Fish Tails

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Needly, all the grown ­people I had associated with were wise about something. None of them were simply stupid or ignorant. I did not realize a simple fact: Though silence and vagueness can be a mask for profound knowledge, they can also mask total ignorance! Sometimes silence and vagueness are the reality. The Oracles simply knew nothing about the things I had asked them about.

  “But they had all these great machines, edubots that were . . . well, the most advanced ones that had ever been made. They were just there, up in the front of the cave, and the Oracles, they didn’t seem to pay any attention to them at all. I put two and two together to get what I considered reasonable. They didn’t need the machines because they had put the information into the machines to start with. So there I was, young and curious and with all kinds of time on my hands, and with machines that would answer any question I asked. That was enough. I never went farther back into their . . . territory than that. And they never invited me into those areas.

  “I asked the edubots and the other equipment they have in there what I should do with my life. One of the machines I asked set off a whole series of bells and whistles and red lights and urgent messages to say that they, or someone, was looking for a particular genotype that fit me. Oh, I was smart enough to ask how they got my genotype, and the machine replied that it was well equipped to analyze spit and sweat and skin cells and . . . and . . . and. Quite honestly, I crowed over that a little. It’s nice to feel special, which I did not feel at home. Every person in that house, to hear them tell it, was unique and more special than anyone else in the world, and I was merely the girl child.”

  “They should have thought more of you than that, Grandma!”

  “Maybe they did and just didn’t show it. Too late now to ask them. At that time I felt some of those machines were more . . . human than some of the humans I knew. The humans, often as not, said, ‘Go away and don’t bother me,’ but the machines actually welcomed me. I asked if I was the one they were looking for . . . one of the ones, I should say. As I remember, their answer to that question was that I was ‘the type that had been selected.’ They never actually told me who did the selecting. I foolishly assumed the Oracles had.

  “As for the inducements I was offered . . . when I asked what was to be my payment for being ‘the type that had been selected,’ I got a document printed out on one of the machines. I have no idea who actually wrote the thing. At the time I just assumed the Oracles were responsible for it all. The inducement talked about the history of Earth and the problems of ­people, and it offered me the opportunity to have ‘children who would contribute positively to the future of the earth; the opportunity to meet men of very high attainments.’ Things like that. At the bottom it said: ‘If you agree, sign at the bottom and insert into slot A.’ Which I did.”

  “Are you glad you . . . like you said, worked for them or whoever it actually was?”

  “On balance, I’d say so, though I’d have preferred more disclosure and less mystery. Joshua, my first partner, didn’t arrive until years later, of course, but the machines were there all the time. And when I saw the house being built near ours, of course I went over to meet the person who was building it. I was sixteen by then, and Joshua and I became very, very close, and no one at my house said ‘don’t’ or ‘no’ or ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I didn’t really think about it at all. And when we became partners, he took me to Hench Valley. No one ever explained why Hench Valley either. He built a house for me there. He left me, but he told me someone else would be coming along. The partners that arrived from time to time were really wonderful men, joyful, joyous men, capable of delight, the kind of men that . . . when you meet them, you think they have known you forever and you have known them, just that long. Our children were delightful. Though giving them up was neither delightful nor even bearable. But if I hadn’t agreed to it, you probably wouldn’t be here at all. You were certainly an inducement when you came along.”

  “So, really, you probably were working for someone else all along, not the Oracles at all.” Needly gave Grandma a long, long hug. “I’m glad it was someone else, Grandma. I don’t like the Oracles very much, but I still hope they can help Willum.”

  “You’re very fond of that boy. Be very careful, child. Don’t get yourself carried away if you two get older together.”

  “If I did, wouldn’t you suppose that it was fated, just the way you were, and my real father, and Xulai, and all the rest of us?”

  “Ah, doesn’t it sound wonderful? Living in an age where all may be left to beneficent fate?”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “Sweetheart, fate isn’t beneficent. Given the size and complexity of the universe, I’d guess it’s pretty much random. Humans have a long history of trusting in good fortune, and it hasn’t worked out very well. Every human person, tribe, community, nation, has spent millennia trusting in beneficent fortune, burning fossil fuel, sucking aquifers dry, having babies like rabbits, sucking Earth’s lifeblood and raising her temperature while denying we were doing it, the whole time trusting in Luck! Good Fortune! God with a small g! God with a BIG G! Science with a BIG BIG S. Science with a sneer. None of which helped solve the problem because we WERE the problem.”

  “Weren’t there any followers of the Great Litany then, when we were despoiling?”

  “The litany hadn’t been given to us then, and most of the religions were of the ‘God Sits on My Shoulder’ variety . . . You don’t know of those? Each one of them declares he or she has a personal relationship with God. They are not thinking of the Creator of the universe when they say this. They are not thinking of innumerable galaxies, planets, and stars beyond counting. They are not thinking of an immensity, a miraculous machinery out of which life springs in a trillion forms. No. The picture they have in their minds is of a nice grandfatherly God shaped just like them who made a nice little flat garden world with a sun going around it, into which HE, always HE, inserted our first parents, whom HE challenged to be naughty, already knowing they would be because HE is omniscient. Nice and grandfatherly but tricky and sadistic, setting us up for sin so he can punish us, because, really, he likes punishing things.”

  “I do not understand that!”

  “I’ll tell you a truth, Needly. Men almost always make gods in their own image. If men make a god who likes to punish ­people, it’s because the men like to punish ­people. Many men do. They beat their wives, their children. They get in fights. They like punishing things. In one country, the one that used to be here where we are . . . if they had a choice between preventing a misdeed or punishing a misdeed, their usual solution was to build more and bigger prisons.”

  “Preventing . . . ?”

  “Oh, child. If ­people like to eat corn and you make eating corn illegal, what happens?”

  ­“People eat it anyhow.”

  “And if ­people like to dance or drink liquor, or take some drug to make them feel better, and you make it a prison offense to drink, dance, or drug, what must you do?”

  “Oh, I see! You’ll have to build more and bigger prisons. Much bigger, I ’magine.”

  “It seems ridiculous, but when ­people are self-righ­teous, they really tend to prefer punishment to prevention. We talked about Mobwows a long time ago, remember?”

  “Monkey-­brain willy-­waggers.”

  “The Mobwows have brought us to this, Needly. They’re why Earth got into such terrible shape, and they’re why it is being drowned. Somewhere, someone, something has finally taken notice. Maybe the REAL ONE who’s REALLY in charge. A Living Planet is too important for fools go on trifling with it. The Oracles have a prediction machine in there. I’ve asked it. You feed in all the facts you know about a given situation, it asks questions back, you answer them to the best of your ability, and it makes a prediction. That machine is ninety percent certain that someone or something with the power to enforce it has decided to contro
l the number of human babies born on Earth. Even when we are completely aquatic, there will never again be more than two billion of us on this planet. That’s less than one-­quarter of the number before the Big Kill. And no person who is not healthy and healthful will cause or have any pregnancies at all. And to keep any willy-­wagging revolutionaries from rising up, any man or woman who tries to circumvent those prohibitions will be fixed so he can do no damage.”

  “If . . . if the number’s set, how could anybody circumvent . . .”

  “I didn’t say if they succeed, I said if they try. The Oracles say . . . And look at what I just said. I’m telling it wrong again. The machines, not the Oracles, gave me the information about the number of humans that will be allowed.”

  “Grandma, you are not the kind of person to get confused about things. Why are you so upset about this machines-­or-­Oracles riddle?”

  Grandma frowned, shook her head, rubbing at the two deep wrinkles between her eyes. “Oh, Needly, it’s part of that filling-­in-­the-­blanks business. I never got answers from the Oracles, and I assumed they didn’t answer because they knew I could get the answers from the machines. And I assumed the answers were IN the machines because the Oracles PUT them there. I was a child; it seemed logical. In time, I learned I was wrong. I’ve met some ­people recently who have what they call ‘library helmets.’ Do you know about them? You do!”

  “Abasio has one. And Arakny.”

  Grandma sighed. “The machines get their information the way the library helmets do. They don’t let false information in!”

  Needly put her hands to Grandma’s cheeks, petting her. “So you’re trying to separate the Oracles from the machines, in your mind.”

  “Exactly. And it’s a hard habit to break.” Especially since her children, HER children, were supposedly in the custody of the Oracles. Don’t think of that. Not now. Not now! “Now, the machines—­which were not made by or given information by the Oracles—­the machines say there will be a limit on humans. Some ­people, those with genetic problems, won’t have any children. Some will have one. Most will have two, one for the mother, one for the father. Exceptional ­people may have more and inadequate ­people maybe none, but the total number, worldwide, will never exceed two billion. Once that limit is reached, if any person or laboratory or scientist tries to exceed that limit, that person or laboratory or scientist will cease to exist.”

  “What about if a child dies?”

  “I gathered the death rate is already built in. That third child some ­people will have makes up for those who die young. I doubt that a death would allow the parent to try again. Too much room for shiftiness there. Too many historic incidents of daughters being killed to make room for a possible son. The quota is per person, not per ­couple. No willy-­wagging allowed! Once one’s own quota is born, no more.” She gazed into the fire. “How they hope to keep track of it is more than I can imagine. The only thing I can come up with is an automatic genetic response to pregnancies. After so many, a woman would simply become infertile.”

  Needly considered this, swinging her legs in time to the music the Artemisians were making. “Is the number they allow larger than the population of mankind now? There aren’t many of us.”

  “I think it’s a little larger, yes. The figure has to be based on balance. Not just how many humans, but also how many elephants, and how many antelope, horses, cows, sheep, goats, field mice, oak trees, coconut trees, miles of grassland. Of course, now all those things will have to be translated into their comparable aquatic equivalent: giant kelp instead of pine forests; scurrying crabs instead of mice; whales instead of elephants; dolphins instead of horses—­unless they come up with an aquatic version of horses. How many of each and every single thing—­all of them in balance.

  “It’s ironic, but when the world is covered in water, there will actually be more space than there was before, vertical space as well as horizontal space. That disturbed me a little, but the machines said that humans won’t be able to live very deep down. There have always been various biomes at various depths. I suppose it’ll be pretty much the same, except the bottom ones will be a lot farther down.”

  There was a burst of laughter from around the fire. Grandma raised her head, listening, smiled a wry smile, and pointed to the Artemisians who were singing a bawdy song, a very funny one that she had learned from the father of her fourth child. He had been a lovely man. Very . . . skilled. She repeated the words and tune so Needly could learn it. “There, you have some new naughty words to teach Willum.”

  Needly smiled a very small smile, then concentrated on making it feel larger. For a little while she would pretend. Willum would be all right, somehow. She would teach Willum the song. She would civilize Willum. She would grow up and love Willum! He would love her. They would each get a sea-­egg and become a ­couple, like Abasio and Xulai. She sat singing softly in the dark, the dream wrapped around her like a blanket, holding fast to the happiness inside it.

  Grandma, seeing the child’s expression, did not draw her out of her joy. Let her dream while she could. At present, neither Grandma nor the Oracles nor the omniscient machines saw any help for the boy who had given his life for the Griffin’s child.

  Chapter 13

  The Weigh of All Flesh

  LAZILY LATE ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING, THE ARTEMISIANS were readying the wagons to return to Wide Mountain when they were startled by a wild hallooing and the thud-­shudder of many racing hooves. They had barely time to look up before Deer Runner leapt from the lead horse and stumbled into the arms of two friends.

  “We got news,” he gasped to Abasio. “Wide Mountain Mother said to catch you before you leave. Something you prob’ly want to see; you and the others. Can you get ’em?”

  Arakny was summoned along with Precious Wind, Xulai, and Grandma. Deer Runner, his dust-­dried throat being soothed by a cup of something hot, delivered his message. “Patrol rider came in after dark, last night. He’d been on border rounds south of here, down the river valley. There’s been a . . . whaddya call it when the ground falls in? Makes a pit?”

  “Sinkhole,” said Abasio.

  “Like that, yeah. Well, accordin’ to him, there’s one heckuva stink hole happened down the river valley, only it’s not just a hole. It’s like the whole section of river had a seam on its bottom side and somebody pulled the stitches out, and the whole riverbed’s dropped and spread out and then filled up with water. Like an arm a’ the ocean grabbed up at the mountains here.” He took another swallow, then gargled, “Did somebody see t’the horses?”

  Abasio stood aside so Runner could see the horses being watered, wiped down, petted, and praised by ­people from the escort camp.

  “That must be what happened the other day!” cried Arakny. “That earthquake that dropped all the chimneys at Wide Mountain. You say an arm of the ocean. You mean, it’s salt water flowing in?”

  “Not salt water flowin’ in, no, but it’s sure no water flowin’ out. ’Rakny, you used to ride the borders. You know the Wanderin’ Lows, the place down across from Cow’s Bottom Bluff? Had that big, deep pond in the middle and swampy all around it that spread all to gosh and gone when it rained? Took a long while to dry out and shrink back? An’ excep’ for the pond, ever’ time we thought we had it mapped, it went somewhere else?”

  Arakny said she did remember the deep pond and the Wandering Lows, yes, what about it?

  “Well, now there’s new streams—­not new ones, but old ones running in different directions—­comin’ inta that pool, an’ it’s spreadin’ out, and they say at the far south end there’s not much high ground between it and how far the ocean’s come. Like water’s runnin’ in from the ocean over a lot of the land south of us.”

  Arakny asked, “Anybody drowned, anybody’s house sunk, anything like that?”

  “No, that’s not the trouble! Trouble is, the border riders han’t been d
own that way in six months, so we didn’t know the blasted Edgers’ve put some kinda camp down there by the Lows pond—­only now the pond’s a regular lake—­and they’re buildin’ something the Mother-­Most needed to know about. And she said come get you all to go with me because you’ll probably be the ones best suited to see to it.”

  Grandma said, “I’ll tell the Oracles. I imagine they’ll want to know.” She went slowly up the path to the hidden door, the sandy path neatening itself behind each footfall, Needly looking after her with troubled eyes. Grandma had been forced to admit that the advice she had been given over the years had emanated from machines the Oracles had obtained or been given by someone. Someones. The Oracles could not take credit for the information the machines produced.

  They might take credit for obtaining the machines . . . if that acquisition had been an honest one. If not, the Oracles could take no credit at all, and though Grandma said she accepted that, she was having great difficulty breaking old habits of respect for the Oracles themselves. Needly felt no such ambivalence. Her certainty was growing that the Oracles were far from being the omniscient do-­gooders she had come to expect. Far from being do-­gooders at all.