Fish Tails Read online

  Abasio tried to concentrate on what she was saying. They had dozens of sea-­eggs well hidden in the wagon, two dozen from each of three distinct genetic groups on the coast behind them—­once a woman made the change, she usually produced one every ten days or so—­and Xulai was adding her own sea-­eggs as they traveled. They could not, however, distribute any of them until they were near seawater, preferably at Sea Duck 3. He sank back onto the wide windowsill, which seemed to have been cushioned for the purpose. He closed his eyes momentarily, while Bertram resumed his sketches.

  Only for a moment . . .

  Often as a child he had had dreams that troubled him. He very vaguely remembered his mother, his grandfather, shaking him awake and calming him down. During his Ganger years in Fantis, he’d had dreams, too. Dreams of horror and terror. Murder and mayhem. Those had jerked him awake, covered with sweat, staring around himself for . . . the threatener. The attacker. Those dreams were gone moments after he wakened. They did not last.

  The dreams he’d been having on this journey were different. He remembered every detail of them, and the memory did not fade when he woke. There was the tower one, with the two children: the place, the tower, was always the same. He was in it unmistakably. The graceful arches, the spiral staircase ascending to the balcony, where smaller arches echoed those below, and in the domed open center the bell was hung. The creature, being, person who struck it, morning and evening, used a long, almost wandlike striker. In those same dreams he remembered thinking the striker was wrong, all wrong. The bell should ring of itself. Would have rung of itself if this world had been left alone. If humans had left it alone. He had no idea where that thought came from!

  The pool was filled with a living fluid, bubbles and sparks continually swimming within it, or rising to the surface to vanish in the air. Around the edge, next to the rim, light glinted from the small, flat crystals the size of thumbnails, slightly thicker than the leaf of a tree.

  Sometimes creatures fished out a crystal and put it into their mouths. Sometimes the creatures took several crystals and made off with them, variously twirling, darting, flying out into the world. Some of the creatures were star-­shaped. Some were small, furry bipeds. Some were, he thought, animals and birds.

  Abasio sighed.

  Bertram heard the sigh and looked up from his sketch. Poor fellow. He’d fallen asleep there on the windowsill. Oh, to have such a task ahead of him, harder, perhaps, than Bertram’s own task. The Great Cause of the Volumetarians. The Preservation of Books. He said aloud, but softly: “Tea. We need some hot tea.”

  He left them. Xulai and Abasio heard the slosh of water, the clink of china from somewhere toward the back of the building, but they did not stir. Both of them felt blessed merely to be sitting still, to be not jouncing on the wagon seat, not hearing the wheels creak. It had been a long, long way from Tingawa, where the children had been born: first across the seas to Wellsport; a rather pleasant stay there, not too tiring, no insuperable problems, one small excitement in an attack by a Lorpian maniac who held Xulai to his chest with one arm and waved his knife with the other. (Lorpians were shapists who believed anyone who changed his physical body in any way was devil-­ridden and should be executed at once.) The shapist had been standing on the dock, his back to the water. Below him, in the water, was a recent large, strong initiate who was resting from his change. The initiate found the maniac within easy reach for five out of his eight arms while the sixth removed the knife and the other two remained anchored below the waterline. The maniac, sadly enough, had not been able to breathe underwater, though Xulai had found it easy enough.

  Then when the Sea Duck station was set up and the first few ­couples had been initiated, it was time to head eastward through the forests to Woldsgard, stopping at villages on the way; from there south to the lands above the Big Mud—­with a stop in Elsmere to meet with an old sweetheart of Xulai’s father.

  She had given them more recent maps, and from there they had come on eastward, through wooded hills and grassy valleys, and finally into the mountains themselves, following young Kim, their Tingawan outrider, into or through or around village after village, spending a day here, two there, sometimes backtracking because Kim came back to report—­map notwithstanding—­some road might go through, but this one did not.

  They never stayed anywhere long enough to rest enough. They almost never had water deep enough to transform themselves—­a transformation that had unexpectedly become a source of relaxation, recreation, peace. When too much time passed between transformations, they began to fret over it, suspecting they couldn’t do it anymore. It made them feel they were pretending, no longer sure of what they were doing. Their lives were so . . . unlikely. Put into words, this journey was unlikely: almost a fantasy; a dangerous fantasy; a deadly one.

  Add to all that: their attempted education of an often disbelieving populace.

  ­People had to be convinced that the waters were rising. One had to get that over first, and it was often difficult, sometimes impossible, in these rugged mountains. Only after that could they speak of the transformation that could occur for their children and grandchildren. If they got that far, then Abasio and Xulai could paint a picture of a happy and productive life on and under the seas for their great-­, great-­, how-­many-­times-­great-­grandchildren: a lovely though largely speculative picture. When Xulai described floating hamlets constructed entirely of seaweed on which experimental populations were even now dwelling, it was all true, quite true. The structures were still experimental, and certainly the “populations” were first-­generation changers, not yet many in numbers, but they really were living in that way and many of them were relishing the challenge of inventing new ways of doing things. Or of doing without things or procedures they had previously considered necessary. By this time there might even be additional second-­generation children to serve as Bailai and Gailai were serving, as living proof!

  Once in a while they had come to a place where the news of the inundation had preceded them. Another traveler from coastal regions had been there before them, or some native son or daughter had returned home from regions already flooded. Either of these happenings made the message more believable. They had had success enough that despite the episodes of weariness and hopelessness, they were quite honestly accomplishing what they had set out to do. They had sent a significant number of adventurous young ­people off to Sea Duck 2 in Wellsport, and a few would go later to Sea Duck 3; more than even the planners had hoped for. Xulai had chronicled it all. The name of each village, how many and who had gone or planned to go from it. Every now and then she leafed through her record book and counted them up, needing to convince herself their journey made sense, to assure them they were not wasting their time! Their youth, their love, their joy . . . That was another matter! Xulai grieved once in a while, stroking Abasio’s head in her lap, seeing the gray hairs at his brow. He was too young to turn gray!

  She resented that. Though she couldn’t deny the importance of the task, she resented it. She resented it particularly among ­people who would not believe the waters were rising until they were standing in seawater up to their necks! If then! Often these ­people had no opinions, only convictions or hatreds forged of iron. “The world has always been as it is now. The world will never change.” “This world was made for us, as we are, as it will continue to be.” “As a matter of conscience” (or sometimes “As our deity commands,” or “In accordance with our custom”), “we will kill anyone who suggests that the future will be different or that we should change in any way.” More than one set of villagers had tried to do just that—­unsuccessfully, of course. Ul xaolat, the device she carried, did not need to threaten. It became at need a spy, an alarm system, a defender. From a hundred whispered conversations among villagers, ul xaolat could detect those conspiring murder and identify not only the speakers but the sympathetic listeners, without error. Still, the feel of enmity was opp
ressive; the threats of enmity not easily forgotten.

  Even in some villages where most inhabitants had been more curious than hostile, there had been individuals or small groups who felt the babies—­along with their parents—­should be destroyed because the world belonged to “their kind,” and could not possibly include “otherness.” Their world could contain only ­people who believed as they did and who shared their own color, cuisine, dress, habits, language, shape—­and who were also, provably, one or the other of their two acceptable sexes. One particular village had insisted the babies Bailai and Gailai could not be considered girl or boy, never mind what Xulai said.

  “Y’can’t see they thingies t’tell, can ya? Any real baby, y’kin see they thingies ’f it’s a boy, right?” When Xulai separated Bailai’s legs to show that his quite normal little-­boy thingy was hidden by the overlap in the skin, it made no difference. Thingies had to hang out in the open. That is, except for trousers. Or didies on babies. And why a trouser leg should be acceptable and a flap of skin not? Why, because that’s the way it was!

  In that place, aptly enough called Ramton, all the grown men gathered together in the evening and decided that since Xulai had “connerdick-­ed ’em” when she talked, killing her would show their own women that “connerdick-­ing” men was not a good idea.

  Xulai had quietly asked one woman what “connerdick-­ing” amounted to.

  “Oh, you do that, you cuttin’ off they thingies, lady. When you talks back, you cuts off they thingies, so the menfolks say. Can’t connerdick a man, ’cause anybody with a thingy, what he says goes. S’like a crown on a king, only he’s born ’th it. Y’got a thingy, what you say is law! All a man hasta do here is take his thingy out an wave it, y’know yer in fer a real whopping.”

  “How did I argue with them?”

  “You said you c’d tell if’n those fishy chil’ren was girl baby ’r boy baby. Men said y’couldn’. Not easy ’nuf.”

  “Which is easier, stepping your legs one step apart or taking off your trousers?”

  “See, thass whuchur doin’! Yer connerdick-­in’!” And the women fled, afraid they might have caught the connerdick-­ing disease.

  In Ramton, as was their habit, they had parked the wagon a little distance from the village. Early on, they had made a habit of putting the wagon where it could not be surrounded by villagers at any time, against a cliff or among several large trees. Add to that the fact that the new, improved version of ul xaolat could also make their camp fade into the background and surround it with what Precious Wind called a distraction field—­one that made ­people turn right or left and wander off looking for something else. Though it was not as effective at night, when ­people relied more upon touch than upon sight, Xulai had felt that was protection enough, and one of the first things she had done on receiving the improved device was to tell it not to kill ­people. Ul xaolat accepted this. It also accepted her order to protect her and Abasio, their family, their horses, their wagon. Thus, when it isolated the whispered plotting among the men and older boys, ul xaolat accepted that they could not simply be slaughtered. They would have to be forestalled in some other way.

  The conspirators, every male in the village over the age of ten, had come from the village intending to circle around the wagon, steal the horses, then kill the two monsters while their so-­called parents watched, then kill the man slowly while the woman watched, and for a final thrill, amuse themselves with the woman and then kill her. That’d show her what came from connerdick-­ing them. They had not had the fun of slaughtering a connerdicker for . . . a few years. Time to show the young’uns how to cut off breasts, n’ ears, n’ fingers without killin’ ’em too quick. They knew the direction the wagon had gone. They went in that direction, circling, seeking here, there, searching for the wagon, at first whispering:

  “Y’ seen it yet?”

  “Where’s it?”

  “M’ torch went out!”

  Then calling:

  “Dam, butz dark, Jed.”

  “Where’re ya, Balf?”

  “Jed?”

  And finally yelling at the tops of their lungs:

  “Hal, k’n ya hear me? You, Balf?”

  “Jed.”

  “Pong, m’ torch burnt out! Where’re you guys!”

  Not one of them was aware that he was alone until the sun was well up. By that time the strangeness of the trees and the horizon, when any of it could be seen, suggested that each one was somewhere other than in the forest around Ramton. Where they were, in fact, was in a deep primeval forest that had no trails, roads, or villages in it at all. There was no smell of campfires, no human animals, only four-­legged ones including large, hungry bears and several of the rare but ravenous big mountain cats. Each man or boy found himself as Xulai had required, totally uninjured.

  Over the next several days, steering by the sun, Pong, one of the more sensible of the men, made almost thirty miles in a direction that would have, in another twenty or thirty, brought him into familiar country. There was plenty to eat in the forest; berries were ripe, mushrooms were plentiful; there were fish in the streams and snares could be rigged if a man had a knife, which he did. If he had been patient, he would have survived nicely, sleeping in trees, collecting food as he went, traveling only when he could tell what time of day it was and thereby which directions the shadows pointed. He was not patient enough to wait out three days of rain, however, and ended up returning almost to his point of origin, where the bears, who had finished off what was left of Jed a few days before, had just wakened to go looking for breakfast.

  The ul xaolat had originally been designed more than a millennium ago, during the Big Kill, as an aide to those who traveled and who transported material from place to place and who did not want to fall prey to one of the monster killing machines. It obtained its power from receivers and broadcasters on Earth that received it from the sun cannons on the moon. Tingawa now guarded and maintained the receivers and broadcasters, devices so well constructed that they were still powering devices around the world, mostly ones of Tingawan manufacture. At the time of the Big Kill, ul xaolats had been designed to do almost anything that a traveler might need to do to survive in some degree of comfort. It could hunt game, cut firewood, light campfires, and clear campsites, and it could serve as a defensive weapon against predators—­human and otherwise. Thus, even the original versions had been designed to detect hostile intent and provide defensive protection.

  The new, improved ul xaolat had complied with Xulai’s orders by moving the men without harming them in the least. New improvements had made it possible for the device to extrapolate the men’s future behavior as well, and they adjudged the men’s hostility to be of such determination and degree that it would persist indefinitely. The initial move, therefore, had to remove all threat existing at present or future time. The ul xaolat decided to set future time at eternity. The new improvements also allowed the device to extrapolate possible user reaction, and therefore to Xulai’s request that the men be transported back once she and Abasio were far enough removed to be out of danger, ul xaolat merely replied “order understood.” This was followed a day later by “Transported men fought, all were fatally injured. Shall separated parts of bodies be returned?” This was true; they had fought the bears, very briefly. It was also a test reply on the part of the device, as it wished to determine whether bodies or parts of bodies were to be further disposed of.

  Xulai found the outcome completely believable. The men had been notably quarrelsome; they carried knives, and all of them, even boys as young as nine or ten—­in addition to virtually all the woman—­had knife scars. On consideration, it might be less disturbing if the men just disappeared rather than being returned in sections. She visualized separated parts as being ears, perhaps, or fingers. Maybe teeth. She replied, “In this case, no.”

  Meantime, ul xaolat entered into its data bank that
men armed only with knives who fought large, healthy bears were almost invariably killed, and in such cases, body parts need not routinely be retrieved. The user had not, however, said this would be true in every case. In this case the device had supposed a “no-­return” policy without knowing it to be true. The device found such uncertainties troubling. Itchy, as it understood that word. Incomplete. Being itchy or troubled used up power. Using power unprofitably was against the rules. This instruction had to be clarified.

  Ul xaolat asked, accordingly, “When retrieving body parts for return to point of origin, is separate material at the cellular level to be included, i.e., blood, fingernails, and the like?”

  Xulai shivered and answered promptly “No. Fluids and cellular level material need not be included unless specifically requested for laboratory use.”

  Not wasting power was an ul xaolat imperative. Bringing ­people back dead or in pieces was wasteful of power. Therefore, the device reasoned, it was up to the device to report in such a way that it would not require bringing ­people or parts of them back at all unless needed for forensics. Ul xaolat had the answer it needed. It immediately modified its internal procedure manual to implement the change. In future, in similar predatory situations, ul xaolat would submit “in-­process” reports until sufficient time had passed for nature to take its course; a delay that centered on the oft-­repeated question of whether bears poop in the woods. Poop would not constitute remains of the persons pooped; therefore when a body was entirely reduced to poop and bone fragments, no return would be necessary.

  Moving this item from probable to certain gave the device a momentary surge of satisfaction. Since this journey was unique both in the way in which ul xaolat was being used and the fauna among which it moved, it was unlikely that anyone involved in refining the device or monitoring its activity would notice its autonomous acquisition of a sense of irony.