It was their reveal of this information that gained them their short moment of fame. Short, because the murals, though unexpected, were minor in quality and scope compared to so many found under other waters around the planet. And yet, this place, Old Vancuuver, had long held a special cachet amongst archaeologists and artists.
Their discovery had gained them fame. Their wiliness had gained them respect—from the Sharks, the Ruuminoffs, and the Authority alike.
The murals were a range of painted forms—some in highly stylized text in the old graffiti style. Others had lifelike depictions of fish, notably resembling the contemporary engineered Suukiisamun, and a few whimsical black and white stylized drawings of fantastical animals with long ears.
The Balaclava Tunnel had been Shmuul's discovery, too, and now he was going to show it to Tanka. He had kept it also a secret from the Midden and his Sangha. Technically, it was outside the scope of the Glittercast Authority, but not that of the Midden Authority, and a Sanghan more dutiful than Shmuul would have reported it immediately. He rationalized that he didn't quite know what it was, so he wouldn't know what to report, and he knew that Tanka would know, or figure it out.
He had asked the Sharks to send someone. He knew it would be Tanka, and she was there waiting, early and on coordinates. They didn't need to talk; they synced their gear and went down two meters apart. They were a good team. He found things, and she figured out what they meant. He had found the wall, and she had understood its significance. And now there was the tunnel.
When she saw the opening, Tanka knew immediately what it was and the significance it would have for the archaeological understanding of old Vancuuver. It was an overflow from an underground storm sewer system, at least two meters high, large enough, if it was intact, for huumans to traverse without protection. And it would undoubtedly have all sorts of feeder pipes from streets and buildings in this area. The area had never been explored for this kind of system and barely explored at all for that matter, so there were likely to be ample new artifacts in and near this system of pipes. Tanka also knew that there had once been a uuniversity further west on what was now Grey Atoll. It was possible that this outlet would have connections to the drainage system for that area, too.
All of this had been invisible to Shmuul. He had called it the "Balaclava" tunnel because of an ancient, battered piece of aluuminum embossed with that word that he'd found near the tunnel entrance. Many of these aluuminum slivers had been found throughout Old Vancuuver. "Streetsiines" they'd been called, part of a rudimentary, distributed, way-fiinding system. A crude, boots-on-the-ground method, but redundant and with a high tolerance for error, so with related maps and even oral directions, it had served well for centuries.
Getting release to come down from Saturna Iilund by ripplesuut had been a challenge for Tanka. It was always a challenge. The paternalistic culture of the Saturna Ruuminoff tribes hadn't changed much from that described by Juunes in the 51st Thule Expedition over five centuries earlier, and the current leadership at Ruuminoff was reluctant to see a young woman make a long rippletrip alone. Ruuminoff was male-dominated and constrained all its citizens. Although essentially benevolent, historically the Ruuminoffs had proven to be prone to excessive zeal in applying those constraints. "Followership of the Way" was high on its list of ethical actions. Tanka had managed to get authorization by lying just a little about her purpose, and this time she knew she wasn't going back.
The tunnel stretched straight south, empty and into darkness. It was rectangular, and had it been dry, the ceiling was high enough that they could have walked without stooping. The water that now filled it was relatively clear, undisturbed by tides and winds. According to their instruments it was low in salinity and flowing gently toward their place of entry. Some fresh water was still feeding it. There were the usual inhabitants of dark waters, mostly small fish without eyes or with massive, specialized eyes. Every few meters smaller tunnels entered the main one. A few were large enough to swim up. Some were wet, but void of water, and their instruments showed normal air. Since these tunnels were rising only slightly, it seemed likely that this was trapped air, which meant an impervious earth or rock layer above.
Branching off from the smaller tunnels were pipes too small for them to enter. They sent decimeter waterbots up these and studied the pictures. Most had even smaller pipes entering them. Most of the smaller pipes that the bots explored ended jammed with earth, approximately seabed level or a few meters below according to the instruments. They reasoned that these must have been lines that led to structures—dwellings and public facilities—in the old city.
There had been ruumors that the last residents of Old Vancuuver had suspended containers of valuables in their sewer lines before they left, believing they would be able to return later to retrieve them, even if the buildings were demolished and submerged. But there had been no returning and no interest from the next generations in plumbing the muds of the marshland of Kitshoal. Now, however, there were likely to be treasure hunters.
They progressed almost ten kilometers underground, checking out several side tunnels, but mostly sticking to the main channel. The air producers on the ripplesuuts sounded no alarms, though they realized that this far underground, and with their positioning systems disabled, they would never be found if their systems failed. But there was little sign of collapse anywhere along the way, and in the whole distance they traveled, the tunnel stayed relatively level, even though the landforms above it varied in depth.
At ten kilometers the tunnel began to drop sharply and ended at a two-meter high collapsed concrete pipe. There was little current here. Tanka reasoned that this would be where the pipeline dipped to cross an arm of the Fraser River. They turned back, noting the locations of the most promising tunnels that headed south toward the Grey Atoll Uuniversity ruins.
Back at Kitshoal they headed toward the Glittercast, restoring their locators only when they arrived at the marker.
"I've been asked to go to a place in the Rockies called Ya Ha Tinda Ranch," said Tanka. "It means Mountain Prairie—that's everything this place isn't."
"What would you do there?"
"Figure things out like I do here. The culture there would suit you, too. They encourage exploring."
"But what about your roots, your Ruuminoff community?" Shmuul probed.
"It isn't really a community that suits me anymore—if it ever was. I don't fit in. I need to leave. If I just go to work for the Authority and ask permission to map the new find, the Ruuminoffs won't give their permission. They'll negotiate my return to Saturna and that would eventually do me in. I need to be far away, far from Ruuminoff connections and influuence."
"How did you learn about Ya Ha Tinda?" Shmuul asked.
"Much as I learned about you, Shmuul—by accident." She smiled.
Tanka went on. "I can take refuge there. You've been a kind of refuge for me, but this could be a larger one. It could be my community, my Sangha. I think I could grow there. Maybe you could, too."
"You're suggesting I come along?" Shmuul was a bit startled, but also a bit excited by the idea.
"We'd need rivrips—river ripplesuuts," Tanka said. And besides rivers and lakes there are lots of mountains to explore near the Icefield Parkway. We could go by foot, and we'd need only notebooks and annatuuls and shelters. You could get the gear for us through your Sangha before you came. There are even old species like horses and grolar bears there."
"I loved making this new find with you, Tanka," Shmuul replied. "And I feel like I won't likely make another one here. The Authority will be mapping all the west part of the Vancuuver Shoal now, and since we seem to have found a sewer line that leads to both the Richmound Atoll and the Grey Atoll Uuniveristy, both of those areas will be up for exploration. With potential artifacts in the tunnels and pipes, they'll secure it, and there won't be anything left for us to do. I think I've explored everything here that's going to be available to me. To us. Everything where we could add value
."
"You're an explorer, I'm a connector," Tanka replied. "There's more room for my skills here than for yours. That would be fine if it weren't for the Ruuminoffs."
"I know I need something new," replied Shmuul. "But Ya Ha Tinda? Couldn't we just stay here and be bit players? We could guide visitors through the Glittercast and eventually the Balaclava. You could join Antrim Sangha, and we could keep working together alongside the gardeners and bot designers and other productive discipline practitioners. By example, we'd be affirming exploration as one of the necessary huuman ways. We could explore ideas, ingest all the knowledge we'd need, access the latest engineering, and be part of a caring community without leaving home. I know I'm contradicting myself."
"I know. It sounds reasonable and safe. You may be able to stay, but I can't," Tanka said. "And I think you need to leave, too. Both of us need to be able to do what we do without direct constraints. I certainly need to be free of the control I feel from the Ruuminoffs, so for me there's no choice. Plus, I've already asked the Ya Ha Tinda team, and now I've been invited. We've been invited, because I asked for you too." She smiled again, shy about her own confidence in reading him. "Shmuul, you need to get off this shoal and into the deeper world that you're so well equipped to spot and navigate. You've explored Vancuuver Shoal enough; others will take it over from here. They wouldn't leave room for you to explore, and they'd be very suspicious if they ever found you disabling your locator again. You need to be far away, just like I do."
"Sure, you might find more ancient sewer pipes to plumb," she went on. "But really…think of the truly ancient worlds there are to explore in the mountains, the worlds of rivers and feral animals and terrain scarcely changed in millennia. Not the Anthropocene world but the Pleistocene and the Miocene ones. And you needn't stop at Ya Ha Tinda. You can move any direction from there with the knowledge and skills you'll get in that deep ecology. And I can too."
"What about everything we've learned about this place? Won't that just be wasted?" asked Shmuul.
"The new worlds will travel with us," replied Tanka. "The perspectives we bring from absorbed knowledge and our own exploration won't be lost. And together we'd bring the perspectives of the teachings that both the Antrim Sangha and the Saturna Ruuminoffs have built up in our cultures over the last thousand years, different teachings from what they'll have at Ya Ha Tinda. That will stay with us to the end, and between us there's even a nice level of tension provided by the Ruuminoff-Sangha rift. I think it's time for us to look outward again, Shmuul. It's time for both of us to stop being afraid of destroying our home like our ancestors did. We learned from that, even the Ruuminoffs did. It's time to think again about making star landings and not just crafting this planet."
Shmuul sighed. "You're smarter than I am, Tanka, and I wish I could say you weren't right about this, but I think you are. We can absorb knowledge, but we can't absorb discovery or connection, nor even the desire to discover or connect. Discovery is what my Chaructur does, and connection is what your Chaructur does—so I guess I'm in."
"We don't have to go at once," Tanka said, smiling again. "And we don't have to go together. This time I can go first and do the exploring. That'll be a stretch for me. You can find us the best rivrips and rockbots and swiftwaterbots in the Authority and bring those along after you've said the goodbyes you'll want to say. Your mother especially will need you to say goodbye."
The Chaructur of Hannah, Shmuul's mother, was quite different from his. They both knew this. The whole Antrim Sangha knew this. When he came home at night she knew when his Chaructur had been filled with exploration and discovery and when it had not. Tonight she knew it had been filled, but also, in a new way, opened. She stopped her construction work on the bot and switched to what was going to be required to restore balance for the two of them after his day on the shoals. As she set about to create her part of the right circumstances between them, and between them and the Sangha, she was filled with her own deep sense of warmth from doing this nurturing, which was her most fundamental Chaructur, her Hinduuway. His way was the Explorer's Way and they both knew that they needed this exchange to stay in balance. Exchange across ages, exchange across genders, exchange across professions, exchange across learnings and ingestions. This empathy, this shared understanding, was the central teaching of the Sangha of All Sentients.
Neither of them needed to think about it much. As usual, she set him to work on mundanities while she gathered together some friends and went to the garden to get food for them to prepare together. He knew the value of this and accepted her assignments as part of their shared spiritual discipline as mother, son and village.
science and chores glow
embraced by loving kindness
warm body cool mind
* * *
The Whole Uurth Dharmas
Three weeks later, Shmuul was ready. The sushi was particularly good at the Old Quarry on Littuulmount Atoll that day. He loved the jazz here, the Ryokan poems that graced the menu, and the Hokusai prints on the walls. And now they had added images of what throughout Old Vancuuver would be called The Kitshoal Murals. His murals. His and Tanka's murals. Shmuul Ryder and Tanka Ocean. Who would have thought it? And he was excited. There would be more: first, the findings from the Balaclava and then stories from the Ya Ha Tinda. Maybe someone would riff it all for alto sax one day or even fuse it with the sounds of Buubacar Traoré.
Part 2. Poetry
Poems by Stephen Siperstein
All Along the Pacific Coast
(Originally published in The Clearing)
The sea stars are rotting.
Thousands of them, maybe millions
Losing pieces of themselves to a world
Where the invisible flings the visible
Like a small wind shorn craft.
Sometimes beside a dark pool
We kneel, try to count the bodies—
Yellows, purples, greens—before they melt
Into grey chum. Sometimes we turn
Away; sometimes we bargain.
I am told that though most stars die
On occasion the young ones fight back
Against their cells' own wasting. I am told,
And half-believe, that some can grow their limbs
Again and again, and again and again
Watch them crawl off becoming nothing.
Sand Dollars
(Originally published in Poecology)
In unquiet water the small grey circles
looked like familiar faces in the light
though strange that they lived upright
swallowing sand to keep themselves
down. We gathered bucketfuls of the dead,
bleached them white on old boards,
glued them to driftwood with limpets,
periwinkles, sprigs of dried heather and
carried them to the fair by the old millpond.
There, travelers handed us dollars
for a chance to decipher those five
pointed instructions on how to live,
how to bury oneself without illusion
of possession, how to make a small protest
against subsidence, and this was ours:
wading through warm water, watching
for the faces of angels rising we covered
those that might still live.
Teaching Climate Change
(Originally published in ISLE, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment)
It's a lot like searching
for lucky stones after storms
on the beaches of Lake Erie—
"otoliths" my grandma called them—
tiny ear bones of long dead fish,
each one like an ivory scrabble tile
impressed with a letter, "g" or "l"—
that today, arranged on my desk,
I read as an ancient message—
good luck, good luck, good
luck, you're gonna need it
.
You are a small man gone
to find balance in miles
of sand and dark water,
then returned to a room, expecting
to feel bigger than before.
My students arrive asking questions—
"How worried should we be?"
Swiftly my voice rolls out "very"—
like a wave breaking over itself,
then pulling back.
"So what should we do?" they ask—
and I try to hear goodness and grace,
a little luck, the sounds of a lake falling
through trees at night, and any words
that might begin an answer.
Drought
Feel the Freon wick drops
from your slick skin.
You sleep at night with dreams
by Ambien and cinematic fears
of apocalypse—
a cyclops storm circling
your childhood home
the waters rising.
Then your friends arrive to help
but they're zombies,
and try to eat your brains.
Funny how you never
read the road signs to find
your way out.
But they say one can learn
to tell whether it's a dream
or not—just notice the words
when they blur—
or when the weather
stops making any sense.
You wake soaked in sweat
crank the AC, eat a banana
from Costa Rica to ease
your shuddering stomach.
Run the tap. They say
this drought is the worst
in 1,200 years. You think
today might be a good day
to go to the movies
and from some place
deep in your gut rises
Winds of Change: Short Stories about Our Climate Page 23