Fish Tails

  “I heard about that, but I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Abasio said. “The babies are almost a year old; they’re very healthy, they’re almost weaned, and they’re growing fast. When we get to the ocean, down below Artemisia, they’ll probably start eating seafood, that is, fish and seaweed, things right out of the ocean.”

  “Give ’em back the damn horse,” shouted Pa suddenly, yelling it into Lorp’s face. “You are all the time getting us into trouble, Lorp. You and your prophecies and your shapist sillyness! Tryin’ t’kill that traveling lady just because she had earrings on! Now this nonsense! None a’ us care ’f yer a Lorpian or a crawdad! We’re going to give them back their horse, and you’re going to be shut about it, and if I hear any more about it out of your mouth, it’ll be the last thing you say!”

  “Wow,” whispered Willum. “Pa don’t let go very often, but when he does, look out!”

  Pa stood at the top of the hill, waving his arm. In a moment someone came out of the town, leading Kim’s horse.

  “Meet him halfway,” said Abasio to Kim, and Kim started down the hill. When they met, the reins were handed over, and Kim brought white-­footed, mostly black Socky to rejoin Blue and Rags. The ladies from Gravysuck had finished the obligatory cup and were preparing to leave. Xulai waved them farewell, with smiles, but Ma looked around, searching. “Where’s Willum?”

  Everyone looked. No Willum. “Did he go back to the town?” Abasio asked.

  “Must’ve,” said Ma. “That boy’s gone more than he’s anywhere. He’ll show up for supper. Seldom if ever he misses supper.”

  THAT NIGHT, WITH KIM, THE babies, and the horses asleep, Xulai and Abasio met with Bertram in his cavern, entered from the shop basement through a narrow slot in the mountain. Air moved freely through the space, making the candle in the lantern flicker. The first space they came to was empty and uninteresting, a cave, merely a vacancy in the stone, but a narrow and twisting crevasse led them to a second, very different cavern. It was huge, high, echoing, and filled with transparent cases of books. One of the cases had been unsealed, the others were misted inside with gray vapor. Bertram confessed to having opened the one.

  “That case held the inventory, and also it had the book about the wet suit,” he said, pointing. “When I opened the case, the gas inside came out. I wouldn’t have opened it except that I had more gas canisters, so I knew I could refill it when I put the books back. Strictly speaking, I shouldn’t have opened the case even so. But, since I knew I could reseal it, I decided I could at least take a look at the case that had the inventory in it.”

  “Are there more of these places?”

  “Book repositories? Oh, yes, wherever there are Volumetarians.”

  “They’re books about the oceans,” said Xulai, who had been looking more closely at the books in the open case. “They’re scientific books, full of graphs and charts and mathematics. Gracious. I wonder if my ­people know about all this.”

  “Would they understand them?” asked Bertram eagerly. “I’ve wanted someone to come who could understand them. Or someone who would take them to someone who would understand them.”

  “Oh, yes. That’s exactly what my ­people in Tingawa do,” said Xulai. “Bertram, keep your secret just a few months more while I arrange for ­people to come. They have arranged for all the information to be kept in a form that will still be accessible when the waters have risen. Would all the Volumetarians want their books to be copied?”

  “Copied? You mean, written down?”

  “It’s easier than that,” said Abasio. “They have machines with eyes. The eyes look at each page and store all the information that’s on it. It goes as fast as the machine can turn the pages.”

  Bertram’s face lit up and he heaved an enormous sigh. “How wonderful. I’ve thought of it over and over. If I can be sure there are ­people coming, I’ll seal up the little slot we came in through—­make it look like a natural fall, you know. Then, when the ­people get here, they can go in and copy them all. I’ll give them the list of my kindred and friends, each of them will give others, and so on until all of them are reached. None of us have the complete list. There were times when that just wasn’t wise. But when that’s done, all of us Volumetarians can quit living like hermits!”

  “There’s someone you’re interested in?” asked Xulai.

  He blushed. “There is a girl in Asparagoose . . .” He sighed. “We’re sworn not to reveal to anyone outside the fold, as it were, that we are Volumetarians.”

  Abasio asked, “Do you have any idea what the rest of the books are about?”

  “There are sections on everything. Astronomy through zoology. Everything.”

  They slipped back the way they had come. “Would you like our help in sealing it up?” Abasio asked. “The fact that you seemed friendly with us may stir up some talk; it could lead to troublemakers hanging about.”

  Bertram lifted his lantern, pointing to the pile of stone next to the crevasse entry. “The ones on top are the ones that go on the bottom,” he said. “I thought it’d make it quicker, putting them back. It shouldn’t take us any time at all.”

  While Xulai held the lantern, they stacked the stones, mostly a matter of tumbling the large stones down and tossing the small bottom ones on the top. Repiling was obviously easier than unpiling had been. When they were finished, the pile looked like several others around the walls of the cavern. As they were about to leave, Xulai stopped. “Footprints,” she said. In the lantern light, their footprints led straight to the pile of stone.

  “I’ll get a broom,” said Bertram, leaving them momentarily.

  “Strange,” said Abasio to Xulai. “Bertram, I mean. So . . . unlike the other inhabitants of Gravysuck. It’s almost as though he belongs somewhere else.”

  “Place I was before, it wasn’t that different from here,” said Bertram, returning. “But a long time ago, I opened one of the cases there and started reading the books in it. I read almost every book in it, and it was a big, big case. Fiction, the books were called. Stories. It’s like I’d lived the lives of hundreds of other ­people, you know. I believe it would be hard to be just a Gravysucker or a Saltgoshian or a Burned-­Hatter once you’ve done that.”

  Abasio, thinking of the wonders of the library helmet that he had hidden in the wagon, knew exactly what he meant, and so did Xulai. Olly had given him her helmet before she left. She had been given it by one of Artemisia’s librarians. They had received the helmets originally, so they said, from helpful creatures who had come from some other place or time or universe. In any event, Abasio had taken his helmet all the way to Tingawa, where the babies were born. There a scientist named Savanker Kyn Dool had found not only that the Tingawan labs could duplicate it, but also that new, empty helmets made exactly like the sample one were able to access the same information source as the original helmets. In addition, they were waterproof. When humanity was at last consigned only to the sea, their books could go with them. Savanker Kyn Dool was the same man who had given them the key to making humans and other creatures “seaworthy.”

  Bertram was very busy for the next several days. Willum came and went and came again, often bringing others with him, children and adults, to watch the babies swimming in the nearby pond among the trees, to play with them under Xulai’s watchful eyes. Willum was uniformly gentle and playful with the babies—­he said they were pretty much like baby goats and sheep, except for being wet—­and they soon adored him. Lorp (who, it turned out, had taken his name from the Lorpist sect) was still trying to convince the village that Abasio and Xulai and their children were “monsers,” but he made very little headway against the babies’ chortles, grins, and happy splashes.

  Xulai, using the Tingawan far-­talker that had been installed in their wagon, spent most of one night reaching her friend Precious Wind, who was traveling toward them and was now somewhere southeast of Artemisia
. Precious Wind had far more practice in using the device—­which, like most devices, ancient or modern, had its quirks—­and she in turn reached the appropriate ­people in Tingawa and reported back that they were sending a mission from the University to record all the books in Bertram’s hoard and getting his list of Volumetarians so they could record everything that existed in print. On hearing this, Bertram burst into tears and hugged both Abasio and Xulai repeatedly, confessing brokenly that he could not forgive himself for having been rude to the lovely children. Xulai patted him into a semblance of poise and forgave him yet again.

  Later Xulai told Abasio, “I told Precious Wind about the Lorpians. They haven’t shown up in her area, not yet at least. She has several groups well started along the coast down there, and she feels they can continue the work without her. Most of the ­people down there can actually see the water rising; they’re not skeptical. So she’s decided to head back in our direction to be with us in case we meet up with a Lorpian threat. She’ll meet us in Artemisia, and according to the map, it’s just two valleys and a pass away!”

  Abasio nodded, glad of it. Xulai had been lonely for female companionship. She had actually borne the bulk of the “fatedness” they shared. It was she who had borne the children, she who nursed them, she who did most of the caring for them. Having Precious Wind with her once more would give her some help and make him feel far less guilty. Not guilty of anything in particular, just for existing in a kind of not-­particularly-­helpful male matrix of some kind. Being the one responsible for constant alertness to danger and constant readiness to meet it did not qualify as “doing something.” This journey had for both of them been an isolated, anxious, sometimes angry time—­angry not at each other, but infuriated by certain villagers. Or sometimes reduced to hidden laughter.

  A schoolmaster had explained to them: “Y’see, when there gets t’be ’nuff a’ that water, see, it’ll all run t’the bottom, see, and the earth’ll just float on it, see, with the north half outta the water an’ we’re not worried ’cause we’re on the north half!”

  When Xulai had asked which way was the bottom, it was carefully explained that all the maps showed which way was up and which way was down. The south was down because it was heavier and water always ran downhill. The village schoolmaster had been delighted to explain the matter to them and delighted to calm any fears their visit might have occasioned. He was quite, quite sure they were far enough north to be above the waterline.

  That village had not been dangerous. Other villages were dangerous, but Xulai and Abasio had been warned. They’d known. The constant abrasion of implacable ignorance and focused animosity had not yet rubbed through their defenses, but the everlasting watchfulness had been extremely wearying. That night, soothed by the fact that Precious Wind would soon be with them, Abasio totally relaxed into sleep. He dreamed once again of the not-­Lom place. It was the Plethrob dream. He paid attention. Maybe this time he could make sense of some of it . . .

  And in the morning, Abasio awoke suddenly with the whole dream firmly in mind. It stayed with him for at least ten seconds. Then he realized what had awakened him was Bailai, loudly shouting his first word: “Il-­lum. ILLUM. ILLUM.”

  Beside him, wrenched from sleep, Xulai burst into tears.

  “There, there, dear,” said Abasio to Xulai, holding her closely while she wept. “Come, come, sweetheart. I know you expected them to say ‘Mama’ or ‘Papa,’ or ‘Dada’ or whatever, but since we don’t address one another by those names, it was illogical for us to expect that the babies would read our minds. We do address Willum as ‘Willum’ frequently, and Willum is far more ubiquitous than we! He’s in constant motion. He’s noisy. He brings ­people who bring treats and toys. He is unfailingly amusing. We, on the other hand, are merely part of the environment.”

  “I was looking forward to their saying ‘Mama.’ ” She wept.

  “Now, now, dear heart. I don’t call you ‘Mama,’ Willum doesn’t call you ‘Mama.’ They will say something like ‘Oolai,’ because that’s what they’ve heard. Oolai and Baso probably. You’ll grow sick of hearing it soon enough.” He believed what he said, then during the rest of the day tried to remember how he knew that.

  The next day Gailai’s first word was “Oolai,” and by evening Xulai knew that Abasio had been right. Gailai said it: within hours, Bailai said it, then shouted it, and very soon they were both shouting it at every opportunity.

  “Lug them over to the pond, will you, Willum?” said Abasio, his ears ringing.

  “Drown them,” muttered Xulai.

  “Don’t think they drown,” said Willum thoughtfully. “Y’want me to try?”

  “She was joking, Willum!”

  “Oh, fiddle, ’Basio. I know that,” said Willum, with the scorn of which only a very bright child is capable. Abasio, as a matter of fact, recognized the tone as one he himself had sometimes used. As a child.

  “It’s time to wean them,” Xulai announced. “They’re teething. They bite! Remind me what the ­people in Tingawa said I was to feed them. We’ve only given them fruit and vegetables . . .”

  Abasio recalled the instructions: “Anything we eat, a tiny bit at a time, mashed up. Not too much of any new thing, at first, and easy on the seasonings.”

  Some days passed. The children grew fond of eggs. And crackers. And leaves and moss and insects. Willum carried a damp handkerchief about with him for wiping out mouths. The ­people of Gravysuck grew familiar with the concept that the waters were indeed rising. Several young ­people announced their intention of traveling to Wellsport, to see about taking part in the future. Xulai began to look less weary and laugh more often. Kim rode off to find reputed horse breeders, here and there, but could not locate another team of horses.

  They had become too well accepted to suit at least one villager. Arising from bed and leaving the wagon one morning, Abasio almost tripped over a body stretched out on the ground, near where the horses were grazing. Lorp. Lorp with a knife in his hand and a horseshoe-­shaped depression in his skull. He was quite cold.

  “Tried to cripple me,” said Blue. “Came around midnight, but had to do a little bragging about it first. Leanin’ up against me, tellin’ me what he intended to do. Man got kind of startled when I told him I didn’t like the idea. Mighta managed to cut me if he hadn’t had to call me names first. ’Cordin’ to him, only HYUman shapes’re allowed to talk.”

  “He had to call you a monster, I suppose,” said Abasio mildly.

  He pointed the body out to Willum, calling his attention to the knife. Willum said matter-­of-­factly, “Ayeh. That’s his knife.” He went to summon the family.

  No one wept, not even Liz. “Notcher fault,” Liz told Abasio. “Not t’horse’s fault neither. He’uz allus a mean’un, Lorp. Allus was. Glad I din’t have to killum m’ownself. I was ’bout ready t’killum! Musta bin crazy t’marry that’un.”

  After an appropriate silence, Abasio said to Willum, “Bertram finished the jackets and pajamas and shirts for the little ones yesterday. The children wore the pajamas last night, slept well, and they didn’t show any sign of drying out.” He turned to Kim, who’d been waiting for his instructions. “Kim, your horse is well rested. You can ride on toward Saltgosh early tomorrow morning. We will follow you an hour or two later. Saltgosh is the last town before we go over Findem Pass and down into Artemisia—­the last one on the road, at any rate. Bertram goes down to Flitterbean and Asparagoose fairly regularly, he has promised to serve as our recruiter there, and that leaves us free to take the northern route and stop in the village of Odd Duck. Leave sign if you see anything we should look out for, and we’ll see you each evening, as usual. Ask Bertram if he has anything to send his sister Liny, and if he does, either put it in the wagon or carry it with you. She lives in Saltgosh.”

  He turned back toward Willum. “Tell the folks in Gravysuck we’re moving on tomorrow, Willum. It’ll ta
ke me most of today to get rid of the water tank and plug up the drain holes in the bottom of the wagon. In this dry air, the floor should dry out in a few days. The map says the stream runs along the road all the way to the Findem Pass. Would anyone know if that’s true on the north road?”

  “Oh, it’s true,” said Willum. “Gum goes to Saltgosh ever’ year, and he says the river from there runs down both ways. Like it splits there, or something. And, I heard from one a’ the wagon men there’s a little creek starts up pretty quick on the other side a’ the pass, too.”

  Abasio nodded. “The map says there’s a little lake about a half day’s travel down on the downhill side, so we can actually get by without even filling our drinking-­water tank as we travel uphill.”

  Willum gave him a long, searching look, and loped down toward town.

  “I’m almost out of cookies,” said Xulai. “We’ve used up all the ones we brought along, and I can’t bake cookies over a campfire.”

  Bertram had been listening. “When you get to Saltgosh, you’ll be seeing my sister Liny. She and a dozen or so of her women friends do all kinds of catering things for Saltgosh, and they’ll be glad to bake hundreds and hundreds of cookies. You seem to use a lot of them . . .”

  “Tea and cookies. That’s the way we do it in every village. Even if ­people don’t want to hear about the inundation, they’ll come along for the tea and cookies.”

  “Ah. I see.” He gave her a saddened look, turned it toward Abasio, and asked plaintively, “I shall miss your being here. It has been . . . a friendly time. Do you, perchance, have any idea when the mission from Tingawa might arrive?”

  “It’s already fall,” Abasio mused. “We’ll reach them as soon as possible, and if the ships have a good wind, they’ll get into Wellsport about thirty days after that.”