“Disguises?” asked Ellin. “You mean, masks?”
“Disguises,” said the Timmy, coming very close and looking her in the eye. “In your language, which is not always sensible. We say, what you wear out here,” he tapped her arm, her shoulder, her cheek, “is a guise (that is your word) for what is in there,” and he peered into her eyes, as though trying to see her brain. “If it does not match your insides, it is a disguise (that is your word, meaning a bad-guise), and you go through the Fauxi-dizalonz and get the outside to express the inside. Then back through to change the inside, perhaps, and sometimes back and forth several times, working it out.”
“Do your outsides look like your insides?” she asked.
The Timmy hunkered down and considered this. “Before mankind came, Timmys were shaped differently. When mankind came, Bofusdiaga thought we would be more … what is mankind words … acceptable, to look like you. So, some insides also shifted, to make it work.”
“Were your outsides looking like your insides before?” queried Bao.
“Always, pretty much. First came life without any insides, just moving, eating, excreting, moving some more, no thought about it, no worries, just live or get eaten, building bigger and bigger. Then, the big thing grows a little bit of insides, enough to say to itself, ‘Do not grow that way, the fire is too hot.’ So, once it says that, it must have outsides ready to grow where it says! You see?”
“When you say ‘insides,’ “ asked Ellin, “you mean brain?”
“We mean the thinkables. The person inside who talks with the person outside. The unbodied observer of that which acts. I suppose yes, brain, but you people, you have four brains, maybe five, all mixed up. You know?”
“I am not knowing this,” said Bao. “What five brains?”
“First very little brain for some little something swimming around that does not do much. This brain makes you jump if someone bites you. Then you have brain for some cold thing that moves better and thinks a tiny bit. This brain says run, hide, that thing is dangerous. Then you have brain for some warm thing that runs and leaps and thinks. This brain says, build nest here, not there, or eggs will drown. Then you have bigger brain that thinks much and is aware. This is ape brain. We know about ape brain because the Hags talk of it. This brain says: me powerful; oh, child, dead, I grieve; alas, I love, I want. Then comes mankind brain, brain that talks, brain that puts ape thoughts into words, brain that uses and misuses many words! Only the last brain is what you call human, which is what we call dosha, which means fullness, capable of self-judgment and correction.”
“All that!” exclaimed Ellin.
“Too much,” agreed the Timmy. “Because your brains are not a good fit. They are like some too small boxes in another too big box. They rattle. Outside, you look like one person, inside you are five things, not all persons. So, if you go in Fauxi-dizalonz, you come out like your insides, with lizard tail and ape arms and your inside minds say, oh, look, this is who I am, and you think about that with brain five, then you go back in Fauxi-dizalonz and put the pieces back, but put them back in good order, so they work together and do not rattle.”
Ellin had listened to this with increasing horror. “But, but,” she cried, “I know who I am already. I know who my grandfather and my mother were, or I would know, if I looked them up, but … “
“Pff,” said the Timmy. “You mankinds with your fathers and mothers. This is one of first things we thought strange, you all the time talking my father this, my mother that. What does fathers and mothers have to do with who you are? Your planet is your mother; time is your father. Your insides know this! All life outside you is your kinfolk. Even we dosha are your kin, born of another planet but with same father as you. Starflame makes your materials, and live-planet assembles them, and time designs what you are, not your fathers and mothers. Pff. You could be genetic assemblage; Bofusdiaga could make you without fathers or mothers; and you would still be persons! But you could not have material without stars, or life without planet, or intelligence without time and be any way at all. It is your stars and your world and long time gives you legs to dance and brains to plan and voices to sing.”