Fish Tails (96 page)

He/it was indeed. Abasio had the germ of an idea, but there was one thing still left undone. “Wait for me. I want to speak to Fixit for just a moment.”

Fixit was standing next to its flier, helping Mavin, Silkhands, and Jinian get on board along with a seemingly endless clutter of small gifts they had been given by the Artemisian women. When he saw Abasio coming, it came to meet him.

“Is trouble?” Fixit asked.

“Just a niggle. A promise I made to a man. I get the itch that it may fit into something else, maybe.” He explained what it was.

“How very strange a request! In a few moments we will depart, but I will arrange to obtain what you need. I have small, very fast messenger that will return it to you here.”

Raised voices drew their attention to the far side of the plaza, where Grandma and children were gathered around the new house, evidently arguing as to who ought to be first inside. The children won and lined up behind Grandma, who led the way as they all disappeared inside. Meantime, the three women from Lom had managed to get themselves and their paraphernalia aboard; Fixit waved good-­bye and headed for his ship, leaving Abasio to murmur “pollen, pollen, pollen” over and over to himself. He had almost forgotten the pollen.

Needly and Grandma and her other children were inside their new house. Willum was being told Griffin stories while he was held firmly under Sun-­wings's foot. Wide Mountain Mother was in her house, possibly having a nap. Fixit was, at least momentarily, gone.

“Where are the babies?” Abasio whispered, afraid to break the quiet.

“Precious Wind is babysitting in her wagon.”

“Ahhh,” he said, allowing himself to leer. “Then we have our wagon all to ourselves?”

 

Chapter 17

Willum Gets His Ride

W
ITH THE DEPARTURE OF
F
IXIT AND ITS SHIP,
everything had fallen into an almost miraculous calm. Early evening came. Light muted. Sound softened. Footsteps slowed. Abasio sat with Xulai, Needly, and Wide Mountain Mother on a long, comfortable bench beneath a shade tree in the plaza, all four of them enjoying the fact that absolutely nothing was happening.

Needly murmured, “Grandma and her children are getting acquainted. The house is really nice. We each have our own room. It's just about perfect.”

“Yes,” said Abasio. “It looks very . . . residential. I saw the Fabricator had already provided shade trees. Very large ones.”

Needly nodded her unequivocal approval. “The thing in the sky looked around and saw how things were done, then it did one to match. It got the trees from the mountains, and it planted small ones in their place.”

“How many rooms does it have?” asked Xulai, with a touch of envy.

“Grandma has a bedroom and bathroom all to herself. And there's a girls' wing, with three bedrooms, one for each one of us, and a boy's wing, too, and each bedroom has its own toilet and basin! Then there's one big huge shower room for girls and one for the boys. It's wormhole plumbing! They run the water near a star to heat it! It has huge kitchen with everything to cook with, but the best thing is the music room. They do make wonderful music, Abasio. They're going to teach me. Serena says I have a nice voice. I can sing, sort of sing, but I didn't know I could do it at all because that's the last thing any female would want to do in Hench Valley. Evidently my mother couldn't sing, but Grandma can, and she says it skipped a generation. And the house has a separate living room and the hugest dining room. The table has chairs enough for twice as many of us.”

“Has it indeed?” said Abasio thoughtfully. “Has it indeed! Well, sharing a shower room is quite acceptable.” He nodded gravely. “After all, sometimes Xulai, you, and Willum, the babies, the horses, Kim, and I all have had to share the same tree.”

Needly giggled. “We did, didn't we.” She looked up. “Oh, there's Bear and Coyote!”

“They went to sleep at my house,” said Wide Mountain Mother. “Poor things were worn out.”

The two animals ambled over. Stretching out on the ground, Bear said, “We was so tired we didn't wake up until just a little while ago. Didn't nobody care 'bout where those Edgers went? Them as was buildin' fish bodies?”

Abasio started, flushing. “Oh, Coyote, Bear, there's been so much going on we're losing track of what we're trying to do! We do need to know about that.”

Coyote lay down at Abasio's feet and recited what he and Bear had seen, describing the containers that had been filled from the truck, and concluding, “He took some stuff out of the truck the spray came from, you know, the one we saw? N' then him and the driver got in a fight. Or t'other way round. Driver was yellin' at him how long was it gonna go on, all this killing ­people t'make fish, and who's gonna wanta be in the fish two hunnert years from now. Anyhow, Old Purple, he knocked the driver down and he took off in that wagon, Abasio. Eight horses. Maybe twelve riders and a whole bunch of other trucks and things.” He turned to Bear. “Isn't that what happened?”

“Near as I could tell. He didn't make much sense, and he was so mad his face was all swole up.”

Abasio grimaced and rubbed his forehead, wishing greatly that Fixit had not chosen just this time to go off to Tingawa. “If he headed north, he's headed for Edger country or west, one or the other. He wouldn't go east or south. If he's headed west, he'll have to cross the Big River, and on our way from the pass, we used the only bridge that'll take wagons and trucks; it's the one northwest of here. He can't take vehicles across the river anywhere else unless he goes north almost to Fantis.”

“He'll be going through Artemisia,” said Wide Mountain Mother. “He has to, to get to the bridge.”

Coyote laid a paw on Abasio's knee. “Listen, 'Basio. There's somethin' worse. That Chief Purple, he was yellin' about the sea-­children. He was sayin' he's got poison t'put at all the Sea Duck places t'kill the sea-­children. He was yellin' about the only one to go on livin' was the Edges, nobody else.”

Xulai drew in her breath, paling. Abasio got to his feet to pace a three-­step square, back and forth, muttering, “Sea Duck. He wouldn't know where to find Sea Duck Three, and he has no way to get to Tingawa, so he's headed for Sea Duck One. He'll have to go through the mountains. When he left, where were you? Up on the Cow? Which direction did he go from there?”

Bear moved his left front paw. “We were on the sun side of that Cow Mountain, up above his cave. He was headed around that Cow Mountain, n' he had to go the long way. No way he could get that wagon through where that whale blew up. Couldn't get through that little forest n' all the sand piles inna way.”

“You mean where we had the camp?”

“Yeah. He couldn' go that way. So he went aroun' the mountain t'other way.”

Abasio cursed himself for not waking Bear and Coyote earlier to find out what was going on. If old Chief Purple had headed around the east end of Cow Bluff and angled west to come up the east side of the Big River, he could already have crossed the bridge. It had been less than a full day's trip south to Cow Bluff from the Oracles, slowly, with loaded wagons. It had been a full day ago that Coyote and Bear had seen the men depart.

Bear mumbled, “That wagon a' his. It's real bright. Sun shines off it like off water—­”

“Just a minute,” cried Abasio. “A wagon painted . . . could it be gold, Coyote? Painted to look like gold?”

“What's gold look like?” Coyote asked.

Wide Mountain Mother took a chain from around her neck and held it out, twisting it so that the small pendant on it sparkled. “Like this, Coyote.”

“Yeah, painted to look like that. Why?”

“Then Grandma was right!” cried Needly. “Grandma knows about him. She says he's the same man as that one you called Chief Purple.”

“How does she know him, Needly?”

“In wintertime, the Hench Valley men spent most of their time digging in the buried city. Then, come springtime, they'd haul everything they'd found up to Findem Pass to sell to the traders. Grandma used to go up there, see what was sold and bought, and she saw the Gold King and his wagon when he bought stuff from Old Digger. She even talked about the kind of cans Coyote described. That tag Coyote found? She thought it was like the ones on those cans, and that's what made her think it was some kind of chemical. She thought the little tag Coyote found would confirm it, but Precious Wind said Tingawa can't identify it.”

Abasio growled, “That stuff might have been what Chief Purple used to buy himself a place in the Edge.”

Xulai stared down at her knotted hands, frowning. “Tingawa doesn't know what the tag identifies? If the Gold King only bought a few cans of it, up there at the pass, he either had to have some of it already, or it had to be mixed with other things in that ‘activator' truck.”

Abasio mused, “The truck had several tanks on it, the mixture probably wasn't explosive until it was mixed, and the various substances were probably mixed as they were sprayed. Otherwise, the activator could have been too dangerous to have around. They must have thought they'd solved the explosive problem . . .”

Xulai offered, “Maybe they had solved it. It didn't blow up until something went wrong with the . . . what, the wiring?”

Abasio grunted. “Possibly. Well, if Tingawa can't identify the substance, we've got to get hold of some of it! The quickest way might to go back to Cow Bluff and find the red truck that sprayed it . . .”

Coyote yelped, “Nah, 'Basio, that's what we're tellin' you. Him and the driver had a fight. Purple knocked him down, and he didn't move. But then, when Purple and all his men left, the driver got up off the ground and he went in the cave and came out with this burning stick, and he threw the stick at that truck and blew it up!” said Coyote. “He was yellin' about nobody wantin' t'be in a fish—­”

Bear interrupted. “Sayin' wasn't gonna be anybody lef' in two hunnert years to go inna fish.”

Abasio shook his head, his hands curling into fists. “Sounds like he used dynamite to blow up the truck; they still use it in mining, even at Saltgosh. And, if he destroyed the truck to get rid of whatever went into the ‘activator' substances, he's probably also destroyed any supply of them they had in their cave.” He rose, stalked about, muttered, “Hell of a time for Fixit to take himself off to Tingawa.” He came back to Coyote. “You didn't have time to count the men, did you?”

Coyote swung his jaw from side to side, meaning no. “Happened too fast. Lots, though. Really lots. Two paws, five or six times, maybe.”

Abasio kept up his pacing. “If Tingawa can't identify the tag, then the only way it can be identified is to get some of the stuff and have Tingawa . . . or Fixit . . . tell us what it is. If the Gold King's wagon is past the bridge, it'll be headed up toward the pass.”

He was thinking furiously. It was late afternoon. The sun would go down soon, and the cavalcade of horses and trucks would have to stop. Unless some of the trucks and cars still had headlights. Very few did. Batteries were almost an extinct creation, but if anybody had any, it would be old Chief Purple's bunch. Who knew what might be found in the buried factory east of Fantis? Someone had to see to that. He'd talk to Fixit when he came back . . . which could be far too late.

Xulai murmured, “Bear, can you tell us again what sort of container he put the stuff in?”

“They was 'bout as big as your head. Real shiny, like sun on water. With a round place where a lid screws onto like a honey jar, and a kina . . .” He reached out to touch her belt.

“Belt? Strap?”

“Like that, yeah. A strap across the lid to hold it so it wuddn' get open by mistake. And there was a hose at the side of the truck he got 'em from, that's how he filled 'em. And he put 'em in his shiny wagon, an' all those other men came runnin' out and got inta their cars n' trucks, n' they drove off. They had . . . what's those . . . ?” He looked questioningly at Coyote. “T'kill things with?”

“Long guns, Xulai. Long guns,” said Coyote. “The kind that shoot really far.”

“Did you hear him, Abasio?” she cried.

Abasio was glaring at nothing. “Yes, I heard him. Rifles. Chief Purple was always and is now as bad a stinker as his . . . creatures are. The problem I'm struggling with is that once he gets past Saltgosh Valley, he'll be in the forest. Maybe Fixit can locate him, even there, but I don't know that he can; we don't know when Fixit's's coming back, and if Old Purple gets to Wellsport . . .”

“That Old Purple, he's got a two-­paw hitch . . .” said Bear. “And he 'uz out front. Didn't nobody go past him.”

Abasio stopped pacing and turned toward Needly. “Do you happen to know, has Sun-­wings been flying?”

Needly cried, “Oh, yes, Abasio. Before the healer lady from Lom left with Fixit, she looked at Sun-­wings' wounded wing, and she put some new stuff on her, and then Mr. Fixit took a portable machine over there, and between the two of them, they healed her wing beautifully, not even a scar, and—­”

Wide Mountain Mother interrupted: “Meanwhile, they were giving most of the credit to you, my dear, for the wonderful job of field surgery you did.”

“I need to go talk to Sun-­wings,” Abasio muttered.

“What about the glactic guy?” asked Coyote.

“The galactic guy had to run some sort of galactic errand.” Abasio turned away, fuming. Yet another Edger plan. What kind of mind would come up with a plan to kill everyone else and leave the planet for the Edgers? Even the driver of the truck seemed to have figured that out. Edgers were a dying breed. Couldn't the old fat man see that? No. The old fat man couldn't see past his nose. The old fat man not only did not have bao, he was off the scale the other way. He thought the whole universe was centered on him personally. Well, he wasn't going to get away with it. Not damned likely. Abasio turned back toward the rider. “I think I know how to handle this.” He turned and ran across the plaza, headed for the building the Griffins were still occupying.

Sun-­wings was dozing when he came in. She lifted one eyelid, yawned, and greeted him with a sound rather like a purr. Then, “Yes, Abasio?”

“I understand you've been flying.”

“I have,” she said with great satisfaction. “There's a little pull in the membrane of the wing, but the healers assure me it will lessen and finally go away.”

“Are you flying well enough to go to Saltgosh, carrying a passenger?”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Because our hope of letting men survive, and our hope of giving you what you've asked for, are rapidly escaping from us. One of the Edgers—­you know who I mean?”

“The ones we call the ‘gophers.' Yes.”

“Long and long ago, an artist among them created you, Sun-­wings. You and the others like you. He was a great artist because he made you beautiful and sane and marvelous. We are being visited by a shapeshifter who can help you and your children take a form that will swim and float and fly when the world is covered in water. However, doing it requires a substance . . . a material. One of the Edgers, the one called the Gold King, has taken the substance and he's headed for Wellsport, across the mountains. There are a great many other Edgers in vehicles following him. They have weapons. He is going, we think, to sell the material to someone else. We can stop him, but I need to get word to Saltgosh now, in a hurry, and the only way I know to do it is to send someone.”