The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  But now I’m whistling shark again and Zat One is pushing the bowawa off with her in it. One big uncle is coming out to them. That uncle goes right to the bowawa and tries to tip it over and I try to help him. I’m thinking what a good idea, but that it’ll take two of us at least. But then Zat One takes that finger thing and flashes it and the big uncle is rolling around in the water like a fish on land and then he’s dead. By the time I turn around from that uncle, Zat One and the red-haired one are beyond the surf.

  I’m angry even at myself because I had the stone in my hand and I just watched and waited to see if he would be like he usually is, and then he was, and now here’s this beautiful red young Person which he’s trying to make the ma of some thin, ugly, hairy baby. That young Person should be having her nice, fat, red-haired child, and she should have a good chance to laugh and play around in the water with somebody she likes.

  Then I see Zat One is doing another thing I haven’t seen before. He’s taking some of that string stuff he has and he’s tying the red Person’s wrists together and then he ties her to the edge of the bowawa. I’m surprised and I think that this is just as strange as if it were some place else entirely.

  They go along and I follow, wondering where is the fun in all this and why do it? Then I think how Zat One may be half-lizard. I’ve seen a lizard look in his eyes. I feel sorry for that red-headed Person who maybe only just picked out her cowry.

  She sees me coming and I see her seeing me. I stay back, but I wave the wave that means I’ll follow wherever she goes. Tied up like that, she can’t wave back, but she shakes her red hair at me and I know what she means.

  I smell sky water. Though I’ve only smelled it twice before, I remember it. There’s not only the smell of water from the sky, but the smell of storm, too, and the waves are swelling up. Maybe Zat One will be swept away if I’m not going to help him, but I have to help the red one. I must find something to cut her free with. Zat One has a nice sharp thing.

  I smell wet storm more and more and I know the red one smells it, too, because I see her raise her head and sniff. I’m also seeing the red hair hanging down her back and I think no wonder Zat One has her to be his Zoe instead of me, but I worry that she’s stuck to the bowawa and that the storm will come and she won’t be able to save herself, so I move closer. “Go on in to shore,” I say, “We’re too far out,” but he says, “No.”Then the red one says, “Go in,” too. He looks up into the wind and it seems he can tell what we can see and smell. Those clouds are still over at the elbow where they’ve been floating these last few days, but I think now they’ll come. “Go in while there’s still time,” I say, and he does.

  I don’t think about you and the future that might be. I want him gone, but not this red one. I think of her like a little sister and I don’t think her hair is like fie, but that her hair is like the sweetest berries, or like when the land gets wet. Mostly it’s yellow flowers, but there are a few red ones, too. I think I’ll call her Red Flower Person. No one would wonder who I was calling.

  There’s no good place to come ashore, but we do it anyway because by this time we have to. Zat One won’t untie Red Flower Person even now, though I ask him to. I come, then, and help, so we all get there, first to a flat rock and then to a split place and up that to a steep slope. It’s not easy with Red Flower Person stuck to the bowawa and her hands tied together, but Zat One makes her stay that way. He says, “Life isn’t always just picking up clams as you creatures seem to think it is,” but we know that.

  The higher we go, the higher the waves come. I think they want somebody and I’ll see to it the one they get will be Zat One. If I give him to the storm, maybe nobody’s baby will have to be swept away.

  Then we see it’s not spray anymore and Red Flower Person and I look at each other because it’s sky water and even though things aren’t so good for us right now, I see a good look in her eyes and I see that she can see a good look in mine. Soon the land will flower. Everything will change. Maybe even Zat One will be changed. How could it not be?

  That night Zat One turns the bowawa upside down on himself and sleeps inside it with Red Flower inside with him, still tied to it. Later the bowawa blows off them and almost takes Red Flower with it, down the slope to the cliffs to be swept away, except I hear her whistle even with all that howling wind and go to help. We pull the bowawa to a better spot and put some rocks on it.

  I don’t sleep. I keep wondering what to do and I wonder even more after that because I should have pushed Zat One off right then but I didn’t, partly because of his sharp thing that I think to use to cut Red Flower free and partly because I would have to push him down all the long sloping place before we’d get to the cliffs and by that time he would have killed me with that other thing, and then who would help Red Flower get free?

  I sit and sing storm songs to myself. Sometimes Red Flower sings along with me. I hear her when the storm isn’t so loud. I play a one, two, six, six, game. I lick the good sky water off myself. I catch some in my hands and drink. Sky water is the sweetest water of all. The sea of the sky is all made of this good stuff. I sleep a little finally, but I worry about what Zat One is doing to Red Flower in there under bowawa.

  It’s another day before the storm stops, and there’s a good lot of sky water. After it stops I really do sleep and when I wake up everything is as bright as it usually is.

  When Sweet Red comes out from under the bowawa, as best she can still tied up to it, I see that good look in her eyes again. We tell Zat One it’s a thing we must go see, but he says no. We tell him all three of us should go out into the land and drink sweet water and dance and watch the thing happening which has already begun, but he says no again. Then I think I’ll cut Sweet Red free right then. I’ll get his sharp thing. Why have I been waiting? I pick up a stone and come to him, but he takes out that thing that flashes and points it at me. I see the lizard look in his eyes, and yet I see that he doesn’t want to do this, but I also see that he will if he needs to. I put the rock down and turn my back and sit. So let him kill me, then, except it isn’t me who needs to die, and, if me, who will help Sweet Red Flower?

  “There’s no time,” he says and puts that thing away. “Time! I’ve told you how important it is. We have to get this thing started.”

  But why can’t we wait a few days until the color comes out? This is what People always do. You will do it when your turn comes. You’ll go off to where the land blooms for no other reason than to see it. You’ll be like us in that.

  I had a dream of wrees during the storm. They blew back and forth like seaweed and splashed the land with sky water. Under the wrees the flowers grew so that everything was yellow and the ground looked like the sun and we lived comfortable on the land as if we were Sun People. It was shaded and wet, but we missed swimming around. I was sad in my dream and then I was frightened because howling land sharks came… a great school of land sharks and I had no place to go because I was up on the land already so there was no place to escape to.

  The water is calm now. We take the bowawa down and we go on as we did go, me in the water and he pushing the bowawa along with those funny things, and Sweet Red still tied to it. Sometimes she splashes herself with water so as to feel cooler. Sometimes I do it for her. Splashing always makes us laugh.

  This time Zat One has some of those stones in the bowawa and sometimes he stops to rest and chips at a stone again. Other times he stops and makes marks on that thing he says is for his sons. The ma stones are all still me, not Sweet Red Person. They’re all a ma who has come into her full fat.

  We pass beaches sometimes with People, but we don’t stop, and then, almost by mistake, we do get to see the land flowers. We come to a place where the banks of the sea roll down smooth like I’ve never seen before, and there are tips of green there already. As we go along we begin to see more and more yellow and then a lot of it and some patches of red. Then Zat One brings the bowawa in closer to take a look. Zat One stands up in the bowawa and Swe
et Red does, too, and I wish I could stand up and see better, too. We go closer, but Zat One doesn’t come to be in it. He just sits down again and we go on. When he lands, it’s on a beach where he chases out some seals, though it’s their beach.

  This beach is full of stones and will be uncomfortable and it’s a place where we can’t see the yellow, though there are some small patches of it back where it’s not so stony. It’s almost as if Zat One picked it because of not many flowers. It’s as if he wants the opposite of fun. Could such a person be?

  I’m getting more and more worried about Sweet Red being stuck like that to the bowawa. I tell Zat One again that this isn’t safe for her. I tell him she won’t run away. “Let her come on back into the land with me,” I say, “so as to be as if standing on the sun.” But Zat One won’t let that happen. He pulls the bowawa up where it’s not quite so rocky, turns it upside down and they sleep there. I sleep just out beyond the surf. It’s a good night for it.

  Zat One sits, the next day, making more one-hand-sized ma stones. He makes as many as two hands’ worth.

  All this while I bring food to Sweet Red because it’s impossible for her to go out and find something to eat. (Zat One eats clams, but I don’t get them for him.) I give Sweet Red the best of what I find. I call her Sister Sweet Red and she calls me Sister Sweet Ma though I tell her I’m not a ma yet. “But I’ll watch over you, anyway,” I say, “as if I was a ma of your own home People.”

  We talk, but not about what we really want to talk about. (Zat One sits too near. I’m sorry now I taught him so many words.) After a while I go beyond the rocks a ways into the land and bring Sweet Red all the flowers I can carry. I tie them to themselves in little bunches and put them all around Sweet Red and I see I’m making Sweet Red happy even though she’s worried about being tied up. We hug and laugh and play almost as if we were in the water though you can’t play very well on land. I see Zat One watch us, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking. It’s always some land kind of thought. Even if I knew what it was, I wouldn’t know it.

  Sweet Red tells me sad things. She says that the big uncle that was killed was her mother’s oldest brother. Then she cries. She says he was called Old Bird because once he helped one of those big black birds. Old Bird fed it fish and it would sit on Old Bird’s head when he was standing about in the water or even when he was swimming. And Sweet Red smiles because that’s a good memory. “It stayed with Old Bird until it died, but it had a good death right after the land bloomed.”

  We’re in the shade of the bowawa or else we would have to be in the water because of the heat. Even Zat One is down where the waves wash over him. He moves up with the tide, but Sister Sweet Red is stuck above where the water comes. Then I think to cup up water in a big shell and cool Sweet Red. I make her good and wet and the pebbles and sand around her wet and we sit and watch the sun go down.

  In the morning I see one of those stingers that maybe I slept close to all night and didn’t know it. I’m always thinking what to do about Zat One, so I think about the stinger. It’s drifting slowly in. Maybe Zat One doesn’t know about those things.

  ZUESA

  This has been coming out better than I ever thought it could. I’ve found my real Zoe. I hadn’t thought I’d be so lucky as to find a red-haired one. There’s a current flowing north, and I think it’s grown a little cooler, though that may be because of the rain. I thought, before I leave the beach, I’d make each of them a hat out of seaweed. Some of that seaweed is good and strong. They’ll not have had hats before. Even the big one may like it. I worry about her, though. I wonder how jealous they get. It’s a powerful emotion, and I only have one shot left. I was saving it for her just in case. She had been looking around for a way to get me even before, but they’re all so childlike I can read everything they’re about to do on their faces. They always hesitate. They never just do something. I saw her look and think about a jellied mass floating just beyond the surf, and I stopped that before she got started with it.

  I’m glad I didn’t let them go out to see the desert blooming. I hope it taught them something. That kind of thing goes with that all-day sex they do, and I’ve no time for it. I want to see this world begin before I’m too old to keep control of it. I want to be in my prime when my sons are grown so I can help them learn. Rapid seeding is my first priority.

  However, I stayed on at that beach all the next day. The little goddesses were finished, but I thought to make not only the hats, but a sun shade for the boat. I wonder that I’d not thought of it before. Poor Zoe. She’s always splashing water on herself.

  I was busy with the sun shade when she (what should I call the other one now?) went out to get that jelly thing, holding out a shell and piece of drifted-up brush. I thought to teach her another lesson. I took out the zapper and told her to come back and quickly. I said that even though I was about to make her a gift I knew she’d like, I’d not hesitate to kill her. I said she was no more than a seal or an otter to me, which wasn’t true. I even told her I’d eat her, and that if I ate her, I’d know everything she knew. Of course, I’d do no such thing. I said it even though I knew it would just add to her superstitions. I don’t want to kill her. As much as I can say I like any of these creatures, I like her, but it may come down to a matter of me or her.

  The way she looks at me…. I’ve had that kind of look many times before. I’ve captured those small men from the mountain trees, and I’ve had four at once looking at me like that. And not so long ago I’ve had my own captains looking at me in the same how-to-get-ridof-him manner. But these creatures will never be fast enough to do it.

  VENUS

  I like the thing he calls hauwa. That’s a real thing. It has a nice wideness to it, it balances, it makes me feel like laughing. It’s the very first land kind of thing that’s a good thing. I’m surprised we haven’t thought of it ourselves. And then, when he makes the hauwa for the bowawa, I’m surprised we didn’t go around making things like that, too, even for sitting on our beaches. After he gives me my hauwa, I put some of those flowers on it. I don’t have to go far. There are clumps near our beach. I do that for Sweet Red’s hauwa, too, even more than on mine. Then, when he finishes the hauwa for the bowawa, we go off again, me swimming not far behind. It’s good they go slowly because I’m doing a lot of thinking, and I’m still worrying about Sweet Red being tied up all the time, and what will happen to her if something happens?

  But now he’s landing at another beach full of People. This beach has a lot of big clumps of rocks out from the shore. Zat One leaves the bowawa in the water and hooks it to one. I hide behind the rocks, but I come in closer when those People come out of the water to see what’s happening. I don’t hide on purpose exactly, I just wonder what to do and when and if. Things are going all wrong and I’m not fixing them. My mind isn’t enough like a lizard.

  Zat One lines up all the new ma stones in a half-circle and then he begins to say everything all over again and then he’s building fie like he always does, but these People have a lot more stuff on their beach to do it with, not only dry seaweed, but a lot of washed-up land stuff, too. Zat One takes all the stuff they have and makes a big circle of fie near the ma stones he stuck into the sand. It’s the biggest fie I ever saw and I think maybe this fie really is something even though it has no usefulness and is even hotter than all the others.

  Sweet Red is still sitting, stuck to the bowawa. She’s in the shade of the hauwa that’s on the bowawa, so she isn’t wearing her hauwa. Those hauwas are in the bottom of the bowawa. By now all the People are gathered around Zat One and are looking at the ma stones and at the fie. I swim over behind the bowawa and take Sweet Red’s hauwa out. I take that one because it has more flowers on it than mine. I go out a ways, put it on, and then come ashore, standing up and walking through the surf.

  I am beautiful. Sweet Red is not yet as beautiful as I am, though she’ll be even more so, but now I’m the most beautiful one I know of. My hair hangs down and is whitened
by the sun, and I know it shines. I walk in a way I’ve never seen anybody walk before. I don’t know why I even thought of it. I keep my arms up and out as wide as the hauwa, which is very wide. I walk slowly, and I come to the edge of the half-circle of fie and half-circle of ma stones. I’m the big one of all these mas. I even surprise Zat One. He’s backing up. He’s not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, and, even though he saw the hauwa before and knew it was covered with yellow and some red, too, his eyes get as if he never saw such a thing as me in my hauwa coming up out of the sea, walking in this special way. And those People…. They don’t know what to do either. They back up like Zat One does. Fie didn’t make them do it and not the ma stones, but I, with my hauwa, did it. I know what they think, too, with all this yellow and this big round thing on my head. They think I’m the ma that peeks out from behind the sun.

  I haven’t thought about what to do next, but I already know that water can stop fie and I’m wet and so is the hauwa. This is a big fie, so I’m not sure, but I walk into it and don’t think if it hurts or not. I stand on one part and drip there and make that part go away. This is right. This is water over land things and even over the cruel sun.