Fish Tails (103 page)

“A passionate, loving woman who thought being faithful to an ideal was more important than being faithful to any particular male creature who came and went as the mood took him.”

“Him, it, or them! But I'm still glad they, you were all the same . . .”

“ . . . the same . . . minion. And, Lillis my love,
I'd so much rather you didn't say ‘were.'
I didn't
stop
being, you know. I still
am
. I've worked part-­time until now, but it's full-­time from here on out.”

“You still are what?” she cried. “I'm very well read, but I don't know what a ‘minion' is! And if you were always the same one, then why didn't you just stay in Hench Valley the whole time? Why all that back-­and-­forth-­ing?”

He frowned, very slightly. “Because the children could not be identical. They are not copies of one another. One does not make an orchestra of all oboes. Or violins. Or cymbals and kettledrums. Each is an individual. And in order to assure that, one had to be . . . what is it that Xulai is always fussing about?”

“Being fiddled with!”

“One had to be fiddled with. Rebuilt. No, not really rebuilt at all, as a shapeshifter, that came automatically, but I did have to be reequipped.”

She choked on her tears again, trying to laugh. “You had . . . have very nice equipment.”

“Thank you. I particularly like the shapely nose and this manly jaw.”

“That's not what I—­”

“No? What else
could
you have been thinking of?” He sat there, quietly staring at her, a slight smile coming and going. “How old are you, Lillis? You were seventeen when we met. Our firstborn was . . . were the girls Sarah and Sally. How old are they now?”

“They are apparently postpubertal. How ‘post,' who knows. Did they age at all while those creatures had them?”

“Unfortunate creature, the Oracle . . .”

“While those idiots kept them in storage. Did you know about that?”

“I did. They were not suffering. They were not conscious. They were merely arrested. As you were.”

“As I were what?”

“Arrested. Everyone calls you ‘Grandma.' Yet . . . your hair is not gray. I see no lines in your face. If I had to judge, I would say you are probably in your early to midthirties. One reason for Hench Valley would be its everlasting sameness. You could (and did) miss great chunks of Hench Valley time without noticing it at all because
Hench Valley did not change.
A three-­year chunk there, a five-­year chunk here, it would still be the same. You wondered, ‘Why Hench Valley?' That's why. Though you only had six of the babies, it took a sizable chunk of time to accumulate a dozen children . . . thirteen, if we count Trudis.

“Besides, we
should
count Trudis. As it turned out, you were right to fight for her. When we got to that stage, the Silverhair stage, she turned out to be the only one to have the genetic mix that was needed. Which was a good thing.”

She gave him a look of frank disbelief. “Don't tell me you planners and conspirators didn't have such a person located in advance.”

“I wasn't one of the planners and conspirators. They did have such a person in mind, but they had neglected to recruit a real seer when they recruited me. A seer would have told them the person they were depending on would die before her contribution could be made. Which she did. Died.”

“Chastised to death in Hench Valley, no doubt.”

“No.
That
they could and would have prevented, but she was not kept under constant surveillance. One cannot prevent a woman deciding to go visit her mother in the middle of the night by way of a mountain trail which she had no doubt traveled hundreds of times, and, as she rounded a corner, being confronted by—­way, way below his natural range—­a pugnacious mountain goat going the opposite way. It is probably unnecessary to speculate whether, when on a narrow trail, a pair of horns and four feet firmly planted will always outperform two feet totally surprised.”

“Do you mean Ma Beans!
That was why she fell?
”

“She woke in the night with a premonition of death, thought it was her mother, and went to prevent it.”

“You're inventing that.”

“As a matter of fact, I'm not. She told her sister she was going and why. You knew her?”

“I helped her in childbirth. Several times. The babies were always early and died within a few days. I'm sure it was a genetic thing. I told her how to prevent the pregnancies. She said no, she was going to keep on doing what she wanted to do. I had her help me, I thought it might show her where things were going wrong . . .”

“Her mother probably told her not to walk the trail after dark. But she kept on doing what she wanted to do.”

“She had a good reason for staying pregnant, Joshua. Her man of the house didn't chastise her when she was pregnant. Oh, Joshua or whoever . . . What am I supposed to call you? I don't want to talk about Hench Valley. I want Hench Valley to . . . go away.”

He leaned close and put his arm around her, whispering urgently, “Listen to me, Lillis. I am your fairy godfather and can grant your wish! Hench Valley has only about half a year to go. At which point it will be gone.” He hugged her. “The two little girls who are still there will disappear. The Home at Saltgosh has agreed to take the two little girls. They are mentally very slow but they willingly do easy tasks like dusting and washing things: dishes, pots, pans, floors. They love music. They enjoy food and any bit of new clothing puts them into ecstasies. Their lives are not without pleasure. In the Home, they will be well treated, probably even loved, much as a pet is loved, and they will be protected.

“In Hench Valley the last fertile woman has recently gone through the ‘change' and this is known throughout the valley. Very shortly, now, the men remaining in Hench Valley will know females have to be found if they're to continue pointing at some hungry little boy and bragging that ‘he's one a' mine.' They will decide to go over the pass, down toward Catland and Artemisia, where they plan to steal a ‘whole buncha wimmin.' There are far fewer men left in Hench Valley than you might guess. They've been leaking away for the last decade. They will, of course, follow tradition by first dancing around the fire and getting thoroughly drunk.

“While still in that frivolous state, as they approach Catland, they will encounter Sybbis escorted by a large group of her gangers, all well armed and not drunk. Sybbis will be on a mission to find out what has happened to
her
stinkers, left in her charge by old Chief Purple. This meeting of the two groups will result in carnage. None of the Hench Valley men will return to Hench Valley.”

“And?”

“And nothing. By then, all the stinkers will have been . . . disbanded by Fixit. They are not a race of ­people; they do not have the abilities necessary to survive, even if taken to some hospitable and untenanted planet; they are without mentality and have no emotions but a recurrent mating urge and consistent hunger. There are no female hunters, the male hunters will be relocated to live out their lives.

“In Hench Valley, after a quiet and really rather enjoyable winter, when spring comes the few older women and the scatter of little boys remaining will be looking for a leader. Someone to guide them and their remaining livestock out into the world. Perhaps a small committee of female Artemisians could be persuaded to undertake a rescue mission?”

“And you know this how?”

“The likelihood of each event is well over the ninetieth percentile. As is the probability that Sybbis, while hunting for her stinkers and getting involved in the fray between her gangers and the Hench Valley men, will be very slightly scratched and will subsequently die of an easily preventable infection. This will result in the population of Catland being dispersed into the surrounding countryside. I have not described the interventions which will help this whole plot along, but they are simple and nonviolent.”

“If the infection is easily preventable . . .”

“Sybbis will refuse to use an antiseptic solution because ‘it stings.' ”

“And you know this how?”

“You and I played games, love. Remember? We played cubies, sometimes: one asks a question, then one rolls the cubies and writes down the letters on top, and if it's a long question maybe they are thrown twice. Then you make up the answer out of the ten or twenty letters you have.”

“You played cubies to determine the future of Earth?”

“It's only a similarity. For questions pertaining to something the size of a planet, one needs something a bit larger and more reliable, so one has this enormously complicated machine that figures out likelihoods. One tells the machine everything one knows about a situation. Then one asks it to research the situation and give the likelihood of X happening. Or X and Y and Z. Or the whole alphabet. And the machine asks for certain other information, which one provides—­after taking some time and effort to find it out—­then one goes around and around with the machine, refining the information, changing it here, goosing it there, and eventually it says the likelihood is even both ways. And then one asks this and that and the other thing, and when one has spent enough time changing the variables, one learns that there are a ­couple of little interventions, as follows.

“If someone goes to Grief's Barn in Hench Valley in the afternoon of a certain day this coming spring, and asks a certain Pa what the men are going to do now that there are no childbearing females at all left in Hench Valley, everything I mentioned will happen.”

“With a ­couple of little interventions?”

“First intervention was having someone go in and get the little girls out of there before we ask the question. Second intervention is somebody getting there and asking the question. Fixit and I will do that.”

“Why do you have to get the little girls out?”

“They are not bright, but they are willing and seemingly tireless, and will do almost anything to please others. Which can be a deathtrap we wish to avoid. Because we don't want them trying to please the men of Hench Valley, do we?”

She shuddered. “No. I wasn't thinking.”

“The machine forecast death by gang rape if we didn't get them out first, so we're getting them out first.”

“And everything we did, you and I and the Home that kept the Silverhairs and the stupid Oracles and Needly and . . . everything was because that sort of machine said DO?”

“That machine doesn't have a DO button. A human person has to decide to do. Fixit's machine, now, oh yes, it has a DO button, but he's in another line of business.”

“Which is what, really?”

“He's in our business, our DO thing, yours and mine. Our business is about increasing the share of the population who have bao.”

“From what to what, increased?”

“Well, various extraterrestrial populations were polled. Virtually everyone asked thought it was perfectly all right to drown a population that had fewer than one in ten with bao, and that held true right up until we hit fifty percent and then decreased the higher we went. At sixty percent, they voted do not destroy, but do intervene. HOWEVER, while drowning mankind met with general approval, those who were questioned pointed out that there were a great many other self-­aware creatures on Earth who had not been involved in despoiling the planet, and these creatures would also perish. This was a definite NO-NO. Which is the opposite of DO. This includes the Griffins and all the other creatures that want to go on living.”

“Is Fixit really here?”

“Oh, yes. He's here. Somewhere. He's actually been doing what he says he's been doing. Both here and on the other side of the planet. It seems there is still a side besides our side to the planet, and there are as many or more ­people left over there. Different languages, same concerns. Fixit is fixated on fixing things.

“His to-­do list today includes a visit to Tingawa to double-­check that ­people haven't been fibbing to him about the Griffins having a few bad eggs. That's a Fixit joke. He lets me borrow his ship sometimes. If I decide to stay . . . he'll leave the little flier for me—­us—­to use. He'll appoint me—­us—­an ambassador or something.”

“If you decide to stay? I thought you were a native here, that you lived here.”

“I do live here, I
have
lived here. But I could move on. Depends on what kind of offer I get. From this woman. See, that's why I'm here,
stealin' wimmin
.”

She stared at him with something very much like hope in her eyes. “Is it possibly a woman with thirteen children? If one counted Willum.”

“Yup. That's the one.”

“And who, exactly, is the one doing this woman stealing? Joshua? Or one of the others.”

“I thought I'd sort of let it be whoever it was on any given day. Unless this woman takes a dislike to one of them. See, that way, if she gets mad at one, he can just get lost for an indeterminate length of time . . .”

“Until she cools off?”

“Or warms up, whichever.”

“You took the Silverhairs to Saltgosh.”

“Whichever me was available, yes. You heard them there. Singing. Did you know that Needly sings just the way they do. As you and I do. I remember our singing while we were building that house. I imagine our singing these days would be sadly out of practice, but it was a pretty good house and very good singing.”

“I've got a pretty good house now. It has room in it for . . . at least one other person if he didn't mind sharing a bedroom. You'd never be more than one at a time, would you?”

“It is my understanding that it's impossible to do that. Did you just offer an invitation?”

“Well . . . it's just that someone has to solve that problem you've presented.”