Fish Tails (14 page)

The conspirators, every male in the village over the age of ten, had come from the village intending to circle around the wagon, steal the horses, then kill the two monsters while their so-­called parents watched, then kill the man slowly while the woman watched, and for a final thrill, amuse themselves with the woman and then kill her. That'd show her what came from connerdick-­ing them. They had not had the fun of slaughtering a connerdicker for . . . a few years. Time to show the young'uns how to cut off breasts, n' ears, n' fingers without killin' 'em too quick. They knew the direction the wagon had gone. They went in that direction, circling, seeking here, there, searching for the wagon, at first whispering:

“Y' seen it yet?”

“Where's it?”

“M' torch went out!”

Then calling:

“Dam, butz dark, Jed.”

“Where're ya, Balf?”

“Jed?”

And finally yelling at the tops of their lungs:

“Hal, k'n ya hear me? You, Balf?”

“Jed.”

“Pong, m' torch burnt out! Where're you guys!”

Not one of them was aware that he was alone until the sun was well up. By that time the strangeness of the trees and the horizon, when any of it could be seen, suggested that each one was somewhere other than in the forest around Ramton. Where they were, in fact, was in a deep primeval forest that had no trails, roads, or villages in it at all. There was no smell of campfires, no human animals, only four-­legged ones including large, hungry bears and several of the rare but ravenous big mountain cats. Each man or boy found himself as Xulai had required, totally uninjured.

Over the next several days, steering by the sun, Pong, one of the more sensible of the men, made almost thirty miles in a direction that would have, in another twenty or thirty, brought him into familiar country. There was plenty to eat in the forest; berries were ripe, mushrooms were plentiful; there were fish in the streams and snares could be rigged if a man had a knife, which he did. If he had been patient, he would have survived nicely, sleeping in trees, collecting food as he went, traveling only when he could tell what time of day it was and thereby which directions the shadows pointed. He was not patient enough to wait out three days of rain, however, and ended up returning almost to his point of origin, where the bears, who had finished off what was left of Jed a few days before, had just wakened to go looking for breakfast.

The
ul xaolat
had originally been designed more than a millennium ago, during the Big Kill, as an aide to those who traveled and who transported material from place to place and who did not want to fall prey to one of the monster killing machines. It obtained its power from receivers and broadcasters on Earth that received it from the sun cannons on the moon. Tingawa now guarded and maintained the receivers and broadcasters, devices so well constructed that they were still powering devices around the world, mostly ones of Tingawan manufacture. At the time of the Big Kill,
ul xaolats
had been designed to do almost anything that a traveler might need to do to survive in some degree of comfort. It could hunt game, cut firewood, light campfires, and clear campsites, and it could serve as a defensive weapon against predators—­human and otherwise. Thus, even the original versions had been designed to detect hostile intent and provide defensive protection.

The new, improved
ul xaolat
had complied with Xulai's orders by moving the men without harming them in the least. New improvements had made it possible for the device to extrapolate the men's future behavior as well, and they adjudged the men's hostility to be of such determination and degree that it would persist indefinitely. The initial move, therefore, had to remove all threat existing at
present or future time
. The
ul xaolat
decided to set
future time
at eternity. The new improvements also allowed the device to extrapolate possible
user
reaction, and therefore to Xulai's request that the men be transported back once she and Abasio were far enough removed to be out of danger,
ul xaolat
merely replied “order understood.” This was followed a day later by “Transported men fought, all were fatally injured. Shall separated parts of bodies be returned?” This was true; they had fought the bears, very briefly. It was also a test reply on the part of the device, as it wished to determine whether bodies or parts of bodies were to be further disposed of.

Xulai found the outcome completely believable. The men had been notably quarrelsome; they carried knives, and all of them, even boys as young as nine or ten—­in addition to virtually all the woman—­had knife scars. On consideration, it might be less disturbing if the men just disappeared rather than being returned in sections. She visualized separated parts as being ears, perhaps, or fingers. Maybe teeth. She replied, “In this case, no.”

Meantime,
ul xaolat
entered into its data bank that men armed only with knives who fought large, healthy bears were almost invariably killed, and in such cases, body parts need not
routinely
be retrieved
. The user had not, however, said this would be true in
every case.
In this case the device had supposed a “no-­return” policy without knowing it to be true. The device found such uncertainties troubling. Itchy, as it understood that word. Incomplete. Being itchy or troubled used up power. Using power unprofitably was against the rules. This instruction had to be clarified.

Ul xaolat
asked, accordingly, “When retrieving body parts for return to point of origin, is separate material at the cellular level to be included, i.e., blood, fingernails, and the like?”

Xulai shivered and answered promptly “No. Fluids and cellular level material need not be included unless specifically requested for laboratory use.”

Not wasting power was an
ul xaolat
imperative. Bringing ­people back dead or in pieces was wasteful of power. Therefore, the device reasoned, it was up to the device to report in such a way that it would
not require bringing ­people or parts of them back at all
unless needed for forensics.
Ul xaolat
had the answer it needed. It immediately modified its internal procedure manual to implement the change. In future, in similar predatory situations,
ul xaolat
would submit “in-­process” reports until sufficient time had passed for nature to take its course; a delay that centered on the oft-­repeated question of whether bears poop in the woods. Poop would not constitute remains of the persons pooped; therefore when a body was entirely reduced to poop and bone fragments, no return would be necessary.

Moving this item from probable to certain gave the device a momentary surge of satisfaction. Since this journey was unique both in the way in which
ul xaolat
was being used and the fauna among which it moved, it was unlikely that anyone involved in refining the device or monitoring its activity would notice its autonomous acquisition of a sense of irony.

Ramton—­and possibly Burned Hat—­had been the worst towns they'd encountered. They'd heard all possible arguments and vilifications on this journey. As a result, they had learned not to talk about the
first stage
of the process. Any explanation of the first stage, which could be slightly traumatic, could be left to the ­people at Sea Duck, who could actually enact it before their eyes. Instead they simply referred to “the process
.
”
“We are here to offer the process to those of you who are interested.”
Those who were not merely uninterested but violently opposed turned their backs and muttered threats or attempted violence and were dealt with; those who didn't care one way or the other chatted about it for a few days before forgetting it; and those who were truly interested and young enough to be accepted packed up their necessary belongings and traveled westward, to Wellsport. One had to be of childbearing age, otherwise there was no point. Abasio and Xulai had been able to avoid preemptive defense except on the Ramton occasion and in the three-­town cluster: Burned Hat, Saddlebag, and Rotch.

Burned Hat had been impossible
. “If the water comes the angels will come take us to a new world. We know this for a fact. No, we ain't interested and better get going before the men get worked up. They don't like folks comin' here tellin' us how we're s'posed to live.”
Accordingly, they got going. This irritated the already-­worked-­up men, who knew shortcuts to Saddlebag and Rotch, and they had worked up the men of those villages into a fine fury before they figured Abasio and Xulai could get there.

Abasio and their outrider, Kim, however, had already decided on detouring via a long loop to the south that would avoid both the other towns. Men from Saddlebag and Rotch lay in ambush, intending to kill the travelers before they reached either place so that neither village could be contaminated by new ideas.

Abasio and Xulai never saw those lying in wait. When other villagers went looking for them later, the ambushers were gone, leaving no evidence of violence or, indeed, any evidence they had ever existed. Abasio and Xulai knew of the incident only when
ul xaolat
reported as one item in the day's activity log: “routine defensive maneuver completed.” There was no mention of the village names. By that time
ul xaolat
had learned that reports were unlikely to be closely scrutinized when they were, first, given as general information, without any interesting details, and, second, were not provided until very late in the day, by which time Xulai was too tired to be picky.

In blessed ignorance, Xulai counted only Ramton and Burned Hat as total failures. The two villages avoided were not counted at all. She felt they had achieved an excellent acceptance rate, though she had tended to fret over some missed villages, regretting that they had not been able to take time to try to convince ­people. “If the men succeed in killing us, our mission fails,” said Abasio, who had been schooled among gangers. “Living under the sea will require adaptability and intelligence. ­People without those qualities won't make it anyhow. Survival of the fittest is an absolute truth, and fitness implies being able to see reality. I think it's something called bough . . .” He stopped, momentarily confused. “No, that's in one of those dreams I keep having. I just mean some ­people don't ever see how things really are, and reality has let them perish. Who are we to second-­guess reality?” There was something in
that
about bough, also, but he couldn't think what!

So now, in Bertram's shop, they second-­guessed nothing but merely slept exhaustedly until Bertram returned with a tray. The jingle of china woke his visitors to be astonished by teapot, cups, saucers, even milk and white sugar—­in little loaves! Like tiny building blocks! They had not seen sugar cubes since they left Tingawa! Abasio's eyebrows went up. Real sugar was virtually unknown on this continent.

Bertram flushed at their obvious surprise. “My family sends it to me. It is their business. It isn't from cane. We grew cane in the east, my family did, but the climate here is too cold for cane, so we grow sugar beets some way south of here. Cane or beet, the process is the same: crush the plant, collect the juice, boil the juice. The little sugar shapes are a conceit of ours. And all shapes of sugar are equally sweet in the tea, no?”

They sipped together. Xulai relaxed. It was a good tea, herbal, slightly floral, a touch of mint, and bergamot, with other ingredients she could not quite identify. It was not as satisfying as the teas in Tingawa, where the tea shrubs of the ancient world were still being cultivated, but still it was flavorful and relaxing, with a pleasing scent. Tea was one of the things that she would miss, though if her friend Precious Wind had her way, the flavor would be transferred to one or several sea-­plants: cups would be carved from coral, and magnifying glasses would be used to heat the water—­if they couldn't figure out underwater stoves or possibly ways to use subterranean hot spouts! Sea-­plants tended to be heavily mineralized, which interfered with flavor. Precious Wind was much concerned with methods for distilling seawater so the tea would not taste of salt. Xulai didn't worry over it: by the time tea no longer existed, neither would Xulai.

She drank deeply and focused instead on the matter at hand, saying gratefully to Bertram: “Make two jackets for each child, a little larger than the size they are now: then two each, a size larger than that; and two more a size larger yet. That's six for each, a dozen. Light shirts, also, something
very
washable that will not need to be ironed. It simply can't be done when we're traveling like this. I suppose that should keep them clothed for at least a ­couple of years, perhaps longer, though I've been wrong about every supposition I've made about them yet.”

“Would you say they are growing about the same rate as ordinary children?”

Xulai nodded. “I've been told they are, by committees of mothers who've seen them.”

“Can you weigh them, ma'am?”

Abasio said he could.

“Then if you will tell me their present weight, I have a chart that will give me their probable sizes for the next ­couple of years.”

“Wonderful.” She sighed. “What payment do you accept, Bertam?”

“What have you to offer, ma'am?”

“Notes upon the bank of Ghastain. Letters of transfer from the Tingawan Reserve. Some barter goods, though they are small things only. Or gold coin.”

“Gold is always acceptable, ma'am. The smaller coin the better if I am to use it.” He lowered his voice and whispered, “Or I would take books, ma'am.”

“Books?” exclaimed Abasio.

“Shh,” said the tailor. “I broke my vow when you came in, sir, madam. In my surprise, in my shock, I mentioned the books. I am not supposed to mention the books, ever. But . . . considering what you have told me . . . Ah. Nothing is as it should be! I am a Volumetarian, sir. Are you familiar with Volumetarianism?”