Panille climbed farther out of the hatch to sit on the rim. From this vantage, he could see the ballast rocks draw foaming lines across the waves, skipping over the kelp's leaves. The giant sail-crests of the hylighters billowed and flapped as they turned, then stiffened as they took their new heading.
Standing below him to peer over the top of an instrument bank, Thomas could see some of this.
"Don't tell me they're brainless," he said.
"I wonder if we've angered them?" Waela asked.
Panille, the wind tugging at his hair and beard, heard this as though it came from the ancient world of Ship. He felt exhilarated - free at last. Pandora was wonderful!
"They're beautiful!" he cried. "Beautiful!"
A sharp crackling sound from behind Thomas brought him whirling around. It was the speaker of a radio he had left on after testing it. Another sharp crackling erupted from the speaker. Hylighters and kelp both were blamed for this phenomenon which made radio undependable here, but how did they do it?
The swarm was almost at the gondola now. A giant specimen in the lead aimed its rock ballast directly at the gondola. Thomas held his breath. How much of that could the plaz withstand?
"They're attacking!" Waela shouted.
Panille had climbed farther out, standing now on the ladder's topmost rung while he steadied himself with a knee against the open hatch cover. He waved both arms wide, shouting: "Look at them! They're gorgeous! Magnificent!"
Thomas shouted to Waela who stood at the foot of the ladder: "Get that fool down here!"
As he shouted, the tucked tendrils of the leading hylighter slid over the gondola and the rock smashed into the plaz directly in front of Waela. She clutched the ladder for support and screamed at Panille as the gondola tipped, but her warning came too late. Arms still waving, Panille was knocked off his feet and spilled out of the gondola. She saw one of his hands clutch a hylighter tendril and he was jerked skyward. Other tendrils quickly enfolded him, almost concealing his body which was now glimpsed only in places through the hylighter's grasp. She saw all of this in bits and pieces as the gondola went through a series of wildly twisting gyrations under the massed onslaught of hylighters.
They were attacking!
Thomas had wedged himself into a corner where the arc of controls joined the communications board. He saw only Panille's feet disappear and heard Waela scream: "They've got Kerro!"
In your terms, Self may be called Avata. Not hylighter, not kelp, not 'lectrokelp, but Avata. That is the Great Self in the language from your animal past. Avata. Finding this label in you, Avata knows we sing the same song. Through each other, Avata and human know Self. No second measurement for Avata. Same value every time. No separate qualities or forms. Thus with human.
Avata. But not Avata.
To name is to limit, to control. To name without knowing your limit is to hinder the knowing. At best, it is a diversion. At worst, it is a misrepresentation, a stolen label, a death. To name a thing falsely and to act thereafter on the name - that is killing, a cutting of the spiritual leaf, the death of the stem. A thing is Self or it is Other. The naming is a matter of proximity.
Avata identifies the speciesfold magnetification, the magnetism of proximity; the wavelength of space: humanthomas, humankerro, humanjessup, humanoakes. Avata concludes lack of sensory organ necessary to differentiate between clone and human. Avata does not consider this lack a weakness or misrepresentation.
Avata is one in hylighter and kelp, not separate in either, nor the same. Cells differ but share the One. Before humans, Avata did not distinguish. Both are Self. Avata would teach you the self of Other, the human in clone.
Some things are because you name them. You perpetuate them in your language, you commiserate over the woe they have wrought you.
Say simply that these things are not so. Do not change the label but the labelness. Eliminate them from your life by washing them first from your tongue. Ignoring that which is false is also a knowing. Thus - learning. To learn is to grow and to grow is to live. You may practice forgetting and thus learn.
"Home."
That is your label for this place, humankerro. Avata washes your tongue here that you may properly inflect the name and then forget it. Avata brings you this to cleanse you of expectancies, that you may learn the cues to which Avata responds or refuses to respond.
This is how you learn Avata. You are both lower level and higher level, and the continuity is the continuity of your will. Observe the vine which is all Avata winding through "Home." Grasp the vine. Cup the waters in your hands and drink.
You are the observer-effect.
And the Lord God said, "Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
FOR KERRO Panille, his last sensible thought was the beauty of the lead hylighter passing within two meters overhead. He felt the presence of the sea and the wind, saw the black twisting mass of tendrils and the long rope of them which he knew linked the magnificent creature to its ballast rock. Then he was knocked off his feet and clutched at the only possible handhold - that long rope of guiding tendrils.
From his study of them, Panille knew that the creatures were considered to be dangerously hallucinogenic, explosive and poisonous to Shipmen, but nothing could have prepared him for the actual experience. As his hand touched the hylighter he experienced an electric buzzing which climbed to a crescendo in every sense of his body. He tasted bitter iron. The musk of uncounted flowers savaged his nostrils. His ears were the citadel of the fiercest attack - cymbals and twanging strings competed with horns and the cries of birds. Behind this assault, he heard the choral singing of a multitude.
Then his sense of balance went crazy.
Silence.
The sensations were turned off as though by a switch.
Am I dead? Is this real?
You live, humankerro.
In a way, it was like the voice of Ship. It was calm, faintly amused, and he knew it occurred only in his head.
How do I know that?
Because you are a poet.
Wh.... who are you?
I am that which you call hylighter. I save you from the sea.
The beautifu....
Yes! The beautiful, gorgeous, magnificent hylighter!
There was pride in this announcement, but still that sense of amusement.
You called m.... humankerro.
Yes - humankerro-poet.
What does being a poet have to do with my knowing this is real?
Because you trust your senses.
As though these words opened a door to his body, he felt the enclosing tendrils, the sharp bite of wind between them, and his inner ears registered the roll of a sweeping turn as the hylighter tacked. His eyes reported a shadowy golden area millimeters from his nose and he knew he lay on his back in a cradle of tendrils, the body of the hylighter close above him.
What did you do to me?
I touched your being.
Ho....