The mechanism is hormonal, using prolactin which normally regulates our metabolism and our sexual behavior. However, when an errant individual is forcefully reminded of transgression her hypothalamus overloads and she enters a continuous but unbalanced physiological state. In our ancestors this was a survival factor that caused hibernation. However, in our present evolved state, the reaction is inevitably fatal.
DIET
It has been said that if you look into a creature’s mouth you will know what she eats. Dentition denotes diet. A nenitesk has flat-topped, square teeth for grinding up the immense amounts of vegetable matter it must eat, with sharper-edged teeth in the front for cutting and tearing its food loose. The neat, attractive rows of cone-shaped teeth in our jaws denote our healthy and carnivorous fish-eating diet. The thickness and strength of our jaws indicate that mollusks once played a large part in our ancestors’ diet for we did—and still can—crush the shells of these tasty creatures with our teeth.
REPRODUCTION
There are certain things that Yilanè do not talk about, and this is right and proper in a well-ordered society. When we are young and in the sea, life is endless pleasure. This pleasure continues when we are fargi; our simple thoughts should not be burdened with subjects too complex to understand.
As Yilanè we not only can consider and discuss any matter, but we must do this if we are to understand the world we live in. The life cycle of the Yilanè is perfect in its symmetry and we begin our observation of this circle of life at the time it begins, when the young emerge from father’s protection and enter the sea.
This is the beginning of conscious life. Though all of the earliest activities are inborn reflexes—breathing, swimming, gathering in groups—intelligence is already developing. Communication begins, observation, cogitation and conclusion are initiated. Members of the young efenburu learn by observing the older ones.
This is where language begins. There are two main schools of thought about the origin of language among those who make a study of languages. Leaving out the detailed arguments, and phrasing them in a popular way, they might be called the swim-swim and the ping-ping theories. The swim-swim theory postulates that our first attempts at communication are brought about by imitations of other creatures in the sea: that is, a movement of the hand and arm in imitation of the swimming movement of a fish would indicate the idea of a fish. On the other hand the ping-ping supporters say that sound came first, the sounds that fish make being imitated. We cannot know, we may never know, which of these theories is true. But we can and have watched the young learning to communicate in the open sea.
The elements they use are all of the ones that they will use later, but simplified to a great degree. Basic movements of the limbs, colored indications with the palms, simple sound groupings. These suffice to join the members of each efenburu together, to build the strong bonds that will last through life, to teach the importance of mutual aid and cooperation.
Only when they emerge from the sea do the fargi discover that the world can be a difficult place. We may speculate that in distant times, when our race was young, the competition was not as severe. Only when communication in an advanced society became of utmost importance did the individual begin to suffer.
It is a law of nature that the weak fall by the way. The slow fish is eaten by the fast fish and does not breed. The faster fish survive to pass on their genes for swift-swimming. So it is with the Yilanè, for many of the fargi never learn to speak well enough to join the happy intercourse of the city. They are fed, for no Yilanè refuses food to another. But they feel insecure, unwanted, unsure of themselves as they watch others of their efenburu succeed in speaking to join in the busy life of the city. Dispirited, they fish for their own food in the sea, wander away, are seen no more. We can feel for them, but we cannot help them. It is a law of nature that the weak shall fall by the way.
It goes without saying that, of course, these self-chosen rejects are all female. As we know, all of the males are sought out and cherished the moment that they emerge from the ocean. Doomed would be the culture that allowed these simple, sweet, unthinking creatures to perish! Wet from the ocean they are brought to the hanalè to lead the life of comfort and ease which is their due. Fed and protected they live happy lives, looking forward only to the day when they can perform the ultimate service of preserving their race.
WARNING. What follows may be too explicit for some to absorb. Details may offend those of too delicate sensibilities. Since the authors of this study wish only to inform, anyone who feels they would not be happy with material of this sort should read only the following paragraph, then skip ahead to the section labeled “Science.”
There is a process within reproduction whereby a small portion of male tissue, called a sperm, is united with a small portion of female tissue, called an ovum. This ovum becomes an egg, and the male carries the egg in a special sac. When carrying the egg, and keeping it warm and comfortable, the male gets very fat and happy and sleepy. One day the egg hatches and a lovely youngster goes into the sea, and that is all there is to it.
The union of the sperm and the ovum takes place during a process with the technical term intercourse. There follows a description of this event, the details of which are of a possibly offensive nature.
A male is brought to a state of excitement by the stimulations of a female. When this happens one or both of the male reproductive organs becomes engorged and emerges from the penis sac at the base of the tail. As soon as this occurs the female mounts the male and receives the penis into her cloaca. At this point mutual stimulation, which need not be described, causes the male to expel a large number of sperm. These specialized organisms find and unite with ova inside the female body to produce fertilized eggs.
With the sperm is also released a prostaglandin that produces a reaction within the female body that causes rigidity in the limbs, among other things, that prolongs the sexual union for a lengthy time, a good portion of the day. (Intercourse without production of the hormone is technically named a perversion and will not be discussed here.) During this period, the fertilized eggs quickly develop and grow, until they are extruded into the male’s pouch.
The female’s part is now finished, her vital role fulfilled, and responsibility for the continuation of the Yilanè race now becomes that of the male. The fertilized egg now contains the genes of both male and female. The implanted eggs now grow placentas and increase in size as they draw sustenance; for this to occur major changes happen in the male body. There is first the urge to return to the sea, the warm sea, and this is done within two days, since a stable temperature is needed for the maturing eggs. Once on the beach and in the sea the male enjoys a physiological change, growing torpid and slow, sleeping most of the time. This state remains until the eggs hatch and the young are born and enter the sea.
It should be mentioned, though it has no bearing upon the continuation of our species, that a few males die on the beaches each year as their bodies resist the metabolic change back to their normal condition. But since this only affects males it is of no importance.
Thus the life-cycle of the Yilanè begins anew.
SCIENCE
There are many sciences, each a specialized system of study, too detailed to go into in this brief history. Those interested can consult specialized works that deal with chromosome surgery, chemistry, geology, physics, astronomy, and so on. Note will only be taken here of genetic engineering and mathematics.
Like all else in Yilanè history the true history of our biological development is lost in the mists of time. We can, however, make some logical assumptions that explain the facts as we know them now. With patience enough—and time enough—any biological problem can be solved. In the beginning it can be assumed that crude breeding was the only technique that was used. As time passed, and greater interest evolved in how reproduction actually took place, research into gene structure would have begun. The first real breakthrough would have been when the researchers
succeeded in crystallizing the genome, that is bringing about evolutionary stasis. Only when we can stop evolution can we begin to understand it.
At this point the uninformed reader may be puzzled and might be inclined to ask—how does one stop evolution and make genetic changes? The answer is not a simple one and in order to answer it we must begin at the beginning.
In order to understand genetic engineering some knowledge of the biological makeup of life on this planet must be considered. Organisms exist as two grades. The simplest are the prokaryotes, ordinary bacteria, blue-green bacteria, blue-green algae, viruses and so on. The other larger and more complex life forms, the eukaryotes, will be considered in a moment. First let us look at the prokaryotes.
All of these have their genetic material as rings of DNA, or RNA in some viruses. These tiny organisms seem to be economizing on their genetic material because many of these coding regions overlap. They possess special DNA sequences between genes for at least two purposes. Firstly, the control of gene function, such as the turning off of gene transcription by the products of the coded enzyme in operons, and for providing sequences recognized by transcription or replication enzymes; secondly, there are DNA sequences that incorporate the DNA between them into other strands of DNA. (Examples would be into a host bacterium, for a plasmid or a bacteriophage, or a host eukaryote cell for a virus.) There are bacteria that produce a few enzymes which actually snip or join DNA by recognizing specific sequences for snipping or joining between two nucleotides. By using these enzymes it is possible to determine the sequence of DNA lengths. This is done by digesting them sequentially with enzymes which recognize the different sequences. Then each mixture of shorter resultant sequences is analyzed with other enzymes.
This is a lengthy process requiring millions of tries. But then Yilanè patience is infinite and we have had millions of years to develop the process. In order to recognize particular sequences, radioactive DNA or RNA messengers are attached specifically with base complementation along their length. Afterwards, special enzymes are used to remove a specific length and insert it into another organism’s DNA ring.
This is the way that bacterial DNA rings are modified: Firstly by the use of plasmids, natural bacterial ‘sex’ sequences; secondly, by phages, viruses that naturally attack bacteria; thirdly by using cosmids, artificial DNA circles with special joining sequences, any of which can be tailored to include new or modified genes, so that the modified bacteria can make new proteins.
So it can be seen that it is relatively easy to change the protein chemistry of bacteria, simple eukaryotes such as yeast, and to reprogram other eukaryotic cells in a similar simple manner.
It is much more complicated to produce desired changes in the larger eukaryotic animals. In these creatures the egg itself is programmed in the mother’s ovary, where it builds upon itself in the foundation of the embryo’s development. Only after completion of this embryonic structure does each cell produce proteins that change the cell itself, as well as other nearby cells, in a process that finally results in the juvenile organism. How this process has been mastered and altered is too complex to go into in this curtailed discussion. There are other facets of Yilanè science that have to be considered.
Mathematics must be discussed since many Yilanè have heard of this, and since all of the sciences employ it, though they will not have run across it at other times. The following explanation, although brief, is accurate.
The science of mathematics is based upon numbers. If you wish to understand numbers, spread your hands out before you, palms down, and inner thumbs touching. Wriggle your outside thumb on the right. That is called number one. Now moving one finger at a time from right to left, the adjacent finger is two, the next finger three, the inner thumb four. Left inside thumb five, fingers six and seven, and finally the outside thumb on the left is ten. Ten is also called base, a technical term that we will not go into here. It is enough to know that numbering starts over again after the base is reached, ten-and-one, ten-and-two, right up to two-times-ten. There is no limit to the number of multiples of ten that you can have. That is why numbers are so important in the sciences where things are weighed, measured, recorded, counted, and so on. Mathematics itself is very simple, just a recording of things that are bigger than things, smaller than other things, equal or not equal to other things.
The origin of mathematics is lost in time. Although mathematicians themselves believe that the base ten was chosen because we have ten fingers. They say that any number may be chosen as a base, though this seems highly unlikely. If we took two for a base then 2 would be 10, 3 would be 11, then on with 4=100, 5=101, 6=111 and so on. Very clumsy and impractical and of no real use. It has even been suggested that if ustuzou could count, a singularly wild idea in any case, that their base 10 would be our 12. All our numbers would change as well; the 40 million years of Yilanè existence would shrink to a mere 30 million years. You can see where such unwise speculation might lead so it is best we abandon such unhealthy theorizing.
CULTURE
We have had to introduce a number of new terms in this history, and culture is another one. It might be defined as the sum total of the way we live as it is transmitted down through the ages. We can assume that our culture had historical beginnings, though we cannot possibly imagine what they might have been. All we can do is describe our existence now.
Every Yilanè has her city, for Yilanè life revolves around the city. When we emerge from the sea we can only look on in speechless awe at the beauty and symmetry of our city. We go there as fargi and are taken in and fed. We listen and learn from others. We watch and learn. When we can speak we offer our services and are treated kindly. We see all the manifold life of the city and are drawn to one part or another. Some of us serve humbly and well with the herds and in the slaughterhouses.
As a city is built in rings, with fields and animals outermost, the living city next, the birth beaches and the ambesed at the heart of it, so also is our culture built. The large circle of fargi outermost. Within that circle are the assistants and the trained laborers in the various specialities. They in turn circle about the scientists, the supervisors, the builders—all those at the peak of their learned skills. They in turn look to the city leaders, and all look to the Eistaa who rules. It is logical, simple, complete, the only possible culture to have.
This is the world of the Yilanè. It has been this way since the egg of time, and will go on forever. Where there are Yilanè there is Yilanè rule and law and all are happy.
At the two poles of our globe there is great cold and discomfort and Yilanè are too wise to penetrate these places. But only recently it has been discovered that there are comfortable places in this world where there are no Yilanè. We owe it to ourselves and to the world to fill these empty spaces. Some of these places contain ustuzou, unpleasant ustuzou. In the interests of science we must examine these creatures. Most readers will close this volume now since they have no interest in such matters. Therefore what follows in the section beginning on page 499 is for those with specialized interests.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Here the translation from the Yilanè ends.
TANU
The history of the Earth is written in its stones. While there are still unanswered questions, the overall history of our planet from the Palaeozoic Era up to today is recorded in fossil remains. This was the age of ancient life, 605 million years ago, when the only creatures in the warm and shallow seas were worms, jellyfish, and other backboneless animals. The continents then were still joined together in a single large land mass that has been named Pangea.
Even then some of the sea creatures were using lime to build shells for protection and support. The development of internal skeletons came later, with the first fish. Later fish had lungs and lobe-like fins that could be used to support them when they emerged from the sea and ventured onto the land. From these the amphibians developed the ancestors, about 290 million years ago, of the first reptiles.
Th
e first dinosaurs appeared on Earth just over 205 million years ago. By the time the first sea-filled cracks were appearing in Pangea 200 million years ago, the dinosaurs had spread all over the world, to every part of the first giant continent that would later separate into the smaller continents we know today. This was their world, where they filled every ecological niche, and their rule was absolute for 135 million years.
It took a worldwide disaster to disturb their dominance—a ten-kilometer-wide meteor that struck the ocean and hurled millions of tons of dust and water high into the atmosphere. The dinosaurs died. Seventy percent of all species then living died. The way was open for the tiny, shrew-like mammals—the ancestors of all mammalian life today—to develop and populate the globe.
It was galactic chance, the dice-game of eternity, that this great piece of rock hit at that time, in that manner, and caused the the global disturbance that it did.
But what if it had missed? What if the laws of chance had ruled otherwise and this bomb from space had not hit the Earth? What would the world be like today?
The first and most obvious difference would be the absence of Iceland, for these volcanic islands mark the place where the meteor struck and penetrated to the mantle below.
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