«It’s of no significance now, because on another happentrack you have obeyed my wishes. Happentracks are infinite, Karina.»
«Damn you! And damn that other me!»
«The other Karina will become famous. But you will not, and you will never see me again.»
«See if I care,” said Karina, turning her back on the tall woman and walking away.
«So Mauo told me he had a sister — my daughter. I never saw her, but I often think about her. I think she might have been something like you, Karina.…»
Haleka’s voice droned softly on, telling of his childhood while Karina sat facing him on the broad back of the tump. They were boring, these endless pointless yarns, but they were better than suicide, thought Karina. Haleka had to talk things out.
«Look!» she said suddenly. «There’s a car — that must be Rayo! What’s wrong with her?»
The swiftest sailcar ever built limped southwards, her sails like transparent membranes against the late sun. The mainmast had broken and the car had been crudely jury-rigged, the two pieces of the mast splinted together with a crimson liana, the sail hanging crooked like a broken wing.
«So she wasn’t so fast after all,” said Karina. «After all that trouble and secrecy, she’s slower than any of the others.»
«Speed is the enemy of man,” said Hakela. «This is one of the first lessons a boy learns in the Women’s Village. I recall one day the Madre —”
«What are your plans, Haleka?»
«My work is done. As the Madre once said —”
«I think we should build a boat, you and I. We should sail off east to the Magic Islands, where women live in grass castles and men ride whales, so the legends go. Wouldn’t that be fun? We could build a castle and send for my sisters, and we could all live there, forever.»
«What would we eat?» asked Haleka tolerantly.
«We’d catch fish, of course, like the Magic Island people do.»
«Eat flesh? Me? Never!» said Haleka, whose ancestors came from the floating islands of Polysitia themselves, if he did but know it.
The tump began to move again, heaving itself towards the water, and Karina’s heart missed a beat. «Look!» she cried desperately. «There’s another tump further down the beach. I think our tump looked at it. Maybe it’s a girl tump!»
«Tumps have no sex, Karina. That’s the whole problem. That’s why they’re dying out.»
«How do you know they have no sex? Have you ever looked?» Karina warmed to her theme. «Can you honestly tell me anyone’s ever rolled a tump over and looked?»
«Don’t be ridiculous, Karina.»
«Well, then!» The tump had reached the water’s edge. Karina and Haleka still faced each other. Haleka watched the sea, Karina the land.
Haleka said, «The very fact that a tump can’t roll over ought to tell you it can’t mate.» The conversation was becoming distasteful to him. Tumpier culture dictated that Men ceased thinking about sex once their reproductive duties were done, and much of the childhood teaching was conditioned to this end. «It wouldn’t be able.… It couldn’t.… Even if it had.…»
«It couldn’t bring its organs to bear,” said Karina with relish. Then, with the subject seemingly at an end, the sadness rolled back like a sea fog. «Are you really going to kill yourself, Haleka?»
«That is the way.»
«I’m not going to let you — you know that? I’m going to fight you and drag you back, and the whole thing will become ridiculous. You know I’m stronger than you.»
«Please let me die with dignity, Karina.»
«No way.» She took his hands in hers. The tump was in the water now, and a wave touched her feet. She kicked at the water, hating it.
«Karina! Please don’t take this away from me!»
The tump was buoyant, rocking beneath them in the light swell. Karina held Haleka firmly around the wrists. His eyes were shut. Tears of shame started from under the lids. Karina blinked, wondering if she was doing the right thing. Haleka wanted to die, but she wouldn’t let him because.… Because she was just as selfish as the Dedo and the handmaiden and lousy Starquin.
«All right, Haleka,” she said quietly. «Goodbye, now. I love you.» And she kissed him on the cheek.
She slipped from the tump’s back and began to swim alongside, unwilling to head for the shore just yet. Looking around, she saw the other tump was closer now, a low mound showing above the water with a tumpier sitting on top, shoulders drooping. Haleka’s tump rocked, nearly unseating him. The bulky animal was not nearly so stable in the water as on land, and Karina moved away a couple of meters, fearing a capsize.
A capsize .…
«Haleka!»
«What is it now?» He was trying to compose himself. He loved her, but couldn’t she leave him alone?
«Why do tumps take to the water?»
«To drown, of course, when their time comes. Just as I shall do. Our time has come.»
«Haleka — suppose this stuff about times coming is all garbage! I know it’s traditional, and so on. But I can’t really believe the tump wants to die. I can see his eye from here, and he looks pretty lively to me!»
On an impulse she swam up to the tump and laid her hand on its head. The tump sensed her presence but this time it didn’t shy away from her; rather, it moved her way, recognizing something in her. Something flowed down her arm, flowed back. Karina smiled.
«So that’s it,” she murmured.
Years later, Karina thought to visit the tump pens.
By now she was a mature felina with three grupos behind her, and a lot of good memories. El Tigre had died several years previously during a brawl on the outskirts of Rangua but he’d taken three True Humans with him, and further assured himself of a place in felino legend. Karina was still beautiful, with the fleshy, wild beauty of the older felina, and the gray streaks in her red-gold hair lent her a slight vulnerability which added to her appeal.
It was not surprising that the man in charge of the tump pens stared in admiration as she walked slowly along the beach. Twenty meters from him she stopped and looked out to sea. There was a breakwater out there; a rocky wall which had taken several years to build, enclosing half a dozen rectangular pens. The backs of the tumps could be seen breaking the surface, two to a pen.
In the pens nearest the beach were the young tumps. They were being conditioned by the rise and fall of the tide to the feel of dry land under them. Each year another two or three young tumps were ready for the fields. It was simply a matter of training. Left alone, they would have spent their lives in the ocean, like the whales they were descended from, grazing the continental shelf. Trained to live on land they thrived just as happily — until, after a thousand years or so, they matured. Then, like an amphibian, they returned to the water to mate.
But this essential part of tump lore had been lost until recent years.
Tentatively, the man approached the beautiful woman. «Can I help you?»
«No.… I was just looking. Tumps fascinate me.»
«They’re interesting animals. I’ve studied them all my life. There was a time when we thought they were dying out — that would have been a bad thing for you felinos, eh?»
«Oh, I don’t know.…» The Examples weren’t so rigid, these days. Two nights ago she’d led her youngest grupo into the jungle and they’d feasted on capybara, and felt not the slightest guilt.
He laughed suddenly. «We tumpiers like to feel indispensible, you know. Don’t mind me.»
Her eyes flashed, as though this show of humility had annoyed her, and she said sharply, «The tump is the most important animal on the coast. Many felinos would have starved if the secret of the tump’s life cycle hadn’t been discovered.»
Still smiling, he said, «You said it for me. But tumpiers would have starved too, with nothing to trade in. We both owe a debt to Haleka.» Now he glanced at her, glanced away. «He was my father, you know.»
«Oh.» She scrutinized his face.