Fish Tails (28 page)

“My wife says they grow near Tingawa. If you'd like, I'll try to get some pollen for you. Would it be too late for this year?”

Gister grinned at him. “If you could do that! Oh, yes. This year or next or whenever, so long as I'm still living. Even if the waters come, like you say, I've got a hunch there'll be a mountaintop of two could stand having trees on it. And I'd see the seeds were kept, too, ready to plant when the time came. Or take to some other world, maybe. I can dream that!”

Abasio promised. Later he gave Gum a sample caltrop, a jug of the poison, and a letter to Willum's mom, explaining about the giants and suggesting that they be prepared if the Giants came into their area. The village had a blacksmith. He could make the spikes, and they could buy the stuff that went on them from Saltgosh, or trade for it. Gum shook his head over the information. When he left for home the next morning, by the southern route, Willum sat atop Abasio's wagon watching the Gravysuck hitch on its way back home, disappearing and reappearing as the road rounded the plump shoulders of the mounded hills.

Xulai, while tucking the wet-­suited babies into a basket for their nap inside the wagon, remarked, “Don't forget we have to stow the cookies.” Liny and a dozen other women had made them in the huge Tavern kitchen between the regular breakfasts, lunches, and suppers for the residents. Those made by the Saltgosh women were plainer-­looking than the ones from Tingawa, but even Xulai admitted they tasted just as good. It had taken several tries before they had come up with a way of packing and stacking them that would keep them whole as the wagon bumped its way up toward the pass. Certain drills the miners used came in long fiber cylinders, perfect for packing stacks of cookies that could be slotted into the hollow ceiling of the wagon.

Abasio took their map from the wagon and spread it on the shelf that folded down from the wagon's side. “Since we know the map isn't accurate, I'm not going to trust it entirely, but since it shows no ­peopled place between here and the plains on the eastern side, and since the ­people here in Saltgosh agree with that, we won't plan on stopping anywhere. Liny says the kitchens here are well provided from their Home farms and the wagons that bring barter, so if we need anything in the way of food to last us until Artemisia, now is the time to buy what we need.”

“Gum mentioned ­people from around here who raided for women . . .” said Xulai.

“If you're thinking of a place for us to recruit, there's nowhere. Remember, those ­people came seventy years ago. If they still exist, which I doubt, they're too deep in the woods to get the wagon in, and considering what Gum said about the ­people from there, they are not candidates for the sea change.” He laid his hand on Xulai's shoulder. “The next likely place to do any recruitment is going to be inside Artemisia itself. You'll like the ­people there.”

“How come you know so much about the place?” Willum asked.

Xulai answered. “Abasio was born east of the mountains. A lot of the ancient scientists and technicians lived in the same area . . .”

Willum's face twisted oddly, half curiosity, half annoyance. “I hear you and 'Basio alla time sayin'
sine-­
tist,
sine-­
tist, sine
-­tist,
but nobody tells me what one
is
!”

Abasio grinned at Xulai. “Not keeping up with your educational responsibilities, madam?”

She took Willum by the arm, handed him a bucket, took another one herself, and started for the pool, saying as she went, “Well, Willum, a scientist is a person who studies things. One might study animals, another might study birds, or stones or stars . . .” Her voice went on, discoursing on scientific method, Willum interrupting at intervals, and as they returned, she was saying, “One person may say ‘tall' where another says ‘short,' or ‘thick' where another says ‘thin,' but two is always two, four is always four. It is the scientist's job to prove how something works by recording and measuring, and they can't say it's so until they can prove it.”

Willum stared at her. “How would one o' them prove something like . . . like a rainbow?”

Xulai threw a glance to Abasio that said, “He may be a brat, but he isn't stupid.” Abasio had already figured that out. He leaned back and drowsed, the sun on his face, while Xulai set Willum to chopping cabbage during her explanation of raindrops and prisms and the scientific method, concluding “ . . . and even though one man quotes his holy book as to what's true and another man quotes his traditions as to what's true, a scientist will not say anything is true until he's proved it.”

Willum looked puzzled. “But how come the holy book didn't know what was true? I mean, if it was holy and all that?”

Abasio opened his eyes and joined the conversation. “Willum, there's a holy book some folks have that tells about God making the first man and then taking one of that man's ribs to make the first woman out of. Everybody in the world was supposed to be descended from that man and that woman. So a lot of the ­people who believed in that book said the book explained why men have one less rib than women do.”

Willum drew himself up, hands flying to the area in question. “Do I have a fewer rib?”

Xulai murmured, adding chopped apple to the salad, “No, Willum. You've got the same number we all have, same on both sides, men and women.”

After a moment of frowning concentration, the boy's face lighted up. “So you mean
they never counted
?”

Abasio was delighted. There was intelligence hidden behind that stubborn, unthinking behavior. “You're right! They never counted. That's why Xulai and I have to be so very careful about ­people's religion when we're traveling. If your religion tells you to believe you have one less rib, you're not allowed to count them.”

“My ma, she'd say that's just plain silly.”

“Well,” drawled Abasio. “In my experience, often ­people with very little brain find life easier if they turn the brain off entirely. Thinking is work, and for some ­people, that's like harnessing a pair of field mice to pull a hay wagon. It's lots easier to shut your mouth, ignore reality, and believe what ­people tell you to believe.”

Xulai, moved by Abasio's challenge, was considering what her duty was as temporary mother to Willum. She had assumed that duty would include telling a child whatever that child wanted or needed to know, promptly and fully. Including the embarrassing details, if any! Abasio had waited with some anticipation for the unveiling of the embarrassing details, but Willum, being farm-­reared, knew about sex already, including things about the sexual behavior of animals that Xulai would have preferred to remain ignorant of, much to Blue and Rags's ­amusement.

Each of them had a plate of lunch, Willum walking back and forth with his, and she became slightly apprehensive about what else the boy might have on his mind. Since he usually approached food as though it had to be disposed of before it grew legs and got away, she expected an immediate resumption of discussion. Today, however, she noted the boy's furrowed forehead, the brows drawn together over his nose in puzzlement, the slowed movement of hands to mouth. She shared a glance with Abasio, who shrugged slightly. The boy was bothered about something.

In a moment Willum looked up and said, “Well, tell you what, Xulai! I think that rib business is just . . . like I said, silly. Now, God took that rib, right? And so my uncle, he had a accident, and he lost his thumb. N' after that, he had a little boy and the boy had both thumbs, so losing some part of you doesn't mean your children are gonna be missing that part.”

Abasio laughed out loud. “You're perfectly right.”

“Even back then there were enough examples that ­people should have known it,” admitted Xulai. “But ­people thought since God made man in the first place, any changes made by God would turn out to be hereditary. Of course, that was mostly before the Big Kill . . .”

Willum shook his head in stubborn, red-­faced confusion:
“Ma n' Pa never tol' me about any Big Kill! You and 'Basio say there's not many ­people anymore. Nobody tol' me there wasn't many ­people anymore. Nobody in Gravysuck ever tol' me that!”

Abasio frowned as he pulled the boy closer to him. “Hey, Willum, settle down. We told you, these things happened way in the past! Forty generations. Remember? That's what we said. Nobody talks much about things that happened that long ago. Most ­people talk about what they've done, sometimes about something their parents did, and even more seldom anything their grandparents did or saw. The Big Kill happened long before Gravysuck was even there. I imagine your family didn't get started in Gravysuck until hundreds of years after those things ­happened.”

A long silence while Willum actually snuggled against him. Abasio caught Xulai's eye, and she nodded. She had noticed. Too many new ideas! And actually being disciplined! The boy was feeling lost. And maybe homesick. And perhaps scared. He'd never before thought it was necessary to listen or be obedient. Now he probably found the thought frightening. Maybe?
Could one hope so?

“Was there really truly lots more ­people then, 'Basio?”

“You can answer that for yourself, Willum. I know you've heard about all those buried cities!” He paused for a nod of agreement. “Well, if there were big cities, they had to have been filled with ­people. Where did they go? What did you think I meant when I talked about the Big Kill?”

Willum frowned, chewing his lip in annoyance. “I didn't conneck it up, I guess. If they was killin' hunnerts a' ­people, I guess there had to be hunnerts of 'em to kill, but I didn't conneck it up.” He turned toward Abasio. “ 'Basio. What was your story about why we don't have all those ­people? Where you lived, what did they say about it?”

Abasio half smiled. “Well, I lived in farm country along the east side of these mountains. Just over the pass, where we're going. We didn't know about the Big Kill because almost all the killers had been destroyed by the time my grandparents were born. But the ruins of the city, Fantis, were there. Lots of ­people had seen the ruins. Even though the city was mostly buried, anyone could see how huge it'd been once upon a time. You could see buildings that had had ten floors in them, even twenty! So, all those ­people had to have gone somewhere, and nobody remembered the Big Kill because that had happened too long ago, right?”

“I 'spose. Right.”

“Everyone along the mountains knew there were spaceships at the Place of Power. No one knew much about them, but it wasn't a secret. ­People knew power got sent down from the moon to the Place of Power and there were ships that went up there to maintain the machines. Nobody thought much about it. ­People at the Place of Power didn't mix with other ­people, so they didn't know much about one another.

“So what I think might have happened is some men were drinking beer somewhere near Fantis, that's the big buried city where I was. Maybe they were digging into it for treasure. And one of the men maybe said something like,
‘This place was really BIG. I wonder where all the ­people went that used to live here?'
And one of the other men maybe said,
‘Oh, they prob'ly flew to the stars in those ships they got down at the Place of Power.'
And the first man says
, ‘Sure, that's prob'ly what happened.'
And then they drank some more beer, and when they went home they talked about it, and their families talked about it, and pretty soon everyone along the mountains there decided that everyone had flown to the stars in spaceships they had down at the Place of Power!

“And then later, maybe one night some boy about your age asked his mom,
‘Mom, why didn't our family go to the stars on the starships?'
And Mom didn't know, but she didn't want to say she didn't know . . .”

Willum blurted, “And she didn't want him thinkin' like they hadn't been asked neither. Moms can get real mad if somebody has a do and they don't get 'vited.”

“Right. Nobody wants to be left out, so maybe she said something like”—­he screwed up his face and gave it his best falsetto—­“
‘Oh, my family said if those other ­people want to leave this good earth that's been our home, well, let them. We're going to be faithful to our home and stay right here.'
And the boy repeated that, and someone else told someone else, and before long, everyone said it
. ‘When I was a boy, all the ­people in the cities went to the stars, but we chose to stay right here!'
And, of course, there had been millions of ­people in the cities.”

“Is that a lot? Millions?” Willum asked Xulai.

“It was way too many ­people in one place, yes.”

Abasio was rubbing his head, casting his mind back to that teenage boy who had left the farm for the city. “Where I grew up, on the farm, twenty or thirty grown ­people and their children was a village. So when we spoke of a million ­people, it seemed an enormous number.”

“So it
is
a 'normous number,” said Willum. “Isn' it?”

“Yes,” said Xulai. “But it's only a tiny bit of how many there really were.”

Willum frowned. “If ­people knew how many there really was, how come they thought they all went to the stars, then?” He frowned, then shouted, “Wait! I know, I know. It's what you said about not counting! But it seems like they would . . . I don't unnerstan' that!”

Abasio gave him half a real hug, which Willum—­obviously not thinking—­returned. “Willum, how do your folks measure farmland?'

“Pa says it's achers, like a backache. 'Cause whether you plow it or seed it or whatever, it makes you ache all over when you're done.”