Fable Blue

by Robert Reed

Fantasy

He was born in a remote village high up near the Blue, and his mother took him at once and swallowed him whole, holding his half-formed body safe inside her stomach. His father fed them and cared for them and talked sweetly to his wife, as new fathers do. She was Yio, quiet and loving. Strun had been her husband for years, but this was only their first child. Naming a once-born is considered bad luck, but the village began to call the boy "Miracle." After all, Strun and Yio were middle-aged people, their carapaces glowing with the dull, softened colors of grandparents, and poor Strun had lost three arms since his prime. Yet here they were, suddenly parents, and Strun had to work like a young man, using experience in place of vigor to provide for his growing family.

The entire village attended the boy's final birth, and he was named Wyll, which means "Little Miracle." Smaller than most children, Wyll nonetheless proved strong for his size, and smart too. He acted shy and said little, but when he did speak his carapace was full of vivid colors, bright and exuberant -- blues deeper than the Blue itself and reds that nearly burned the eyes watching him.

Strun was proud of his son, as was his right, and the village tolerated the old man's occasional boasts.

Yio was a protective mother, fearful and alert.

That Wyll seemed odd was mentioned from time to time. A dreamy boy, some said. Lazy, others claimed. Yet boys are not men, and everyone hoped that Little Miracle would replace his father in every way. "Time changes," it is said, "and nothing changes." Today Wyll might seem distant, but someday he would inherit Strun's traplines, taking his living from the edges of the Blue. His good work would enrich the village, making everyone happy and proud.

What better way is there to spend one's life?

Blue is misery's color.

The Blue itself means death. It is where the ocean ends -- a great void named for its daytime color -- and it kills through suffocation and dehydration and countless other terrors. Some say that the Blue holds the World in its grip. Most people never see it, living deep in the ocean, but everyone knows about it and everyone tells stories about it. Wealthy people pay dearly for slivers of cured meat that come from the Blue. For while it means death to people, the Blue is home to a multitude of strange beasts who walk the dry land and soar in the void itself, and who can be lured down to the ocean when the tides are low.

Men like Strun have always made their livings with traplines. They are accustomed to the bright warm waters, and they use every trick. Special shields protect their large eyes from sunlight. The moon's motions and the tides are known by heart. They swim up near the Blue when the tides are peaking, setting fancy traps and camouflaging them. No one was better than Strun. He could guess where some careless animal or void-soarer would step. Then with the next high tide he would return, finding his quarry drowned and waiting for him. For just as the Blue is deadly to people, the water is deadly to them, the two worlds antagonistic and separated by a vanishingly thin boundary.

Strun would take his prizes to a little city below the village. He'd cure the meat himself, leaving it on the bone to prove its authenticity. The buyers knew him as honest and reliable. Strun never disguised fishmeat as something rare. He didn't dye a void-soarer's feathers to enhance its worth. And he was a shrewd judge of what each piece was worth, knowing his market and usually receiving the best deal possible.

His family wanted for nothing. Wyll was well-fed and rich with toys, and Strun brought gifts every time he came back from the city. He even brought fancy children's books -- flat machines that glowed like a person's carapace, telling stories with colors and shapes. Wyll was envied by his peers, yet he didn't boast about his good fortune or even seem aware of it. He shared what he owned, almost without thought, and because of that he had an assortment of friends, mostly younger and liking him for the gifts.

One day Strun caught something very rare. The creature must have been wading in the ocean after the tide turned. The trap pinned its leg, and the waves covered it soon afterward. Its body was upright and hairless, save for a little furry tuft on the ugly head. It tasted odd -- that night they ate one of its smaller limbs -- and Strun cured the rest with seaweed extracts and weakfish blood. Sometimes rarities brought nothing from the buyers. This beast resembled nothing else, and Strun had little hope. Yet when he pulled the carcass from its sack there was a tangible excitement throughout the market. Not even the sharpest buyers could hide their mood. Strun decided to hold an auction, and in the end he was paid ten times what he would have accepted. Silver cylinders rattled in his money sack. He made glad yellow colors, asking the highest bidder, "What makes this worth so much?"

"Its rarity, and the strange look about it." The man laughed, then admitted, "Some people think its meat is particularly clean, no filthy hair and all that..."

"If I catch more of them," asked Strum "will you pay me the same rate?"

"I doubt if you can. They're extremely hard to trap."

"But if I do, will you pay me?"

"Of course."

"Then I'll bring more of them," Strun promised.

"Sure! Be my guest!"

Their deal was struck, then Strun asked what else the buyer knew. "This is a young one, for instance." The buyer grasped the upper limb with several of his arms. "This thing can grasp. Here, at the end. Not a strong grasp like ours, but enough to pry itself free of most traps. You're lucky it was young and small and that the tide came over it. I've done this work for years, but this is only my third Twos. The third one that I've seen, mind you. The first that I've been able to buy."

"Twos?"

"What people call them. You see? Two of everything, sort of. An odd shape all around." The buyer's words faded into the cold dark water around them. "There's no stranger creature anywhere, Strun. Unless you're talking about people."

Yellow laughter filled the little market.

* * * *

Using his windfall, Strun bought new tools and new metal parts made in distant factories. In the next months he devised a brand-new trap. Wyll helped him. The boy had a knack for anticipating what would work, and together they built and tested the invention. Then Strun took him for the first time, showing him where and how to set up, then returning with Wyll to check on their luck.

Wyll was full of questions, particularly about the Blue and the strange animals living in it. What substance made up the void? Did it extend to the moon? To the sun? How far did the dry lands extend? And wouldn't it be amazing to see the land, if only for an instant -- -

"That's crazy talk," his father warned him. "In fact, don't talk at all. The animals can see your words in the water."

They caught nothing exceptional, just ordinary void-soarers and a fat little weed-rat. But one of the new traps had been destroyed, buried under rocks. Had the Twos spotted it? Had they thrown the rocks? If so, they were clever and Strun had underestimated his quarry. He took more care with hiding them, and he baited them with fresh-killed fish, years of experience telling him where a walking creature would stop before reaching. Several days later, he caught a new Twos, the trap snapping shut and a second trigger sprung, a taut cable winding onto a spool far below and the prize dragged underwater in moments.

They ate none of the meat themselves. Strun made a special trip to the city, taking Wyll with him; and the buyer was thrilled, telling them, "See the belly? The bulge? She's carrying a child, do you see? Oh, my clients will pay for this one!"

"Maybe I've earned a bonus," Strun suggested.

The buyer complained, but this was business. They settled on a modest bonus, and afterward, trying to make amends, the buyer told him, "I hope to see you again! Soon!"

Wyll said nothing during the long swim home.

"What's the matter?" Strun asked, tired of his son's pale gray carapace. "Is something bothering you?"

"No. Nothing."

"Something is the matter," his father maintained.

But Wyll would only put out all of his arms, uncurling them, the gesture older than any words and meant to show he was hiding nothing. Nothing at all.

Strun found new baits and new ways to present them.

Sometimes he placed barrel clams above the low-tide mark, and when he returned he found them smashed by rocks, their meats gone. Even clever animals could be lulled into indifference, he reasoned; after several months of careful feeding, he would set a single trap nearby, seemingly by accident. A large male paid for its carelessness, and Strun used the new money to build better traps. Instead of cumbersome brass jaws, he decided on fancy wire nooses. Two small males were pulled to their deaths; and afterward, Strun's reputation spread throughout the high country, every village knowing about him.

He was wise enough to downplay his success. Too much pride would make others angry, he knew; and besides, he didn't want to encourage too many trappers. He told his neighbors some of his tricks, making them promise to tell no one; but they were impatient and clumsy, their baits stolen and their traps smashed under barrages of rock.

Wyll benefited from it all. Strun brought him a new book -- a thick and elaborate history of civilization -- and the boy spent countless days in his room, the book fixed to a rock wall and telling its stories with sharp colors and intricate shapes. Sometimes Yio would look in on him, feeling a motherly disquiet. Was he having a good time? Did he need anything? A few times she tried to read with him, but the density of the picture-words was beyond her abilities. Scholars and fancy people spoke this way. Not simple villagers at the edge of the World.

"Do you understand all of this, Wyll? Can you really?"

"Of course," the boy replied. "Yes, I can."

That was a lie, but not much of one. Wyll couldn't follow most of the names, and the distant places seemed more fictional than real. But the story itself was powerful and horribly sad. He read how the Confederation had been built through warfare. For millennia, the city-states had tried to dominate one another. The cities near the deep ocean vents were first to purify and shape the first metal tools. They learned how to culture the hot-water bacteria, selecting strains that in turn concentrated different flavors of metal, and craftsmen used stone molds to create the best weapons in the World. The Confederation was dominated by those victorious cities. They were the seats of government and learning, and every new wonder -- electricity and thinking machines and books like this one -- came from them and proved their superiority.

Misery, blue and bright. Wyll felt misery when he read the accounts of famous battles, and he felt guilt for things he couldn't quite name. He understood that he was squeamish and weak, and sometimes it was all he could manage to keep that flaw hidden. And it was a flaw. He realized it that day when he and his father were in the market, the buyer explaining that the Twos was pregnant. All Wyll could see was a once-born baby starving inside its dead mother, the image preying on him for days. The Twos meant good things for him and his parents, and why was he so weak? These were animals, after all. Clever, but not civilized. They had no tools, unless one counted rocks ... but then again, he knew almost nothing about them and their lives. Father seemed puzzled by his questions and his endless speculations. "I don't know what life's like in the Blue," Strun would say. "I wish I knew, I can tell you. It would help me with my trapping!"

The Confederation was enormous. And what is more, there were nations on its north and south, not civilized like them but building better weapons every year. The history book ended with warnings about these barbarians, but Wyll took a different lesson. Ages ago, he realized, people didn't have tools and thinking machines. They were as simple as the Twos were today, and maybe the Twos weren't merely clever. Maybe they were a younger species, and if given time and luck they would invent their own wonders.

"Come on," his father told him. "I need some help. You can read later, but help me now."

They swam up to the Blue, reaching it at high-tide. Strun needed his son's strength to help unjam a cable and drum, but first they set the trap above it, baiting it with something new. Strun had found a lovely chunk of rock, bright and enticing. At least he hoped it would prove enticing. Setting the triggers, they retreated and repaired the drum as the tide fell. Intuition made Strun say, "Wait here," once they were done. It was evening by then. Sunlight was a mild red glow. They removed their eye shields and slid into shadows; and after a little while the trap was sprung, the drum turning in front of them. The cable hummed, sometimes jerking side to side, and a strange wet noise grew louder.

Wyll felt cold and simple. The struggling Twos appeared before him, still very much alive, limbs kicking and its grasping limb bleeding where the wire cut into its meat. It was a male, not small and not large, drowning while they watched. The strange little eyes saw them in the dark water, and its face changed, the ugly mouth opening and shimmering bits of the void itself bursting free. It was amazing to see. It made him sad. Wyll watched the void flying skyward, seeking its source; the creature thrashed and squealed; then Wyll approached it, curious and terrified in equal measure, and a free limb managed to grab at him, living flesh brushing against him for a horrible instant.

Wyll flinched and retreated, red flashes betraying his fear.

His father laughed, telling him, "You'll get used to it. Don't worry." Then the Twos was dead, and Strun removed the snare and stuffed the carcass into a mesh sack. "Help me cure the meat," he said. "I'll show you how it's done."

"No," Wyll replied.

His father kept laughing, still amused. "It looks difficult," he responded, "but I'll teach you my tricks."

"No."

"Why not? You have to learn someday."

But the boy thought to himself: Never. I will never learn any more about this, never. Never.

There were no more Twos for a long while. Strun decided they were getting too smart and needed to be spoiled some more, but none of the barrel clams that he offered were broken open. Fancy rocks were left undisturbed, as were half-hidden traps. Intuition told him that the Twos were all dead or all moved to some other place, which was normal enough. Fish and beasts wander; it is their nature. Only people could love a single place enough never to leave it.

But someday they would return. If not in his lifetime, he reasoned, then perhaps in his son's lifetime. That's why Strun stored his traps in oil, safe from corrosions, and why he continued planting barrel clams on the high rocks. It was an investment that served Wyll as well as his unborn grandchildren, and the village itself.

One day strangers arrived, half a dozen of them, riding inside a strange metal contraption bigger than any machine Strun had ever imagined. Even in the city there was nothing like it, spinning wheels and jets of water making it move with ease. And the passengers looked odd in little ways, in their carapaces' curves and the precise colors of their words. Each one of them carried a strange machine or two, and one of them said, "We're looking for Strun. Where can we find Strun?"

The old trapper came forward, worried but trying not to show it. "What do you want?" he asked them.

They were scholars. They came from the Confederation's largest and oldest university in hopes of finding him. Was it true that he'd caught Twos on a regular basis? Did he appreciate how rare it was to see even one of them in a lifetime? In the last year, by himself, Strun had become a legend among the wealthy. That was how they had heard of him and this village, and each of the scholars had to touch arms with him and claim that this was a great honor to meet him.

Their little machines were fancy, new, and powerful. They explained them in simple ways, but Strun was baffled, falling on his son's help with the hardest parts. "They've come to talk with the Twos," Wyll said, his words bright with excitement. "They've studied them on a different coast. They know how they speak to each other."

"Animals?" Strun groaned. "Speaking animals?"

"We don't call them animals," a young woman corrected. "Never."

"What are they? Seaweed?"

They ignored those words. A different scholar said, "We want to pay you for your help, your time, and experience." He seemed to be in charge of the others. "Show us where you find these creatures, and we'll be most grateful." Strun was no fool, and these fancy deep-sea people had a fraction of the cunning found in any market buyer. It was amusing to watch them compliment him for everything he did, no matter how trivial. His home was lovely; his son was adorable. His wife was a great beauty, and she knew just how to spice the rainbow fish. Would he take them to the Blue? Perhaps tonight, while it was dark? Yes? "Yes," Strun answered, smiling in secret ways. "If you finish the rainbow fish, I will."

More fish? Of course, of course! They practically fought each other for shares; and Yio, taking her husband aside, said to him, "Be careful, will you? Promise me. I'm worrying, like always. I know. But please take care of yourselves, will you, please?"

Strun and Wyll took them. There were complaints about the warm water and its foreign, land-flavored taste; but when they arrived everyone was quiet. The tide was rising fast. Strun showed them the best places, and the scholars busied themselves setting up their machines according to some master plan.

"Twos speak with sound, not light," claimed the young woman. "We learned this years ago. Or our predecessors did, I mean. It must seem bizarre to you, I'm sure, but once that was understood, all kinds of progress has been made."

It made sense to Strun. A lot of fish spoke with throbs and whistles and other sounds. It was a primitive, clumsy way to communicate, but what more did animals need?

Wyll asked, "Can I speak with them? With the Twos?"

"No, no, no," laughed the woman. "No, we don't know that much yet. For now we're leaving listening devices above the low-tide line, and they're connected to special machines down below. Those machines decide which sounds belong to the Twos and what those sounds might mean. I know that seems impossible -- "

Silly, thought Strun.

" -- but what we learned before is helpful. And the machines are designed after military machines, ones meant to make and break codes. A noble twisting of an ignoble purpose, don't you think?" She waved a dozen arms with excitement. "Someday, perhaps not too far off, we'll be able to converse with a few of them, in a limited way -- "

Strun laughed, interrupting her.

The leader ignored the laugh, saying with great patience, "We need your promise to help us, sir. Will you leave your machines in place?"

"So long as I can keep trapping the Twos."

"No!" the woman shrieked.

"But I have to make my living," Strun protested.

The leader made soothing colors, then asked, "How many Twos do you catch in a month? Can you estimate their number?"

"Ten," Strun claimed.

Wyll looked at him with astonished eyes, saying nothing.

"Ten?" asked the leader, plainly startled.

"That's my count, yes. Ten of them every month."

"Very well." A deal was struck, leaving the university a little poorer and Strun wealthy by every measure. "But you have to keep luring the Twos to this place," said the leader. "Leave food for them. Any reasonable trick, if you could. We appreciate all of your help, believe me."

Such simple people, Strun was thinking. Beneath their education, they were nearly children, all of them full of ideas and none of the ideas pragmatic. Yet he couldn't feel too disgusted, since some of them, particularly that one odd woman, reminded him a little bit of his own son.

* * * *

She was named Hyon, and when the scholars had enough of the heat and sunlight, Hyon volunteered to remain behind, tending to the machinery after they left. Wyll fell in love with her in no time, following her everywhere and helping with every small chore. He learned about the fancy decoders. Finally he had someone who could answer his questions about the Blue and the Twos themselves. He absorbed her stories about far cities and the great university, and he could practically see the glowing towers where knowledge was dispensed to thousands of students at once. Could a boy from such a remote place hope to go there someday and learn? Oh, yes! Hyon came from an equally remote village, one of the floating ones anchored beneath the Seaweed Forest. Hard work and a good mind were what the scholars demanded. Health and connections helped, but only so far.

She loved speaking about the Twos, always beginning with the words, "We know next to nothing about them," and then painting vivid images of their lives. They were peaceful creatures, she maintained. Most scholars felt they had no other choice. Twos lived by wandering the World's dry lands, unable to make anything more elaborate than simple stone tools. Vegetables and some meats had been found in their stomachs, but the meats were almost certainly from carrion. They'd make awful hunters, she reasoned. They had such tiny teeth and weak builds. The university had dozens of them in storage, and she'd looked at their faces for days on end. It was obvious to her -- the creatures were innocent, pure, and nearly perfect. Living as they did, wandering without possessions and without the encumbrance of nations, they could exist outside of politics and corruption of greed.

Wyll didn't understand how she got from "We know next to nothing about them" to these broad statements about a Twos' nature. But that didn't matter. He loved everything about the woman. Did she feel the same toward him? She gave no outward sign of minding his presence. Indeed, she seemed grateful for his help, particularly when she wanted the fancy listeners moved from place to place. In payment, she taught him how they worked, how they absorbed sounds and how when the time came they would make their own sounds, mimicking those strange voices in the void.

"Twos speak according to rules," she promised. "The early work was done north of here, many days north, and we used cruder machines. Hopefully these Twos have similar rules. If they do, and if they come by again, then it may not take long at all."

Hyon played old recordings, and Wyll listened and thought they seemed lovely, even strained through the water. But he had to ask why the scholars hadn't gone back to the old coast? Why come here instead?

"Mistakes were made," Hyon confessed. "Awful mistakes, really."

He asked what she meant.

"It was the people, the local people...." Blue colors bled into the words. "They used our machines to lure them down by the water, then they tripped a huge snare and captured several dozen at once. Captured them and drowned them, then sold their meat."

"That's awful," said Wyll.

"People are so wicked," she told him.

Wyll was remembering the young male drowning before him, feeling anguish but not daring to say anything.

"And the Twos are wondrous creatures," she promised. "They must be! One day we'll speak with them, and you know what will happen? They'll teach us! The Twos will be inspirations to us. They'll show us how to live. The Confederation will be transformed by their wisdom. Like fresh honeyhearts in water, their words will dissolve in our ocean and leave it sweet to the taste."

What a strange, lovely girl! Even when she made no sense, he knew that he would never see anyone so lovely again.

"This work is my life," she promised him.

"And mine too," he replied; but already Hyon had turned away, working on one of her machines.

* * * *

Their fight was a culmination of small episodes and minor frictions. Strun had trouble coaxing his son to help him, and Wyll made a point of criticizing his father and this life. The village was tiny and ugly and backward, he would say. It was full of ignorant people who were proud of their ignorance. Murdering the Twos was wrong, he added. It was a crime and an embarrassment, and that's when Strun couldn't stand it any longer.

"What do you mean, murder? What murder?" he exploded. "Since when does the well-being of animals hang over you and me?"

Wyll tried to make him understand what was obvious. He spoke about brain dimensions and the ramifications of language --

"How do you know the size of their brains?" his father interrupted. "Did the Twos measure themselves and tell you?"

That wasn't the issue here, and his father was a fool. Just like the rest of the villagers, he knew less than nothing. "Fool." The word leaked out of Wyll without warning, and someone new said:

"Who's a fool? Who?"

Yio had come into the room. She was stunned and afraid, drifting beside them with her arms limp.

They scarcely noticed her. Wyll told his father, "You're a killer, a thoughtless murderer," and Strun assured him, "I've done everything for you! Only you!"

"Please," Yio whispered. "Please stop..."

"Everything," said Strun one final time.

"Then you're an idiot, old man!"

Everyone paused for a moment, the room almost dark.

Then Wyll said, "A stupid old fool," and his mother cried out, "You don't mean it!"

Finally they realized she was there. They had an audience, and maybe it was shame and maybe it was her desperate attempts to soothe them. Yio said, "You can't fight this way, I won't allow it," and Wyll responded:

"All right. We won't!"

No more arguing. He left the room, the house and his books, vowing that he'd never return. Wyll had a huge anger, vivid and translucent; the anger had its own life and demands, undiminished even after days. Just the thought of his father made him physically ill, weak and trembling. Yio brought him his favorite books, trying to make amends, and his rage spilled onto her too. She begged him to return and apologize, and she promised that Strun would apologize in turn. "It's not worth hating each other," she assured him. But Wyll knew otherwise and told her so.

"I'm staying with friends for now," he reported. "Eventually I'm leaving for the university. You won't see me again, Mother."

She looked tiny and old, her colors slow and muddled together.

"Leave me alone," he said, throwing his books aside for emphasis.

"I'll leave your room as it is," she promised.

"Go!"

"As you wish..."

She was weak, thought Wyll. As weak as his father was strong, and he hated them for these qualities. Then he thought of the Twos, filling himself with intentional shame, remembering when they'd eaten part of the first Two and how they had enjoyed it, golden colors flowing through their home and fading everywhere but in his grieving self.

Hyon kept working, oblivious to the family problems. She didn't ask where Wyll was living. It was enough that he showed up at her little crudely made house, offering his help. She was busy and frustrated, then busier and excited. One day the Twos returned to the coast, the listening devices hearing their voices and the thinking machines beginning to pick at the meanings. She told Wyll, "It's going perfectly!" and he tried to act happy, watching her work and never quite getting in the way.

Would he take them some barrel clams? she wondered. Of course, yes. Plus he remembered their interest in shiny rocks, and he left them as gifts, sometimes laying them out in patterns -- circles and fancy stars -- making sure the Twos would know they were intentional.

One day he saw Strun swimming toward the Blue, and Wyll wondered if he was going to set up traps again. But he couldn't make himself face the man, swimming the other way and hoping that he hadn't been seen. It was Hyon who met with his father and learned that no, he was just leaving weakfish at high tide. "He's doing what the university is paying him to do," she reported. "Now that the Twos have returned, he says that he has to earn his money."

"All he cares about is money," Wyll muttered.

Hyon scarcely noticed, returning to the machinery, arms working the controls according to some plan. She showed Wyll how to draw simple words and how the words were translated into sounds, mimicking voices; then any responses were absorbed and digested, none of them making sense but the machinery learning more with every low tide.

Wyll stayed with her for days, neither of them sleeping long or talking about anything but the Twos. This was an historic time, she claimed, and for a thousand years people would remember her and her glorious work. There were several dozen Twos above them; the machines recognized each of their voices. One night one of the Twos said, "Who are you?" A listener sent the sound below, and the question "Who are you?" appeared on the glowing screen.

Hyon gasped and wrote, "People. People."

The word was translated as well as possible, then came a long pause. Then, at last, the Two replied, "More fish. I like the fish."

It was a great, perfect moment. The girl grabbed Wyll and squeezed with all of her arms, and he squeezed back and felt splendid. The recent past dissolved. "What do we say next?" Hyon asked. Wyll considered, then said, "How about 'Who are you?'"

"Perfect!"

They drew the question on the screen.

"People," was the answer. The many-armed symbol for people appeared before them; and Hyon said, "It's the best the machines can manage."

Wyll touched the symbol with the tip of a single arm.

Then it vanished, and the Two was telling them, "Give us more fish! We want to eat more of the fish!"

Hyon studied the Twos for many days, learning more as the machinery became more adept with the language. Then came a sudden change, odd and unexpected. Some of the Twos had changed their language, muddling the translations; and Wyll couldn't feed all of them. He was buying fish from the villagers, and his father must have been doing the same thing nearby. Yet all at once there were too many Twos, and Hyon was confused, then worried. "They're talking to each other," she said. "I hear them. I think there's a second group of them."

"What are they saying?"

She played recordings. The voices were louder than before, shrill and swirled together. "What does it mean?" he asked.

"I do not know," Hyon confessed.

One morning both of them swam up to the Blue, bringing bundles of fresh weakfish; and they discovered dead Twos floating against the bright sunshine. A dozen of them, maybe more. The poor creatures' heads were smashed, blood still seeping from the wounds. Hyon was in shock. She fled back below, leaving Wyll to set the bundles in the rocks. Afterward he found her with the machines, and as soon as the tide had dropped, she began to call to the Twos. "People," she said, "where are you?"

One language answered. "Thank you for the fish," they told her, no mention made of the dead.

Hyon asked about the bodies. What had happened?

"We killed them," said one voice. "Snuck up in the dark and killed them."

"Invaders," said a second Two. "Thieves!"

Others made foul sounds loosely translated into curses.

Hyon made colors of grief, unable to reply. She turned off the machinery and began swimming toward her house, and Wyll didn't understand until he saw her placing a few possessions into sacks, preparing to leave. Where was she going?

"Home. To the university." She was sick with disappointment and grief. The Twos were nothing like she had imagined, her life's meaning wrung right out of her. "Store the machines, will you? I'll send someone to retrieve them."

He didn't want Hyon to leave. Wyll panicked, flinging his arms over her and grasping as a lover might, arms curling and her too shocked to respond at first. Then she spun and got free, asking, "What are you doing? Leave me alone!"

A mistake. He'd made one and knew it, and he was trying too hard. Hyon said, "I've got to pack. Bring back my machines, will you?"

"I want to go with you. Take me to the university!"

She gazed at him, dumbfounded and then laughing, with a shrill tone. "What would you do there? An ignorant, inbred peasant like you -- ?"

"But you said -- "

"Get away from me!" she screamed. "I don't want to think about this place. Never again!"

Wyll could have told her that she had no choice, that awful things had their own lives and memories, inhabiting the mind without invitations. But she'd find that out for herself, he knew. It was the closest thing to revenge that he could imagine. "You'll learn it like I did," he whispered, and she paid him no attention whatsoever.

Something occurred to Wyll while he was recovering the listeners.

It was night, him hovering in the dark water and the void not an arm's width above him. And suddenly he was speaking, the tide starting to turn and his words bleeding up into the night air. He could see the partial moon. Shouting each word, he tried hard to make himself visible; and after a little while he saw motion, upright figures approaching and then stopping, then coming closer, his colors washing over them.

Arms touched the Blue and lived. There was the sensation of emptiness and a strange absence of heat, but nothing more than that. Wyll found himself splashing while he shouted, the Twos unable to comprehend anything but intrigued by the show. They'd never seen their benefactor, he realized. He wished he could climb free of the ocean and join them ... if only ... and he suddenly saw that he was floating in a pool, his escape route too shallow to cross. Panic made him fling and twist. His carapace screamed in bright colors. The Twos were stunned, stepping back, limbs across their squinting eyes.

Eventually the sun rose, blinding Wyll in turn.

The tidal pool was hot and stale, waters seeping away between the rocks. There was pain, but it was never worse than miserable. Wyll felt anger at himself and no one else, forgiving the world once he realized that he was dying. And the Twos seemed to understand the seriousness, coming close and sometimes grabbing at him, trying to pull him somewhere. Would they eat him? He tried to tell them that they should, in payment for his past crimes. But instead they splashed into the pool together, perhaps a couple dozen of them, grasping each other beneath him and screaming as one, bodily lifting him and the water sliding off his body and the void around him, then carrying Wyll over the rocks and back into the ocean again, and all the while him thinking:

I'll tell everyone I was in the Blue, if only for this long...

* * * *

Strun didn't know about the breakthrough or the subsequent disappointments; he'd worked to avoid the strange woman and Wyll, first out of anger and then because Yio begged him to keep his distance. She feared another fight, as bad as or worse than the first one. She was hoping that this nonsense about leaving for the university would pass -- a misplaced love interest; a youthful illusion -- and the news that Hyon had left suddenly, and alone, made her very happy. "You know," she told Strun, "a lot of the girls here would want Wyll, if he just tried."

Probably so, he thought. They'd like the money that he'd inherit in a few years.

"She just packed and left, I understand." Yio was sparkling with the news. "She took her personal belongings, nothing more. She couldn't swim away fast enough."

Strun felt a vague disquiet.

"Maybe he'll come home tonight. Maybe." Yio tickled him with a couple arms, then made dinner for three. "Maybe soon," she said all night; then in the morning, the first light red and faint, she said, "Maybe today."

Strun swam up toward the Blue with a sack full of rock prawn, that sense of disquiet larger and more insistent. He spotted the unattended machines, and out of curiosity he turned them on and read the words that appeared on the false carapace.

"Are you all right?" he saw.

"Answer us!" someone was saying.

"Can you hear us, Person? Have you made it home?"

Strun set the sack down and swam higher, not with urgency yet but aware of his hearts and little details in the rocks and how there were too many scavenger fish in the area. For an instant he didn't notice his son, the body already losing its shape and all the color washed out of it. Wyll looked more like a mass of gelatin than any person, and when Strun knew it was a body -- him floating above it, staring hard through the bright waters -- it was as if he knew everything in an instant and knew nothing at the same time, his self just sipping little doses of the knowledge and not even a taste of the grief beginning. This was not his son; this was someone else. A stranger, no doubt, and what should he do? Take him to the village, of course. Right away. And so long as he believed it was a stranger, Strun was fine. He was resourceful and calm, knitting a quick seaweed sack for the unfortunate fellow -- yes, he was male, and young by the looks of it -- and he swam past the machines, so fancy and useless, and for some reason paused and stared at the words as they formed.

"Are you safe, friend? You did not look well when we saw you last."

Strun opened the sack, and for the first time he saw his dead son.

"We are worried. Can you hear us, person? Friend?"

The old man touched the false carapace, making it go blank. Then he drew a single word with the delicate tip of an arm. "I hear you," the word meant.

"You are alive!" came the response.

He felt too alive, really.

"We are hungry, friend! Our children are hungry!"

Again he looked at Wyll, and his emotions seeped out of him. Blue is the color of misery in people, and the water around him and his dead son was a rich deep blue, color without shapes and no meaning past the color and its strength; and even later, when he made his carapace turn gray, that blueness persisted as an afterimage, almost burned into the flesh itself.

There was a funeral; the entire village attended.

Yio went into mourning, and her friends worried about her well-being, sometimes catching a glimpse of her in a doorway, her appearance that of someone very ill. She lost weight and strength and color. Eventually she could speak only in total darkness, and then only if everyone around her said nothing at all. She missed her son, she told them. But he had been a miracle in the first place, and now he was safe in the afterlife. "Have you seen Strun?" she asked them. "I'm worried about my husband. This was a horrible shock for him, and he blames himself, which is wrong. If you see him, tell him. Tell him that none of this is his fault, will you please?"

Strun vanished after the funeral. Someone saw him at Hyon's little house, carrying her fancy books away; then later he returned in a rush, removing every one of his fancy traps from storage, making a series of trips up to the Blue.

"He blames the Twos," said the villagers. "They murdered his son, and now he's going to kill all of them."

They thought this was a good thing, in truth. A justice.

"Do you want help?" someone asked him. "Strun? Can we help you with your work?"

"Later," he told everyone, pressing on and nobody brave enough to follow.

There was no killing the Twos, however. Not for justice, nor for profit. One evening, just as the last hint of the sun vanished, Strun returned home and spoke to his wife at length, then called for his neighbors to gather and see what he had to say. He had an announcement of great importance. With poor shriveled Yio beside him, he looked out at a hundred or so people -- old and not; friends and not; the tough and determined people that his son had called ignorant -- and he said, "We're giving you all of our property, my traplines, from the Mud River to Weakfish Point. It's yours from today, but there are rules. You must do certain things from now until the end of time."

No one spoke, everyone watching him, waiting for the next astonishing words.

* * * *

Eventually the university found a replacement for Hyon. He wasn't as eager as she had been, and he wasn't a natural traveler. It was more than a year before he reached the village, surprised to find it prosperous by any measure. The children had the best books and toys. The houses were braced with expensive stone arches. He asked for Wyll and learned that the boy was dead. Then what about some man named Strun? People directed him to an ancient fellow, vigorous despite missing three arms. The new scholar identified himself, complimented Strun on his fine home, then asked what had happened to Hyon's notes and the very expensive machines that she had left behind.

Strun said, "That girl was crazy."

The scholar had much the same opinion, but he wouldn't admit it to this man.

"We sold that stuff," Strun admitted. "All of it."

"Sold it where? To whom?"

"In the city, and I don't know the buyer's name. Sorry."

The scholar was agitated, scarcely able to speak. He took a long look at the village while he collected himself, watching a team of people pulling some kind of carcass past them. A single hooved limb protruded from the sack, unlike any limb he had ever seen. A meaty body was attached, probably worth a fortune to its owners --

"Nobody came to claim the machines," said Strun, "and so we sold them. You didn't care about them, so why not?"

"But we do care! How can I do my work without them?"

"You should have come sooner," the old man informed him.

The scholar took a different course, telling him, "They're worth a fortune. You don't know how much -- "

"How much?"

He made a quick estimate, thinking the number was large enough to intimidate anyone. But instead Strun said, "Wait," and vanished into his house, returning with a sack of new gold cylinders. "This should be enough. Is it?"

Yes, it was. Probably too much, and the poor man had to move to the next sticking point. "Where are Hyon's notes?"

"Lost, I think. But I can help you look for them."

The research was going to have to start again, the scholar sensed. And probably on some other piece of coastline too. The two of them swam through the village, and several times he saw more people pulling carcasses into deeper water. He stopped one group and asked to have a closer look. In the sack was a furred animal that he didn't know, clawed paws and menacing fangs implying a predatory nature. Where did they find it? "Sometimes the rivers flood," said one young man. "Bodies are pushed out to sea then." This body had been killed with spear points, and someone had gutted it before it rotted. What would such an enormous, wondrous beast bring on the open market? More than a scholar would ever make, he was certain. More than a hundred lifetimes could give him.

"This is where the crazy girl lived," Strun announced.

It was a haphazard pile of stones, the only room totally empty. "She said that she left her notes here," the scholar admitted. "I don't see them."

"Maybe she lied. Crazy people aren't the best workers."

This was such a disaster. He had traveled halfway across the ocean, and for what? Then he felt the weight of the gold, terrible ideas filling his mind.

Strun was saying, "You can stay here, if you wish. If you're going to keep doing the work -- "

"No."

" -- although without the machines and notes, I don't know how anyone can expect you to try."

A young man was swimming nearby, carrying a sack up the rocky slope. The scholar approached him and took the sack, opening it and seeing an assortment of spearheads and jawed traps and wired nooses. That's when he realized the truth, or something at least approaching what was true. He returned to the old man and said, "You're trading with the Twos, aren't you? You're using our machines -- "

"Not your machines. Ours. We just purchased them."

The scholar rattled his sack, feeling the gold against its skin. "Meat for weapons, is that it?"

"I don't know what you mean," Strun lied.

"They hunt for you, don't they? The Twos do?"

Strun said, "Maybe you should leave. Take your earnings and make a nice home for yourself. That's my advice, son."

The scholar felt powerless and angry because of it. Hoping to wound, he told the old man, "I'll go someplace of consequence. Someplace at the center of everything."

"But that's here, my boy." A contemptuous green flowed over Strun's carapace; then he said, "This is the only important place in the world right now. You just don't see it yet."