Humanity Prime by Bruce McAllister

Author:Bruce McAllister
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: high tech, science fiction, adventure, alien, aliens
ISBN: 9781434448057
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2012-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Her soul weaves a faint image of the scalesouls’ island.

“Yes,” she says, “I was the one you touched.”

Two faces move on the fringe of her soul, and neither face pleases me. One is a simple awe...felt before the boy who crawled out into dryness. The other is affection...whose reason and sureness is beyond my soul’s understanding, beyond my comfort.

My face’s eyes touch her, find her floating below me, near the sandy bottom, her eyes closed as she listens to me.

“Forgive my shouts in anger,” I am obliged to say. “The then of me was strange.”

“A girl understands. She understand in the then of you also...after her confusion left.”

Before I can ask, she offers the answer, again with the she.

“The girl was present at your island by the babbling of a female euyom. You can understand the misunderstanding...the euyom was deeply excited by the coming of the bigshinegray; the euyom had seen it herself. The euyom’s soul was babbling about the coming when she passed through the girl’s territory. The girl misunderstood the babbling as a message, as a command of responsibility. The girl went to the island, unaware that it lay in your territory. Territories are not without shiftings of their bound—”

“Yes, I understand. But I would touch your truths more easily if the girl would leave your stories!”

The reprimand darkens no part of her soul. She nods quickly and easily.

Perhaps I wanted to darken her. The waving affection within her soul can only annoy me further: such affection is presumptuous. She knows my soul deeply? Of course not. So affection is not justified.

“When it happened,” she says quickly, a pale tone of answering, “I could not understand it. I had always known that two bodies must touch before it could happen.”

The image of it is too bright with feeling for my soul to see it clearly.

“It?”

“You do not understand what happened? It came from your soul—”

The image dims—her feelings losing brightness—and I see it clearly and suddenly.

The crawling fish!

I have given this girl a child....

Ignorance slapped by understanding can only change the color of one’s soul. See it: I am embarrassed, pale tinglings rushing—

“I am sorry....I saw the fish touch you, but I imagined it was a lie. That the image could travel so far to reach you—”

“I am not sorry,” the girl interrupts.

Again the assuming affection.

“Fears held me at first,” she goes on, “but a guardian explained it into light, and understanding sank all fears.”

A guardian? She has no parents? The need of affection, given—

“Nightbreaking gave me understanding. She felt no fears, I felt no fears.”

The girl grows silent, but a question, persistent in its dimness, mumbles its way to me.

“No,” I say, “it was not the brushing of my body against the euyom’s shell. Fears refused to allow that. The image of the fish was born because—”

“Because you entered dryness.”

“Yes, the truth appears....”

She surprises me suddenly with a laugh.

“Because you were following the same path as the crawling fish!”

I share no laughter. The truth is too heavy.

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