The Sea is Full of Stars

become males. Everyone’s not changing gender all the time, but if one hasn’t had it happen to them, one knows others that have. One’s gender is basically irrelevant here, you see, but whatever is needed to keep our population in balance, we do. This is why we all look rather feminine and have these breasts. The young are born live and carried in sacs—your sac is along here, as you might notice. They are nursed like mammals, although we are a rather unique species outside of here, and if you live with someone who has a nursing baby, even if male, you’ll discover that hormones will be triggered and you can hold and nurse as well. We prize personal honor and relationships over gender. It is another adaptation that helps us thrive.”

He thought it over, and decided it was a neat concept. It might be fun to be both. “I assume that the sex act itself is as fun as it used to be?”

“It is certainly not something we shy away from,” Shissik admitted.

And then it hit him, just what the Inspector meant. “So I really could be Ming. Or Ari.”

“Or both. That suggests a fascinating duality I’ve never had to face. You might be both a police officer and a criminal. Please relax—you are a criminal no more, nor, of course, are you an officer. Whatever you become starts now. We like to use the knowledge and experience you might have if it’s handy, but it is traditional that no newcomer to a race here is held at all accountable for past deeds. Inner natures do tend to emerge over time, and that might be interesting in your case. One might expect you to commit a criminal act and then arrest yourself.”

He realized that Shissik was being funny, but he didn’t share the joke.

“So what happens now?” he asked the Interior Policeman.

“Now? Nothing immediately. We will get you a good meal and then I want to propose an experiment to my superiors. They now have a recording of this conversation, so we’ll see if they are satisfied from their point of view. We are in the city of Mahakor, a medium-sized city in the northeast of our nation. The other is in the capital of Jinkinar. I’d like to take you up there eventually and get you together with this other one. We simply cannot be totally trusting of newcomers for a while, you see, and we do have this nagging question about the other far more than about you.”

“Which is?”

“Well, if she doesn’t know who she is or what she was, then aren’t we merely assuming that she’s your Ming? Perhaps she’s the other one you were linked to, the onetime cultist or whatever it was. Or perhaps she is neither of them but someone else. Ari’s uncle was near death. If he survived and was processed, who is to say what his mind might have been like by that point? Suppose it’s Ari’s uncle Jules that we have? And even if his memories were turned to mush, as I said, inner natures have a tendency to begin coming out over time. I think we need to know for certain.”

Jesus H. Christ! he thought in panic. What if it is Jules Wallinchky? That would be just what I needed here! A whole new body, a whole new race, a whole new life, and they would be putting me right back where I started…

Ochoa

The creatures flew over the seas at an altitude of almost a kilometer, yet their bony heads were on the ocean and not each other, and their large eyes angled down as if they could see beneath the seas, which, in fact, they could. Not so precisely, of course, but they weren’t looking for a particular fish; they were looking for signs of lunch.

The wings were broad but leathery, the tail almost serpentine until it flattened out into a fan shape at its end. The heads were triangular, almost perfect right angles, except for a slight crest at the top rear behind the eyes, each of which had independent movement. Ears were mere cavities in the back of the head that seemed made of something very solid indeed. The lower jaw, which ran the length of the head, had a leathery sack beneath it which, in those whose sacks were empty, seemed to flap slowly back and forth. Those who had some prior catch appeared to have somewhat larger jaws.

The extremely long legs were up flat against the body now, their long talon-tipped fingers and opposable “thumb” locked up and out of the way to increase streamlining. Looked upon from above, they were quite colorful and distinctive, with patterns of randomness in reds, yellows, blues, grays, and browns; their underside, however, was a blue-white, and in either sunlight or clouds they were extremely difficult to see from the ground.

“Big school! Sandrums! Three o’clock, thirty-two-degree angle!” one of them called, its voice harsh, birdlike.

She saw it, the slight pattern of silver just beneath the waves, and with a built-in sense of where any other of his kind was, she dove with them down on the unsuspecting school of fish.

The entry into the water was unhesitating and effortless. Eye lenses flattened, sensing the electricity and magnetism in sea life as by seeing, the group continued flying, underwater, in formation, as if they were still high in the air. The tail, so suited to flying and balance, split apart and turned opposite, providing two paddles that were as effective as tail flippers and gave them the same kind of control a sea mammal might have.

The poor fish, some up to sixty centimeters long, didn’t have a chance. The ravenous horde pounced on them, huge mouths open, and began scooping them in from the rear before the front of the school was even aware they were under relentless attack. She quickly had her jaw pouch filled with four lively fish, which quickly calmed down as juices in the pouch flowed around them, knocking them out and acting as a preservative. She gobbled a fifth and last one straight down for her own gratification, chopping it to bits with her impressive range of teeth, then angled up and leaped right out of the water and into the air. The tail reformed as an avian device, and the leathery wings began to move. Reforming above, all with full pouches, they circled and headed for home.

This is a hell of a way to make a living, she thought sourly, and not my ideal for a new way of life.

She looked down over the hex, which was composed of a vast network of islands, all apparently of ancient volcanic origin since none seemed active. They formed an amazing series of bays, harbors, and protected coves right in the middle of an ocean that had no other land, or so she’d been told, for a thousand or more kilometers in any direction.

It was a semitech hex that might have fooled anybody into thinking it a nontech one, and precisely because of its isolation, it was a well-visited one. The Ochoans were worldly and aware, and liked their little amenities, particularly cigars, some wild scents, and various drugs and brews, little of which they could make themselves, even if they’d had the organization and urge to do so. The islands had tons of birds and insects and some reptiles and a few what-the-heck-are-they-anyways, but the Ochoan was the dominant and basically the only important creature on any of them. When you could walk, fly in the air, and fly underwater, not to mention seeing quite well in darkness or in daylight, you tended to dominate things. They even made some occasional delicacies out of fruits and grains, which they pretended were luxuries but actually needed to keep themselves. They mainly ate fish, all sorts of fish, alive, dead, or stored in their pouches until needed, and they did some harvesting of native fruits for commercial trade as well as their own brand of art, both drawing and carving, which on the whole was bizarre, but popular in some places. There were some small steam engines about, mostly commercial ones bought from other hexes and modified to Ochoan physiology for operation, but these were mostly used for pumping water from one point to another, as in irrigation on the dry side of some of the islands or in sanitation.

And, being the only land and shelter in all that distance, they traded. Ships from all over stopped there, took on fresh water, fruit, sometimes even salted fish if the Ochoans trawled for them.

Even in her short time here she’d seen more creatures than the old Realm ever had, and some pretty bizarre and scary ones as well. She wanted to leave this dull paradise for a number of reasons, but as a newcomer she had no funds to blow on a ship’s passage, which was the only way in or out. Although master of land, sea, and air, individual Ochoans could generally range no more than about hundred kilometers, and the denizens under the waves of the neighboring hexes would not ignore a nice, fat, juicy Ochoan floating on the surface or swimming a bit below it.

There was a government of sorts, both a loose hereditary nobility and a parliament elected by the local councils and set up as a kind of national assembly, but it met only rarely, and then to set quality standards and appoint inspectors for goods going out and coming in, and to appoint ambassadors to Zone. The councils, under