Fish Tails

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Each night Xulai and Abasio shared the bed in the wagon, the babies curled up in their baskets beneath it, top halves dry, bottom halves wet. If the weather was good, Kim put his own bedding near the horses; if it threatened rain, he shared Willum’s space beneath the wagon—­already shared with Needly, who also preferred it to the small bunk bed that could fold down above the big bed in the wagon. Though Willum had brought nothing with him to sleep in, after several early-morning encounters with him in his natural and extremely shivery state, Xulai had adapted an old shirt of Abasio’s, shortening the sleeves and eliminating the buttons. Though Willum considered this totally unnecessary, he admitted he was warmer at night in the shirt, along with the pair of soft, drawstringed undertrousers Xulai had made from half an old sheet. Also, Abasio had told him the ­people of Artemisia allowed nakedness only up until the time children were toilet-­trained, so if Willum were observed running around naked it would be assumed he still pottied in his pants: shameful at his age.

  Xulai’s notebook, kept for the benefit of the Tingawan chroniclers and historians, benefited from the discussion of cultural differences: in Gravysuck, children were regarded as asexual until puberty and went naked whenever weather and surroundings allowed. Xulai approved of the custom, for she had noticed there was little or none of the preadolescent sneaking, peeking, and nastiness in Gravysuck that she had noticed in other places. Needly, however, had grown in a society in which uglification and shapeless clothes were necessary for females almost from birth. Another of Abasio’s old shirts and the other half of the sheet were sacrificed promptly to meet Needly’s need, and Needly was left wondering why Grandma had not included at least one of Needly’s nightgowns in the getting-­away pack.

  “But, when you travel afoot, you sleep in your clothes, don’t you?” asked Xulai.

  “Yes. Of course you do. If something comes at you, you don’t have time to get dressed. You grab your pack and run, or hide, or climb a tree—­if you’re not already up one.”

  “Well then, that’s why. Your travel pack was just to get you where you were going. Once you’re there, the other things you might need would be available. Besides, you knew exactly what was in your getaway pack, didn’t you? You didn’t think of it either.”

  Needly agreed that was probably the case but was still left with a small, aching doubt she had never had before. Grandma had always thought of everything.

  Each morning Kim and the extra horses set out an hour or so ahead of them. Abasio occupied the wagon seat out of habit, though he did not pretend to drive the team. His only duty was to apply the wagon brake when it was necessary. Usually it wasn’t, for he had designed the wagon to be brakable by the team itself. The wagon body had two short, widely spaced shafts in front. Between these shafts stretched a stout leather strap, securely fastened at each corner so its wide, flat surface was perpendicular to the road. Blue and Rags could simply back their rear ends against it to slow or stop the wagon as needed. Blue and Rags preferred to be the rear hitch, as they were the ones most familiar with the stop-­strap, and also because they enjoyed hearing what the humans had to say to each other; this despite the fact that most of the conversation was dull.

  “Not horse-­ful,” complained Rags.

  “Y’could hardly expect that!” Blue replied.

  “You n’ him were alone together all that time in the north forests. I shoulda thought he’d have absorbed some horse sense by now.”

  “He has. He just doesn’t always talk like it.”

  Each night they caught up with Kim to share food and campfire, preferring sites open to the east so they could watch the widely separated skeins of smoke that rose above the shadowed slopes below: faceless gray specters with glowing feet; ghostly, blood-­tinged arms reaching upward into oblivion. Each wavering spirit marked the location of someone alone in all that darkness, and no obvious track or trail led toward any of them. If there were such trails—­Abasio explained with a direct stare at Willum—­they were hidden from above by trees and on the ground by endless convolutions as well as by deadfalls or other traps. Abasio took some time to describe the traps he had seen in the north—­including vivid details of the partly or wholly consumed bodies found therein.

  “Only bones,” he confirmed to doubting Willum. “Ask Blue. He was there.”

  One evening Willum pointed out an unusual gathering of smokes that had risen almost to the level of the road they were on: a dozen or so of them, near enough to one another that they were being braided by an eddying wind.

  “That many forest camps close together is unusual,” Abasio agreed. “The trader up north told me sometimes kinfolk would share a good home place, one close to water and well protected, because three or four together would be better able to defend against raiders who might to steal their furs. Even then, he said, no matter how they depended on one another, they would never share trapping territory.”

  The braided pillar, much larger than the usual smoke ghost, danced on into the night, its top flushed with rose by sunset rays still slanting through high valleys behind them. For a long, breathless moment several smaller spirits undulated in attendance until light vanished all at once, leaving only far-­separated sparks of campfire glow to populate the dark.

  Xulai shivered. “I wouldn’t want to be lost in there.”

  Abasio nodded agreement. Seeing these fires reminded him of his long trek through the north country on his way to find Xulai. He’d almost forgotten that journey, so much had happened since. It had been long and tiresome and dangerous, but it had taken him to Woldsgard: where the child Xulai had been; where he had needed to go. And all the way there he had wondered why he was going! No prize had been offered at the end of the road; no glory or riches would be forthcoming. Just . . . go, go there. Get there as soon as you can.

  “But at least there were roads,” Xulai commented.

  He half smiled, ruefully. “They were given that title thereabouts. The trader told me if night was coming on, it was better to keep going, to get some distance between my wagon and the nearest camp, for the horse and wagon might prove irresistible if trappers thought they could take it without too much trouble. Blue and I got very, very good at hiding the wagon and ourselves.”

  This interested Willum to the extent that he, Needly, and Blue spent most of one evening discussing techniques of hiding oneself and one’s belongings in the midst of a forest.

  Abasio fell asleep promptly on lying down. Later in the night, he dreamed.

  In this dream he knows who he is: he is Abasio Cermit, Abasio the Dyer, Abasio the Traveler, who is married to the Princess Xulai, Abasio the father of the Children of the Future and the supposed owner of the horse Blue, a speaking horse who knows very well he is not owned by anyone save himself. The dream Abasio knows also that this particular Abasio is dozing on the wagon seat and is dreaming yet again of a throne room in some very distant place . . .

  The one enthroned—­is that one Plethrob? Or is Plethrob something or someone else? Of course, if this is a new dream, Abasio wouldn’t know who it is. It could be anyone. The dream feels familiar, however, and those blood drinkers on the perches—­Abasio has seen those before; something like birds, but birds didn’t have long, tubular tongues that unroll endlessly, from the perch all the way to the floor—­so the thing on the throne is probably Plethrob.

  Abasio looks down at . . . itself. It is wearing a sort of vertical brassiere with three—­no, five lumps protruding. If it were female there would be . . . six? Or four? Some even number, surely. The wall opposite him or her or it is mirrored. He, it moves slightly, watching for movement in the mirror. Ah, there. An apparently bipedal, two-­armed, erect creature wearing a circlet on its head to hold back a full head of slowly squirming tendrils? Tentacles? A short, open-­fronted jacket and whatever garment it is down the front to cover the bumps. Not breasts. Not testes or anything similar. No. This body is not a he or a she.
It is the body of an IT. An IT in the ser­vice of Plethrob, surely, who is now . . . thinking, his broad brow furrowed, the two nostrils under the right eye slightly elevated in . . . annoyance? Perhaps. Or simple irritation.

  Plethrob speaks: “So this world decided to intervene, is that it, Jeples?” The words are not in Abasio’s language, but he understands them nonetheless.

  “Yes, great corpuscle of heaven.” The glabinour replying is an old one with gray integument, wrinkled earflaps, vlagators veined in blue, age spots all over them. Which means, thank heavens, there will be no dominance rituals or . . . any of that. Uninvolved ­people could get accidentally dead during dominance rituals.

  “This is a world name of Lom?” Plethrob inquires.

  “It has upon it a place named Lom, indeed, O golden lymph node!”

  The very masculine presence narrows his several eyes: “Jeples!”

  “Yes, O marvelous bone-­marrow, master of miracles.”

  “Make a note.”

  Jeples takes a deep breath and makes a note. It is r’datitch (B flat, says Abasio’s mind in the dream). Very slightly off. Abasio knows this without knowing how he knows it or caring very much. He seems to be alone in this disregard, however, for everyone else in the throne room is suddenly . . . stiffer. The old person tries again, and this time the note emerges purely. Everyone breathes carefully, silently, enormously relieved. Abasio finds himself thinking that deheadings are so damned messy, especially early in the morning, and it, Feblia, hates mess. (So that’s who Abasio is! Abasio is an IT, probably named Feblia!) It—­Feblia—­will speak to the old thing’s carapace polisher and tell him to serve old Jeples a bulb of herb tea with ziblac nectar first thing in the morning. Ziblac removes that accumulation in the throat, a precaution made necessary when a Ruling One has a tendency to poke, poke, test, test, call for a note here, a note there, purely to annoy, purely to irritate, to give an excuse for slaughter so he can watch the blood drinkers slurp!

  Jeples is a nice old glabinour, but not of sufficiently high rank to have a personal sustainer. It would be terrible to witness an execution for being out of tune when a little personal care would carry it through. Another season or so and it would be retired from court to spend its aged years in safety.

  Besides, when a great HE becomes annoyed first thing in the morning, it usually doesn’t stop with one deheading. It can go on and on until the moppers are in hysterics and all the blood drinkers are falling off their perches from inadvisable repletion. Not that Feblia is concerned for itself. Early-morning annoyances are virtually always same-­sex-­directed and glabinours are arbitrarily considered to be male. That old rivalry thing. Every few octads someone proves morning dominance reclusions are a complete myth, that they are not caused by anything physiological or psychological, that no glands are spewing anything at all!

  Oh, yes, it had been conclusively proven that morning dominance reclusions resulted from a specific irritation: a night’s sleep not being as restful as usual; the night cook not as well prepared as he-­she-­it-­or-­they should have been; the shes of the previous evening not as skilled as they should have been. HOWEVER, in this particular case, one had to ask, “How could they be skilled? Look at that creature on the throne! Look at its amtrog! How can anyone NOT look at its amtrog? Has anyone even IMAGINED an amtrog of that size? Immensely swollen, out of all proportion to purpose! How could any she or any consortium of SHES and ancillary ITS do anything with that monstrosity except regard it with fear and revulsion?”

  Oh, Feblia had seen the devices developed by the Erotory Society for pleasing monsters like this. Disgusting! Terrible fleshy pink naliwags, made out of glafwood and that slithery Vantec stuff, twenty times, one hundred times normal size, requiring eight to ten erotory specialists to manipulate them. Manipulate . . . that meant with the hands! What word did one use for hands, arms, legs, filquabs, shoulders, and thrugs? One must, quite literally, throw oneself into the work! All that trouble and pain simply because a He (Plethrob) had decided to become more He (!) than anyone else.

  In south Gobanjur, where Feblia was reared among its egg siblings, any male who showed any sign whatsoever of developing that bigger-­bigger-­bigger ambition was mercifully and quietly done away with. It was the only sensible thing to do. But here in the north? They enthroned them, what else? The net effect was rizziwanks of infant males running about shouting, “Ooky me, ooky me. l gotta bigger amtrog’n you do!” And then, when the children got old enough to see a real monster, they suffered terminal frustration and either died or relieved the pressure with indiscriminate slaughter.

  And lately there’d been entirely too much of that! When would members of the Jiptwik—­the almost-­royal-­families—­realize they could not help their kinfolk and snafluggers by nominating them to positions at court for which they were not well trained or equipped! Inevitably such a one would draw attention to him, her, it, or them selves by improper costume, inadequate abasement, or failure to hrack soon enough. At which point the dominant HE—­who would inevitably be all too full of HIMself—­would execute the creature for inability to shlub or some other such foolishness. Such heedless nominations were inexplicable—­unless, of course, the Jiptwik had wanted to get rid of the nominee all along. It could happen. It had happened, as Feblia knew, when the Snafluggers (one of the Jiptwik clans) had wanted to rid themselves of Feblia’s own brood brother, Plikkub. Of course, Plikkub had always been an idiot.

  Nobody, absolutely nobody is unable to shlub! One learns shlubbing in infant school! Seventeen damned cycles of it. One could shlub in one’s sleep! In over thirty languages. One could shlub while laspinking, and one’s partners would not even notice!

  Ah! The great HE is speaking.

  “This Lom-­world was asked for help, yes?”

  “It truly was, Eyelash of Heaven. Urth-­world asked Lom-­world for help.”

  “Because this Urth-­world was being destroyed?”

  “Magnificent Muscle, it was indeed being destroyed by a plague of mankinds.”

  “Mankinds? Am I aware of mankinds?”

  “Why would the Glorious Skinflake take any notice of such inconsiderable trifles?”

  “Most Magnificent Self would not. So how did Lom assist this Urth?”

  “It offered to drown the destroyers, O heavenly hair follicle.”

  “Ah. How?”

  “How, most Marvelous Cuticle?”

  Feblia felt a drop of sweat forming. Oh, no.

  The great HE actually swelled. “Are you blamfozzled, Jeples? One means where did they get liquid? Space is abundant. Burning hydrogen is abundant. Metals are abundant. Light fills the very void. But liquid is not a condition universally available.”

  “Ah, forgive my stupidity, Magnificent Nosehair. Hydroxic liquid is found in abundance on the-­very-­large-­world-­Squamutch, most Marvelous Mandible. You will remember that the-­very-­large-­world-­Squamutch had asked the planetary scrutators for more dry space on which to grow crops, those crops Your Magnificence has been kind enough to endorse. By taking one world’s overabundance and placing it upon this other world—­”

  “Which is named what again?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No, sir, what?”

  “It is not named Whatagain, sir. It is named Urth.”

  “Now that is a most demeaning untruth, Jeples. My Glorious and Utterly Unique Self has used its third retractable manipulator to access the catalog of acceptable worlds. Our own world of Barfram is there. Others are there. But my Astonishingly Masculine Self has found no planet with the name of Urth.”

  Jeples bowed. Abasio/Feblia is amazed to see that its legs went down like a fold-­up ruler, five sets of knees bending in opposite directions, thus allowing Jeples to stop with his nose touching the floor. Jeples bounced up a few moglors in order to speak: “Your Magnificence is as ever utterly correct. Urth is never include
d in the catalog of acceptable worlds. As one said, it is infected with mankinds. It should have been fumigated aeons ago and IGGI ETC, the Inter-­Galactic Group Investigating Eradication of Toxic Creatures, is currently studying the problem. But all sensible creatures know how long such a study is likely to take, and meantime Urth is infected with hordes of mankinds who could at any time explode further into the great void to settle on other worlds as they have already transgressed upon Lom.

  “Therefore, Miraculous One, Lom has prayed for succor from Squamutch, a conorbited world of vast size but only a tiny bit of land area, all dedicated to the farming of Fligbine. Through an utterly dependable, long-­life wormhole discovered by completely qualified and respectable Galactian Locators, liquid substance from Squamutch is being poured into the planet Urth. The wormhole being used has no inappropriate deviations and only one egress, which is buried deeply under the ocean on the planet Urth itself—­a location called the Mariana Trench. The wormhole has no lesser contiguities; it is direct and uncomplicated; and through it, one-­fifth of all liquid on Squamutch will be redirected into Urth. Urth—­a much smaller planet than Squamutch—­will be completely covered in ocean. Mankinds—­as air-­breathing, land-­dwelling creatures—­are being eradicated as IGGI ETC has ordered.” Jeples bounced slightly and began to hrack its way up.

  “And as a happy side effect, Your Magnificence, Squamutch will end up with three times as much dry land on which to grow Fligbine, the Fligbine Your Utterly Flawless and Superb Magnificence so much enjoys in the evenings, or before the wake-­up meal, or after the afternoon nappy.”

  Or any time at all, thought Feblia, when His Magnificent Muchness had nothing else to keep him amused.

  “I am pleased,” said the Great One, almost smiling. The room hummed with pleasure and relief. The Great One had almost smiled! And before breakfast! The blood drinkers hummed.

  Feblia reflected on the truth that Fligbine is delicious when eaten or sipped as a tea. When inserted into one’s lateral anstrackle—­an anatomical feature of both males and neuters, but not of shes or frigles—­it produces a long-­lasting euphoria. It is also addictive. At the current time, this Great He Plethrob was, all by himself, utilizing half the annual crop produced on Squamutch in each Barframian year. In addition to His Enormous Maleness, the rest of Himself was actually getting fat! Which everyone is pretending to admire, for the Great One is soooo much less bloodthirsty when he is on Fligbine! Lots and lots of Fligbine!