Emerald Sea

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“Duke Edmund,” Bruce said, coasting into the swim-through that had been set aside for the duke’s party. “Would you mind joining me for a short swim?”

“Not at all, sir,” Talbot replied, setting down the section of whale bone he had been carving.

He didn’t ask, and Bruce didn’t offer, where they were going. He just followed the mer-leader as he popped up above the reef and headed downward towards the open ocean.

The reef ended at about twenty meters or so and gave way to sand bottom. The light had trailed off, but it was still quite bright in the brilliantly clear waters. They turned to the right and swam along the edge of the reef and Edmund looked around himself with interest. He realized that while he had been enjoying the overall beauty of the reefs, he hadn’t had the time, or, face it, the inclination to really examine them.

The reefs were covered with fish; schools of ones the size of his hand and nearly round of body with blue vertical stripes were everywhere. There were other schools of more “fishlike” appearance, fairly long to their height, with bright yellow tails. In among the crevices were more small fish, all of them in a rainbow of colors. It was only with great trouble that he managed to realize that there were drab fish there as well. And finally he picked out ones that were camouflaged so perfectly they were almost impossible to see. One that looked exactly like a section of reef popped up as they passed and swallowed a smaller fish whole. Edmund never would have noticed it if it hadn’t moved and when it stopped to swallow its prey it nearly disappeared again.

Now that he was really looking around he realized there were many things about the reef that were puzzling. Some of it looked exactly like stone. He knew that it was limestone that had been built up by the coral polyps. But other portions seemed to be covered in fur. These portions were infrequent, but interesting. The covering didn’t seem to be a slime or a mold; he wasn’t sure what it was. And then, why were the swim-throughs there? They looked like gouged canyons, but there was nothing that he could see to gouge them. Did trickles of fresh water open them up? Or water or sand pouring down from the shallows to the deeps?

Furthermore, the reefs were not constant. The area with the swim-throughs, where the town was, was built up to several meters over the sandy bottom. But within a few hundred yards down the coast it had given way to scattered small rocks stuck up barely over the ground.

But even these were alive. There were delicate sea fans dangling from them, waving back and forth in the light currents. A turtle the size of a pony was lying with its belly on the sand, eating a sponge attached to the side of one of the outcroppings. There were brightly colored reef fish. There were even some larger fish that looked more of the open ocean type to him. But they had gathered around the rocks, one or at most two by each one. He thought, at first, that they were hunting something. But they were simply stopped, as much as possible, hanging motionless. When they drifted away from the rocks they would turn and come back into the current until they were over the rocks again and stop, as if they were using them as some sort of location beacon.

Intrigued he deviated from Bruce’s wake and coasted over for a closer look.

The larger fish were shaped something like tuna, but had a more rounded head, a bluish sheen and a horizontal stripe along their midline. What was happening became clear as he got close enough to see details. Smaller fish, one colored bright blue, were darting out from the rock and swimming over the body of the larger fish. He waited patiently for the larger fish to eat one of them but it never did. Instead the small fish swam all over its body, picking at it from time to time as if eating the larger fish’s skin. They even swam into its slowly opening and closing gills and as he watched in amazement one swam right into the larger fish’s mouth, poked around and came back out.

“Cleaning station,” Bruce said and Edmund realized that he had stopped instead of following his host.

“Sorry, I was just watching this,” he said.

“Good,” Bruce replied, clearly willing to dally. “I’d hoped you might actually look around you for once.”

“Was it that obvious?” Edmund chuckled.

“You’re a very focused person, Edmund Talbot,” Bruce replied. “And there are many things to focus on on the reefs. What’s happening there is that the small fish, that one’s a blue wrasse,” he said, pointing at the bright blue one, “are picking parasites off the larger fish. Which is an amberjack by the way.”

“Why doesn’t it eat them?” Edmund asked. “It seems like an easy meal.”

“Sometimes they do,” Bruce said. “But, by and large, they don’t. The small fish get the easy meal. The larger fish get their parasites picked off. If they didn’t have the small fish around, if they ate them all, they’d end up covered in parasites. Both of them get what they need; it’s what’s called a commensal relationship.”

“I saw a turtle back there eating what looked like a sponge,” Edmund said. “What does the sponge get?”

“Eaten,” Bruce replied with a shrug. “Predation is predation. But… that type of sponge grows over live coral as well as dead. If it was left unchecked it would spread over the whole reef, killing it. Tide and currents along with storms would eventually wipe the remnant coral out. So the whole ecosystem would die. If you killed all the turtles, it might not come to pass, there are other things that eat sponges and they would increase as their food source increased, but you begin to understand a small bit of the complexity of the web of life that is a coral reef. Take away the damsel fish and algae grow unchecked. Parrot fish eat the live coral, but their fecal matter is almost pure sand because of the rock they have to ingest to get to the polyps; their shit is what you see as crystal white sand. But there’s something in particular I’d like to show you; it’s not far.”

“Let’s go,” Edmund said, turning away from the cleaning station.

Down the section of patch reef a large coral head rose up in the middle of an expanse of low rocks. It was about three meters high and two across, tapering a bit like a teardrop. It was colored a faint green, as if it had some algae all over it. Sections of it were covered with the mosslike growths he’d seen elsewhere.

“This is Big Greenie,” Bruce said, coasting to a stop and letting the current carry him past the coral head. “It’s a species called green coral and it is the oldest living organism on earth.”

“I thought that was some tree in western Norau?” Edmund said, peering at the rock. “And is it alive?”

“Oh, yes,” Bruce said. “See the fuzzy patches?”

“I’d noticed them before,” Edmund admitted. “They look like it’s covered in moss.”

“Those are the live polyps,” Bruce corrected. “They’re actually related to jellyfish. Think of them as upside down jellyfish surrounded by a rock shell. They’re filter feeders; they extend tendrils that catch plankton as it passes by. Once a year they reproduce, releasing clouds of sperm and eggs to drift on the wind. But Big Greenie, here, has been doing that for seven million years.”

“Damn,” Edmund said, impressed.

“It very nearly died,” Bruce continued. “Water conditions in the mid-twenty-first century were terrible. There was, as it later turned out, a normal climactic shift to higher temperatures, then the cycle reversed and there was a sharp temperature decline, a mini-ice age. All of those created temperature stresses. Toxins released by industry into the water, divers touching the reef, industrial fishing that removed vital species, all of it nearly killed something that had lived for millions of years. There were sections of this reef where less than ten percent included live polyps; that was a recipe for disaster.”

“Your point?” Edmund said, dryly.

“You are, as I mentioned, very focused, Edmund Talbot. But while it’s important to focus on the trees, sometimes you have to let the forest speak for itself. I’m showing you the oldest tree in the forest because I thought it was something that you could focus upon. This is what the Work is all about; ensuring that the reef, Big Greenie included, is never brought to those conditions again.”

Edmund thought about that for a moment, kicking against the current to carry him back to the coral head. He dropped down to the bottom and looked at it closely, then backed up when he saw the head of a very large moray stuck back in a crevice near the coral’s base.

Finally he swam back to where Bruce was waiting patiently.

“I understand what you mean,” Talbot said.

“There’s a ‘but’ there,” Bruce replied.

“There’s a huge ‘but’ there,” Edmund admitted. “The first ‘but’ is that the conditions that you’re talking about don’t apply. Won’t apply. To get to the conditions you describe will require industry, major industry. Which cannot exist given the explosive protocols.”

“Toxins can be created without internal combustion,” Bruce said with a frown.

“Not on large scale, without internal combustion or electrical energy. The first is prevented by Mother under the explosive protocols. And any power production gets sucked up by the damned Net. So you cannot have large-scale industry. You have no idea what I’d give right now for a couple of tons of sulfuric acid, for example, but producing it in a low-tech environment is a stone bitch.”

Bruce opened his mouth but Edmund raised a hand.

“Give me a second here.” Edmund grinned. “You had your say. If we win this war, the entire system comes back online and all the conditions before the Fall hold. You’ll be able to replicate all your needs again. There won’t be any industry, any more than there was for a thousand years before the Fall. Nor will there be any more visitors, because there aren’t that many people and even with the natural population increase that is going on, there won’t be more than a billion and a half, two billion max, in the next hundred years. There’s also a maximum even past that point; you can only support so many humans on preindustrial agriculture. You forgot nutrient run-off in your litany, by the way.”

“It’s in there,” Bruce said, grimly. “Flora bay was nearly killed by it. And the bay is the nursery for half the ecosystem in this region.”

“But that won’t happen because you cannot transport the fertilizers from where they are to where they are needed,” Edmund snapped. “God knows we’re running into that already in Raven’s Mill. My point is that while the war is going on, the reefs are still out of danger. But you are not.”

“So you’ve said,” Bruce shrugged. “But New Destiny doesn’t have a reason to attack us.”

“I’m not talking about New Destiny,” Edmund replied. They had drifted away from the coral head on the current and were headed in the general direction of town. “Your people are excessively vulnerable. And they are valuable to more than just us and New Destiny. We passed a settlement on the way here in Bimi island. With your underwater abilities, you’re a priceless asset to a group like that. How long until they come to the conclusion that since you’re unwilling to assist them, they should force you to?”

“How are they going to do that?” Bruce said, angrily.

“I don’t know,” Edmund replied with a shrug. “But some of them, maybe not now, but soon, will figure out a way. “Why should they dive for lobster when you can do that for them?”

“We could ally ourselves with them, just as well,” Bruce replied.

“They can’t protect you from New Destiny,” Edmund retorted. “And they have far less to lose than we do. You’d be the cleaner fish to their big fish. Sure, it’s a commensal relationship, but if I had my druthers, I’d be the big fish. The cleaners can’t snap me up.”

“And you wouldn’t be the big fish?”

“We need willing allies,” Edmund said, reasonably. “We need you to scout for us, to fight for us if we can figure out a way. To communicate with the delphinos and the other cetoids. To find the New Destiny ships so that we can destroy them before they destroy us. Before they come to my land and I have to fight them at my damned walls. That’s not big fish to little fish. We can’t force you to do those things. How do we know that you intentionally missed some fleet? It’s a big damned ocean, as I’m coming to understand. But I can damned well tell you that the fishermen will get out their whips if you don’t come back with enough lobster.”

“You create problems that don’t exist,” Bruce said, still angry.

“Maybe, but here’s one that already exists: you’re starving to death.”

“We’re getting by,” Bruce said, defensively.

“Barely, as primitive hunter gatherers, dependent on what you can bring in each day,” Edmund said, warming to his own anger. “Damnit, Bruce, you’re responsible to your people, not just to this reef! I’ve got people under my protection that were members of the Wolf terraforming project. Are they working on it now? No, they’re working on rebuilding civilization; not scavenging for food in the forests. And you’re not even good hunter gatherers. You’re losing body weight; Daneh can prove that. You’ve had people die from nutrient deficiencies. We can help. So you don’t want gill nets, fine, they take too many of the fish you don’t want and damage the reef. Fine. We can provide seine nets instead. You can target your prey that way. There are other things your people have asked for. Lobster pots, long lines—”

“No long lines,” Bruce snapped. “They’re nearly as bad as drift nets!”

“Whatever,” Edmund replied. “Tell me what you want and we’ll provide it. Within reason. You’re not the only group we have to support with arms and materials.”

“What’s within reason?” Bruce replied.

Ah, hah. “That’s to be worked out. We can provide the fighters with some weapons. The bronze is better for your purposes; it can be resharpened easily, unlike the stainless. But it’s hard to make and there are no sources of made material whereas we can get blanks, have blanks, of the stainless in quantity. But that’s hard to work as hell, it takes time which means money. We’ll set up a credit system for support and ensure solid, and honest, trade, under UFS trading laws. We’re not going to strip you of people and with our support there are products that you can trade for luxuries and that way you won’t be entirely dependent upon us. As I said, the details have to be worked out, but they are details. As willing allies in a mutual protection pact we’re not going to let you starve at the very minimum. Your mer-men and -women won’t have to scrabble for every little reef-fish they can catch. And maybe even not have to eat sushi for the rest of their lives.”

Bruce considered this for a pace and then shrugged.

“I come out here to convince you, and you half convince me,” Bruce said.

“The reef will survive, with or without you,” Edmund said. “But, here and now, the crisis is the war against New Destiny. Win the war and the reef will be waiting for you. As you yourself said, Big Greenie survived the worst that man could throw at her. She’s survived natural and unnatural disasters for seven million years. She’ll survive this. Assuming that New Destiny doesn’t throw huge power bolts into her. Another thing that we can prevent.”

Bruce shrugged again and then headed back towards the town. Edmund figured it was as good as he was going to get. For now.

Rachel pawed among the leaves and vines, her fins kicking at, and above, the water’s surface to keep her in place. She was mostly finding hard, unripe fruits among sea plum growth.

“Sea plum’s one of those ‘good-bad’ things,” Elayna said, foraging in slightly deeper water. “It’s more of a pest in the waters around Flora, but it has some really specific growing requirements.”

The bed of vines was anchored near the spring on Whale Point Drop but the vines stretched for meters in every direction.

“It interferes with the sea grasses some,” Antja said, sitting up so her head was out of the shallow water and looking around, then bobbing back down to continue to forage. “The roots have to have fresh water, but the fruits will only mature in salt. So it’s only found where there’s a strong fresh-water flow that meets salt water. That means right around spring runoffs like this one for the most part. And it only grows so far. So it’s not a terrible pest. And it supports most of the species that sea grass does, for that matter.”

“There are all sorts of little fish and… stuff in here,” Rachel said. “But not much in the way of mature plums. Elayna, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” the girl said, her bright blue tail waving out of the water as she rummaged in the vines.

“Where’s the eel?”

“Oh, I only bring Akasha out for special occasions,” Elayna said, “And generally only at night. During the day she hides in her cave. I think this bed has mostly been picked over,” she added with a sigh. “We need to go find something else. Conch? Lobster?”

“Conch is generally found around sea grass,” Antja said, looking at Rachel. “But the nearest bed is klicks away. I think we need to go bugging.”

“Bugging?” Rachel asked.

“Looking for crayfish,” Elayna said, then added: “Lobster.”

“Oh.”

“Mostly the way that we do that is to swim upstream so we can coast back,” Antja said, swimming towards the inlet’s mouth. “But we’ve been here long enough that most of the upstream stuff has been picked over like the sea plum. The lobster move around; they come in to refill the niches they hide in, but that takes a little time. So, I’d suggest heading east, if you’re up for a hard swim back?

“I think so,” Rachel replied, picking up the string-mesh bag that had a few fruit in it. “What is this made of?” she asked as she followed the two mer-girls out to sea. They were swimming slowly since she was a virtual cripple in the water but it was still a little fast for her and she was glad when they caught the current and it pushed them to the east.

“Mostly seaweed stems,” Antja said. “We make some from the sea plum, too, but if you cut the vine, you don’t get the fruit. Hard choice.”

“And both of them rot quickly,” Elayna complained. “And aren’t very strong to start with. They’re not very good.”

“This is something we can help with,” Rachel said. “I don’t know if cosilk or hemp would be best, but we have both. Not a lot, yet, but more every year as we break more ground.”

“What I’d really like is a bathing suit top,” Antja said, looking at Rachel’s two-piece. “I’m really tired of having my breasts on display all the time. There are times that I don’t like being looked at that way, if you know what I mean. I won’t even comment on the occasional touch.”

“Speak for yourself,” Elayna said happily. “I like the looks. I don’t even mind the touch, if it’s the right hands.”

“That’s because you’re a slut, Elayna,” Antja said, without rancor.

“She’s not a slut,” Rachel challenged. “She’s just… comfortable with showing off her body. But I know what you mean, Antja. Even this thing is too skimpy for me. I never really showed off, much, before the Fall. Except, you know, when I was younger…”

“Putting on as little as your mom would let you get away with and going out in public to flaunt?” Antja said with a grin.

“Oh, I’d shake it,” Rachel laughed. “But then… some of the looks I’d get. They just made me shiver, you know? And I started putting my clothes back on. Since the Fall… with… some of the things that have happened, you never catch me anymore except in long skirts or slacks and a high-buttoned shirt. I don’t want the looks. At all.”

“Well, I don’t mind them, thanks,” Elayna said. “And I’m not a slut. A slut is some girl that sleeps with any guy that crooks a finger. I’m much pickier. Now, Bast, Bast is a slut.”

“Not by your definition,” Rachel said with a laugh. “By your definition, she’s perfect. But she wouldn’t mind being called a slut; she’d probably take it as a compliment. But Bast is very choosy and as far as I can see… sort of serially monogamous. I didn’t realize it at first, but she really is. She’s never even looked at another guy since she started dating Herzer, at least not around Raven’s Mill. And, God knows, Herzer doesn’t worry about hopping from bed to bed. If you’d like a slut, Herzer’s the male definition. But Bast isn’t. Hell, she chose my father when he was not much older than Herzer and they apparently were quite an item for damned near a decade.”

“Really?” Elayna gasped. “Your dad?”

“Oh, yeah,” Rachel said with a wicked grin. “Apparently back then, Dad must have really been something. Heck, he was living with Aunt Sheida before he met my mom and that was either post Bast or concurrent; I’ve never been sure and I’m not about to ask. And then he tossed them both over for Mom. Now that must have been a spectacular breakup.”

“Aunt Sheida?” Antja said, picking up on the name. “Not the council member?”

“Yep, now Queen Sheida of the United Free States. Even back then she was number two or three on the list for a Key, and they don’t hand those out at raffles. But here Dad is bouncing from Bast to Sheida and then finally settling on Mom of all women.”

“So he’s never slept with Bast again?” Elayna said. “That’s hard to believe. She’s so…”

“Sensual,” Rachel finished the sentence. “After Mom left him, taking me along, he apparently had some time with Bast. But… I’m not sure what was going on there. I’d say he needed the company; he was really busted up when Mom left.”

“When was this?” Antja asked.

“When I was about four,” Rachel said, sadly, remembering the arguments vaguely as not happy times. “My dad was a really serious reenactor before the Fall. He lived in a stone house, cooked his own food, or had a nanny servant do it anyway, the whole thing. Like some feudal lord. I mean, it wasn’t crazy living; he had hot and cold running water. But it was from a cistern on the hill and that was filled from a spring. When I say cold I mean cold. Anyway, the way I pieced it together, Mom wasn’t willing to raise me like that and he wasn’t willing to leave. So he clung to his life like a limpet and… Mom made a new one. He came and lived with us for a while but he just couldn’t hack it. Technology really seems to drive him crazy if he’s living with it every day. So by the time I was six or so, he was gone for good. I’d still visit him from time to time, especially for Faire. It was great when I was a kid. Dad was the local ‘Lord’ and I’d get all dressed up and people would fuss over me. But then as I got older, it just got so… old. So I stopped going to visit him.”

“What happened?” Elayna said. “Why’d you go back?”

“Duh, the Fall, dummy,” Antja chuckled, grimly.

“Duh, indeed,” Rachel said with a frown. “Mom and I lived… hell, not that far from Raven’s Mill. No more than a hundred klicks. Do you know how hard it is to walk a hundred klicks, carrying food, in the middle of the storms they had after the Fall?”

“Yuck,” Elayna muttered.

“Yeah. But what more perfect place to go? Before the Fall it was ‘This water is like ice and why do I have to use this old-fashioned flush commode? Why don’t you just transport like any normal person, Daaadddy!’ When I got there and saw a flush commode, and a hot bath being drawn, I cried like a baby. No more squatting in bushes! No more rough flannel and cold river water! Mom…” She stopped and breathed for a moment. “Mom got first crack at the tub. But, anyway, that’s how Mom and Dad got back together. And… after a while they got back to being… friends. For a while there, it was really sickening, like two giggly teenagers. Now they’re just… well, they’re just about the most perfect couple I’ve ever seen. They discuss problems, rarely lose their temper with each other and compliment one another for what they do. And Bast, returning to the subject of the discussion, has been smart enough not to interfere. Why should she? She’s got Herzer!”

“So what about you and Herzer?” Elayna asked. “I heard you were sharing a room on the ship? Care to pass on any tips?”

“He snores,” Rachel said, sweetly. “As for the rest, Herzer’s like my brother. I… we’ve never. We’re not going to be doing that.”

“Why?” Antja asked, reasonably. “I mean, I’ve got Jason and Herzer’s got no tail to speak of, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see the attraction. Hell, you’ve only got to take one look at his bathing suit to see one attraction.”

“I did!” Elayna snickered.

“Well…” Rachel said, coloring slightly. “If… if there’s such a thing as an ‘antislut’ that’s me. That doesn’t mean I’m down on girls who enjoy bed hopping; Marguerite was one of my best friends before the Fall and she lost her virginity about the time she started blooming tits. And never looked back. But me… I’ve just never been interested.”

“You mean in guys?” Elayna asked.

“I mean in sex,” Rachel responded. “Guys or girls. I just don’t care. I like guys, and girls, as friends. But I’m not interested in… all the squishy awfulness. It sort of makes me queasy to tell you the truth.”

“That’s weird,” Elayna said. “I can’t really imagine that.”

“That’s because you’ve got a sex drive,” Rachel said with a sad frown. “I don’t. It’s like being tone-deaf. You can listen to the music, but all it is is noise. Unpleasant noise at that. The thought of… Herzer’s dick in me is… ooooh!” she ended with a shudder of disgust.

“Okay,” Antja said. “I have to agree, that’s weird.”

“Well if a normal sex drive is like a five,” Rachel said with a shrug. “And Elayna here is, say, an eight, I’m like a negative one.”

“And what’s Bast?” Elayna said.

“Three thousand one hundred and fifteen,” Rachel laughed. “More or less.”

They had drifted to an area of scattered patch reef, most of them a meter or so high, and Antja suddenly darted downward, reaching into a crevice.

“Gotcha,” she said, pulling the lobster out of its hole. It waved its antennae at her furiously and kicked with its tail but most of the motion stopped when she wrung the body off of the tail and dropped the latter into her bag.

“They generally hang out under ledges and in cracks,” Antja said, dropping down to the sand bottom to swim along the side of the section of reef. She was peering into the ledges under the rock and then darted her hand in again. This time she drew it out with an expression of disgust.

“What we need is spears for this,” she said. “It’s not particularly sporting but we’re not here for sport.”

Rachel coasted a little farther down and picked out her own patch of rock. She got down on the sand and looked under the reef but it was nearly black to her eyes. The sun was high and shining down through the water as if the ten meters or so over her head wasn’t even there. And the shadows under the rock were nearly impenetrable. But she could see stuff on the sides, little fish darting in and out. Then she saw a shadow move under the rock and backed up in a hurry as a small shark came sculling out lazily. At least, she thought it was a shark. It looked a little like one except that the mouth was pursed as if it had been eating a lemon.

“Nurse shark,” Elayna said as she swam by. “They’re harmless if you don’t bother them. On the other hand, they’ll tear you a new one if you do. A guy before the Fall, a mer and he should have known better, tried to ride one. Fortunately the nannites fixed him right up. But he Changed back to normal human and never got in the water again.”

“How do you see under here?” Rachel said. She had changed patches and was now looking under the new rock, warily.

“You get used to it,” Antja said, drifting past. She now had three lobster tails in her bag, one of which was huge. “Watch them, though, they’ve got spines. You have to grip them firmly but not hard. Firmly enough that they can’t get away; they’ll rip you up struggling out of your hand. But don’t grab them so hard that you poke yourself.”

“Great,” Rachel said, catching a glimpse of some antennae waving just down the reef. She pushed herself off the bottom with her fingers and snuck up on the crayfish. It was apparently unworried about her approach, except for waving its antennae more aggressively. She moved her hand in closer and then lunged. She wasn’t quite fast enough, but she got ahold of the antennae at the base, surprised by the struggle the lobster was putting up. She managed to get her other hand around it and then wrung the tail off quickly.

“Got one,” she said, happily. Then noticed the small cuts in the fingers that had snagged the antennae. The salt water stung them but there wasn’t much she could do about that.

“Gloves,” Elayna said, popping up from a section of reef about ten meters away. “That’s what we really need: Gloves.”

“Not if you use a spear,” Antja said. She was out of sight, only her golden-red tail sticking up out of the reef. The colors only really came out when they were close to the surface.

“Why do you guys all have colorful tails when the water makes them all look brown or green at depth?” Rachel asked, going back to her hunting.

“Our eyes process out the blue light,” Antja replied, then paused as she apparently lunged for another lobster. “Until we get deep and that’s all there is. But when we’re at, say, twenty meters, we see things just as clearly, color-wise, as you do up here. But by the time you get down to say, thirty or forty meters, it kicks back over to ‘normal’ vision because just about everything but blue has gone away.”

“Is it harder for you to see?” Rachel asked. “I mean, down by the town and stuff. Everything down there is blue.”

“No,” Elayna replied. “We’ve got superior night vision, too. Kind of like a cat. We can probably see better than you can. That might be why we can see under the rocks better, too.”

“I see this one,” Rachel said, darting in and getting ahold of the body this time. She’d figured out her grip and didn’t get cut for her troubles, but her hand scraped on the rock as she drew the struggling crustacean out. She also realized that she was tired. And there was a long swim back against the current. “This isn’t easy.”

“No, it’s not,” Antja said. “I’m not sure we’re getting more calories than we’re going to burn off, especially with having to swim back against the current carrying the tails.”

Rachel thought about that and then laughed.

“I’ll carry them back,” she said, spotting another lobster. “I can walk up on the shore. That way you guys don’t have to wait for me to catch up.”

“Works,” Elayna said. “But we can keep in the shallows, that way you’ll have company. That way you can tell me all of Herzer’s terrible secrets.”

“I think those are Herzer’s to tell,” Rachel said, pausing in her hunt.

“Oh, that’s no fun,” Elayna replied.

“Well, most of Herzer’s life before the Fall doesn’t contain many terrible secrets,” Rachel replied as her hand darted in and just missed the more wary crayfish. It had been a large one, too. “He had a genetic condition that my mom cured, just before the Fall, fortunately. It got worse as he got older and especially worse around puberty. He… didn’t have many friends and no girlfriends to speak of.”

“That’s pretty unbelievable,” Antja said. Her bag was nearly full and she rested on the top of the reef for a moment. Rachel suddenly realized that the scales on their tails had more than decorative purposes; if she had tried that, with the mild swell that was pushing over the rocks, she would have come away with a scraped-raw butt.

“He… twitched,” Rachel said, finding it hard to explain. “He worked out but he couldn’t keep any muscle mass; he was like a shaking twig all the time. And he had a speech impediment. Sometimes he’d drool or one of his limbs would just start spasming. It was… awful to watch. He’d been a fun kid, played sports, and then this… disease just wasted him away. I admit I started avoiding him. I’m pretty ashamed by that but it was just too weird. Anyway, Mom figured out a cure just before the Fall. Basically she killed and brought him back to life.” Rachel swallowed at another thought she didn’t want to voice. “Which… makes them bound in a weird way. Anyway, that’s why he didn’t have girlfriends. Now after the Fall,” she continued with an evil glint in her voice, “that’s another story.”

“So I’m just the latest?” Elayna asked. “I’d sort of figured; he was… pretty good. Actually, darned good.”

“A lot of that is because of Bast,” Rachel replied. She popped up over the reef to see Antja taking a bite out of one of the lobster tails. “Aren’t we supposed to be sharing with the town?”

“I’ve got too much to carry back,” Antja said, reasonably. “If I eat some, I carry it in my stomach.”

“We can switch out bags,” Rachel replied. “I’m never going to fill this one at this rate.”

“Works,” Antja said, finishing off the lobster tail and wiping her hands on her scales. “These things are a lot better cooked, though.”

“So, why’s it Bast?” Elayna said. Her tail was flipping back and forth savagely as she shoved an arm deep into a crevice. “Hah, gotcha ya bastard.”

“Bast considers it a solemn duty to train her current boy-toy,” Rachel replied, dryly. “And she’s been doing a lot of training with Herzer.”

“It shows,” Elayna laughed. “Although it took him a few minutes to figure out the differences in anatomy. After that it was great.”

“Herzer has two great skills in life,” Rachel said. “Fighting and… the other. I wish I could appreciate either one.”

She snagged another lobster and carried it over to Antja, who was dragging what had been Rachel’s bag behind her. It was more than half full.

“How do you do that so quickly?” Rachel asked.

“I’ve been doing it since I was a kid,” Antja replied. “My parents were mer and they had me as a mer; I’ve been bugging my whole life that I can remember. For that matter, I’ve hunted this reef before; I know where they tend to hang out. Try over there,” she said, pointing to a patch of reef that looked identical to the empty one that Rachel had just been working.

When Rachel approached the reef she could understand half of Antja’s success; the ledge under the rock was packed with bugs from side to side, their antennae waving at her angrily. She reached into the mass and snatched one out while the others skittered from side to side, trapped by her body and the shallow ledge. As fast as she could reach she pulled lobsters out and wrung their tails. Some skittered by her, turning to use their powerful tails to skim over dangerous open ground, but she heard Elayna whoop behind her and dive on them.

In moments she had over a dozen tails lying on the ground among the scattered bodies of the lobster.

“So it’s a trick,” she said, smiling, as she gathered up the tails.

“Sure, isn’t everything?” Antja replied. “I think that about does it. Three bags full as they say.”

“So, you were born as a mer,” Rachel said. “Did they, what? Did they crack the can under water? Some sort of underwater uterine replicator? What?”

“No,” Antja said, in a tone that showed she didn’t want to discuss it.

“Sorry,” Rachel replied, hurt. Given everything that they had been talking about it seemed a harmless enough subject.

“I’m sorry, too,” Antja said. “I just don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

“Okay,” Rachel said. Then she paused and her brow furrowed. “Antja, after the Fall, all the controls on the landsmen, well, let me make this plain, the landswomen, reproductive system turned off. We had an awful time with the first… menstruation. Did yours?” she asked, delicately.

“Yes,” Antja said, tightly. “On the other hand, they designed mer better than ‘normal’ humans; we, thank God, don’t menstruate.”

“But, you are fertile?” Rachel asked, realizing that she’d just tiptoed into a minefield as Elayna came over a rock with a set expression on her face. “You and Jason could have a baby? Elayna, for that matter, might be carrying Herzer’s?” She looked over at Elayna who had a stricken expression on her face as if that thought had just occurred to her.

“Yes, we are,” Antja said. “I wish you would stop pursuing this line of questioning.”

“Sorry,” Rachel said, “call me incurably curious. Just one more: Antja, what happened to the babies?”