The Waters Rising (67 page)

Her voice tightened and she shivered in the circle of his arms.

“You hate that? Being controlled?”

She looked into his face, so familiar to her that she might have always known it. “No. Abasio, no, I really don’t. I hate the
idea
of being predisposed, prearranged. But I don’t hate the reality, not now. I hate the thought I could not choose, but I would not have chosen differently. It’s a dilemma, isn’t it? Precious Wind says it’s how all young people feel when they grow up. They do not wish to be like their parents, and yet very often they end up choosing to be like their parents.”

He held her close. “I’ve never asked you, Xulai. Do you love me?”

“I loved Xu-i-lok. I love Oldwife Gancer. I love my horse. I loved Fisher. I would not have lost any of them. I would rather lose myself than lose you. Should it be more than that? How do I know?”

“So you want me with you? Always? So you’d grieve my loss? Would you leap between me and certain death?” He laughed harshly. “I would answer yes to any of those questions about you, though I’d prefer not to find the last one necessary.”

“Well, do you love me, Abasio? Will you come under the sea with me? Will you chat with my sea father and live as part octopus?”

His face clouded. “How do octopuses . . . you know?”

She laughed at his expression. “It’s what the Sea King calls ‘an arm’s-length transaction.’ As soon as he said it, I remembered it was in the book I borrowed from the abbey library. The males give the females a sperm packet. The females store it inside themselves, then they use it when they get ready to plant their egg packets. I absolutely know there has to be some biological incentive, some hormonal or sensory drive, but the Sea King spoke of it as though he were . . . simply being accommodating. ‘Here, madam, you seem a pleasant cephalopod, please accept this with my compliments.’ ”

“Isn’t it nice to have the choice of methods?” Abasio croaked from a throat suddenly tight and painful.

She drew away from him. “I’m not sure we have that choice. Sea-egg people will evidently be part human, part octopus-who-talks, but the Sea King is all octopus-who-talks. The only humanity he has is in the design of his vocal apparatus. I don’t think
his
children can change. With the waters rising, there’d be no point in that.”

“So when there is no more land, how will
we
procreate?”

She shook her head. “Well, if we’re not totally different, we sea eggers, I can think of one possibility. I had the idea when the lady served tea . . . Precious Wind and I used to drink tea at Woldsgard. The foresters cut chunks of ice from the glaciers up in the Icefangs, and we kept the ice in an icehouse and in summer we had iced tea. And thinking about ice made me remember reading that the north and south poles were frozen. And I wondered if they wouldn’t still be frozen with the waters rising. That’s where the walruses and seals have their babies, don’t they? Won’t the ice bears and the penguins and the other creatures who live in those cold lands go on living there? And didn’t men used to live in those snow lands? Couldn’t men still live there? In the coldest parts, couldn’t people even make ships out of ice?”

He thought about this. “You mean, people who are given sea eggs could live out of the sea, or they could live in both places? Or just go there to procreate?”

“I can imagine us going north to have babies. We build a hut on an ice . . . raft, is that what they call it? And it floats south, and by the time it melts, we’re ready to take the baby underwater. Something like that.” She sighed, her face crumpled in dismay. “I killed Jenger. Now I remember doing it. I even remember why, though it was the part of Xu-i-lok in me who actually impelled me to do it. If he had raped me, if he had impregnated me, it would have ruined everything. It could not be allowed to happen, so I, she, killed him. I did it by taking a sea shape even though I was on land. The Sea King was out of the water a lot of the time today while we talked. So, we should still be able to take sea shapes and live out of the water part of the time. And if someday so much water freezes at the poles that the oceans go down again, then there would be a place for land creatures, wouldn’t there? If we keep seeds. If we keep animals, or their patterns. If we keep Clan Do-Lok’s laboratories on the ice when Tingawa is covered with water?”

“I think Clan Do-Lok has made provisions for its laboratories, even underwater. I worry more about Precious Wind’s wolves.”

“She might have thought of it. Precious Wind thinks of most things.”

They sat longer. Abasio was searching himself for feelings of revulsion, rejection, or fear, finding vague shadows, nothing he could not manage. Xulai was remembering the ocean, the sheer, bubbling delight of the ocean.

Abasio said, “If you’re distributing sea eggs, I think Artemisia might be one place to start—after Tingawa. I think you’ll find a high proportion of the right kind of people.”

“The right people! The refugees,” she cried. “Abasio, the Sea King told me who they really are . . .” She told him what she had learned, including the winks and nods given to her while they were climbing the great cliff. “So many people, counting on us, depending on us, and we still don’t know what we do about the monster. He’s still intent upon ruining everything, and I’m so afraid he actually can! If he can detect those who have been given sea eggs, he’ll kill them. He’ll kill them all.”

Neither of them could believe otherwise, and they sat in baffled silence, side by side, unmoving, until they looked up to see Xulai’s father and grandfather rounding the end of the little island and returning slowly along the sand. Their faces expressed what Abasio had felt earlier: intense curiosity mingled with extreme apprehension. Xulai and Abasio stood up and went to greet them, seeing the older men’s expressions change and soften as they came nearer.

“It’s all right,” said Justinian. It could have been a statement or a question.

Xulai took his hand and drew him close between them. “It’s all right.” She reached up to pat his cheek. “We’re not totally comfortable with all this. We’re nowhere near understanding all this. We’re not sure we can manage it. But we’re not afraid of it.”

Over her father’s shoulder, she smiled into her grandfather’s eyes and he bowed to her, to Abasio, and turned away so they would not see his tears.

“S
o you met the Sea King,” said Precious Wind. “I never have. What did you think of him?”

“A very large, very smart creature who looks nothing at all like a human being,” said Abasio. “And who, nonetheless, seems very humane.”

They were dining in their common room, the food brought to them, they were told, by the same people who served those of Clan Do-Lok who lived in the citadel. Many of the clan had homes elsewhere, but those who did live there shared a common kitchen and people to provide their daily needs. Abasio, who liked to know people’s names and what they were like and where they lived, found himself frustrated at not seeing any of the same people twice. Each meal, it seemed, new people arrived, served them, bowed pleasantly but not at all obsequiously, and departed. Precious Wind said that because everyone wanted to see them, the opportunity was being passed around.

When their intimate group was left alone, Xulai took from her lap the small box that she and Abasio had taken from the forest so long ago. She set it on the table and opened it. It now held the twelve sea eggs she had cut out of her undershift that evening after returning to the citadel.

“I had thirteen,” she said. “I gave Abasio one in Merhaven. He swallowed it. I want you and Clan Do-Lok to decide who gets these. You know your people better than I do, and these will change six men and six women. I hope to heaven they’ll come out even when they are recognizing mates and that none of them need to run off across what’s left of the world to find someone.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Precious Wind asked, staring at the little box as though at a miracle. “We’ve been waiting, wondering. I told everyone, all the workers and planners, they were not allowed to ask you! Oh, this is wonderful. Once there are several couples, the number of sea eggs produced will increase exponentially. Within a year, we could have hundreds or more . . . what shall we call them? Sea-fertile people?”

“Let me be sure I understand this whole thing,” said Abasio. “A woman who is given a sea egg can produce sea eggs. Her female children cannot, however, unless their father has also received a sea egg. Xulai can produce sea eggs because her mother could and because Justinian’s genetics were already the same as the sea egg would have given him, right? It’s the same with Xulai and me. Justinian and I couldn’t change into . . . another form without the eggs, but we could father children who could.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I have a little trouble remembering what part of the situation is which.”

Precious Wind nodded. “If both father and mother have had sea eggs, or if one of them has and the other is already genetically compatible, then their children, male and female, will be sea fertile as well as able to change. Being able to change will be critical as the waters’ rising goes on. So, since genetic compatibility is very rare—we were lucky to find Justinian, but it took years and a number of false starts to find Abasio—our first priority is to increase the number and distribution of sea eggs as quickly as possible.”

Xulai said, “Also, the distribution must be as wide as possible, assuring that both men and women all over the world get them. No people or group should feel they are being left out. Assuming each sea-fertile woman produces as many as I have, each woman should pass on at least a dozen every year. By the time the waters’ rising has completed, all children should be changeable.”

Precious Wind nodded in agreement. “We will take the first ones produced by Tingawans back to Norland with us. And, if we give each one to a new candidate as soon as it’s produced, alternating between men and women . . . How many, Abasio?”

“Hundreds. The first year. When I think how far they had to go to track me down, and to find Justinian, though . . .”

“You can forget that. That was different. We didn’t have a sea egg for any of the men then,” said Precious Wind. “We had to search Huold’s lineage for a genetic match. Once we had sea eggs, however, we no longer needed to fret about that.”

Abasio was still worrying the problem. “I understand Justinian having the right genetics, but my family was never anywhere near Norland . . .”

Xulai said, “Huold had seven sons. Both he and they traveled all over the map, Abasio. Women liked him and he liked women. If you could trace it back, you’d find that your mother or father or both had Huold as an ancestor. And the line may have inbred several times, as well. As soon as we have a few sea eggs to distribute, we want to take them to Norland. But, Precious Wind, we can’t ignore the threat of that monster . . .”

Precious Wind made a face. “I know. Clan Do-Lok has been talking about it. They’ll want to meet with the emissary as soon as he gets here. He’s the only one who’s actually seen the thing. It killed Bear plus several of our best fighters, and quite frankly that terrifies us because it means it’s going to be very hard to trap the thing or kill it. It hates Tingawans, and we’d rather set a Tingawan trap in Norland than here, for obvious reasons. It might decide to destroy the whole country if it were here, and maybe it actually has the means to do so. We don’t know what it’s capable of. However, I don’t think our people will like the idea of you or any sea-fertile woman going into danger. They want to figure something else out.”

They left it at that. The following day, Xulai joined Precious Wind in providing the sea eggs to a dozen young Tingawan men and women, all very serious, several of them seeming to be in a state of exaltation. Xulai wondered at this until she realized that, of course, these were to be the parents of the whole race. It would be a very great honor to have been chosen. They were eager to question her about how she had felt.

“I felt strange,” she said. “I think you may, too. Try very hard just to relax and let it happen, because otherwise you’ll upset everyone and they’ll wonder if they’ve chosen the right people.”

As it turned out, she had given this advice to the wrong people. The scientists who had run the program descended upon the poor young people with a battery of tests and hours of questioning. The young people, already struggling to adapt, felt irritated and unresponsive, and this in turn made the questioners doubtful, itchy, and more demanding. Precious Wind wanted to compare this with Xulai’s experience, and she began going back and forth with suggestions and questions.

Xulai, suddenly aware of what was happening, went furiously off to find Lok-i-xan.

“Grandfather, your people are very smart and very interested, and they chose the twelve people by doing all that preselection stuff, testing for compatibility and so on, but now instead of trusting their process, they’re fiddling with it, and they’re driving the young people crazy. If anyone had treated me like that, I’d have jumped off a cliff! You’ve got to make people leave them alone!”

“Tingawans are not perfect,” he said, half-amused. “Most humans behave in the way you have described, particularly people who have spent a large part of their lives on a single project. They have a great deal invested in those young people and, unfortunately, they regard them as experimental subjects.”

“Well they’d better disregard them as such,” said Xulai emphatically. “That was the one thing I really had trouble with. I could face danger. I could stand confusion. I even managed to deal with betrayal, even though it still makes me cry every time I think about Bear and what he did, but it was the idea that people were herding me like a goat or sheep that I really objected to.”