by Pam Crane
give me."
I rooted in the filing drawers and held out a pink folder.
"Is there a search party, Sir?" My mouth was dry.
"We have just the one emergency helicopter. Its fuel allowance is low, but we can fly it within range. Any rescue party will have to trek from there on. Casual nomads we wouldn't worry about, but Silver is important to the recolonisation programme and we need to find her." He looked drawn, exhausted. "Thank you, young man."
"Sir?" I grabbed at his arm as he turned for the door. "Take me with you? I can find her. I have ... gifts, Sir. Dowsing, Sir. Give me a London map!"
Bewildered, the GMO unfolded his pocket plan and spread it under my lamp.
"I've done this for prospectors." I filled my mind and my heart with Silver. The little brass pendulum that lived in my breast pocket swung in arcs over the map. My arm fizzed. The shining point jerked and steadied at the edge of what had been the Thames.
"She's here, Sir."
"Are you sure? Isn't this just hocus-pocus?"
"I have references, Sir. You need to take me there. We'll get her out. All of them."
"If they're alive."
Oh dear God let her not be dead.
We clattered north, the ancient helicopter struggling through dust and snow. Below us was a waste of white, punctured by frozen turbines and the iced remains of pylons. The shivering pilot set us down at last in sight of the tilting, motionless half-circle of the London Eye. My pendulum swung. It drew us desperately slowly over the ice towards the statue of Nelson that once towered above Trafalgar Square ... onward again ... and then stopped, yanking my hand in its frosted mitten insistently downward.
"Silver!" I whispered.
And there we dug.
Days later we broke into Charing Cross station concourse, nearly falling just as Silver's group had fallen. We found dead people, broken people, half-eaten dogs, burnt sleds, crisp bags, chocolate wrappers, juice bottles from wrecked dispensers, and shivering in a foraged mound of decades-old clothing a few mutant survivors. One was Silver.
I held her and sobbed.
"I dreamed of you," she said.
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1THE FUTURE OF FISH
Angel Fish was a Pisces. The youngest of thirteen children, her birth came as both a relief and a shock to her mother, who some fourteen years earlier had celebrated her wedding eve by visiting an itinerant gypsy. Palm suitably crossed with what in these straitened days passes for silver, the plump black-haired woman looked up from her well-thumbed Tarots with a mischievous smile and said,
"I hope you're fit - you're going to have a full set!"... and ...
"You're a seventh child, aren't you." (How could she know that?) "Watch out for your own number seven - she'll have the gift. Number thirteen will be the last."
"A full set?"
"You'll see!"
The next day Maisie Head became Mrs Bill Fish and just over a year later she started her long and exhausting haul through the zodiac. The enthusiastic Mr Fish, initially dismissive of the gypsy's unlikely prediction, beheld his feisty Aries son, a musical Taurus daughter, then hyperactive Gemini twins, with bemusement and then increasing anxiety as every year his fertile loins produced another bump for Maisie and another sign in their collection. The seventh, Ginnie, was only three when in the midst of being towelled dry after her Wednesday bath she said firmly,
"When I'm six we're going to have a real fish."
Maisie laughed at her precocious joke.
"And then you won't have to make babies any more."
Two years passed and came the foggy late February day when Angel would make her entrance. Maisie had opted for a water birth, which had worked well a couple of times before when she'd had the luxury of time to prepare, and the help of the local midwife who had become a close and indispensable friend.
"She's coming, Maisie!"
"Lift her out for me, Annie."
And this was the unforgettable moment of total shock.
The baby had gills.
They were definitely gills - the twins who had tumbled in as soon as their mother was decent were nine and therefore knew everything.
"I've seen those things on her neck in a book," said May who had to be stopped from experimentally poking her new sister, whereupon June jumped on a chair and lugged a dog-eared encyclopaedia from the bookshelves, bringing down with it an avalanche of haphazardly stacked volumes. The racket brought the other children in and Leo, already bossy at seven, snatched the book from his sister and riffled through the pages.
"Look," he said, as if it had been all his own idea, and shoving the opened page under his weary mother's nose, "It's evolution. Babies have gills for a bit because we all used to be fish ..." ... this was obviously enormously funny and Annie had to shush everyone ... "... and then they're supposed to change. Our baby's still got hers. And she can breathe as well!"
"She's not crying though," said Marcus.
"Not now," said Maisie, "She must need to sleep. Buzz off, kids. You've seen your new sister. Leave us in peace now. Please. Annie, I need a drink ..."
"What are we calling her?" asked Julian, reluctant to let go of Maisie's sleeve.
"Angel," she replied, staring at the tiny, slightly puckered face snuggled up to her breast.
"Angel Fish?" More hilarity.
"Why not?" Bill, summoned from work, had at last been let into the crowded sanctum and was gazing with great tenderness at the newest member of his family.
"She is a little angel," he said. And then with alarm, "But what are those funny things on her neck?"
"Gills!" his ten older children were jumping with glee. "She's a real fish! A real fish!"
Bill blanched and staggered.
"I'll call the doctor."
"The only option," said Dr. Splint. "Is plastic surgery ..."
"Plastic?!"
"Shush Octavia! He doesn't mean plastic plastic ..."
"... to remove the gills and normalise baby's respiratory system. I've not seen this before, but I'm sure once she has put on some weight an operation in a few months time would stand every chance of success. I can put things in motion for you. But ..."
"But?" One little word suddenly introduced a world of uncertainty which Bill wasn't ready to handle.
"In the meantime the filaments must not be allowed to dry out, and we mustn't risk infection. Baby's neck must be kept wrapped in moist, sterile dressings at all times and these need to be regularly changed. I can fetch you a supply now from the dispensary and arrange an on-going prescription. Till I get back, a clean towel soaked in boiled and cooled water will have to do."
"I can do it! I can do it!" April was already dancing away up to the airing cupboard. Annie grimaced at Maisie and headed for the kitchen as the front door closed behind Dr. Splint.
"Mummy, fishes die out of water."
Maisie had learned to listen to her seventh child.
"What do you think we should do, Ginnie?"
"Can't we clean the pool and put her back?"
"She might drown."
"No she won't. Daisy's Mummy takes her new baby swimming every Tuesday and Daisy says he opens his eyes under the water and shuts his mouth and really likes it. And he's an ordinary baby not a fish baby."
Maisie looked up at her worried husband.
"Could we do that, Bill?"
"Anything's worth a try, Maisie. Why don't you get out of the pool now ... here, let me help you ... make yourself comfy on the sofa and just keep Angel's neck wet till we have that towel. I'll empty this onto the compost ..."
"Urggh!"
"Libby I did this after you were born, and Archie, and no-one's died; it's all good for the garden. Then I'll give the pool a good scrub and put in the spare liner as well. Where shall we put it? When it's full again?"
"As close to me as possible, Bill. I don't know how we do this."
It was Ginnie who understood what her baby sister needed. Dr. Splint returned that evening to find Maisie showere
d and refreshed in bed with Angel dozing in a cot beside her, swathed in warm damp towels. In the living room the rest of the family (except Christian and Jane of course) were 'helping' their father position the refilled pool in a suitably protected corner well away from anything electric.
"I've spoken to the hospital," he said, shedding slippery packs of sterile dressings over the sofa. "The Registrar can schedule remedial surgery for the end of April. I've said Yes on your behalf."
"Then you can un-say it," replied Bill.
"I beg your pardon?"
"We're going to look after our little fish just as she is."
"She has no future! She'll just be a circus freak! Or she'll die. There won't be another chance. Please reconsider."
Ginnie, in her pink dressing-gown and ready for bed after an exciting day, said,
"Why are you so cross? Angel's our baby. We're not going to let you take her away and hurt her. She's going to swim and swim and be really famous. She's going to have babies of her own when she's grown up, and they'll have gills as well, and when all the ice melts and the sea comes in there'll be new people because of her who can live in the water. You just wait and see!"
The door slammed behind the furious doctor.
"We'll have to buy everything she needs now," said Bill. He looked glum.
"But all we need to do is keep Angel clean and let her swim all she wants to, Daddy."
A month later Maisie felt strong enough to take Angel to the local Baths for the first time. The chlorinated water, just below body temperature, would keep her little fish safe from infection. Letting go was difficult - it was a such a huge, busy pool after their small blue one at home. Would she sink? Would she drown? Maisie opened her arms and let Angel
