He put his arms around her, pulling her close. “But you were a girl, for which I am very grateful.”
“Yes. I am female. And I’ve laid a dozen sea eggs, and I’ve given you one, and I’m producing more of them, so now we have enough to give others. And if the sea egg you swallowed works, we will have children who can change and our daughters will also be able to lay sea eggs. Our children will live. Any couple that we give sea eggs to will live and their children will live. We start by giving them to men and women, then they connect with one another. The right women. The right men.”
Her voice tightened and she shivered in the circle of his arms.
“You hate that? Being controlled?”
She looked into his face, so familiar to her that she might have always known it. “No. Abasio, no, I really don’t. I hate the idea of being predisposed, prearranged. But I don’t hate the reality, not now. I hate the thought I could not choose, but I would not have chosen differently. It’s a dilemma, isn’t it? Precious Wind says it’s how all young people feel when they grow up. They do not wish to be like their parents, and yet very often they end up choosing to be like their parents.”
He held her close. “I’ve never asked you, Xulai. Do you love me?”
“I loved Xu-i-lok. I love Oldwife Gancer. I love my horse. I loved Fisher. I would not have lost any of them. I would rather lose myself than lose you. Should it be more than that? How do I know?”
“So you want me with you? Always? So you’d grieve my loss? Would you leap between me and certain death?” He laughed harshly. “I would answer yes to any of those questions about you, though I’d prefer not to find the last one necessary.”
“Well, do you love me, Abasio? Will you come under the sea with me? Will you chat with my sea father and live as part octopus?”
His face clouded. “How do octopuses . . . you know?”
She laughed at his expression. “It’s what the Sea King calls ‘an arm’s-length transaction.’ As soon as he said it, I remembered it was in the book I borrowed from the abbey library. The males give the females a sperm packet. The females store it inside themselves, then they use it when they get ready to plant their egg packets. I absolutely know there has to be some biological incentive, some hormonal or sensory drive, but the Sea King spoke of it as though he were . . . simply being accommodating. ‘Here, madam, you seem a pleasant cephalopod, please accept this with my compliments.’ ”
“Isn’t it nice to have the choice of methods?” Abasio croaked from a throat suddenly tight and painful.
She drew away from him. “I’m not sure we have that choice. Sea-egg people will evidently be part human, part octopus-who-talks, but the Sea King is all octopus-who-talks. The only humanity he has is in the design of his vocal apparatus. I don’t think his children can change. With the waters rising, there’d be no point in that.”
“So when there is no more land, how will we procreate?”
She shook her head. “Well, if we’re not totally different, we sea eggers, I can think of one possibility. I had the idea when the lady served tea . . . Precious Wind and I used to drink tea at Woldsgard. The foresters cut chunks of ice from the glaciers up in the Icefangs, and we kept the ice in an icehouse and in summer we had iced tea. And thinking about ice made me remember reading that the north and south poles were frozen. And I wondered if they wouldn’t still be frozen with the waters rising. That’s where the walruses and seals have their babies, don’t they? Won’t the ice bears and the penguins and the other creatures who live in those cold lands go on living there? And didn’t men used to live in those snow lands? Couldn’t men still live there? In the coldest parts, couldn’t people even make ships out of ice?”
He thought about this. “You mean, people who are given sea eggs could live out of the sea, or they could live in both places? Or just go there to procreate?”
“I can imagine us going north to have babies. We build a hut on an ice . . . raft, is that what they call it? And it floats south, and by the time it melts, we’re ready to take the baby underwater. Something like that.” She sighed, her face crumpled in dismay. “I killed Jenger. Now I remember doing it. I even remember why, though it was the part of Xu-i-lok in me who actually impelled me to do it. If he had raped me, if he had impregnated me, it would have ruined everything. It could not be allowed to happen, so I, she, killed him. I did it by taking a sea shape even though I was on land. The Sea King was out of the water a lot of the time today while we talked. So, we should still be able to take sea shapes and live out of the water part of the time. And if someday so much water freezes at the poles that the oceans go down again, then there would be a place for land creatures, wouldn’t there? If we keep seeds. If we keep animals, or their patterns. If we keep Clan Do-Lok’s laboratories on the ice when Tingawa is covered with water?”
“I think Clan Do-Lok has made provisions for its laboratories, even underwater. I worry more about Precious Wind’s wolves.”
“She might have thought of it. Precious Wind thinks of most
