Xulai stared. A sea egg?
Abasio stirred. “Xulai, I was there when you brought it to her. He means the thing she sent you to find! You brought it to her.”
“I never had a name for it,” she whispered.
“What did you do with it?” the Sea King asked.
“I swallowed it,” said Xulai, hovering between horror and curiosity like an atom of iron between two magnets. What was it she had done?
“Aaaaah,” the Sea King said with a satisfaction that seemed to spread and glitter across the waves like a sunrise. “So! And after that perhaps you understood things you didn’t know you knew. You heard things you couldn’t have heard. You spoke the language of nature, convincing living things that they were other kinds of living things, perhaps.”
Had she? Oh, Fisher, yes, but the other? She couldn’t remember! “They tell me I did such things. I know somehow I got out of a prison there was no way to get out of. Somehow, the man who took me disappeared completely! I don’t know how it happened.”
The Sea King made a humming noise, a satisfied noise. “Perhaps you did not need to remember, not then. Nonetheless, you are Precious Hope, the daughter of Xu-i-lok, Precious of the Ancients, for those long-ago people worked on this project for generations. Most of the human genes that went into your lineage were found here, in Tingawa, or on the continent nearby. However, some needed variations were not found here, or were not found among suitable donors.
“Of all Lok-i-xan’s daughters, only one had the proper genetic structure. Your mother. To beget you, she needed a human male with a certain rare genetic structure. We knew it should be found among the descendants of Huold, and that meant in or near Norland. She went there, she found the duke, together they begot you, and you were X, her precious hope. You are the first one able to create more sea eggs! The people you give them to will change, and if two changers mate with one another, their children will inherit their abilities and their children after them.”
After a lengthy silence, Abasio said, “Two of a certain, very rare kind of people finding one another? That’s leaving it to mere chance! We . . . that is, you should have better odds than that!”
“There must be no odds at all! Xulai must be sure that each fertile sea egg is given to a person like herself. Otherwise, we will have wars beneath the sea, hatred, species-ism, territoriality—who knows what horrors we would have. Your children will be born with the ability; they will pass it to their children.”
Xulai cried, “What ability? I don’t have—”
“We believe you can be a land creature when you wish, you can live beneath the sea when you wish.”
Xulai cried, “No, I—”
Abasio put his hand on her shoulder, silencing her. “Just out of curiosity, what would happen if Xulai gave me one of the things?”
“It would extend your life but it would not make you immortal. Both you and Xulai will live out your lives long before the oceans cover the last mountaintops. But it will give your descendants a new life and that will give us more time to save humanity.”
Xulai cried, “I don’t understand any of this. But . . . but suppose I might give an egg to a woman who is a perfectly lovely woman, but she might marry someone who was a dreadful person, and then their children would be all wrong . . .”
“This difficulty was foreseen. It is all planned for! Once the man or woman has the egg, only the right kind of mate will attract them. As your mother found Justinian, Xulai. Your father has told you. They saw one another; she knew he was the right one.”
Xulai found herself staring at Abasio, wondering if he felt as she did, this feeling of being herded, directed, this uncertainty whether to be relieved or furious. Here they were again, planning her life for her in a way she did not comprehend in the least, and they’d been doing it generations ahead!
The Sea King read her face, or perhaps her mind. “You are not required to do any of this. You can destroy the sea eggs and let all humans die. You can give them to others and let your own grandchildren drown. That would be a pity.” It was said without expression. “However, it is your choice. Lok-i-xan says we may not take away your freedom of choice.”
Xulai was still struggling with the idea. “And I suppose, if I wanted to be absolutely sure, I should let someone check the genetics and approve him. If I wanted to marry someone like . . .”
“Like Abasio, here?”
She flushed. “Purely as an example, yes, suppose I did?”
“Well, the person who sent him to Woldsgard thought he was a likely candidate. Abasio wasn’t the only man he sent to Woldsgard, but he was the only right one. You probably don’t even remember meeting the others. They saw a little girl and were polite, and that was all.”
Abasio saw her face, wavering between fury and curiosity, and pulled her tight against him to keep her from erupting. “Was this sea egg what the Duchess of Altamont wanted to get her hands on?”
The great creature before them coiled and recoiled, expressing distaste, horror, contempt with every curl and twist. “People like that one! I wish
