Fish Tails

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Fligbine,” murmured Feblia as it moved back through the surrounding draperies and into the hallway, bumping into someone as it closed the curtains behind it.

  “Oh, pardon me,” Feblia murmured, making the correct gesture of appropriate avoidance.

  “Not at all,” the creature it had bumped replied. “I was waiting here for you. You are Abasio, aren’t you?”

  “Feblia,” he/it said. “Feblia. I don’t want to cause any—­”

  “Of course not. And it was nice of you to think kindly on old Jeples. He hasn’t been the same since his snardat died. Little Pootsie.”

  “Oh, no! Not the pretty little one with the purple ears. Really?” Abasio/Feblia found him/itself remembering a tiny creature, fluffy, with long . . . no, was that the right . . . ?

  “You probably never received the dream transmission at full resolution,” said the bumped creature. “Pootsie was a snardat. Furry? Rolled around like a ball? A beloved pet.”

  The bumped creature had six legs, Feblia/Abasio noticed, and six arms, and a determinedly cheerful face. The six-­legged creature smiled. It had a very pleasant smile. Abasio/Feblia remembered that smile. It had seen that smile before . . .

  The creature spoke: “I have just injected myself into this dream transmission to introduce myself. My name is Balytaniwassinot. Bally Tanny Wahsi Not. Among my ­people it’s a fairly short name, but others sometimes have trouble with it. Earthers do, I’ve noticed.” The creature put two of its arms on Abasio/Feblia’s shoulders and stared deeply, hypnotically into his, its, Feblia’s eyes.

  “Please try to keep this in mind, Abasio. I have inadvisably involved myself in the mankind problem! It’s against the regulations! I admit that. However, I have an overwhelming aversion to what was going to happen if we let matters take their course. Humans are a galactic nuisance; one can accept that, one has to accept that, the evidence is overwhelming. They are also, however, a very creative and innovative ­people. One has only to look at this new thing, this aquati-­forming of their race. Well, in the last analysis, it all comes down to bao or no bao. If we can fix that lack . . . well, I think of it rather like a blood transfusion. One that carries certain antibodies. You’re not following? That’s all right. You will remember! You’ll add two and two to get four and four plus four to get barflic and a half, like humans always do. Nonetheless . . .

  “I wanted you to know that you and your sweet wife have my congratulations. You’re managing very well. I’ve been observing the sea-­­people process for some little time—­time jumping is such a help!—­a century here, a century there. Forbidden, of course, so one has to fix the logs to cover. I’ve become an expert at that. (Dream transmissions, being my own invention, are not monitored or recorded in anyone’s logs, so this is just between us two. You may not recall the details, but I intend that you shall retain the feeling of reassurance.)

  “At any rate, it’s all coming to a—­what does one say—­to a climax? To a crisis? I’ve heard your plea to the Listener, as well as those of others, and since the, ah, the nitty-­gritty—­the phrase is archaic but descriptive—­looms ever more closely on our horizon, keep in mind that I will be there to assist. If things appear particularly upsetting, don’t despair. That final tending to details is often the worst part, but they will be tended to. I just wanted you to know.”

  The dream had wandered off into never-­never land. Abasio felt the outlines of things wavering. “Very kind of you, Mr. Bahlee . . . ah . . .”

  “Oh, do call me by my nickname. Fixit. So much easier. And it’s what I do. Sometimes in accordance with policy . . . sometimes, as in this case, not entirely. Policy is all very well, but it never makes room for the exceptional, does it? I do hate to see any race of creatures totally expunged, and that would have been the alternative. And everything comes down to a question of bao in the end. It was nice to see you. And it was interesting to learn about the Fligbine . . .”

  “Fligbine,” said Abasio to himself as he wakened. “Good old Fligbine.”

  ABASIO HAD AWAKENED BECAUSE KIM had put his head into the wagon to report that one of the horses had a foot problem.

  Abasio reviewed the dream, quite clearly. He lifted his shirt to be sure his belly was not . . . unbellylike, wondered briefly how someone injected themselves into someone else’s dream life, decided it had merely been part of the whole dream, none of which made much sense. Or . . . hadn’t Xulai said something about the amount of water exceeding the size of the presumed source? Or had that been something Precious Wind had said?

  He shook the dream from his mind, got up, dressed, and went off to do something about the horse’s foot, leaving Xulai and the children to their breakfast.

  Xulai had spent a troubled night worrying over things Needly had said—­and had not said—­and asked suddenly, “Needly, your Pa wasn’t with that group of men that came to get you, was he?”

  “Pa wasn’t one of them, no.” Needly didn’t think Xulai needed to know Pa was deader than week-­old bear kill. She hadn’t mentioned the little pouch of remedies tied under her skirt, day and night, and she didn’t intend to. Grandma had been very clear about the morality of using certain substances: “Passive watchers are as guilty as doers!” Needly felt Xulai’s morality would be somewhat . . . less stringent, more . . . merciful than Grandma’s, and she did not want to be confused by a second opinion from someone she considered, for the most part, admirable.

  Xulai did want another opinion, or at least a clarification, since—­though she believed Needly was telling the truth—­she was unable to accept that any father would sell his child in that way. Unfortunately, she adopted a somewhat chiding tone: “Surely you don’t think your own father would have agreed with those other men?”

  Needly gritted her teeth. There it was. Xulai was admirable, just not always . . . realistic. She understood that Xulai avoided unpleasantness. Farm ­people accepted that some creatures had to die if others were going to live, but Xulai, from what Needly had been able to learn, had not been reared in the barn, the paddock, or the kitchen. Xulai inevitably wanted to fix things so there would be no pain for anyone or anything, and on occasion the tendency became exasperating, as even Abasio had remarked.

  Needly took a deep breath before saying calmly, “No, Xulai, YOU believe that my father, any father, would not do such a thing. YOU are limited by YOUR experience. I, on the other hand, know very well that he would, and I heard him brag about the deal. That is MY experience. Yes, my father agreed with them, ma’am. He’s the one who sold me to Digger. All the men from Tuckwhip believe the same.”

  Xulai made her “Oh my, something should be done about this” face. “So there are no . . . pleasant ­people in Tuckwhip?”

  “Lady, the only folks you could find at all pleasant were Ma and Pa Siffic, a pair of religious folks who lived down at the ford, half a day’s walk away. They are Kindlies, followers of the Kindly Teacher. Kindlies come around every now and then, trying to convince those who live in Hench Valley. They tried with the Pas, but it was like trying to convert rocks.”

  “Convert them to what?”

  “To bein’ less like rocks,” Needly snarled.

  Xulai ignored the snarl and considered the conversion of rocks. “Hard, you mean?”

  Pressed past endurance, Needly cried, “HARD, AND DENSE, AND INERT!,” each cleanly enunciated word spit into the silence like an arrow. Her voice sounded both womanly and angry. Hearing herself, she shivered and covered her mouth with a trembling hand. “I’m sorry, Xulai. Sorry. That was Grandma.”

  Willum had been refilling his bowl from the porridge pot and had stopped, spoon half lowered. Xulai’s mouth had dropped open and her head had turned to give Needly a surprised glance. She shook her head. “That was Grandma?”

  Needly rubbed her forehead, troubled. “When Grandma and I talked, we . . . talked the way her ­people did. Do.” She looked up,
fixing Xulai with her eyes, the words coming with individual, icy clarity: “Our conversations varied considerably from the style of communication common among the village men: among them, or from them to women. Women are allowed very few words in Tuckwhip. As one grows up, one learns to use only the . . . accepted ones.”

  “Such as?” breathed Xulai.

  Needly’s reply was in a whining woman’s voice: “Yes, Pa.” “I’m getting it, Pa.” “It’ll take just a minute, Pa.” “The water’s boiling now, Pa.” Her lips curved into a knife-­edged smile. “Conciliatory words and phrases of that ilk, if said quickly enough and in a properly groveling and subservient tone, could sometimes forestall a beating which could end as a killing and did so with some frequency.” This voice was a woman’s voice, stern and unrelenting.

  Willum, who had been busy emptying his refilled bowl, was staring at her as though she had grown horns.

  Xulai paled in dismay, remembering what Precious Wind had once advised her. Read your informant, Xulai. Do not demand painful words when the answer is there in the face. She had hurt the child by pushing her like that. She took a deep breath. “Since you and your grandmother spoke together in that way, please feel free to do so with us whenever you want to.” She frowned, mostly at herself. “Abasio and I would enjoy it. Willum might even learn something if you did.”

  “I may be able to teach him some vocabulary,” said Needly, with a sigh. Willum had come to stand beside her, and she dug an elbow into his ribs in time to stop his immediate disclaimer. “He’s boyish, which is a handicap, but at least he’s not stone.”

  Willum, now much offended, put his empty bowl down and went off to join Abasio and Kim.

  Needly took a deep shuddering breath, catching Xulai’s eyes with her own and holding them. She did not want to have this woman as anything but a friend! “Xulai, lady, I do not lie to you. I can tell what you are thinking, even now. You believe that children exaggerate, that no doubt I am provoked by old injustice to intensify the preposterous in what I tell you. Some children may indeed do that, but I do not. It’s hard for you to believe Hench Valley. It was hard even for my grandma to believe Hench Valley and she had spent decades there. She told me there is a reason that Hench Valley exists and is allowed to remain in existence when everything about it calls for extermination. I can, however, explain one part of your puzzle. You are thinking the man I called Pa was my genetic sire. Had he been, he would still have acted in the same way, but it may make your belief easier to know he was not. He was called Pa because that is what all women in Tuckwhip call any man once he has got some woman with child. Other males call such a man by his name or a nickname, but all women and children call him Pa.”

  Xulai, frozen in place, was suddenly enlightened. “You mean . . . as a servant might say ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ in other places?”

  Needly thought about it, gave the idea a twisted smile of recognition. “More slave than servant, but yes, precisely like that. ‘Pa’ is a title of ownership. Command. Territoriality!”

  “And fathering a child gives him that title?”

  “No. No man in Hench Valley is a father in the sense you use the word. Impregnating a woman—­or assuming that he has done so—­gives him the title. Having assumed so, they may take credit for the child, if it’s a boy. The credit, mind you. Not the responsibility. Hench Valley men frequently ‘walk their dogs’ in the woods for the purpose of becoming a Pa. However, Gralf was not my father in any sense of that word.”

  “You’re sure of that?” This time the words were not disbelieving.

  Needly relaxed. Xulai was now interested, not . . . doing that digging, that pursuing, that determined uncovering that she had been doing before. “Oh, yes. Grandma told me how I was conceived, I and my half siblings. All the Tuckwhip men went off hunting lions one summer—­there’d been cows killed by such a beast—­and a stranger man came into the valley, like a new rooster into a henhouse, as Grandma said. ‘A kindly speaking, gently holding, sweetly wooing man. A man as unlike Hench Valley men as it is possible to be.’ There were six of us born the following spring. The rest of us were taken from the valley as babies.”

  Abasio had returned earlier in this conversation and had seated himself by the fire. Neither he nor Xulai had failed to notice that Gralf had been spoken of in the past tense. They shared a glance. Xulai asked, “You said, six of us were born?”

  “Children that were pale like me and with hair like mine. Silverhairs, they called us.” It was one of the politer things the children had been called. “Whitecaps,” was another, which was the local name for a particularly angelic-­looking but poisonous mushroom that Grandma called “the angel of death.” Grandma preferred to use another substance, because it was painless. The angel killed surely, but it took a long, excruciating time to do it. Needly had some of both in the little bag under her skirts.

  “How did the other children leave?”

  “Grandma told me each of them disappeared at the time they were weaned, but no one ever saw the children being taken.”

  “Perhaps they were killed by predators,” said Abasio.

  Needly smiled a knife-­edged smile. “No, Abasio. No wolf or bear or great mountain cat has ever been known to leave a gold coin to pay for his dinner. No one saw how it happened, but each women received such a coin. Grandma told me the mothers sorrowed but were glad the babies had been taken somewhere safe. They loved them, you see. As Grandma loved me—­though Trudis did not.”

  “Ah.” Xulai frowned, looked to Abasio for help, received none. The more she learned, the less she understood! “But you weren’t taken?”

  “No, because when I was born, Grandma came. Or, I should say, returned.”

  Xulai turned this over in her mind, trying to find some way into its real meaning, which was there, somewhere, though hidden. Purposely hidden from her, Xulai? Or simply hidden as a matter of habit? “Your mother, Needly, forgive me, but was, that is, is she an intelligent person?”

  Needly stared into the sky, her brow creased. Oh, Grandma had wondered that herself, so many times. “Grandma told me that my Ma, Trudis, could have been a reasonably intelligent woman if she had had the aptitude and the inclination to be so. Gran was being sarcastic, of course. Grandma’s other children had been intelligent, which is why they had been taken away while they were still children. That had been planned for even before they were born.” She saw Xulai’s lips half open, saw her eyes concentrated, her face muscles tight. Oh, Xulai was desperate to know all about it. Well, so was she, Needly, for all the good that did her.

  She took a deep breath. “Xulai, I know you’re curious about that; so am I; but I don’t know why it was planned. I can only assume it was because Tuckwhip was the right place for the breeding or birthing, but not for the rearing.”

  Xulai stared through her, formidably alert, eyes glittering.

  Well, thought Needly, so that means something to her. “Trudis was Grandma’s last child, and Grandma had intended to take Trudis away well before Trudis was old enough to get involved with any of the boys or men.”

  “Before anything disastrous happened?”

  Needly nodded gratefully. “While she was still a child, yes. There’s some mystery in the matter of Grandma’s children. She told me many things, but I’m sure there were many things she didn’t tell me. She was the only healer, herbalist, midwife in the valley. I believe she would have taken me away long ago except that she was the only one who could help the women when they were sick or giving birth. They were helpless without her.”

  She stopped, tears gathering. Abasio, concerned about her feverish look, had filled a mug with water and now handed it to her. She thanked him with her eyes and drank the mug dry before returning it to him and gathering herself to tell the story of Grandma’s return to her home on Midsummer’s Day.

  “ . . . and when Grandma came back from Gortles on Midsummer morning, G
ralf was sitting in the kitchen with Trudis on his lap, drinking beer. He had already taken his dog out hunting . . .”

  Abasio, seeing Xulai’s bewildered expression, said, “Is that the phrase they use for a man having sex with a woman, Needly?”

  She nodded. “The connotation is not so much having as hunting down. The men tell stories about their dogs going hunting: finding prey. You can imagine.” Her voice faded, she stood, staring at nothing. “I always speak of her as Grandma. I don’t know that she was necessarily a grandma to anyone else back then, except to me. She told me stories about her other children later. She had six before Trudis. Boys and girls. When she died, if, indeed, she has died, which I doubt. Though she did not look at all old, she may have been . . .” Her voice trailed into silence that was for a time unbroken.

  After a respectful quiet, Xulai broke it. “So your mother, that is, Trudis, had her first child when she was twelve?”

  “Almost thirteen, I remember Grandma saying.”

  “When I asked about her intelligence, I was thinking of her as a grown woman . . .”

  Needly shook herself, “She was a grown woman in body. Grandma told me that whenever a population is threatened with extinction, one of the signs is early puberty. It’s as though each body gets a signal telling it to breed in a hurry because it won’t have a chance later on. Perhaps the earth knows something awful is going to happen. However, Trudis never changed from what she was that Midsummer’s Day. Gralf and Trudis, sex and beer. Grandma said nine-­tenths of the valley’s barley went to make beer. With Gralf there in the house, that’s mostly what both of them did. Got very drunk and took the dog hunting. Grandma knew there was nothing she could do about it, so she left.”