Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep

by Elizabeth Bear

  Miss Carstairs hid her confusion in a Boston fern, praying that the merman would withdraw his nakedness, or at least hide it in the water. But when she turned back, he was still stretched at full length along the stone, his outsized privates boldly—Miss Carstairs could only think defiantly—displayed.

  He was smiling.

  There was nothing pleasant, welcoming, friendly, or even tangentially human about the merman’s smile. His gaping mouth was full of needle teeth. Behind them, his gorge was pale rose and palpitating. He had no tongue.

  Although she might be fifty years old and a virgin, Miss Carstairs was no delicate maiden lady. Before she was a spinster or even a woman, she was a naturalist, and she immediately forgot the merman’s formidable sexual display in wonder at his formidable dentition. Orally, at least, the merman was all fish. His grin displayed to advantage the tooth plate lining his lower jaw, the respiratory lamellae flanking his pharynx, the inner gill septa. Miss Carstairs seized her notebook, licked the point of her pencil, and began to sketch diligently. Once she glanced up to verify the double row of teeth in the lower jaw. The merman was still grinning at her. A moment later she looked again; he had disappeared. Hurriedly, Miss Carstairs laid aside her book and searched the pool. Yes, there he was at the deep end, belly-down against the pebbled bottom.

  Miss Carstairs seated herself upon the coping to think. Had the merman acted from instinct or intelligence? If he had noted her shock at the sight of his genitals, then his flourishing them might be interpreted as a deliberate attempt to discomfit her. On the other hand, the entire display could have been a simple example of instinctive aggression, like a male mandrill presenting his crimson posterior to an intruder.

  Miss Carstairs mounted to her study and picked up her pen to record her observations. As she inscribed the incident, she became increasingly convinced that the merman’s action must be the result of deliberate intention. No predator—and the merman’s teeth left no doubt that he was a predator—would instinctively bare rather than protect the most vulnerable portion of his anatomy. He must, therefore, have exposed himself in a gesture of defiance and contempt. But such a line of reasoning, however theoretically sound, did not go far in proving that her merman was capable of reasoned behavior. She must find a way to test his intelligence empirically.

  Miss Carstairs looked blindly out over the autumn-bright ocean glittering below her. The Duke of Argyll had written that Man was unique among animals in being a tool-user. Yet Mr. Darwin had argued persuasively that chimpanzees and orangutans commonly use sticks and stones to open hard nuts or knock down fruit. Surely no animal lower than an ape would think to procure his food using anything beyond his own well-adapted natural equipment.

  Since he was immured in a kind of free-swimming larder, Miss Carstairs could not count upon the merman’s being hungry enough to spring her trap for the bait alone. The test must engage his interest as well. Trap: now there was an idea. What if she were to use one of the patent wire rattraps stacked in the garden shed? She could put a fish in a rattrap—a live fish, she thought, would prove more attractive than a dressed one—and offer the merman an array of tools with which to open it—a crowbar, perhaps a pair of wire snips. Yes, thought Miss Carstairs, she would put the fish in a rattrap and throw it into the pool to see what the merman would make of it.

  Next morning the merman had resumed his station on the rock looking, if anything, more woebegone than he had the day before. Somewhat nervously, Miss Carstairs entered the conservatory carrying a bucket of water with a live mackerel in it. She was followed by Stephen, who was laden with the rattrap, a crowbar, a pair of wire snips, and a small hacksaw. With his help, Miss Carstairs introduced the mackerel into the trap and lowered it into the deep end of the pool. Then she dismissed Stephen, positioned herself in the wicker chair, pulled Descent of Man from her pocket, and pretended to read.

  The tableau held for a quarter of an hour or so. Miss Carstairs sat, the merman sat, the rattrap with its mackerel rested on the bottom of the pool, and the tools lay on the coping as on a workbench, with the handles neatly turned toward their projected user. Finally, Miss Carstairs slapped over the page and humphed disgustedly; the merman slithered off the rock into the pool.

  A great rolling and slopping of briny water ensued. When the tumult ceased, the merman’s head popped up, grinning ferociously. He was clearly incensed, and although his attitude was comic, Miss Carstairs was not tempted to laugh.

  With an audible snap, the merman shut his gaping mouth, lifted the rattrap onto the rock, hauled himself up beside it, and carefully examined the tools set out before him. The wire snips he passed over without hesitation. The hacksaw he felt with one finger, which he hastily withdrew when he caught it upon the ragged teeth; Miss Carstairs was interested to observe that he carried the injured member to his mouth to suck just as a man or a monkey would. Then he grasped the crowbar and brought it whistling down upon the trap, distorting it enough for him to see that one end was not made all of a piece with the rest. He steadied the trap with one hand and, thrusting the crowbar through the flap, pried it free with a single mighty heave. Swiftly, he reached inside and grabbed the wildly flapping mackerel.

  For a time the merman held the fish before him as if debating what to do with it. He looked from the fish to Miss Carstairs and from Miss Carstairs to the fish, and she heard a sound like a sigh, accompanied by a slight fluttering of his gill flaps. This sigh, combined with his habitual expression of settled melancholy, made his attitude so like that of an elderly gentleman confronted with unfamiliar provender that Miss Carstairs smiled a little in spite of herself. The merman stiffened and gazed at her intently. A long moment passed, and Miss Carstairs heard—or thought she heard—a noise of water rushing over sand; saw—or thought she heard—a glimmer as of sun filtered through clear water.

  Now, Miss Carstairs was not a woman given either to the vapors or to lurid imaginings. Thunderstorms that set more delicate nerves quivering merely stimulated her; bones and entrails left her unmoved. Furthermore, she was never ill and had never been subject to sick headaches. So, when her head began to throb and her eyes to dazzle with sourceless pinwheels of light, Miss Carstairs simply closed her eyes to discover whether the effect would disappear. The sound of rushing waters receded; the throb subsided to a dull ache. She opened her eyes to the merman’s pearly stare, and sound and pain and glitter returned.

  At this point she thought it would be only sensible to avert her eyes. But being sensible would not teach her why the merman sought to mesmerize her or why his stare caused her head to ache so. Deliberately, she abandoned herself to his gaze.

  All at once, Miss Carstairs found herself at sea. Chilly green-gray depths extended above and below her, fishy shadows darted past the edges of her vision. She was swimming in a strong and unfamiliar current. The ocean around her tasted of storm and rocks and fear. She knew beyond doubt that she was being swept ever closer to a strange shore, and although she was strong, she was afraid. Her tail scraped sand; the current crossed with windblown waves and conspired to toss her ashore. Bruised, torn, gasping for breath in the thin air, Miss Carstairs fainted.

  She came to herself some little time later, her eyes throbbing viciously and her ears ringing. The merman was nowhere to be seen. Slowly, Miss Carstairs dragged herself to her chair and rang for Sarah. She would need tea, perhaps even a small brandy, before she could think of mounting the stairs. She felt slightly seasick.

  Sarah exclaimed in shock at her mistress’s appearance. “I’ve had a bit of a turn,” said Miss Carstairs shortly. “No doubt I stayed up too late last night reading. If you would bring me some brandy and turn down my bed, I think I should like to lie down. No,”—in answer to Sarah’s inquiring look—“you must not call Dr. Bland. I have a slight headache; that is all.”

  Some little time later, Miss Carstairs lay in her darkened bedroom with a handkerchief soaked in eau de cologne pressed to her aching forehead. She did not know whether to exult
or to despair. If her recent vision had been caused by the feverish overexcitement of an unbridled imagination, she feared that excessive study, coupled with spinsterhood, had finally driven her mad as her mother had always warned her it would.

  But if the vision had been caused by the merman’s deliberate attempt to “speak” to her, she had made a discovery of considerable scientific importance.

  Miss Carstairs stirred impatiently against her pillows. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the experience was genuine. That would suggest that somewhere in the unexplored deeps of the ocean was a race of mermen who could cast images, emotion, even sounds, from mind to mind. Fantastic as the thing sounded, it could be so. In the first edition of the Origin, Mr. Darwin had written that over the ages a bear might develop baleen and flippers, evolving finally into a kind of furry whale, if living upon plankton had become necessary to the species’ survival. The general mechanism of evolution might, given the right circumstances, produce anthropoid creatures adapted for life in the sea. Why should not some ambitious prehistoric fish develop arms and a large, complex brain, or some island-dwelling ape take to the sea and evolve gills and a tail?

  Evolution could also account for a telepathic method of communication, just as it accounted for a verbal one. To Miss Carstairs’s mind, the greater mystery was how she could have received and understood a psychic message. Presumably, some highly evolved organ or cerebral fold peculiar to mermen transmitted their thoughts; how could she, poor clawless, gill-less, forked creature that she was, share such an organ?

  An exquisitely stabbing pain caused Miss Carstairs to clutch the handkerchief to her brow. She must rest, she thought. So she measured herself a small dose of laudanum, swallowed it, and slept.

  Next morning, armed with smelling salts and a pair of smoked glasses that had belonged to her mother, Miss Carstairs approached the conservatory in no very confident mood. Her brain felt sore and bruised, almost stiff, like a long-immobilized limb that had been suddenly and violently exercised. Hesitantly, she peered through the French doors; the merman was back on his rock, staring out to sea. Determined that she would not allow him to overcome her with visions, she averted her gaze, then marched across the conservatory, seated herself, and perched the smoked glasses on her nose before daring to look up,

  Whether it was the smoked glasses or Miss Carstairs’s inward shrinking that weakened the effect of the merman’s stare, this second communion was less intimate than the first. Miss Carstairs saw a coral reef and jewel-like fish darting and hovering over the sea floor like images painted on thin silk, accompanied by a distant chorus of squeaks, whistles, and random grunts. She did not, however, feel the press of the ocean upon her or any emotion other than her own curiosity and wonder.

  “Is that your home?” she asked absurdly, and the images stopped. The merman’s face did not, apparently could not, change its expression, but he advanced his sloping chin and fluttered his webbed fingers helplessly in front of his chest. “You’re puzzled,” said Miss Carstairs softly. “I don’t wonder. But if you’re as intelligent as I hope, you will deduce that I am trying to speak to you in my way as you are trying to speak to me in yours.”

  This speech was answered by a pause, then a strong burst of images: a long-faced grouper goggling through huge, smoky eyes; a merman neatly skewered on a harpoon; clouds of dark blood drifting down a swift current. Gasping in pain, Miss Carstairs reeled as she sat and, knocking off the useless smoked spectacles, pressed her hands to her eyes. The pain subsided to a dull ache.

  “I see that I shall have to find a way of talking to you,” she said aloud. Fluttering claws signed the merman’s incomprehension. “When you shout at me, it is painful.” Her eye caught the hacksaw still lying by the pool. She retrieved it, offered it to the merman blade-first. He recoiled and sucked his finger reminiscently. Miss Carstairs touched her own finger to the blade, tore the skin, then gasped as she had when he had “shouted” at her and, clutching her bleeding finger dramatically, closed her eyes and lay back in her chair.

  A moment passed. Miss Carstairs sat slowly upright as a sign that the performance was over. The merman covered his face with his fingers, webs spread wide to veil his eyes.

  It was clearly a gesture of submission and apology, and Miss Carstairs was oddly moved by it. Cautiously, she leaned over the coping, and grasped him lightly by the wrist. He stiffened, but did not pull away. “I accept your apology, merman,” she said, keeping her face as impassive as his. “I think we’ve had enough for one day. Tomorrow we’ll talk again.”

  Over the course of the next few weeks, Miss Carstairs learned to communicate with her merman by working out a series of dumb shows signifying various simple commands: “Too loud!” and “Yes” and “No.” For more complex communications, she spoke to him as he spoke to her: by means of images.

  The first day, she showed him an engraving of the Sirens that she had found in an illustrated edition of The Odyssey. It showed three fishtailed women, rather heavy about the breasts and belly, disposed gracefully on a rocky outcropping, combing their long falls of hair. The merman studied this engraving attentively. Then he fluttered his claws and sighed.

  “I don’t blame you,” said Miss Carstairs. “They look too stupid to sit on the rocks and sing at the same time, much less swim.” She laid aside The Odyssey and took up a tinted engraving of a parrotfish. The merman advanced his head and sniffed, then snatched the sheet from Miss Carstairs’s fingers and turned it this way and that. Catching her eyes, he sent her a vision of that same fish, shining vermilion and electric blue through clear tropical waters, its hard beak patiently scraping polyps out of coral dotted with the waving fronds of sea worms. Suddenly one of the coral’s thornier parasites revealed itself as a merman’s hand by grabbing the parrotfish and sweeping it into the predator’s jaws. “Oh,” said Miss Carstairs involuntarily as she became aware of an exciting, coppery smell and an altogether unfamiliar taste in her mouth. “Oh my.”

  She closed her eyes and the vision dispersed. Her mouth watering slightly and her hands trembling, she picked up her pen to describe the experience. Something of her confusion must have communicated itself to the merman, for when she next sought his eyes, he gave her a gossamer vision of a school of tiny fish flashing brilliant fins. Over time, she came to recognize that this image served him for a smile, and that other seemingly random pictures signified other common emotions: sunlight through clear water was laughter; a moray eel, heavy, hideous, and sharply toothed, was grief.

  Autumn wore on to winter, and Miss Carstairs became increasingly adept at eliciting and reading the merman’s images. Every morning she would go to the conservatory bearing engravings or sepia photographs and, with their help, wrestle some part of the merman’s knowledge from him. Every afternoon, weather permitting, she would pace the marshes or the beach, sorting and digesting. Then, after an early dinner, she would settle herself at her desk and work on “A Preliminary Study of the Species Homo Oceanus Telepathicans, With Some Observations on His Society.”

  This document, which she was confidant would assure E. Monroe Carstairs a chapter of his own in the annals of marine biology, began with a detailed description of the merman and the little she had been able to learn about his anatomy. The next section dealt with his psychic abilities; the next was headed “Communication and Society”:

  As we have seen (Miss Carstairs wrote), quite a sophisticated level of communication can be achieved by an intelligent merman. Concrete as they necessarily are, his visions can, when properly read and interpreted, convey abstract ideas of some subtlety. But they can convey them only to one other mer. Chemical exudations (vide supra) signal only the simplest mer emotions: distress, lust, fear, anger, avoidance; booms and whistles attract a companion’s attention or guide cooperative hunting maneuvers. All fine shades of meaning, all philosophy, all poetry, can pass from one mer to another only by direct and lengthy mutual gazing.

  This fact, coupled with an instinctive preference f
or solitude similar to that of the harlequin bass (S. tigrinus) and the reef shark (C. melanopterus), has prevented H. oceanus from evolving anything that H. sapiens would recognize as a civilized society. From the time they can safely fend for themselves at about the age of six, mer-children desert their parents to swim and hunt alone, often faring from one ocean to another in their wanderings. When one of these mer-children meets with another of approximately its own age, it will generally pair with that mer-child, whether it be of the same or of the opposite sex. Such a pairing, which seems to be instinctive, is the merman’s only means of social intercourse. It may last from a season or two to several years, but a couple with an infant commonly stays together until the child is ready to swim free. Legends exist of couples who swam faithfully together for decades, but as a rule, the enforced and extreme intimacy of telepathic communication comes to wear more and more heavily on one or both members of a pair until they are forced to part. Each mer then swims alone for whatever period of time fate and preference may dictate, until he meets with another receptive mer, when the cycle begins again.

  Because of this peculiar behavioral pattern, the mer-folk can have no government, no religion, no community; in short, no possibility of developing a civilization even as primitive as that of a tribe of savages. Some legends they do have (vide Appendix A), some image-poems of transcendent beauty remembered and transmitted from pair to pair over the ages. But any new discovery made by a merman or a merwoman swimming alone may all too easily die with its maker or become garbled in transmission between pair and pair. For, except within the pair-bond, the mer’s instinct for cooperation is not strong.

  The more she learned about the customs of the mer-folk, the more conscious Miss Carstairs became of how fortunate she was that the merman had consented to speak to her at all. Mermen swimming solitary were a cantankerous lot, as likely to attack a chance-met pair or single mer as to flee it.