Fish Tails

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “However, one thing is the same for everyone: whatever the person’s place is, house or palace or tent, it has some kind of an entry or door on it. When you put on the helmet and ask for Olly, the helmet knocks on her door or rings her bell or shouts into her tent and tells her Abasio is there to asking for her. Then it’s up to her whether she talks to you or not. If she talks to you, she can remember anything you tell her. She learns things the same way she would if she were still with us: either she asks questions and gets answers, or ­people tell her things.”

  “The library helmet could tell her!”

  “Only if she asks it to tell her! It’s up to her! It isn’t the helmet’s job to educate her or inform her. It’s the helmet’s job to keep her as a whole person, as she is or becomes. ­People who visit her can tell her things, but the telling is just like in real life. If she isn’t interested in what they say, she will probably forget it. Or she can ask the helmet to file it for her and bring it up if she needs it or wants it. Just the way you would yourself, writing yourself a note and putting it away.”

  “So I could have gone in there, been with her . . . Olly never asked me to do that . . .”

  “Abasio, that’s not what she wanted. She didn’t want a helmet Abasio. She wanted to share your continuing life out here, where you are. She wanted to be visited by the Abasio who is living in the world, an Abasio who is experiencing new things to share with her.”

  “Because she knew she would not have any more . . . experiences.” He felt his own tears and turned his head away.

  “That’s not true. She can have them, through you and others who enter the library from the outside world and knock on her door and say you have things to tell her. Or she can experience anything she asks to experience. I hope you have told her about your life, about our mission, about your children. I am positively sure that what she most wanted to know was whether her sacrifice had been worth it. Knowing about your children will convince her of that! She wanted to share your life. That is what made her sacrifice worthwhile. Don’t deny it to her.”

  She stood up and went to refill her glass, her eyes wavering between Abasio’s still, white face and Willum’s sleeping one. She had assumed he knew! Wrong assumption. He had not wanted to know about it. He had preferred to think of her as if she were living in some other country. Living there, aging, changing in accord with what was happening to her, as though this outside world still affected her. And, of course, if she asked the helmet to do that, it would do that. If the helmet person grew weary of being, the helmet would let the person age and die. And if one did, then someone who asked for that person would be taken to the grave.

  Willum sighed, yawned, half opened blurry eyes, and took advantage of the momentary silence. “Tell about the two ships that went to the stars, Xulai.”

  “Yes,” said Abasio, as from a great distance. “Tell us a little about them.”

  Her mind was wandering, scattered, like a flock of sheep! She mentally circled the flock, making shooing motions, forcing her voice to be as soothing as possible: “Well, they already had the core of a station on the moon, because they’d been beaming sun power down to Earth for several generations. The shuttles took the pioneers up there a hundred or so at a time to be processed and stored in the ships. Processing meant the minds were recorded and filed, the bodies were preserved for later revivification.

  “Three ships were planned. Things got so bad on Earth that they decided not to wait for the third ship to be finished. They decided to send the two that were ready. That meant there was one whole shipload of passengers up there on the moon that might not get to go at all, and there was some last-­minute shuffling around as to who would be put into the two ships that went. That’s why we don’t know for sure who went, unless they were mentioned in messages after they got there.”

  Willum asked, “So they did get there?”

  Xulai looked up, surprised. “Oh, yes, we know the ships got there. The ships left in our year 2140. In Earth year 3110, after roughly a thousand Earth years, both ships reached what we called the Q System and landed on the fourth planet from its sun. The planet already had intelligent life on it, and both ships sent messages saying they’d landed.”

  “A thousand years?” Abasio mused. “Forty generations of ­people here on Earth. Why doesn’t anyone outside your little circle know about this?”

  She shook her head at him. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Abasio! As you told Willum, it happened over a thousand years ago! Everyone who had any interest in it knew! By that time, we were beginning to hear about the waters rising, and Tingawa switched its attention to long-­term survival here on Earth—­that was also about the time of the Visitation!”

  “Visitation?”

  “Yes. In Tingawa. Shortly after or concurrent with ­people on Earth learning about the waters rising, they received a visitor. In referring to the episode, the ­people in Tingawa always referred to it as ‘the Visitation’ because the visitor was so mysterious, wearing long robes and a veil, speaking in a strange voice. He—­our ­people assumed it was a he—­told them he had just completed a translation of some pre–Big Kill documents on genetic research, and he had thought it best to bring them to Tingawa.”

  “Odd, but scarcely memorable for later ages,” Abasio remarked.

  She looked past him with a peculiar smile. “Well, dear one, I’m of the later ages, and I choose to remember it because those documents are why I was born, and my mother, and possibly you, and certainly our babies. What the Wazeer Nawt gave to Tingawan scientists formed the basis of the sea-­children research. We wouldn’t be here except for them.”

  He turned to her in amazement. “You’re joking? You’re not joking! Who or what was this Wazeer Nawt?”

  “That’s almost a rhyme. I wish we had an answer to who or what! Our ­people evidently asked the strange visitor what his name was, and he told them they could call him the Wazeer Nawt. Our ­people believed ‘wazeer’ was a title, like doctor or professor or reverend.”

  “Did he say where the documents came from?”

  “Salvage. He was quite mysterious about it. He said they’d been salvaged from a buried university. What were we talking about before I mentioned the the Visitation?” She leaned into the wagon and retrieved a light blanket.

  “The ships. You were saying you did hear from the ships.”

  “Well, one of the ships landed down in a valley, all the women on it left it, and the men who were left there started what they called a ‘university.’ That was kind of strange. It blew itself up later, some fault in its systems. The other ship sent its settlers out; they joined the women who had left the other ship, and within fifty years, there were a dozen villages and many farms. The place was called Lom, as you know. You’ve dreamed about it.”

  “Did they know about the waters rising?”

  She spread the blanket over the sleeping boy. “We didn’t know the whole world was going to be drowned. We didn’t know about that until much later, but yes, Lom was told about it.”

  Leaving Willum asleep by the wagon, the two of them took a stroll along the road, taking time to admire the late-­blooming flowers peering up through the drying grasses. As they returned, they passed a gooseherd with his flock of geese just leaving one of the little river ponds downhill from the Saltgosh poultry houses. Abruptly, responding to some stimulus Xulai neither saw nor heard, the flock changed its character as simultaneously each slowly walking, gabbling goose suddenly extended its wings and ran to get under cover. Being domestic geese, too large to fly, they moved instead in a kind of foot-­pumping, wing-­scooping pace that propelled them rapidly in a series of neck-­stretched, half-­sailing broad jumps. In a moment all were hidden among a grove that clustered against the cliff wall. Here and there a muffled honk marked a hiding place. Xulai saw one bright yellow beak stretched vertically alongside a young, white-­trunked tree, bill pointed straight
up, beady eyes searching the sky.

  Xulai looked up. High! Higher! Wings at the very summit of the sky. The thing was far, very far up there, flying east toward a mountain that loomed enormously on the serrated horizon. After a time, wings slipped behind the mountain, almost at its peak. The wings . . . too large! Far too large! Nothing that flew could be large enough to be seen at that distance! Not flying behind that peak and still be seen from here!

  Abasio’s voice was sepulchral. “Speak of the devil—­or near as: Griffin! That’s the only thing it could be. The one I knew lived on the eastern slope of the mountains where we’re going.” Though the one he knew had not been anywhere near that size! Could it have grown? Surely it had been fully grown when he had been carried back to the Gaddir House, cushioned in its mane.

  Something stirred in Xulai like a live thing in a burrow, an occupant of a closed box, something moving that did not often move. She felt it with all of her. As she had felt when she met Abasio. As she had felt at various other times when warnings had been sent or traps had been laid in her path. She did not want to speak of the feeling, but could not do otherwise. Something portentous, busy portending!

  “Is it possible,” she asked ruefully, “that the thing up there is looking for us?”

  “Or,” he said, taking her hand tightly in his own. “Or possibly not us. Possibly . . . just me.”

  At that moment he realized the probable actual size of the thing. The apprehension he felt was a shudder of possibility, like the subliminal detection of a far-­off avalanche, barely heard but inevitably headed in their direction. A creature that size . . . so much larger than the one he had seen, talked to, been carried about by when he was last in Artemisia. So? What might that mean?

  “Sexual dimorphism,” murmured Xulai. “Do you suppose?”

  Abasio scowled at the sky. They would be leaving Saltgosh in the morning; they would be moving toward that distant peak. He did not want to suppose any such thing.

  Chapter 5

  A Departure, and a Departure

  IN THE HIGH VALLEY NEAR FINDEM PASS, THE time came that Needly had to leave Tuckwhip. She was moved by two happenings: a tragedy and a meanness, either of which would have been reason enough by itself.

  The meanness came first. She heard Gralf, the House-­Pa, tell his cronies he’d taken an advance payment from Old Digger, who would be wanting Needly right soon, since she was the only female in the village who was “purdy near beddin’ age.”

  The following morning, when Pa crowed about it to Grandma, she lost her patience and told Pa what she thought of men who sold their children. Pa had no patience to lose, and one of those nice throwing stones was near at hand. It struck Grandma’s forehead. One stone was all that was needed. That was the tragedy, or so Needly saw it. Gralf, seeing what he’d done, ran off. He’d killed the healer. The only one in the valley. It was jitchus! Some might not take that too kindly. Needly, seeing what he’d done, ran for Grandma’s medicine bag. The little blue bottle was there: a drop of what was inside it was placed on Grandma’s tongue while Grandma still breathed. This done, Needly relaxed in tears. She did not grieve. She thought there was no reason for grief. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

  There were no obsequies. The ­people of the village were superstitious about dead ­people left unburied, so Grandma was buried deeply, though evidently not deep enough, for the grave was opened to its bottom that night and Grandma’s body was gone in the morning. This fact served only to intensify Gralf’s fears. Too late he had remembered jitchus.

  Needly had gathered from various things Grandma had said that Grandma’s ­people would come for her body. That Grandma had ­people, Needly had never doubted, nor had she doubted those ­people would be her own, if and when they chose to reveal themselves to her, or if she ever found them, which she now intended to do.

  Without any prompting, Needly had decided the men in the village should believe that killing a woman would bring retribution. They knew jitchus. Therefore let jitchus be manifest. Early on the day prior to her departure, she mentioned to Slap that Grandma had come out of her grave, looking for Pa because the goddess of the valley was tired of the men killing women or girls, killing them or hurting them.

  Needly’s announcement was known village-­wide by nightfall. It gave Pa only an hour of apprehension between supper and sleep and a few moments’ serious discomfort the following morning. That night Trudis and Gralf and the boys had slept very deeply, helped by one of Grandma’s little bottles: this one a clear, tasteless liquid. One had to be sure of the justice of the matter before using Grandma’s potions, but for the most part, they were not unmerciful. Just before Needly left the place, at about midnight, she put a few drops from the yellow bottle in the kettle on the back of the stove, the one Pa would use in the morning for his tea. Pa always poured any extra water out, to prevent Trudis finding any hot water when she woke. Pa was mean that way, as he was mean in all ways, but this meanness was useful, for it meant no one else would drink what was in the kettle. Needly bore Trudis and the boys no fatal ill will. Trudis was her Ma. Slap and Grudge were at least her half brothers. Pa-­who-­was-­not-­her-­father, however, was no kin to her at all and had murdered her grandma. His fate was fitting.

  “With this preparation, Grandma wishes you farewell, Pa,” she said, making the same hieratic gesture she had seen her grandmother make on similar occasions. The gestures had a meaning. They were a kind of summons. Grandma had indicated that these gestures, when used, were seen to be used. If Needly used them, she would be seen to be using them, though how and by whom Grandma did not say. Nonetheless, the girl made them gracefully, completely, as instructed. “With this ceremony, with this elixir, Grandma and I say good-­bye to you, Gralf. Fare far and unwell.”

  Her provisions had been ready packed and accumulating in hiding since she had turned eight. They had been regularly updated as she had grown. She was eleven now, or thereabout. Her small pack contained a fire starter, a good knife and a spare, leggings and boots, warm knitted sweaters, and a hooded raincoat that unfolded into a cover for her bedding. All the clothes were familiar, tested, broken in during private walks in the mountains. The pack was rolled inside a blanket, with another waterproof cover outside it and a strap to hold it across her back. Among the other equipment was a metal stake with a hook that would hold a tiny pot over a fire and a water bottle Grandma had found somewhere, made out of some flexible stuff that would not break. Could have been an animal’s bladder, Needly thought. Something like that. One end of it wrapped around a short piece of hollow bone that was bound there with waxed thread, a hook to put on a belt loop, and a kind of cork thing that screwed in. It was to be used to hold water, whenever she left the vicinity of a stream.

  In the pocket of her jacket she had a comb and a spare. Grandma and Needly had kept a secret from Gralf. They had only pretended at Needly’s uglification. She had always washed and combed her real hair and braided it tight to her head, covering it with a wig made out of horse combings from the one horse in the valley with a white mane and tail. The dirt had been real, but it had never been allowed to grind in or accumulate. There had been frequent baths in the little hot spring in the hollow over the ridge; long midnight soaks while Grandma told her old stories and drilled her on survival matters. Since that first time, Slap or Grudge had not used Needly as their target. Since reasoning from cause to effect was beyond them, Grandma had finally told them Needly was protected by a forest spirit who cut off boy’s parts if they abused girls. After that, they had left her alone. Along with gold, those “parts” were a male’s most important possession.

  By the midnight following Grandma’s burial, Needly was clean, clad, equipped, and well away from the valley, gone by a different route than the men ever took. It was unlikely they would even hunt for her for some time, perhaps not until Old Digger decided he wanted her. It would take several days for Needly to get to the pass, but she did no
t hurry. Better to go slow and careful than quick and careless. Grandma had “foreseen” something useful for Needly would await her at the pass. Once at the pass, she could decide where to go from there so long as it took her east and eventually to the area near the House of the Oracles.

  Behind her in Tuckwhip, morning came. Gralf rose, made his tea, and drank it. He felt very sleepy afterward and went back to bed. Trudis finally decided to wake him in the early afternoon, but his body was cold by then. Cold and starting to stiffen. Trudis went down the road to tell the other Mas. They said the men’d wanna bury him afore dark. The men were afraid of ghosts, so they did bury him. One of the men who had no woman announced to the others his intention of moving into Trudis’s house. Two others saw fit to fight him over it. He killed one of them and sent the other fleeing into the woods, then waited for a ­couple of days after the burying, as tradition required, before moving in with Trudis, announcing he’d take Gralf’s place. Trudis poured herself another glass of beer. She subsequently noticed no difference. Gulped food the same. Snorted and farted the same. Smelled the same. Rutted the same. Only that one fellow had been any different. The one that probably fathered Needly.

  Needly. She yawned and rolled to face away from the new man, wondering if he’d get her pregnant and become a Pa, wondering why Gralf had gone and died, wondering where Needly had got to. Girl hadn’t washed the kitchen stuff from yesterday. Girl oughta be here, takin’ care of things. She hadn’t been around for . . . a while.