The Sea King asked, “Is mating strategy what brought you to talk with me today?”
“No, certainly not. Abasio came to talk with you today because Xulai doesn’t want to go back to Norland until she’s sure he can do whatever it is, change into something.”
Abasio interrupted. “I told her maybe I couldn’t do it until it became necessary. She didn’t do it until she had to, but she says it’s pointless to go without knowing . . .”
Blue snorted again. “But she wants to know he’s seaworthy before she goes for a cruise on him.”
“Blue! Really!”
“Well, she does. And I don’t blame her.”
“Let it go for now,” said the Sea King in a thoughtful and very soothing tone. “You sound very tense. You need to relax, Abasio. Do you swim?”
“I swim human-style, yes.” He had learned as a child, in the river. On the farm.
“Well, if Blue doesn’t mind waiting—and I think there’s some grass among the rocks at the back of the beach—you can get out of your clothes and come swim with me. One of the shell fishers left his face mask last time he was here. Over behind those stones, I think?” He pointed a tentacle. “Yes, that’s the one. It was one of the oystermen I believe, or maybe an abalone-ist or a mussel-eer. At any rate, he won’t mind your borrowing it.”
Abasio dropped his clothes behind the rock and donned the mask before somewhat apprehensively walking into the sea.
“Just swim alongside me,” said the Sea King. “I want to show you my castle.”
“You have a castle?”
“It’s a joke. I told Xulai all about it. She thought it was very funny.” He started away, rather slowly, letting Abasio thrash along behind him, turning his head every stroke or so to gulp air. They went out beyond the nearer rocks, not really very far. “Can you dive just a little so you can look?” said the Sea King.
Abasio took a breath, dived, went back up to laugh, then came down again.
“I didn’t build it,” the Sea King said through the water. “The dolphins did. They talked the corals into doing it. Though frankly, I don’t know how a creature that doesn’t have any brain at all can be talked into doing something. It took them quite a while; corals don’t grow overnight. The dolphins may merely have put food here, where they wanted the corals, I mean. Corals will grow toward food. The eels came all by themselves . . .”
Abasio had gone up for a breath. He came down again.
The Sea King continued. “There are lots of little deep holes in the castle for my children. That is, I suppose they are mostly my children. The other males of my species don’t come into this area, out of respect, but many of the females choose to anchor their egg cases here.”
They swam over the castle, seeing in the doors of its narrow tunnels many tiny octopi, who greeted them variously: “Who’re you?” “It got hans!” “Whasit?” “Wasse doin?” “Whasitname?”
The Sea King replied, “I’m your father, yes he has hands, he’s a drylander, he’s swimming, his name is Abasio.”
“Already very vocal,” said the Sea King with satisfaction as they moved away. “Breeding true, almost all of them. Come along, I’ll show you some of the laboratories.”
They dived deeper and Abasio was amazed to see lines of huge transparent bubbles anchored to the floor of the bay, each occupied by one kind or another of unfamiliar creatures.
“These are third-generation seadogs,” the Sea King said proudly.
“They have skinny tails,” Abasio exclaimed. “Not very good for steering.”
“For wagging. Notice the articulation of the front and rear legs. Sitting and wagging were specified by the canine design committee.”
“The design committee?”
“Of dogs. It seems to be a species thing.”
“How do they breathe?”
“See the gills all along the sides?”
“They have fur.”
The Sea King sighed. “Yes. They felt strongly about fur, as well. The fur does rather hide the gills. It cuts down their swimming speed as well, and the large ears are no help. In time, perhaps they’ll give the fur and ears up, though seals seem to have kept the fur with no problems. Seals are still dryland birthers, of course, which these will be, too. We can’t get away from that just yet. Young mammals have to suckle.”
“Whales manage. And dolphins.”
“Yes, but they’ve mastered that whole business of pushing the young to the surface to breathe, over and over. You know, whales have developed kinship or friendship bonds between mothers, daughters, and sisters so that one helps the other for the first few days until the single baby does it instinctively. Dogs, however, have litters, six to ten at a time. It presents an entirely different problem, and we haven’t figured out how to handle that yet.”
“They have flippers instead of feet.”
“They can walk on them very nicely. If, as I understand Xulai has suggested, there are ice floes in our future, the seadogs might bear their young on ice floes as seals and walruses and otters do now. Ice floes melt rather rapidly, however. They might not last long enough.”
“Sea King, Xulai has been talking about ice, yes, but not simply ice floes. I am told there is still more or less permanent ice as one goes to the far north. People used to live on that ice in the Before Time. The new oceans are less salty than the Before Time oceans. They should freeze even better than the old ones did, and Xulai wondered if there might not be room for people to live there. Out of water.”
“I don’t think we’ve ever considered it,” the Sea King said in a shocked voice. “And I thought we’d considered everything. It would help the seabirds, as well. Though, actually, we have a lot of seabirds already, but we’d like to adapt parrots and ravens, since they are linguistically advanced. Ducks, swans, and other swimmers will have no trouble, but Lok-i-xan tells me his people grieve over the loss of chickens. They have
