Firebirds Soaring (9 page)

Grandmother looked from Yumin to the bird overhead and back again, and shrugged. “That may be. He’s probably just excited, eager for the treat he’ll have earned when his directions lead us to a good catch.”

Yumin nodded, and looked up at the shivering bird, unconvinced.

 

After a few days of relaxing, the otters were eager for some exercise. They slid out through their bolt holes, one on either side of the boat, and coursed along beside the junk as they traveled eastward.

Yumin was in the prow, fiddling with the red-and-gold device. He was worried but found that he was more concerned about what his grandmother would think of his present than of what she would say when he told her his news. And worried that she’d try to keep him away from shore for so long that he’d miss his transport. The officer had told him to report in six days, and it had already been three. Grandmother wouldn’t intentionally keep him away once she heard his plans, would she?

He reassembled the device, but its screen remained dark, flat black in its ornate frame of gold. He toggled the switches that initiated the internal diagnostics, but when the cycles were complete, it emitted a sequence of tweets and whistles that meant no fault had been found. To all indications, then, the original persona was intact, deep within the red-lacquered shell, but it still did not communicate or respond to stimuli—awake, but unresponsive.

Yumin’s deep concentration was shattered when he was pelted on the side of the head with a dumpling, leaving a greasy spot in his hair.

“I’ve been calling your name forever, boy,” Grandmother hooted. “Where are you, anyway? Your body is here but your mind is somewhere else.”

“Sorry, Grandmother,” Yumin said, and couldn’t help but think that soon, his body would be elsewhere, too.

 

The junk reached the spot that the cormorant had indicated, and the bird perched on top of the mast, nervously preening.

Yumin released the nets while Grandmother fired up the engine, and they began to drag the nets behind the boat. The otters dropped back, allowing the junk to course ahead. They gave a little salute and then dove beneath the waters.

Grandmother was at the wheel, and she called over to Yumin at his post at the nets. She told him about chores they needed to look after when they got back, errands she needed him to run. Yumin felt an uneasy fluttering deep in the pit of his stomach and tasted betrayal on his tongue.

Far behind, the head of one of the otters crested the surface of the water. From its nicked ear, Yumin could tell immediately it was Genius. Absently, without waiting for the otter’s signal, Yumin kicked the lever that started the retraction of the nets. But after a few moments, Recluse, the other otter, still hadn’t surfaced, and its companion, Genius, wasn’t giving the affirmative salute, but was instead motioning “Fear” and “Danger,” frantically.

“Hey, Grandmother,” Yumin called, and the old woman looked back. “Could Recluse could be caught in a net, do you think? ”

Grandmother rubbed her lower lip between thumb and forefinger, and nodded, slowly. “It’s possible.”

“You think I should stop the nets’ retraction?”

“No, let them keep reeling in. If Recluse is in a net, bringing the nets onboard will be the best, and perhaps only, way of getting him loose.”

“Fair enough.” Yumin glanced back and eyed the otter trailing behind them. “Something’s got Genius spooked, though.”

Grandmother came to stand beside him. “Will you look at that?”

The otter was still on the surface, still signing “Danger,” and “Fear,” and “Big.” Then he began to sign “Fish,” followed quickly by “Not Fish.” He dove, was gone for a long moment, resurfaced and signed again. “Fish, Not Fish.”

“What does he mean, Grandmother?”

“Nothing good.”

There came a high-pitched squeal, as the motor pulling in the nets began to strain.

“Yumin, take the wheel.” Grandmother switched places with Yumin, going over to lean low over the spools. From the wheel, Yumin could see that the line was taut, the motor still pulling, but the nets weren’t coming in.

Yumin looked back, past the aft end of the boat, to where the lines of the net cut V-shaped wakes into the cold water. Genius the otter was nowhere to be seen.

The motor squealed and strained, and then suddenly the junk lurched forward as the lines momentarily went slack before going taut again. But now the line was spooling in, and the nets were slowly being hauled out of the water.

“There we go!” Grandmother shouted, clapping her hands.

The nets flapped onto the deck. There were fewer fish than they’d hauled in over the Sunken City, but, more surprisingly, there was a huge rent in the mesh of one of the nets.

“What did
that
?” Yumin said, mouth hanging open.

Grandmother narrowed her eyes and shook her head, without saying a word.

 

Night fell, and the otters never resurfaced.

Yumin and Grandmother sat on the deck, laboriously mending the nets. They hadn’t spoken much since the loss of the otters. The cormorant, Great Sage, refused to come down from his perch atop the mast.

The stars were out overhead, and the moons moved across the sky. There was a shooting star moving toward the north, and Yumin realized it was a ship leaving stationary orbit at the top of the orbital elevator. Yumin was momentarily worried that his transport had left without him, but he calmed himself, remembering that it had only been four days, and he had two more to go.

Yumin looked up from his mending. “Grandmother, I suppose we’ll have to head back into land, come the morning, right?” He tried not to sound too eager, but he couldn’t prevent a trace of excitement, mingled with fear, from creeping into his voice.

Grandmother was looking at the net in her hands. “I’ve never see the like. Just never.”

“What about the stories you told me as a boy? The old stories of fish with razor teeth, or otters who carried swords, or dragons from the Land in the Sea.”

Grandmother waved his words away. “Those were just stories. Not flesh and bone.”

After a long silence, Grandmother began to talk, quietly, her voice so low that at first Yumin wasn’t sure whether he was only imagining it. “My husband, your grandfather, used to love those old tales. He seemed to know more of them than anyone could count. And as much as he loved telling them, your father, well, he loved listening to them.”

She paused, and Yumin felt a sting of some strange regret, like a hunger, but thought it strange to feel such a pang of loss for his grandfather, a man he’d never met, and his father, who had died while Yumin was still a babe in arms. He’d never known either of them, not really. But still, when Grandmother would mention them, Yumin couldn’t help but feel that he was missing something deep inside, something vital.

“It is a dark thing to outlive your children,” Grandmother continued, after a long moment’s silence. “Darker still to be left behind, when everyone you know has gone away into the long night.”

Yumin remained silent, trying to think what to say.

“The Red Lantern Families have made me an offer.”

“An offer?” Yumin asked.

“On the junk, on the business, on everything.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them they could take their offer and use it to plug their bungholes.” Grandmother paused, and turned her eyes to the moons overhead, sailing one toward the other. “But now. . . . Now, I just don’t know.”

A long silence followed. In the dim light of the moon, Yumin saw Grandmother sit up straighter.

“But enough stargazing and woolgathering, yes? We have work to do, after all!”

 

Grandmother and Yumin slept on deck and, before sunrise, were awake and back at work, the engine chugging and belching black smoke, the nets dragging behind. Yumin was concentrating on the red-and-gold object in his hands. If he only could find a way to make the persona within communicate.

Grandmother scolded him for lollygagging. Yumin slipped the little machine back into his belt and turned to face their wake.

The V-shapes the nets’ lines made as they parted the water were joined by another. The cormorant overhead squawked profanity and flew away.

“Um, Grandmother?”

Just as the old woman turned back to look, a triangular head parted the waters, grayish-green with black spots, and was lifted on a long, sinuous neck. Baleful, moist eyes regarded them coolly.

“What . . . what is it?” Yumin said, eyes wide. It looked to him like one of the skinks from the Ting township dock, but grown to enormous size.

“It is a dragon,” Grandmother said simply, her voice low.

A stunned silence followed. The huge bulk of the thing lifted farther out of the water, and Yumin could now see that it was caught in the net.

“Cut the nets loose!” Grandmother yelled, but Yumin stood stock still, unable to will himself to move.

Grandmother rushed over and hit the release, sending the lines whipping across the deck.

The junk lurched forward. The dragon roared, then shook the nets loose and dove beneath the waves.

 

The junk plowed on without a hand at the till.

“That . . . that thing . . .” Yumin found that the words in his head spun faster than they could be forced from between his lips.

“The dragon,” Grandmother said simply.

“That . . . dragon . . . must be the offspring of lizards who got into the chemicals and supplies buried in the Sunken City.”

“That’s as may be,” Grandmother said, absently. Then she blinked, repeatedly, and shook herself for a moment, like a dog trying to get dry. Her composure regained, she clamped her pipe between her teeth and lit it. “I believe I’ll be selling out to the Red Lantern Families now. And I’ll thank you to take the post you’ve been offered with the Fleet, and leave me to enjoy my retirement in peace.”

Yumin stammered, dumbfounded. “I can’t . . . I can’t believe you knew about that.”

Grandmother scoffed. “And
I
can’t believe you thought anything could go on beneath your grandmother’s nose know without her knowing.”

A beeping sounded from Yumin’s belt, and he pulled out the red-and-gold device. On the little screen, now lit up, was the semblance of a human face.

“
Waking up now
,” the device chirped. “
Persona coming online
.”

“This . . . this is for you.” Yumin held the device out to Grandmother. “I’ve been trying to get it to work, but I couldn’t get it to communicate.”

“Communication has never been a strength in our family,” Grandmother said, smiling slightly, her hands folded in her lap. “But I can see why the Fleet wants you. The first voyage to the stars will need someone to keep their artificial brains and machines up and running while the crew sleeps, won’t they?”

“I scored higher on the entrance exam than any applicant they’d had,” Yumin answered, chest swelling with pride, “and if I joined up, I’d be taken aboard as an apprentice. By the time the crew went into deep sleep for the interstellar voyage, I’d know more about automata and artificial intelligences than I could ever have imagined possible.”

Grandmother smiled and, still reluctant, took the proffered device. She looked it over, cautiously, as though half convinced it might bite her.

“What is—?” Grandmother looked at the face on the screen and fell silent, taken aback.

It was the face of her husband, long years dead.

“Greetings, Grandmother Lu,”
the face on the screen said in an approximation of his voice.
“How may I be of assistance today?”

“The persona is just an off-the-shelf model,” Yumin said quickly, “but I’ve customized it with data taken from your old family recordings, to look and sound as much as possible like Grandfather.”

Grandmother looked from the device to her grandson. She then turned and looked over the waves. The cormorant was wheeling back toward them, hesitantly.

“These aren’t my waves anymore. This is someone else’s sea, now. Soon it’ll all be automated, and the people will stay ashore, fat and lazy, with their ghosts and memories.” She paused, and a smile spread slowly across her face. “But you know what? That doesn’t sound so bad, anymore.”

The cormorant squawked an interrogative.

“Get down here, you idiot bag of feathers,” Grandmother shouted. “We’re bound for dry land, and we’ll leave these waters to monsters and the machines.”

She looked at Yumin.

“Besides,” she said, “Yumin has a transport to catch. That Fleet won’t wait around forever, now will it?”

 

Halfway home, they dropped anchor, and Grandmother fixed their evening meal, roasting all but one of the fish they had caught on their journey, giving that one to the cormorant for his dinner.

The sky was growing reddish orange with the setting sun in the west, still crystal blue overhead, and growing dark as night in the east. Two bright stars shone over the eastern horizon, one faintly blue-green, the other small and white.

“You know, when I was a child, and you told me about Earth”—Yumin pointed to the blue-green star, rising in the east—“I thought it was just another place where adventures happened, like the Land in the Sea. And when I learned that there was no such place as the Land in the Sea, I assumed that Earth was just in stories, too.”

“Hmmm.” Grandmother sipped from her bowl of broth, salted fish on the broil, humming absently.

“But then I learned that Earth was a real place, the planet from which people originally came. And not only were humans living on Fire Star, but on the moons of Wood Star, and in orbit around Ocean Star. And not just in stories, but in reality.”

“Mmmm,” Grandmother hummed, nodding, her attention on her cooking.

“I wondered where else humans could go, where else we might find someday to live.” Yumin straightened and looked up as the stars came out overhead. “And now I’ll be among those who go out into the heavens, one of the first to travel to another star, searching for a new home.”