Comrade Grandmother and Other Stories

by Naomi Kritzer

  ***

  BACK ON EARTH, there was a shtetl in Eastern Europe called Chelm. Or perhaps it was a neighborhood in Brooklyn, or maybe a suburb of Detroit. The story goes that the Almighty sent out angels with bags full of wise souls and foolish souls, instructing them to sprinkle them evenly all around the world—but the angel with the bag of foolish souls tripped and the bag ripped open, and every single one fell out in Chelm. So the people born there were not exactly the brightest twinkles in the sky. In fact, they were denser than lead and dumber than snot—but they all thought they were geniuses.

  The greatest fool of all was Jacob Macher, the mayor. He had a large collection of framed certificates and diplomas attesting to his brilliance in various ways: he had an Award for Leadership Excellence, a Certificate of Appreciation, and a Ph.D.

  When humans first went to colonize the stars, the people of Chelm heard about it and thought it sounded like a fine idea, so Macher sent his office assistant, Shlemiel, to the real estate agent to buy a planet. “We want a great big planet,” Macher told Shlemiel. “The biggest one available.”

  The real estate agent knew immediately that he was dealing with a fool. “I have just the planet for you,” he said. “It’s five times the size of Earth.” He showed Shlemiel the pictures taken from space. It looked like a creamy blue ball on a black velvet curtain. “Nobody else lives on a world this big!”

  “We’ll take it!” Shlemiel said, and signed the papers. The Chelmites headed for the stars.

  Imagine their surprise when they reached the planet and discovered that while it had an atmosphere they could breathe, and it had beautiful blue oceans, it had almost no land. The whole of the planet had only one tiny island.

  “Shlemiel!” Macher groaned. “How could you be such a numbskull? I should have known better than to send you—your parents weren’t born in Chelm, but moved there from California.”

  “We can’t live here,” said Gilda, Shlemiel’s wife. “We’ve got enough fuel to get us back to Earth. Let’s go home to Chelm.”

  “We can’t go home now,” Macher said. “We’ll have wasted all the money we spent to buy this planet if we go home now. Let’s think about this logically. We need either more land, or less water.”

  “Perhaps we could drain the ocean,” someone suggested.

  “Where would we put the water?” Gilda asked.

  “We could sell it!” Shlemiel said. “We’ll put up a sign. Free Water—You Haul.”

  “Shlemiel, you fool,” Gilda said. “Who’s going to come visit and see the sign?”

  Shlemiel sighed, knowing Gilda was right. Another idea struck him. “Perhaps what is needed is not to create more land, but to make us better suited to the water.”

  “What do you mean?” Macher asked.

  “If we learn to breathe underwater, that will solve all our problems,” Shlemiel said.

  “But we can’t breathe water,” Macher said. He closed his eyes and gestured for quiet. “I have it!” he said. “We can’t breathe water, but we can breathe air. We will declare that the wet stuff surrounding our island is air.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Gilda said. “Water isn’t air!”

  “My dissertation proved that language is just a construct,” Macher sniffed. “Do you have a Ph.D., Gilda?”

  “You can call our water ‘Fred’ if you want but you’re still not going to be able to breathe it,” Gilda said.

  “Don’t bring me problems, Gilda,” Macher said. “I only want to hear solutions.”

  “I gave you a solution,” Gilda said. “Take us home!”

  “Quitters never win, Gilda. Are you a quitter?”

  Gilda’s response was drowned out by the chorus of approval for Macher’s plan. The resolution declaring the island to be surrounded by air passed with an overwhelming majority. “We need a volunteer to test the breathability of the new air,” Macher said. “Shlemiel, you do it.”

  Ignoring Gilda’s protests, Shlemiel paddled a boat out into deep water and leapt in. He sank down and tried to take a big deep breath.

  Shlemiel splashed to the surface, choking and gagging. “Help!” he squeaked as loudly as he could. “I can’t swim!”

  “You don’t need to swim!” Macher shouted back. “It’s air, remember? Try harder!”

  Shlemiel tried again, and barely surfaced the second time. “It’s—not—working,” he choked out. “I’m drowning!”

  “There’s no ‘I’ in TEAM, Shlemiel!” Macher shouted. “And there’s no ‘I’M DROWNING’ in it, either!”

  “PULL ME OUT!” Shlemiel screamed.

  Unfortunately, no one had a rope; Gilda kicked off her shoes and started to jump in, but remembered just in time that she couldn’t swim, either. “Help!” she screamed. “Somebody save my husband!”

  Shlemiel went under for the third time, and for a moment everyone thought that all was lost. But then, his head bobbed up again and stayed up. His arm was tucked over the head of a fish—the most enormous fish any of the Chelmites had ever seen, with huge eyes and shimmering blue-green skin. The fish swam to shore, nudging Shlemiel into the waiting hands of the Chelmites. It then waited for a long moment, staring at the Chelmites with its bright eyes.

  Gilda was pounding Shlemiel on the back, but looked up to study the fish. It seemed to study her back. “Macher,” Gilda said, “This is no ordinary fish.”

  “No! It’s the biggest fish I’ve ever seen!” Macher said. “It could feed us for weeks!”

  “We can’t eat it!” Gilda shrieked. “Macher, I think this fish might be intelligent.”

  Macher grabbed Gilda’s arm. “We have to catch it,” Macher said. “Study it. Dissect it. See if you’re right—because if it is intelligent, we need to be very, very careful not to make it angry!”

  Over Gilda’s strenuous objections, an order went out and the fish was caught in a net and taken ashore. They deposited the great fish into a deep inland salt-water pool. Its skin shone like a polished rock; it swam around and around, its tail flipping out of the water every now and then like the delicate edge of a fan.

  “How can we know if it’s intelligent or not?” someone asked Macher.

  “It saved my husband,” Gilda cried. “Isn’t that evidence enough?”

  There was a long, awkward pause.

  “We can build a maze for it to swim,” Macher said. “That’s how we tested intelligence when I was working on my Ph.D.”

  “That’s how you tested the intelligence of rats,” Gilda said. “How did you test the intelligence of people?”

  “We made them run mazes, too. Did you know that rats are smarter than undergraduates?”

  “Let’s try talking to it,” someone suggested.

  So the Chelmites tried talking to the fish. When it didn’t respond to English, they tried Spanish, Yiddish, Hebrew, Chinese, Esperanto, Russian, and even Bronx. “Hey Fish,” said Shlemiel. “If you’re sentient, say something!”

  The fish didn’t say anything. It just swam around and around and around, occasionally poking its head out of the water to glare ferociously at Macher.

  “Maybe this species doesn’t talk,” Gilda said. “Had that occurred to you?”

  “Of course it had,” Macher said. “Shlemiel! Why haven’t you brought a pen that writes underwater yet?”

  Shlemiel brought a pen and a board to write on. They lowered the pen and board into the water, but the fish ignored them completely.

  “How could it write anything?” Gilda asked. “It doesn’t have hands like ours, just fins.”

  “Wouldn’t an intelligent species be smart enough to evolve thumbs?” Macher asked.

  “We’re an intelligent species,” Gilda said. “Why haven’t we evolved thumbs on our feet, too? Think how efficient your office could be if Shlemiel had four thumbs instead of just two.”

  Macher was struck silent for a moment, then shook his head. “Shlemiel would just make twice as many mistakes.”

  “I have an idea,” someone sugge
sted. “It’s been a while, and the fish must be getting hungry. Let’s throw Shlemiel in again and see if the fish eats him. If it doesn’t, that probably means it’s intelligent.”

  “Hasn’t my husband been through enough in one day?” Gilda wailed, but Shlemiel (eager to redeem himself after his failure to breathe the seawater) jumped into the pool.

  The fish looked startled, especially when Shlemiel started to drown again. Cautiously, it approached him, let him grab on around its neck, and dragged him back to the edge of the pool.

  “There,” Gilda said. “It saved him again. Now will you believe it’s intelligent?”

  “Maybe it’s just not hungry yet,” Macher said. “Or—” he added when he saw that Gilda was about to interrupt him, “maybe these fish just don’t eat meat. No matter how hungry a giraffe is, it’s not going to eat a human.”

  “Maybe we should send a volunteer into the water to visit the other Great Strange Fish,” Shlemiel said, wringing out his shirt. “Someone who can swim, this time.”

  “Oh, good idea,” Gilda said. “Maybe Macher can go.”

  “I can’t go,” Macher sputtered. “I am far too important to this colony to risk losing.”

  “But what if they want to do intelligence tests on us?” Gilda said. “How can we possibly risk sending anyone but you, Macher?”

  “Well, we certainly can’t send Shlemiel,” Macher said.

  “No, you’re right about that,” Gilda said, wrapping a warm blanket around Shlemiel. “Build your maze, Macher. I think that’s the only thing left to try.”

  But the Great Strange Fish seemed to have had enough. As Macher leaned over the water to look at it again, it shot a spout of water straight up Macher’s nose. “Aaargh!” Macher shouted, and fell into the pool. Rather than rescuing him, the fish swam away. It looked like it was gloating. Shlemiel pulled Macher out of the pool.

  “That wicked, horrid creature!” Macher sputtered. “If it is intelligent, it’s devious—wicked—evil—dangerous!”

  Shlemiel looked down at the fish. It had a weary expression on its face. It occurred to Shlemiel that for once, Macher might be wrong; if aliens had landed in Chelm and kidnapped Shlemiel and refused to return him to his home and his family, he’d have done far worse than squirt water up their nose, given the opportunity. For a moment, he felt very lost. Then he had an idea. “You’re right,” he said to Macher. “It’s a wicked, evil fish. It’s so wicked and evil that I think we should kill it.”

  Gilda froze in horror as Macher wrung out his coat and looked at Shlemiel with interest. “Do you think we could fry it up for dinner?”

  “No, of course not. What if the flesh is poisonous? Or worse, what if its wickedness is contagious?”

  Macher nodded slowly. “What do you think we should do, then?”

  “Fish drown in air,” Shlemiel said. “I think we should throw it—into the air.” He pointed at the deep blue “air” that surrounded the island. “Drowning is the only suitable death for a fish like this.”

  “Excellent idea!” Gilda said. “Don’t you think that’s a good idea, Macher?”

  Macher was forced to admit that this seemed just. So the fish was loaded back into the net and carried back to the shore, where it was ceremoniously dumped into the cold, salty air.

  “What now?” someone asked. “We’re still on this stupid island, and Shlemiel couldn’t breathe that sort of air—we’re back where we started.”

  Shlemiel scratched his head. “You know, if your planet is already occupied—if there are intelligent aliens—you’re supposed to get a refund,” he said. “I remember reading that on one of the papers I signed.”

  “But we never determined if the fish was intelligent or not,” Macher said.

  “Let’s just all agree to say that we think the fish is intelligent,” Shlemiel said. “If a genius like Macher couldn’t be sure, the real estate agency won’t know, either. They’ll have to refund our money.”

  “Grand idea,” Macher said. “Shlemiel, if this works, you’ve redeemed yourself for buying this planet.”

  And so it happened. Fortunately, the real estate agency seemed quite convinced by their claim that the fish were intelligent. Not only did they refund the money, but they sent shuttles to evacuate the Chelmites immediately and gave them some extra money not to tell anyone what had happened there.

  This would have been enough money to buy another great big planet—this time with land. But the Chelmites had had enough of colony life for the time being. They returned to Chelm, and were able to buy back their homes and business. They were all very happy to return.

  Not long after Macher had moved back into his office, though, Shlemiel came up to his desk and said, “Macher, remember how you said that language was just a construct?”

  “Shlemiel, you fool,” Macher said. “I wrote my dissertation on that very topic. Of course I remember.”

  “So...” Shlemiel pointed at the cup of coffee in his hand. “I am going to rename this accolades.” He took a thick black marker and wrote ACCOLADES on the cup. “I would like to shower you with accolades, for your brilliant leadership back on the planet.” He dumped his coffee on Macher’s head.

  “Ow!” Macher took off his glasses to wipe coffee off the lenses. “What are you doing, Shlemiel?”

  Macher had been drinking a fizzy drink, and Shlemiel picked that up off of Macher’s desk. “Now, this I’m going to call a Certificate of Real Appreciation for Positivity—that’s kind of long, so I’ll abbreviate it.” He wrote CRAP on the drink, and then threw that in Macher’s face as well.

  Macher scooted back in his chair, grabbing a tissue to wipe the fizzy drink out of his eyes. “Shlemiel, you dunderhead, you have completely misunderstood my research,” he said.

  “Finally,” Shlemiel said, still holding the pen he’d been writing with, “I’m going to call this pen MY JOB. And I’d like you to take this job and—oh, here, I’ll do it for you.” He leaned across the desk and stuck the pen up Macher’s nose.

  “Shlemiel,” Macher said, dripping with coffee and fizzy drink, and with a pen sticking out of his nose, “Have you gone completely insane?”

  “No,” Shlemiel said. “But I have found another job. I’m going back to that planet; I’m going to work for the scientists who are studying the Great Strange Fish. Gilda got a job working for them, too.” He walked towards the door, but turned back to say, “You know, Macher. You can call something air, but that doesn’t mean you can breathe it. You can call yourself a genius, but you’re still an idiot. And you can call me tomorrow, but I won’t answer my phone. Good luck finding a new office assistant!”

  No one from Chelm ever saw Gilda or Shlemiel again.

  Note to readers: that’s it for stories. This last page is links to my other books, and copyright stuff.

  Comrade Grandmother and Other Stories is copyright 2011 Naomi Kritzer

  All stories other than &ldquot;The Long Walk” are copyright 1999-2011 Naomi Kritzer. &ldquot;The Long Walk” is copyright 2005 Lyda Morehouse and Naomi Kritzer.

  If you want to do something with one of these stories, like translate it, reprint it on a website, make a play out of it, whatever: please ask. I will probably let you do so for free. It is very easy to find me on the Internet, just search for my name.

  If you like my work, please look for my other books.

  My other short story collection:

  Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories

  My novels:

  Fires of the Faithful

  Turning the Storm

  Freedom’s Gate

  Freedom’s Apprentice

  Freedom’s Sisters

  Comrade Grandmother first appeared in Strange Horizons in 2002.

  The Golem first appeared in Realms of Fantasy in 2000.

  Honest Man first appeared in Realms of Fantasy in 2007.

  Spirit Stone first appeared in Realms of Fantasy in 2000.

  The Good Son first appeared in Baen’s Univers
e in 2009.

  Faust’s SASE first appeared in Scavenger’s Newsletter in 1999.

  The Long Walk first appeared in Tales of the Unanticipated in 2005.

  When Shlemiel Went to the Stars first appeared in Tales of the Unanticipated in 2009.

  Thank you so much for buying my book, and reading it.