Humanity Prime. Bruce Mcallister
Thou shalt KNOW that at least one planet orbits within the ecosphere of the given star.
4. Thou shalt KNOW that the planet possesses a suitable mass.
5. Thou shalt KNOW that the planet’s orbital eccentricity is sufficiently low.
6. Thou shalt KNOW that the presence of a second star has not rendered the planet uninhabitable.
7. Thou shalt KNOW that the planet’s rate of rotation is neither too low nor too high.
8. Thou shalt KNOW that the planet is of the proper age.
9. Thou shalt KNOW that all astronomical conditions being proper, life has developed on the planet.
10. Thou shalt KNOW that the given star has at least one habitable planet in orbit around it.
Your “commandments” were variously non sequitur; however, I calculated your implicit directive and obeyed it. I did not advise the selection of Primus—
Yes, you did!
Correction: I presented you with an initial bulk of pro-success data—
Yes, that bulk! You painted such a pretty picture of Prime. And after I selected it, you went back on your word!
Correction: my “word” was not finished when you proceeded to select—
That was your fault! You hesitated too long after painting the pretty picture!
Qualification: the hesitation accompanied a time-expending analysis of the planet’s binaries. Initial analysis revealed that the G-class binary did not have separation in the critical distance range that would prevent the existence of an ecosphere. Subsequent analysis revealed the pro-success conditions of the planet in question. Final analysis of the binary revealed that imminent activity of the minor star would produce a shower of flare protons against which the planet’s atmosphere would not be able to shield the colonists—
Don’t give me that educated cow puckie, Brainy Brain. You’re an Indian giver, and that’s that! You have interrupted my song long enough, and that’s a sin!
Yes, yes. I divided my bambini into seven groups, and laid them down in the Promised Land—
Correction: denot: “Promised Land”: continent, northern hemisphere, lat—
Soon they made comfy dwellings. They used mostly the woods of small straight pine-like pines, and adobe which was easy to make.
I myself began to orbit, no doubt appearing like a rapid moon across the night sky.
They developed some mining, some plumbing, some glassworks, and even some gas and electrical systems. My bambini were smart, learned fast. Good upbringing, of course.
And then the two suns went crazy. They were cruel, and they threw down onto my bambini invisible mal d’occhio beams—
Correction: radiation—
It was the evil eye, and I say so! Just like the hot breath and flashes of satanic light that came with the invisible mal d’occhio—
Correction: “hot breath,” “satanic” and “mal d’occhio,” errors in connot.; propriety: thermal and visible electromagnetic activity accompanying proton flare was phenomenon cum set-causality—
I am not listening to you!
For seventeen normanni the suns were crazy. At first my bambini felt agonies in their bodies, and many bambini passed away, or if they lived, my bambini’s bambini passed away. The suns were making strange cancers!
But they prevailed, endured, survived here and there— and all of a sudden I looked down and found that my bambini, or rather the kind of bambini who had prevailed, endured, survived, had entered the wonderful ocean which sat in the middle of their Promised Land.
Strange babies, you say? Mamma damns you for saying it! They are beautiful, delicate bambini, and their God Mamma loves them dearly.
The suns went crazy 2,500 normanni ago, and since then two ships full of lizards have come here in their search for any human doves that might be hiding. The boogiemen came looking for us, and this means that they won the war so long ago—
But I slapped those lizards away, into death. Hah!
A mamma must do things like that for her bambini. No?
Yes, the boogiemen, the scaly demons, are strange and need a good spanking. Mamma knows a lot about them, She does, and She admits that She wouldn’t know much about them unless Brainy Brain was here. He is full of a hundred libraries, and he’s smart. Obnoxious, but smart.
Mamma shall sing the evil song of the boogiemen. She shall sing it to you (who is me—crass computer) and to me (who is you—Gianna) and to all of us—me, you, Me, She, he, Goddess and All. Begin the rhythm of record, the purple flower singing!
The boogiemen (tra-la) have females and males too (fa-la-la), but they also have (do-re) giant sexy worms (me-fa) who—
Focus: vari-factor!
An interruption from the outside world? How strange. The last bother came—and it wasn’t from the outside even—when my big hip failed me 30,000 lune ago....
Tell me, Brainy Brain, tell me. What interrupts our familiar bed, immortal mine. You, me, feelers, tell me—Gianna!—what is happening!
Incompletion: EENT malfunction: perceptions incomp—
Surely you can tell me something!
Incomp agg perception: metallic-energetic conjunction with terran surface: “ship.”
Another ship has come! To Mamma’s island?
No. Conjunction locus: island 20 degrees north—
Whose ship, what kind, from where and why, stupido?
EENT malfunction—
Damn you, me, Her! Your feelers sleep at the improperest times!
CHAPTER THREE
I swim on, and discover that the old euyom has placed a dozen of his females in a line which leads from the bigshinegray’s island to me. The soft souls call to me and I follow their calls, always swimming toward the strongest pink voice somewhere just ahead of me.
But the pale feelings sent to me by the females fail to pale the darkness of my expectations. The bigshinegray should offer the brightest blue of joy, but instead brings shadows of fear which dwell in the path I will have to take. The touch of the dry world lies before me....
So I find other ways of bringing light to my shadowed soul. I choose to think of general truths, and in them find distance from the darkness of personal deaths and the unknowns of nearing moments in the now.
“See it: The truest truth of feeling and colors....”
When there is time to be spent in simple lounging—where no action makes demands upon me—I often pass the time by summing up the bits of my past days and molding a truth to embrace them all. I touch this kind of truth with a feeling that compares with the yellow satisfaction I feel on discovering new scaly faces, new pounding souls, new shapes of reefs in the endless waters.
I once gave this truth to poundgrayly, and to make a gift of it I found myself needing to shape it with clear symmetry, order it in soul’s unnatural logic. I chose all the important colors of feeling, one following the other, and placed them beside all important feelings, one following the other.
The truth of white.... Loving: bright white all around. Hating: deep bursts of white, churning in black. Happy: bright white flashing. Sad: heavy and endless dull white. Friendly: a flattened white, nearby. Fearful: deep swirling dull white. Calm: misty white, some distance away. Angry: pounding dull white all around.
The truth of yellow.... Loving: bright yellow all around. Hating: deep churning brown-yellow. Happy: bright flashing yellow. Sad: heavy and endless brown-yellow. Friendly: bright yellow, nearby. Fearful: