Humanity Prime. Bruce Mcallister

four shells next to each other!

      I place them in the basket, and decide to choose eye’s way: I wait for the murk of disturbed sand to clear. The soul by itself could see well enough, but imprecision of direction is always frustrating—face’s eyes are precise.

      Three more here.

      Even two there—

      What? Where?

      My soul is struck by sudden formless tumble of darkest red.

      (Lift your face’s eyes!)

      My eyes touch nothing.

      But my soul finds the familiar red forms of ioe.

      I clench the basket tightly, as my soul clenches the proper lie, the perfect form, the raging colors of the deceit—ready to throw it at the ioe.

      Poundgrayly nods quietly with a pale softness, and together we throw out our lies, which blend as one, and the ioe are fooled.

      The image for the pack of six ioe charging: Two wounded female ioe here—do not approach!

      It is the most common lie, one that brings roaring fear to simpler souls: the female of the ioe kind, twice the size of any ioe male, five times as fierce when wounded, fearing.... So a pack of ioe will attack a pair of giant oio in mating before it would dare approach two raging females of its own dark taloned kind.

      So my eyes touch the inevitable: the ioe slow their rush, their own black webbed talons pawing frantically to stop them, their skin-taut heads thrown back on sinewy necks in simple assurance that their bodies will follow.

      We keep our lies steady in their form, their jagged rhythm—which would have been tiring in my body’s youth, would have darkened my soul in those days...and to most euyom it would be impossible. But the two of us manage it easily, and find its familiarity even amusing.

      Keeping up my half of the lie, I begin swimming back toward the shelter of yau in deeper water. The basket full of shells hangs from my arm, and poundgrayly swims in front of me.

      What?

      More dark red—

      Where? (There!) Others here!

      The second pack is nearly upon me. Poundgrayly throws out a quick new lie. Image to the second pack’s souls: a giant thrashing oio with plated flesh, dangerous tail.

      The new lie strikes the second pack. They try to slow, but their bodies tumble on toward me.

      (Throw out your own!)

      I tighten, surround myself with one precise ioe lie. The second pack tries harder to slow. But the image to the first pack’s souls has changed: Confusing things, unclear threats—one wounded female disappears, appears a thrashing giant, remains one female—where the threat? Fear is dim—

      The first pack rushes on, almost to me.

      (Escape in body!)

      No, death will be good.

      (Body! Escape!)

      I turn to swim, catch one leg and tail in the basket I dropped, flail out with arms.

      My body thrashes, the basket entangled. My lie is dropped, dissolves.

      (No!)

      Two packs of ioe in one small area? Improbable....

      (No, throw out a lie!)

      And their timing of attack? Improbable too....

      (Throw a lie!)

      Both packs together did sense our presence, forgot their hatred of each other—

      (Yes, you desire death.)

      Talons reach me, flesh of arm, bones of pain, reddening waters, souls roaring redder.

      (At last.)

      Talons on face, one eye dark, pain deeper darker—

      “Poundgrayly! Get away!”

      Pains are darkness. Yellow never was—

      I di—

      I—

      I—

      I—

      “Fishsinger, fool!”

      Who where what here?

      “Always the stupid boy.”

      Poundgrayly? Poundgrayly....

      So I stir without will from the memory. Many, many times since I snatched Father’s experience from poundgrayly’s moment of relaxed guarding have I relived it this way, and each time I fail to reach Father’s death moment—but only because it does not exist for me. Poundgrayly managed to keep it from me, so I hold only the moments leading up to it to sink myself in.

      And this time! Poundgrayly himself has arrived to interrupt my reveries, to pull me from the edge of memory’s incompleteness.

      I throw at him brown teeth of instant hatred.

      I sink back down, try to be the dying man again.

      I—

      I—

      “Fishsinger!”

      Again I try. I—

      “Listen to this old soul. Young hardened reef, shallow love of self, listen. Foolish and fooled, your soul is an ioe’s stomach. Shall I shed the dark used food of my body and feed you with it?”

      This is the way poundgrayly always pulls me out: a wave of insults demanding soul’s defense in the presence of now.

      I begin my own wave of insults, but then stop.

      A thing is different this time. There are always reprimands from poundgrayly, but this time his soul is unusually disturbed, sharp purple feelings, nervous edging.

      “A secret problem?” I ask, green paling in sarcasm.

      “Secret only to your blindness: a personal world swallowing you. Indulge yourself, selfishsinger, and miss the brightest day your kind has ever wanted.”

      Such talk is meaningless to me. Brightest day? Of course he is trying to fool me, pull me completely from my waking dream of dying.

      So I play with the old soul. “I understand. You have finally decided to give me Father’s moment.”

      “Stop this! Listen: A bigshinegray has come.”

      I ignore him. “You still refuse to—”

      And then my soul rises up in understanding. Bigshinegray?

      “You are trying to fool me!” I shout

      “No. No.”

      “One has come?”

      “Yes.”

      “One has come! Has come!”

      “So you do remember the waiting dream inside your kind’s souls. If you had bothered to hold memory of it all along—in all times since screamdeep’s death—feelings of aloneness would not have taken you so strongly. The waiting dream has always held your kind together—”

      “Yes, yes, but such advice is unimportant now! A bigshinegray has finally come—to where?”

      “An island, as the dream expected. Two females of mine witnessed its coming. You see, I prepared their souls well for this day—gave them clear formed visions of what the big, tall, pointed, upright, shiny, round, gray dream of your kind would look like to face’s eyes—”

      “Yes, yes, I will certainly thank your two females—all of them too—but—”

      “It is without a single doubt,” poundgrayly continues, interrupting with the babble of his own excitement, “a bigshinegray, no misreceived light to face’s eyes, nor nervous dream forced into the present. It surely came from endless