Humanity Prime. Bruce Mcallister
You think they taint you, dirty you. You agree with the psychologists who say that many emotional problems arise from a child having to eat his or her way out of the dumb “mother/father” body of a worm.
Ah, you see some hope for the world? You have heard recently that scientists are making synthetic worms, totally automated worms. These oh-so-clean worms will be costly, you know, but they will be worth it. Totally clean, totally mindless. Very dead.
You make a vow that you will never touch another live worm in your life.
Your husband, you feel confident, will see your point of view. After all, he isn’t your equal even though you let him think he is....
So how do you feel now, Brainy Brain? Hmmm? Has darkness embraced you?
Repeat correction, Gianna: the “Links of Quintessence,” one Cromanth group, did effect amicable communication with—
Poor man! You got nothing from my tale! Now shut up, I have things to do.
EENTs! Are you working yet?
How dare you! You are cripples! You taint the Mamma! You are worse than scales!
CHAPTER FIVE
I fishsinger begin to bring the sea through the hollow stem again, and in a moment gesture for the euyom to stop near a stiff yellow plant whose leaves seem to have talons and whose soul speaks of roots deep in the dry sandy ground, in search of wetness.
I wet my eyes again, use some of the water to wet the euyom’s dry head, and begin to stare at the bigshinegray. The grayness is merely a few hundred tail lengths away, but I stare to touch its form completely.
It rises with the smoothest, evenest gray I have ever known—grayer than any soul’s feeling—and it rises above all stiff plants and dry rocks as if reaching to pierce the bright blue distance above.
(It fills out, brings to life my forefathers’ memory of the first bigshinegray—and suddenly it is so familiar that it could be that same bigshinegray, and I my earliest forefather....)
I stare, wet my face’s eyes again, and stare.
And then they appear.
Face’s eyes see them in the same moment that soul’s eye feels them.
(See it: Those five bodies are very strange.)
Yes, it seems they have changed too, just as my kind has changed in a million days.
(You feel nothing familiar about them....)
When I come to know them deeply, I will discover our sharings.
But I am confused, jumble of colors—regardless of my attempts at explanation, lines of understanding.
Their bodies are upright—just like those of my earliest forefathers.
They have two legs each with no tails—just as my earliest forefathers lacked tails.
Their color of flesh is different from mine—just as my soul’s earliest memory said it should be.
But their souls....
My forefathers’ memory: We lived in dryness and spoke with rhythms from our throats, not images from our souls.
But these five bodies in the distance seem to be speaking half with rhythms from their throats and half with their strange souls.
Perhaps this is merely another change brought by a million days’ passing.
Their souls are clearer now, as their bodies are nearer, but they have not sensed my presence yet. To my inner eye the deepest pattern of their souls is more than unfamiliar—not unlike the redder weavings of an ioe’s soul, but different than any souls I have ever known because their colors are not in rivers, because their colors are in rigid waves which lap nervously against themselves.
All images in the five souls are unclear. Only feelings are ever completely coherent, and images must be seen as recognizable forms before they can be understood.
So I wait patiently.
Their faces’ eyes—as I expected—are different from mine, so they see the forms of things differently—though never completely differently.
I move my soul to watch one of the five souls carefully.
The soul looks around it through its face’s eyes, and without will it gives me its vision, which blends pink memory with a darker now:
Here place: the ground: sands of beach: the sea: the rim of the sea in the distance—all of this: seen at tremendous distance: as a round blue, white and green object: very wet compared to: a larger round red-yellow object lacking blue—
But what is this “other world” in the strange soul, a world whose accompanying feeling for the soul is closeness, affection, contentment? Is it the goal of the soul’s travels, or its territory of origin—perhaps territory of birth?
Seeking answers, I turn my soul to another of the five souls, to find another flow of images:
Eyes see: familiar gray: distinct smooth form: fond moving-but-now-resting container of self and four fond others: comfort—
Eyes see: small black unthreatening form moving through dryness in circles: similar to other forms on large round red-yellow object and elsewhere: all such forms similar to self in many ways: in other ways similar to rigid forms protruding from nearby ground and elsewhere—even similar to: unpleasant pale smooth forms with two arms two legs but no tail: but there was dark difference in those pale smooth forms—
This last image I fail to understand. The “pale smooth forms” resemble those in my longest forefathers’ memory—and it is impossible that these could bring unpleasant feelings to the soul in front of me.
I turn to a third soul, and its face’s eyes looked into the blue distance before it:
Beyond this: darkness where self cannot breathe without gray container: far in such darkness is fond round red-yellow object-seen-from-tremendous-distance: in past times darkness most familiar to self: full of killing death for forms like self and forms of pale smoothness—
I look carefully into the third soul, and again fail to understand the image: upright men dying—not at the talons of oie or from stomach’s sickness, but by...by...strange lights bringing pain.
Suddenly, before my face’s eyes, the five strange bodies begin to move their arms. I wet my eyes again, look, and scream.
The five bodies are removing their heads, their skins.
My soul stiffens in darkest gray—and I continue staring.
When I see what flesh and colors lay under the discarded skins, I scream again, and the five souls hear my scream and begin to quiver, darkening, alerting.
The five bodies are scaly and green-yellow, quivering in the same nervousness that commands their souls.
(No forefather ever looked like these. See it: Deep within your soul, memory of dark scaliness which is older than your forefathers.)
Dark gives birth to more darkness, and I tremble.
The five souls have turned toward me, and from more than one of them images rush all too clearly:
Killing and killing and killing: hairless scaleless upright bodies killing, being killed by smaller green-yellow scaly bodies—
And I recognize—from forefathering times—who the hairless scaleless bodies were.
And I see clearly now with face’s eyes that the five bodies staring back at me have long finless tails.
One of the five souls gives out without will a final darkening image:
All hairless scaleless upright bodies: long-since dead!
The bodies before me are not my kind—and I scream. In the infinite dryness there are no bodies of my land still living. And I scream.
I