The Very Best of the Best

by Gardner Dozois

  Was she too clever? Could no one in her age imagine such a theory?

  Well, she knew about clay, about molds, about minerals suspended in water. What else is a glaze? There were people in her village who worked with mortar, which is sand that hardens. There were people in nearby villages who used the lost wax process to cast.

  All the necessary information was present. But no one except Haik used it to explain the objects in the Tulwar cliffs. Why? Because her kin had barely noticed the fossils and were not curious about them, did not collect them and label them and prowl around at night, looking at the pieces of stone and thinking.

  Life had changed through time. It went from the very odd to the less odd to the almost familiar. In a few places on the cliff tops were animals that still lived. So, the process that led to the creation of fossils was still happening or had stopped happening recently.

  How much time had this taken? Well, the old people in her town said that species did not change; and as far as she knew, there were no traditions that said animals used to be different. Oh, a few stories about monsters that no one had seen recently. But nothing about strange shells or fish. So the time required for change was longer than the memories of people.

  Think of what she had learned and imagined! A world of vast periods of time, of animals that changed, of extinction. Hah! It frightened her! Was there any reason why her people might not vanish, along with the fish and plants they knew? Their lineage was small, its existence precarious. Maybe all life was precarious.

  One night she had a dream. She was standing atop the cliffs above Tulwar Town. The houses below her looked very distant, unreachable. There was nothing around her except space, stretching up and down and east over the ocean. (The forest was behind her, and she did not turn around.) Next to her stood an old woman with white fur and dirty feet. “You’ve come a long way,” she said. “Maybe you ought to consider turning back.”

  “Why?” asked Haik.

  “There is no point in your journey. No one is going to believe you.”

  “About what?”

  “My creatures.”

  “Are you the Goddess?” asked Haik.

  The woman inclined her head slightly.

  “Shouldn’t you look more splendid?”

  “Did Rakai look splendid? She worked in clay. I work in the stuff-of-existence. I wouldn’t call it clean work, and who do I need to impress?”

  “Have things really died out? Or do they exist somewhere in the world?”

  “I’m not going to answer your questions,” the old woman said. “Figure existence out for yourself.”

  “Do you advise me to turn back?”

  “I never give advice,” the Goddess said. “I’m simply telling you that no one will believe you about time and change. Oh, one or two people. You can get some people to believe anything, but sensible people will laugh.”

  “Should I care?” Haik asked.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” the Goddess said. “But as I’ve said already, I don’t give advice.”

  Then she was gone, and Haik was falling. She woke in bed in Rakai’s house. Outside her window, stars blazed and gave her no comfort.

  She thought about her dream for some time, then decided to go on a voyage. Maybe her problem was lack of sex. Her best pots went into wicker baskets, wrapped in straw, along with large plates, some plain, but most with strange creatures painted on them: her lovely bird with claws, the many-legged bugs, fish that wore plate armor instead of scales, and quadrupeds with peculiar horny heads.

  When a ship arrived, going north, she took passage. It was crewed by Batanin women, so she had plenty of sex before she reached their destination. But the feeling of loneliness and fear remained. It seemed as if she stood on the edge of an abyss, with nothing around her or below her.

  She got off in a harbor town inhabited by the Meskh, a good-sized family. Although they had a port, they were farmers mostly, producing grain and dried fruit for export, along with excellent halin.

  Her pottery brought good prices in Meskh Market. By this time she was famous as the Strange Animal Potter or The Potter of Shells and Bones.

  “You are here in person,” her customers said. “This is wonderful! Two famous women in town at once!”

  “Who is the other?” Haik asked.

  “The actor Dapple. Her troop has just given a series of plays. Now, they’re resting, before continuing their tour. You must meet her.”

  They met that night in a tavern. Haik arrived escorted by several customers, middle aged women with dark fur. At a table in the middle of the room, surrounded by dark Meskh women, was someone tall and slender, broad shouldered, her fur pale silver. Introductions were made. The actor stood. In lantern light, Haik could see the silver fur was dappled with small, dim spots. It was rare for people to keep their baby markings, but a few did.

  “Hah! You’re a lovely one,” the actor said. “Red fur is unusual in this part of the world.”

  Haik sat down and told the story of her father, then how her mother died and how she had grown up in Tulwar Town. When she finally stopped, she saw the Meskh women were gone. She and Dapple sat alone at the table under the flaring lamp.

  “What happened?” Haik asked.

  “To the others? Most had the good sense to leave. Those who did not were removed by members of my company.”

  “And I didn’t notice?”

  “I don’t believe,” said Dapple, stretching, “that you are a person who notices much outside your interests. The Meskh have loaned us a house. Why don’t you come there with me? We can drink more halin and talk more, if you wish. Though I have spent the past half an ikun imagining what you look like without clothing.”

  They went to the house, walking side by side through the dark streets. Inside, in a courtyard full of potted trees and lit by stars, they made love. Dapple pulled some blankets and pillows out of a room, so they weren’t uncomfortable. “I have spent too much of my life sleeping on hard ground,” the actor said. “If I can avoid discomfort, I will.” Then she set to work with extraordinary skillful hands and a mouth that did not seem to belong to an ordinary woman made of flesh, but rather to some spirit out of ancient stories. The Fulfilling Every Wish Spirit, thought Haik. The Spirit of Almost Unendurable Pleasure.

  The potter tried to reciprocate, though she knew it was impossible. No one, certainly not her, could equal Dapple’s skill in love. But the actor made noises that indicated some satisfaction. Finally, they stopped. The actor clasped her hands in back of her head and looked at the stars. “Can you give me a pot?”

  “What?” asked Haik.

  “I’ve seen your work before this, and I would like a keepsake, something to remember you.”

  At last the flame felt burning. Haik sat up and looked at the long pale figure next to her. “Is this over? Do we have only this night?”

  “I have engagements,” Dapple said. “We’ve arranged our passage on a ship that leaves tomorrow. Actors don’t have settled lives, Haik. Nor do we usually have permanent lovers.”

  As in her dream, Haik felt she was falling. But this time she didn’t wake in her bed, but remained in the Meskh courtyard.

  The Goddess was right. She should give up her obsession. No one cared about the objects she found in cliffs. They did care about her pottery, but she could take leave of pots for a while.

  “Let me go with you,” she said to Dapple.

  The actor looked at her. “Are you serious?”

  “I have done nothing since I was fifteen, except make pots and collect certain stones I have a fondness for. More than fifteen years! And what do I have to show? Pots and more pots! Stones and more stones! I would like to have an adventure, Dapple.”

  The actor laughed and said, “I’ve done many foolish things in my life. Now, I’ll do one more. By all means, come on our journey!” Then she pulled Haik down and kissed her. What a golden tongue!

  The next morning, Haik went to her ship and gathered her belong
ings. They fit in one basket. She never traveled with much, except her pots, and they were sold, the money in a heavy belt around her waist.

  Next she went to the harbor mistress. Sitting in the woman’s small house, she wrote a letter to her relatives, explaining what had happened and why she wasn’t coming home.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” the mistress said as Haik rolled the letter and put it in a message tube, then sealed the tube with wax.

  “Yes.” The letter was to go south on the next ship, Haik told the mistress. She gave the woman half her money to hold, till the Tulwar came to claim it.

  “This is a foolish plan,” the harbor mistress said.

  “Have you never been in love?” Haik asked.

  “Not this much in love, I’m glad to say.”

  Haik had started for the door. Now she stopped. The shutters on the room’s windows were open. Haik was in a beam of light. Her red fur shone like fire. Her eyes were as clear and green as a cresting ocean wave. Hah! thought the harbor mistress.

  “I’m thirty-two and have never been in love, until last night,” Haik said. “It has come to me recently that the world is a lonely place.” She slung her basket on her back and walked toward Dapple’s borrowed house.

  A strange woman, thought the harbor mistress.

  The actors’ ship left on the afternoon tide, Haik with them, standing on the deck, next to her new love.

  At this point, the story needs to describe Dapple. She was forty when Haik met her, the first woman to train as an actor and the first person to assemble an acting company made of women. Her early years had been difficult; but by this time, she was successful and self-confident, a fine actor and even better playwright. Some of her writing has come forward to us, though only in a fragmentary condition. Still, the words shine like diamonds, unscratched by fate.

  Dapple was her acting name. Her real name was Helwar Ahl, and her home—which she rarely visited—was Helwar Island, off the northeast corner of the Great Southern Continent. For the most part, she and her company traveled up and down the continent’s eastern coast, going as far south as Ettin, where she had many friends.

  They were going south now and could have taken Haik’s letter, though Haik hadn’t known this. In any case, their ship was a fast trader, bound for Hu and not planning to stop on the way. East they went, till the coast was a thin dark line, visible only when the ship crested a wave. The rest of the time, they were alone, except for the peshadi that swam in front of them and the ocean birds that followed.

  The birds were familiar to Haik, but she had never seen a live pesha before. As the animals’ sleek backs broke the water’s surface, they exhaled loudly enough so Haik had no trouble hearing the sound. Wah! Wah! Then they dove, their long tails cutting through the water like knives. They had a second name: blue fish, which came from their hide’s deep ocean color. Neither death nor tanning dimmed the hue, and pesha leather was a famous luxury.

  “I had a pair of pesha boots once,” said Dapple. “A wealthy matron gave them to me, because they were cracked beyond repair. I used them in plays, till they fell into pieces. You should have seen me as a warrior, strutting around in those boots!”

  Years before, a dead pesha had washed up on a beach in Tulwar. They’d all gone to see it: this deep-sea animal their kin had hunted before the Drowning. It had been the size of a large woman, with four flippers and a tail that looked like seaweed, lying limp on the pebbles. The old men of Tulwar cut it up. Most of the women went back to work, but Haik stayed and watched. The flesh had been reddish-purple, like the flesh of land animals; the bones of the skeleton had been large and heavy. As for the famous skin, she’d felt it. Not slimy, like a fish, and with no scales, though there were scaleless fish. She knew that much, though her kin no longer went to sea.

  Most interesting of all were the flippers. She begged a hind one from the old men. It was small, the hide not usable, with almost no flesh on the bones. “Take it,” her senior male relatives told her. “Though nothing good is likely to come from your curiosity.”

  Haik carried it to her teacher’s house, into a back room that Rakai never entered. Her fossils were there, along with other objects: a bird skeleton, almost complete; the skulls of various small animals; and shells from Tulwar’s beaches. Laying the flipper on a table, she used a sharp knife to cut it open. Inside, hidden by blue skin and reddish-purple flesh, were five rows of long, narrow, white bones.

  She had cleaned them and arranged them on the table as she’d found them in the flipper. The two outer rows were short, the thumb—could she call it that?—barely present, while the three middle rows were long and curved. Clearly, they provided a framework for the flipper. What purpose did the outer rows serve, and why had the Goddess hidden a hand inside a sea animal’s flipper?

  “Well,” said Dapple after Haik told this story. “What’s the answer to your question?”

  “I don’t know,” said Haik, afraid to talk about her theories. What did she know for certain? A group of puzzling facts. From these she had derived a terrifying sense of time and change. Did she have the right to frighten other people, as she had been frightened?

  Beside them, a pesha surfaced and exhaled, rolling sideways to eye them and grin with sharp white teeth.

  “Rakai told me the world is full of similarities and correspondences. The Goddess is a repeater. That’s what they always told me.”

  “And a jokester,” said Dapple. “Maybe she thought it would be funny to make something that was a fish in some ways and a land animal in others.”

  “Maybe,” Haik said in a doubtful tone. “I tanned the flipper hide and made a bag from it, but couldn’t use the bag. It seemed dishonorable and wrong, as if I was using the skin from a woman’s hand to keep things in. So I put the pesha bones in the bag and kept them on one of my shelves; and I made a pot decorated with peshadi. It was a failure. I didn’t know how living peshadi moved. Now, I will be able to make the pot again.”

  Dapple ruffled the red fur on her shoulder. “Like fire,” the actor said gently. “You burn with curiosity and a desire to get things right.”

  “My relatives say it will get me in trouble.”

  “The Goddess gave us the ability to imagine and question and judge,” the actor said. “Why would she have done this, if she did not intend us to use these abilities? I question the behavior of people; you question rocks and bones. Both activities seem chulmar to me.”

  Then as now, chulmar meant to be pious and to be funny. Dapple’s voice sounded amused to Haik; this made her uneasy. In Tulwar, after the Drowning, piety took the form of glumness, though the people there certainly knew the meaning of chulmar. They did not mean to turn their children away from enjoyment of the world, but so much had been lost; they had become afraid; and fear is the end of piety.

  The ship continued south, till it was far past the Tulwar coast. During this period, Haik was preoccupied with love. Hah! It had struck her like a strong blow in battle! She could think of little except Dapple’s body: the four breasts, surprisingly large for a woman who’d never borne children; the rangy limbs; the prominent nipples, the same color as the “far-down dark grey” strata at home; and the place between the actor’s legs, which was a cave of pleasure. Haik could model a breast in clay, make a covered pot of it, with a nipple for the handle. But how could she replicate the hidden place? Or Dapple’s mouth with its golden tongue? It could not be done, especially now, with her kiln far behind her. Better not to think of pottery.

  They made love often, usually on deck, under blazing tropic stars. She was drunk with love! Love had made her crazy, and she did not care!

  Five days south of Tsugul Island, the ship turned west. They came to the wide harbor at Hu, guarded by white shoals. The peshadi were gone by then; the birds had become more numerous. A low green coast emerged from misty rain.

  Haik and Dapple were on deck. Peering forward, Haik made out the buildings of Hu Town: white and blue, with red or green roofs. F
ishing boats lined the harbor docks. Their furled sails were red, white, green and yellow. “A colorful country.”

  “That’s the south,” said Dapple in agreement. As lovely as always, the actor was leaning on the ship’s rail, looking happy. “People in the north call these folk barbarians, who lack refinement and a sense of nuance. But drama is not made of nuance.” She raised an arm and brought it down. “It’s the sword blade descending, the cry of understanding and anger and pain. I could not write the plays I write, if I didn’t visit the south.”

  They tied up among the fishing boats, empty in mid-afternoon. The acting company went on shore, Tulwar Haik among them. She had never been this far south. The people in the streets, dressed in bright tunics and kilts, were an unfamiliar physical type: broad chested, with short thick limbs. The women were taller than women in the north, towering a full head above their male relatives. Everyone had grey fur, and Haik got many sideways glances.

  “I could lose you,” said Dapple with amusement.

  “They’re ugly,” said Haik.

  “They are different, dear one. When you get used to them, they will begin to look handsome.”

  “Have you had lovers here?”

  Dapple laughed. “Many.”

  Their destination was an inn built around a courtyard. There were potted trees in the courtyard: skyflower and starflower and a kind Haik did not recognize, which had silver-blue leaves and frilly, bright yellow flowers. Several of the pots had been made by Rakai; one had been made by her, an early work, not bad in its way. She pointed it out to Dapple.