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!”

Chapter 46

Chapter 46

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 you 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.