wormling takes one of your babies to feed on, leaves four or five others to take the big worm as their food. The wormling at birth is protected by its own heavy plates; and your own babies at birth are as quick as you are.
So the next generation of babies is assured, no?
But of course you are not thinking of these things. It is all much too natural to be thought about.
A hundred thousand years pass.
Your civilization is impressive now. I compliment you. You have gone out into space and have killed great numbers of unhairy monkeys which came into being on that far-away planet and also went out into space.
I compliment you. But I hate you.
Even in your great civilizational culture, you are perverted. Your “symbiosis” is demonical, dear lady!
You are a society lady now. Your scaliness is covered with plastics and brilliant gauzes which stick like adhesive to your scales.
You are a governor, dear lady, as is your mate. You are equal to him, just as you were a hundred million years ago when you first got rid of the bulging babies that burdened you, and became as fast on your feet as he was. Now you are as quick of mind and free of body as he is. Hooray....
You and your husband are both soldiers too. You think you have come a long way, no?
But what about your pregnancy last year? Remember?
The time had come. Your stomach was huge under your plastic dress.
You went to your palace’s special room. You approached the expensive worm your husband had purchased for you. (Remember: a hundred million years ago you started as equals, you and the worms; and now look at them.) The worm had its own room in your palace; its own terrarium with “hydroponics” and ornaments; its own place in your home.
You cried out in vulgar pain, gave your repulsive sack of premature babies to the worm, and were humiliated by the obscene act. A civilized woman associating with such a creature?
And after the proper time, you children ate their way out of the very sanitized worm. You were not around to greet them. They were sent away quickly to the training lycei, and you were indifferent to the whole matter.
Your husband insists that you should value the worms he buys for you. After all, they were costly; they were wormlings born of mature worms brought up in high-ranking families. Prestige, you know. Bah! you say.
And there are some very popular religions founded on the worms: “Blessed are the worms, for they are faithful. Blessed their mindlessness, for they are pure.”
“The worm is eternal symbol of the soul....” But to you this is a bunch of zealot babbling.
And there are many people in your world who go through complicated ceremonies when a mother puts her foetal bag in a worm. “But these