Fish Tails

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Abasio was still struggling with cannibalistic images. “And after all the new-­­people are taken home from their roots, what happens to the rest of the field of . . .”

  “Were-­not-­­people,” it said helpfully. “Inspectors go through field to be sure all new-­­people are gone, taken home. Usually by then a left-­behind-­person would be known; someone would have seen lonely becoming-­person with no visitors; someone would have called inspector to come see what needs doing. Only if very recent disaster happened and whole maflipluk was killed, new-­person might be left behind. Inspectors take them and arrange . . . adoption. Only when all new-­­people are taken then reaping machines process all not-­­people for food over winter. Many good recipes. In winter only special-­occasion twigpits in greenhouse are fresh g’forz, rest is all packaged. Of course, we eat also many other things; the world has many gardens, orchards, fisheries. We have very nice kitchen; we have member of maflipluk, family, who is dibble: Fantarisa-­vitonka. Fanty is excellent cook! Dib even took classes in cookery! Many dibbles are good at cookery. They give such attention to detail. We joke at dib, such a fussy one cooking!” Balytaniwassinot smiled, shook tan’s head at the memory, saying, ‘Do not touch that minced glabthrot, take from mouth this instant! I am needing for recipe!’ ”

  Abasio found himself wondering just how this arrangement could have evolved. He visualized ancient fields full of omnivorous creatures struggling away from their drying roots, stumbling out into the world, stopping to take a bite out of a wasn’t-­person every now and then. He shook his head. “And so . . . who do you live with, and what is your home like?”

  “Oh, Self’s maflipluk has very nice house at edge of dancing fields. Big family room and kitchen. Each family member has own study-­bedroom-­sanitation-­grooming-­room. Bedrooms have very good soil beds. When house was built, maflipluk sent to planet known for quality of self-­sifting bedding soil, all little clods breaking down by themselves in daytime. While one is asleep, little night roots come out all over, take goodness from bedding soil. In morning when one wakes, night roots reabsorb into body. Every so many sleeping times, new sprinkle of goodness is sifted onto bed. If one is wakened, for emergency, roots all sticking out, one gets up looking like quizzinog! All furry. Most dis . . . repu . . . table.”

  “But you also eat food?”

  “Oh, yes. Food is for taste, for amusement, for fun, for sitting around table together. Now that Self is eldest except for one dibble, most of family are ones Self has chosen or chosen ones of my chosen ones: danced, recepted, planted, fertilized, chosen. One for every year. Of course, years on our planet are very long. One may choose only . . . at most four of its own in a lifetime. Two or three is more usual. Wurf who made me first chosen, that wurf and Self were partners for many trips, but wurf wilted last year. Two of Self’s chosen have chosen ones of theirs, even the eldest one of theirs has one of its. It is a good . . . family.”

  It reached onto a shelf, took down a little box, and rifled through it, handing Abasio a picture. It showed eight creatures, of five very different varieties though all shared a similar body shape. One had very odd knee joints, another a noticeable swelling of the arms. He recognized Fixit at once. And there was another like it. Two tans. And, according to Fixit, who pointed out the easily distinguishable types: two isks, two blags, a dibble, and a wurf. “One of our dibbles, the good cook Fantarisa-­vitonka, chosen one of that isk at end of row, was taking picture,” said Balytaniwassinot, wiping a furtive tear from his breathing duct. “I was chosen one of wurf in picture who is wilted now. Oh, I will be glad to be home.”

  Abasio could not help himself, he reached out and patted Fixit on the nearest approximation of a shoulder. Fixit smiled, saying suddenly, “Abasio, do you have bao?”

  “I’ve heard the word,” said Abasio carefully, without emphasis, something inside him at full alert. “I can’t remember ever having heard it defined, though. Something to do with respect, I think.”

  “This world, is it belonging to some kind of collective? Council? Ruler?”

  Abasio considered this, his eyes fixed on the cup of whatever it had been. Happy-­making, sensory-­negating liquid . . . that just might tend to make a person silly enough to say something . . . dangerous. Well, he and Xulai had discussed precisely this question. At some length! Wasn’t that propitious. Convenient. Appropriate. Foresightful! Damn right!

  “No,” he said with apparent unconcern. “Certainly not that I know of. If it’s conscious, I suppose it belongs to itself. You spoke of its spirit, but I have no idea whether spirits think in terms of . . . ownership. I suppose a spirit might say ‘my world’ just as I might say ‘my job’ is to do this and that. It doesn’t mean the job belongs to me forever, it just means I’m currently responsible for it. I suppose a world would belong to itself, that is, collectively to all consciousness on it or in it. Or to whatever collective it might have decided to belong to or have been admitted to for its benefit. Or if none of those apply, then I really don’t know. I doubt anyone except the Creator could claim complete ownership of it, if even the Creator cared to do so.” And if that didn’t cover all possible bases, nothing would. Thank heaven he’d rehearsed it over and over. And don’t forget to warn Xulai! Needly wouldn’t need warning. Or Grandma. “I imagine you, Fixit, for example, might say of this planet, ‘It’s one of my worlds,’ meaning you’re responsible for it but not asserting ownership. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, just curious,” said Fixit, smiling sincerely. It had been fairly sure, but it was nice to have it confirmed. Fixit liked Abasio. Fixit had counted on Abasio. Fixit was glad he would not have to end up drowning Abasio.

  Chapter 15

  The Matter of Bao

  WHILE ABASIO WAS BEING ENTERTAINED BY FIXIT, THE three women who had arrived on Fixit’s ship, plus two weary animals who had walked all the way from Cow Bluff, were being cared for by Wide Mountain Mother. First, she and Arakny had set about meeting the needs of the women, particularly Mavin, the one who had been stone. On emerging into flexibility, her clothes had fallen into dust around her.

  Jinian had cried, “We never thought of it. Silkhands and I brought clothing, but we never thought of clothing for Mavin.”

  Arakny wrapped her in a robe. They all had a cup of calming tea. Bear and Coyote had a drink of cold water, then happily accepted Mother’s offer of a warm room with a large bed that Mother had first covered with an old blanket. Silkhands saw them limping and insisted on looking at and treating their feet with a salve that stopped the pain. They were asleep before she closed the door on them. Meantime, Arakny had suggested that the women who had come with Fixit might enjoy the bathhouse and a change of clothes in her spacious wing of the house before meeting to discuss the reason for their journey.

  There were tubs for everyone; Jinian washed Mavin’s hair and brought her up-­to-­date on affairs back in Lom. The most difficult information to give her had been about the talents, the loss of talents, so Jinian concentrated on the compensations. Jinian’s husband, Mavin’s son, Peter, was well. Mavin now had grandchildren. No, a thousand years hadn’t passed in the way Mavin would have supposed if she had heard the curse before fossilizing. When they returned to Lom, only a decade or so would have passed since Mavin was petrified.

  Mavin dealt with all this by returning to outrage—­in a furious mutter—­at the fact no one had had the sense to put new clothing around her so she wouldn’t be displayed naked in the plaza. Jinian reminded herself that Mavin, at the time of her petrification, had been in a fighting frenzy, and nothing in the stony time between would have served to calm her. She whispered this supposition to Wide Mountain Mother, and everyone concentrated on being soothing. By the time Mavin had been dressed in the clothing Arakny had provided and emerged from the room, clean and warm, her hair neatly braided, she had calmed down and was beginning to grasp a general outline of what was going on.

  “All
those clothes!” Mavin remarked to Arakny as they passed the large side room with shelves on all the walls, the room from which she had been outfitted. “It’s like a shop! You have children’s things, too.”

  “Well, I guess it is a kind of shop,” Arakny confessed. “I think we can clothe you decently while you are with us. This is what we call our emergency store. It’s where our ­people bring clean, wearable used clothing that children have outgrown or women have grown tired of. Some women who love to sew or knit make new things especially for the emergency store. We have wedding gowns of various types, just in case an eloping ­couple happens by. Any of it can be provided to ­people who need it: if someone is trapped away from home by weather, or has had an accident on the road, or has been attacked by some unprincipled wanderer—­or”—­she gave Mavin an encouraging smile—­“someone who has been petrified for a long time. You are the first we have had in that category.”

  “Not one I recommend,” said Mavin, looking around. “Nothing for men?”

  “We have little-­boy things here. Clothing for men and boys old enough to prefer being dressed by father than by mother are stored in similar fashion in the men’s house, across the stream and the dance ground. We keep a supply of other necessities, too, sanitary and grooming supplies; the men’s house has razors. Basically, we try to keep on hand what someone would need who had been flooded out or burned out or robbed on the road. Though that very seldom happens anymore.”

  Mavin said innocently, “I will bet you that all donated shoes and boots are the same size.”

  Mother frowned at her and murmured, “I don’t know why that would be.”

  “Don’t you have women who come in here and claim they’re all the wrong size?”

  Arakny laughed. “Oh, yes. You’re right, Mavin. Mother, remember the wheelwright’s wife whose wagon got hit by lightning?”

  They laughed together remembering the number of pairs of shoes the woman had tried on, and, indeed, they had all been the wrong size. “Three pair fit her perfectly well,” said Mother. “But she was determined to be upset. I’m glad it was at the shoes and not at the supper.”

  Mavin was sufficiently soothed and recovered that she actually smiled at that. Meantime she was thinking what a sensible situation this was. The men and women didn’t try to live together. They obviously met, to suit themselves, when it suited themselves, but they didn’t try to live together. That would have solved her problem with her . . . her son’s father, back on Lom . . .

  When they rejoined the others in the large, firelit living room of Wide Mountain Mother’s house, the group had grown in size. Half a dozen local women who had seen the turtle arrive had decided since Mother was having visitors, Mother would definitely need several dozen small fruit-­stuffed pastries, some fresh cookies, perhaps some spice bread. Wide Mountain Mother introduced the visitors from Lom, at first being surprised that they all understood one another so well, though on reflection, she realized the ships that had taken Earthian ­people to Lom all those centuries ago had been built here and had departed from here; the machines in the ships spoke the language spoken on this part of Earth; the books that had been saved on this continent were in that same language. Here and there small print shops still printed books, not many and not often, but those that were printed were in that same language, and Volumetarians had for centuries distributed them discreetly: a dictionary here, a children’s book there, a book of fables, a book of basic science, a book of history so the Big Kill would not be forgotten. Village schools still taught children to read the languages the Volumetarians had persisted in keeping alive and uncorrupted. Thus the three women returning from the stars were both understanding the others and being understood by them.

  By the time Mavin joined them, the group had already become engaged in the motherly or grandmotherly activity of bragging about offspring and circulating pictures of children and grandchildren or, in two cases, great-­grandchildren. Cameras were virtually unknown in Artemisia, where the women treasured little portraits drawn or painted by traveling artists who made the circuit every few years memorializing youth or weddings or anniversaries. Jinian had brought some high-­tech pictures of Crumpet and Crash from Lom, where the Mountain ship was still turning out ­people trained to design things, build things, and take pictures of things, and she immediately sat down next to Mavin, putting the pictures of Crash and Crumpet into her hands. She identified them as Crash and Crumpet. “They have much longer family names for proper occasions.”

  “Peter’s children?” Mavin murmured. “And yours . . . Are they good children, healthy and bright?” She accepted Jinian’s nod. There were tears in her eyes. If it weren’t for this trip, she would never have seen them! The last shreds of resentment faded. Whatever they wanted her to do . . . she’d do it.

  The traditional words about the children were said, with varying degrees of sincerity, while Needly listened in amazement. Nothing done in Hench Valley had prepared her for womanly gatherings with heaping platters of sweet things on the table, endless cups of tea, and a seemingly unlimited number of pictured offspring, each and every one of whom—­despite their quite ordinary appearance—­were said to be cleverer, prettier, and nicer than any other children anywhere. Jinian, who had two of her own, doubted this and actually winked at Needly on one occasion when the bragging threatened to go into orbit.

  Much to Silkhands’s confusion, the gathering paid only brief attention to the most urgent situation involving the visitors. Jinian and she had traveled some light-­years in very short elapsed time—­wormhole travel was faster than light, though since there was no light in wormholes they had had no impression of great speed—­and they had arrived ready to do whatever needed to be done about something called a Griffin, only to be caught up in this offspring contest where Mavin was being shown pictures of her son’s children, whom she had never met, by her son’s wife, Jinian, who had had no trouble admiring other ­people’s children.

  Silkhands herself, however, was having trouble breathing. Somewhere near her was another child, a child whose spirit was trapped and suffocating, crushed and in pain. No one was paying attention.

  The mutual admiration still showed little sign of tapering off sometime later when Abasio and Fixit joined the group. Two chairs were moved in from another room and the newcomers sat down. Abasio had some difficulty in lining up chair with body as he sat between Silkhands and Needly. From across the room, Xulai looked at him with raised eyebrows. He shrugged, then nodded, then smiled. Yes, he was squiffy. Yes, his smile said, he was definitely squiffy. However, his face said that the person, thing, creature responsible for his squiffiness, whatever he, she, it, or they was, was a very pleasant . . . creature.

  Xulai, awash in tea, sighed. Men had all the fun. Bailai and Gailai were asleep in an adjacent room, and despite all the child talk around her, she had not mentioned them once. One did not want to remind ­people that all their bragged-­on children could not, in their current much-­admired forms, produce descendants who would survive the coming inundation. Under the circumstances, it would not be fitting for the mother of the future to do her own bragging about children who would. Wide Mountain Mother, who had met Bailai and Gailai, gave her a look that carried both sympathy and understanding.

  Needly was very conscious of the confusion and disturbance in several minds in the room, including that of Grandma, who was sitting next to her. Needly had always thought of Grandma as she thought of the mountains—­solid, eternal, and immovable—­and she had maintained this judgment despite Grandma’s probable misjudgment of the Oracles. Even mountains had an occasional crevasse. Needly had doubted the Oracles from her first contact with them. She had felt Grandma’s need to believe in them without knowing the basis of that need. To go on believing in them, however, Grandma had had to ignore their having been no help with Willum, which Needly could not ignore and would not forgive. As though to echo her pain, she heard Abasio ask Sil
khands, who was sitting between him and Jinian, whether she had as yet seen Willum.

  Needly heard her mutter, “Is that his name? I have come all this way to do something important. I am sitting in a room where I can feel a spirit suffocating, trapped, in agony, a boy. His pain is my pain—­no, I have not seen him—­and why are we sitting, talking, talking, talking?”

  Abasio took her hand in his own and pressed it, whispering, “Give it a few moments.”

  “Tell me about the stone medicine again, what’s it made of?” Precious Wind queried Grandma.

  Needly produced the bottle, which Precious Wind smelled.

  Grandma then repeated what she had said before, producing her little notebook, which had a drawing of the plant. Fixit whispered into its note taker. Silkhands fumed.

  “Then what is the antidote made of?” Precious Wind asked.

  Grandma told her. The notebook was perused. Finally Precious Wind turned to Arakny and said, “It’s nothing I ever learned about. It’s not among the herbal remedies I know.”

  Jinian remarked, “If I hadn’t seen this notebook, I’d have said it isn’t herbal at all, it’s magic—­a curse in a bottle and an anticurse in another bottle. Exactly the same curse that kept Mavin as a stone.”

  “But it required that plant to make it,” Grandma objected, rather sharply. “And there was no invocation, as would be required with either curse or blessing!”

  Silkhands bit her lip and snarled silently into her teacup. She had not come all this way to discuss herbs! She caught Abasio’s eyes on her. He winked. How could he! He patted the air, saying without saying “be patient.” Needly gave her a sympathetic look. Silkhands attempted to be patient. The others obviously didn’t know what it was like for her, though she thought the child had an inkling of it. She could feel the discomfort, the struggle going on, a spirit trying desperately to get loose, screaming that it was being compressed and suffocated. No one else could detect it. They went on talking.