Fish Tails

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Abasio’s voice hardened. “So, since we must travel where as yet there are no seas, the children are sometimes cold. They require jackets! Coats! Something to keep them warm!”

  The tailor mumbled something.

  “Yes?” asked Abasio with a lethal smile.

  “Why would aquatic creatures be here? You are so far from—­”

  Xulai interrupted, her voice like a well-­honed knife. “They must be both, Bertram. If you’ll let me explain. May I sit down?”

  Her words were a question, her tone was not. The tailor’s conscious mind finally received the information his subconscious had been trying to get through to him for some time. “Forget your oath! Forget the books. Forget defending your life’s primary purpose of being a Volumetarian. Shut your mouth and listen. Shut your mouth and smile and listen! Shut up and smile and listen sympathetically, as any decent tailor would!

  He scurried, fetching a chair while stretching his mouth into what he hoped was an understanding smile. She did sit down, with a weary sigh.

  “We are in the age of the waters rising,” she said slowly, ­carefully, hoping to sound merely didactic rather than lethally threatening. “About two centuries from now, all our world will be under the waters . . .”

  She paused for emphasis, but did not begin again, for Bertram had stumbled back, not merely astonished as many were who heard this information for the first time, but shocked as though mortally wounded. His dark face was turning gray, all at once!

  He gasped. “Surely . . . you must be joking, ma’am. I don’t . . .” He put his hand to his head, suddenly dizzy. He gasped for breath.

  Abasio stepped around the corner of the counter and helped the man sit down. He and Xulai realized almost at the same instant that evidently the flooding of the world meant something more to this man than it meant to most ­people.

  Bertram was babbling. “Travelers have said . . . Coastal flooding, of course, yes, but . . . a few lowlands perhaps, but . . . surely not the world! The books . . . the books . . . the books have to be kept dry! What can I do with the books?” He went on babbling, almost wordlessly, his face gray, even his lips so ashen that they might as well have opened his veins and drained all his blood away.

  While the tailor’s breathing gradually slowed, Xulai shrugged off her heavy robe. Though she shared the dislike of dirt that was customary to cats and Tingawans, it would have to wait! Unlike a cat, she could not lick herself clean, but with the filthy robe removed, she could half convince herself that she looked acceptably human instead of appearing to be some monster made of muck. She reached out to touch his shoulder. Let him feel her hand. Let him know she was as human as he!

  Softly, in her most unthreatening voice, she went on: “In order to survive in the changed world, our forms must change. There is enough time for this to happen; six or eight generations. When the earth is finally inundated, all of us who cannot exist underwater will have lived out our lives; so will our children and grandchildren; and in that same time new generations will have been born able to exist underwater, to swim, to dive, even perhaps to dance upon the waves.

  “Abasio and I are . . . facilitators of that change. We—­and some other ­couples like us—­travel from place to place carrying with us the . . . the . . .”

  “The process,” Abasio interjected firmly. “The process by which ­people can be changed. Once changed, their children will be born like our children, able from birth to exist in the changed world.”

  They glanced at each other. They tried not to talk about the first-­generation change at all. Sea-­eggs were needed to make the transformation, and Abasio still remembered his own transformation with embarrassment. He had behaved badly. Or, as Blue said, “Like a pig keeper just got himself knocked into the wallow.” It was the first-­generation changers, however, who subsequently gave birth to sea-­babies like Gailai and Bailai, so no matter how embarrassing, the first transformation might be, it had to precede the second. They had learned to speak largely in generalities, to let ­people see the children, to explain that yes, they were their own children, and if others would like to bear children who would survive the world wide drowning, they could find out all about it in Wellsport on the west coast. The change center there was now called Sea Duck 2 by its inhabitants, for they had, each and every one of them, been “sea-­ducked” and were able to breathe underwater. Sea Duck 1 was in Tingawa.

  So far they had been unable to develop a satisfactory routine! Though they had been on this journey for almost a year now, their reception from place to place had been so varied they had been unable to settle on a routine. Words and phrases that were acceptable in one village turned out to be fighting words in the next place, even though they tried to avoid any fighting at all. If hostility seemed imminent, they had the means to leave, and they did leave: horses, wagon, and all. Essentially they had three duties: first to explain that the world was being drowned; second to let ­people know about the sea-­children. Third: to survive!

  Xulai, seriously worried about Bertram’s seizure, had not left his side. He now had some color coming back into his cheeks, but he still looked woefully unwell, and Abasio suggested he go lie down for a while. Abasio escorted him back into his living quarters, settled him on his bed, and asked if he, Abasio, and his wife might pay him for the use of his bathhouse, if that chimney out in back did, indeed, indicate a bathhouse? Also, would Bertram allow him the horses to be unhitched to graze? Might they take advantage of his hospitality, perhaps, to stay for a day or two, just to rest?

  Bertram could only nod repeatedly. Oh, yes, it would be so good to have company. And if they would stay, he could show them and explain about the books. He murmured distractedly, “Oh, Sir Abasio . . .”

  “Just plain Abasio will do, Bertram.”

  “Well, if you see any ­people coming up from down the hill there . . . be careful. There’s been a bunch of Lorpists down there . . . I didn’t notice. Does your lovely wife have pierced ears? That would count against her ‘wholeness,’ you see. I suggest a scarf over the head and ears if she sees them coming . . .”

  “Lorpists don’t like . . . what? Any trifling with the human body?”

  “That’s it. Yes. And God help a man who loses a finger due to an accident. Lorpists feel it their duty to kill the rest of him so he doesn’t walk about as an affront to the Creator.”

  Blue had stationed himself by the window of the tailor’s shop, where he could hear the conversation. He relayed the word about the Lorpists to Ragweed.

  “Wonder what one of ’em’d do if I kicked him in the you-know-wheres and he maybe lost a ball,” murmured Ragweed.

  “Now, Rags. Don’t go kicking up trouble,” said Blue.

  When Bertram had somewhat recovered himself, he invited them to stay as long as they liked. They would, yes, said Xulai, if he promised to go to bed and stay there until he was breathing properly. If he had any customers, she would see to them.

  Gratefully, Bertram said the horses could graze around the shop and into the little pasture that lay over that way. He was later amazed to find no horse droppings at all.

  Xulai explored the place; Abasio fired up the water heater behind the shop and left it to gurgle warmly to itself. When it was hot enough, he and Xulai and the babies (though they didn’t particularly like hot water) had a bath. Afterward, Xulai used their bathwater to wash all their blankets and she hung them over Bertram’s side fence to dry. For some time, there had been no stream or pool to give them even a halfway convenient place to wash. The back of Bertram’s house was built right up against the mountain for some reason—­which they discovered later. Xulai invaded Bertram’s kitchen, found the ingredients for a proper soup, took a bowl to his bedside, and fed it to him.

  Meantime, Blue and Rags received a visitor. A very dirty small boy came sneaking out from under a bush and, seeing the wagon appeared empty, decided to explore it. T
he boy was blocked by a very large horse. The boy decided to go in over the wagon seat and found his way blocked by another horse.

  “Blassit,” said the boy. “I ’uz just goin’ to look! Was’n gonna take nothing.”

  “What’s your name?” asked Blue.

  “You can’t really talk, can you?” the boy asked. “Somebody’s hidin’ somewhere pretendin’ to be your voice.”

  “Ragweed and I can talk. I was given the gift of speech by some very lofty creatures, angels maybe. Ragweed got her voice from a woman named Precious Wind, friend of Xulai’s. It requires some trifling with the anatomy and it won’t work on just everyone. What’s your name?”

  “I got a dog, maybe she could get him to talk.”

  “What’s your name, boy? Either tell me or I’ll kick you all the way down the hill.”

  “Willum,” said the boy.

  “WILLUM,” came a call from down the hill. “WILLUM, you get yourself back down here and eat your supper.”

  “Quit upsetting your mother,” said Blue. “Go on and get your supper. We can talk again later. Looks like we’ll be here for a day or so.

  The boy left them. “You don’t usually talk to brats,” said Ragweed.

  “No. Have a strange feeling about this one, though.”

  The boy came back, some time later. “Horse.”

  “Yes, boy.”

  “There’s Lorpists down there. They’ve heard about the fish babies. They’re all set to do you some damage when you go down the hill. Where you going, anyhow?”

  “Someplace over a pass, Findem Pass, then down into Artemisia.”

  “Well, ’f’you’re going to the pass, you gotta come down through Gravysuck, where we are. Just remember, those men they got axes n’ things.”

  “Why’s your town called Gravysuck?”

  “ ’Cause . . . we used ta have this man . . . he was real nasty with women, even little girls. Y’know what I mean? He used to hurt ’em. So we had this other man visitin’, and he told us the town needed a cata-­pull-­it, n’ him and a buncha the men they built the cata-­pull-­it an’ they put it out nexta Gravy Lake, and they call it that because it’s kinda thick and brown like gravy. And it’s gotta bottom in it you can’t walk on, and if you fall in you can’t get out, it kinda sucks you down. Then the man said we had ta tell everybody if they didn’t behave, they’d get cata-­pull-­ited. And everybody got told. And the bad man didn’t listen, so next time he grabbed some little girl, they were ready for him, and they cata-­pullit-­ed him right out inta the middle of Gravy Lake and it sucked him down, sploosh, like that. Three or four men got catta-­pullit-­ed since, oh, and one real rotten ol’ lady use to poison ­people’s wells. And since that, we haven’t had any trouble.”

  “Very interesting,” said Blue. “Well, boy, thank you for all the information. I guess we’ll be leaving tomorrow or the next day. Do you think your folks and friends would like to see the sea-­babies? If you think so, you ought to tell them to ask my ­people.”

  Chapter 1

  An Unexpected Lamentation

  NEAR THE EASTERN EDGE OF THE GREAT STONIES, barely within the last jagged file of mountains before the long descent into the deserts and prairies beyond, there was reputed to be an astonishing landmark—­reputed, for it was spoken of more often than it was remembered. Few sought it out. Fewer had seen it, and fewer yet had seen it in the season and hour of its glory. Those who lived near enough to consider the landmark a local thing—­whether they had seen it or not—­generally called it “the curly rock,” and did not regard it as having any particular distinction beyond its odd shape. However named or referred to, it stood on a lofty prominence west of and equidistant from two jagged peaks that sheltered it from the rising sun three hundred and fifty days of the year. Only as Earth tipped the sun back and forth along the horizon during a few successive dawns in spring and again in fall did sun and season work in concert to create something almost miraculous.

  In geologic terms, the Stonies—­in their present form—­were young. Some thousand years before, a great upheaval had shaken the continent, splitting off and drowning the western third of it and thrusting the western edge of what remained so far into the sky that air-­breathing creatures who were along for the ride descended rapidly. Unlike its predecessor range, which had achieved a pleasantly rounded permanency, one that map makers felt secure in locating and labeling, this most recent cataclysm had awarded the Stonies a shifty and transitory reputation, as though any part of them might be subject to sudden erasure or change. Even the rivers moved about from season to season: like flea-­bitten travelers, desperately and perpetually seeking cleaner and more comfortable beds.

  There were not many roads through the mountains, and those there were often lasted no longer than a decade or so. Few penetrated all the way from east to west. A few—­not the same few—­penetrated from west to east. There was nothing mystical about this. Some roads one could scramble up but not down, where “down” would require putting a rope sling around the mules. All of which is to say that the mountains were dark, sneaky, and dangerous, and they made no exceptions for stubborn travelers who should have had better sense.

  On a particular morning in a high, cupped valley, one such traveler stood weary and shivering. All the roots of things were asleep, darkness still lay in drifts; treetops trembled in the ice-­chilled air that darkness had sucked down from the heights. The traveler and the child with her had walked a long way to get to this particular place at this very particular time. Lillis, usually called Grandma, had been here before, on several occasions. Her granddaughter, Needly, had not. Today was Needly’s tenth birthday: she had been told this was to be an occasion, an announcement that had led her rather tentatively to anticipate something in the way of candy, perhaps, or a wrapped something, maybe even with a ribbon. Grandma was capable of such surprising details. In reality, the child’s life had allowed few if any illusions, and she already had an adult awareness that planning and happening were quite different things. Cold and weariness, though extreme, were not yet accompanied by despair.

  Grandma was equally weary, shifting from foot to foot at the edge of a fury directed entirely at herself! This journey had been a gamble, but she had foolishly allowed anticipation to trifle with details of her previous visits; allowed optimism to strengthen two sets of bones and muscles, one not yet adult, one no longer young. She knew perfectly well that lengthy waiting unrelieved by sleep or food or amusement could seem an eternity. During her life she had done a good bit of such standing about, enough to be familiar with that dagger point at which every successive moment attenuates into forever. Well, hope had outrun good sense. She had wanted so to show an enchanting thing to an eager, intelligent little girl whose childish strength her fatuous grandmother may badly have misjudged! She grieved for the child. The cold hand in hers was limp with weariness.

  Both watchers, old and young, sighed in simultaneous exhaustion, looked down, rubbed their eyes, shifted their weight, sighed again, counted silently to one hundred—­as the older one had taught the younger one to do in situations of a similar kind—­and then, without particular hope, raised their eyes to the height above.

  To glory! There it was! As though a heavy window curtain had been suddenly flipped aside, fiery light flooded over the fangs of the esker, darted between the two sheltering peaks, and blazed the landmark into radiance. Where had been only darkness was now a miracle: creation come upon the height, majestic and unbelievable! A thing, a living thing, red as ruby, huge as the most mighty monument, leaping up from the ledge that held it as though it had lain there through millennia and was now, impossibly, endlessly uncoiling itself upward into the sky!

  Grandma squeezed a suddenly muscular and vibrant little shoulder, and whispered, ­“People, those few who’ve seen it, they give it different names. Mostly around here, ­people call it the Listener.”

 
Needly was too busy marveling to reply. The enormous curlicue sprang from the ground angling toward the north, curving as it climbed, higher, higher yet, then circling back toward the south . . . no, perhaps slightly east of south, all that monstrous weight arched across the sky as though flung there, supported by nothing at all! It twisted, it spiraled, the narrow, questing tip of it finally pointing due east. In this light, it seemed to quiver! Needly thought it was most like the tendril of an enormous vine, one of those eager, trembling, impossibly slender fingers reaching out upon the wind, exploring the air for anything it can touch, and touching, grasp, and grasping, hold fast! What was it reaching for? Needly held her breath waiting for it to fall, knowing in the instant that of course it couldn’t fall. Grandma had said other ­people had seen it before, long, long before, so it had been there for a long time, and falling was not what it did. But . . . but . . . it must have survived only by miracle!

  Over the centuries, other travelers had thought the same. The area was not as remote as it seemed, particularly if one came from the east, but its approaches were hidden. If someone was crossing the mountains from the west and came from below, there was only one very short section of road from which it could be seen. In these mountains, winter came early and stayed late, so few travelers would have risked travel during the brief period of visibility in spring or fall. Fewer would have found a suitable campground within reasonable distance the previous night; fewer still would have left that campground in darkness, well before dawn, to have reached this one place on the road; only a fraction of them would have arrived there just at or before the moment of dawn; and of those, even fewer would have been looking eastward at just the right moment to see the sun burst through those gated mountains!

  So, though the great rock formation—­which is what most of those who had seen it supposed it to be—­was indeed visible from other places and at other times of day, those who had actually perceived it numbered very few.