She stumbled to the sea edge, Abasio’s arm around her, took the proffered tentacle, pressed it between her hands. “You . . . I think you helped me.”
“It is possible I did, a long time ago.”
“In which case, I should thank you.”
“Among kindred, no gratitude is necessary.” The tentacle left her as the great creature shifted its way into slightly deeper water. Lok-i-xan drew them back to dry sand.
“Now,” the Sea King said, “sit down there where it is warm. Be comfortable.” The enormous, shining bulk lifted a wet tentacle and let the sea water drip over itself. “Lok-i-xan and I have been waiting a long time for this meeting. Lok-i-xan’s grandfather and grandmother and my ancestors waited for this meeting, and several generations before that! For all that time it was planned that when we met, the Sea King would make a speech. Every generation the Sea King practiced the speech! Now, it really happens, in my life! We have rehearsed this over and over, Clan Do-Lok and I, so I will explain all the things that need explaining. Still, no matter how many times we have created it, the speech is not perfect. We are always changing it, for there are always questions. You will be allowed to ask questions.”
The enormous creature made a sound that, to Abasio, sounded like gentle laughter. It could as well have been the rumblings of a strange stomach or the gurgling of water in a very strange throat, but seemingly Xulai heard it as laughter, also, for she patted the sand beside her to indicate Abasio’s place, then folded her hands in her lap when he sat. He felt uneasy about her. Though she seemed composed, she was dreadfully pale. Lok-i-xan and Justinian took their places to either side. After a short silent moment, the kraken began to speak:
“Long and long ago, before the time of monsters that you now call the Big Kill, our sea people learned your dryland languages. Not that we have your kind of ears, but any creature who lives in the sea learns to understand vibrations. Whales and dolphins speak in vibrations. A female drylander beside the sea calls to a child, ‘Come out now, it’s getting cold,’ and we begin to understand what that means. We learn of coming out and going in, and swimming and drowning and being eaten by sharks. We learn the words for ‘wrecking’ and ‘sinking.’ Death we already knew about, but we learned your words for it.” The great eyes swiveled sideways, and the voice murmured, “ ‘Death.’ ‘Injury.’ ‘Malice.’ ‘Hatred.’ And better words, as well.
“Often, in the Before Time, drylander people used to do a thing called ‘taking a cruise.’ They would go from one place to another on a ship, and during the voyage they would learn about places. We could climb up the side of a ship and look through what they called a porthole. The teacher would show them pictures and tell them words. We learned the pictures, we learned the words, both hearing and reading. We learned that this vibration meant this word and this vibration was also conveyed by this set of symbols. So we learned ‘Ancient Greece’ and ‘the glory that was Egypt’ and many such things. Later, we learned ‘DNA’ and ‘genetics’ and ‘mutation.’ We already knew of mutation, for man had put evil things into the sea that had changed some of us in strange ways. Some of the changes we were grateful for. Others we hated you for. It was a difficult time to know what to think about drylander-kind, for those of us sea dwellers who could think.
“The thinkers were mostly cephalopods, which you called us, and it was an apt name. We were head-footed, for we went where our brains told us to go. The cetaceans were thinkers, too, even though they were former drylanders. We decided to call your people erotopods, sex-footed, for you were always chasing your sex organs. Not all of you. Some of you, too, were cephalopods.
“We learned ‘war.’ You had many of those. Some of us, the seals and the whales, hoped war would kill you all. Some of us would have regretted that, for we had learned so much from you. That was in what you call the Before Time and the Time When No One Moved Around.
“During the not-moving time we sea dwellers made our alliance with Clan Do-Lok. Together we learned of the great waters; together we realized dryland people really would die in times to come. You would die, and all the things you had made would fall beneath the waves.” It coiled, the shape conveying grief like a face flowing with tears. Its color changed to one of sadness.
“Couldn’t we build boats and live on them?” asked Xulai.
“Oh, Daughter, you have momentarily forgotten. There will be nothing to build boats from. There will be no more trees, no more land. Even the mountaintops will be gone. You have a few hundred years, maybe two hundred or so. You will push higher and higher. There will be very little room, if any, left. Perhaps a few trees may live on the peaks, but not enough to build boats.”
“So we have no hope,” said Abasio.
“When there is no hope, one must create hope,” said the Sea King, shrugging all eight of his immense shoulder equivalents. “At first the waters did not rise quickly. The channels were narrow; we had time to create hope! Clan Do-Lok had been working with Sea People for a long time: they had given some of us voices as they had done with horses and dogs; they had given us ways to write things down. When we could speak together, humans apologized for the harm they had done us; we grieved for humans’ fate. We talked of genetics, and Clan Do-Lok began to breed and teach geneticists to create among both our people those who could live in the future.
“We people of the sea learned
