Eileen Gunn - Stable Strategies and Others

Lichen lived with her mother and father and brothers at the edge of the woods on the shore of a large, quiet arm of the ocean. The woods sheltered them, the water fed them, and small electronic devices told them stories. They lived as comfortably as anybody could.

In the summer, they ate fresh fruit and vat-grown mussels, and camped on the beach. In the winter, they ate freeze-dried potatoes and synthetic fish, and the children played near their father’s house in the rain and mist.

When she tired of boys’ games, Lichen played by herself on a large rock shaped like a whale. It was a wonderful rock, for a rock — all grey and knobby, its surface patched orange and green with lichen. A large crack ran diagonally up one side, making it easy to climb. On top was a thick layer of mossy dirt, and a small fir tree grew on the whale’s head. Lichen would lie on the moss and watch music on a tiny television.

A very long time before, when the world was young and whales swam in the ocean, the rock had been a real whale. But because it had splashed the Changer, it had been turned into a rock, good only for children to play on. This is why you should be careful when you are swimming and not splash other people.

But we were not talking about swimming — we were talking about the child Lichen. One day, when she was playing with her brothers outdoors, strange creatures with large, gelatinous eyes like carp came and talked to her parents. These were not the carp-eyed people you sometimes see now, who are merely retooled humans. These were different, and I don’t know where they came from, but they’re gone now, thank goodness. Anyway, her parents listened to the carp-eyed creatures, who said that Lichen should be sent to school.

So she was taken far away and put in a huge house with lots of other children who had been taken from their parents. There they ate what the carp-eyed people ate and learned what the carp-eyed people wanted them to know.

For seven long years, Lichen lived in the huge house. She slept where they told her and wore the clothes they gave her and did the chores that were set aside for her. In turn, the carp-eyed creatures taught her many new things. They taught her to mend damaged circuitry by weaving around it with golden thread. They taught her to read the thoughts of a questioner in order to know the answer he wanted. And they taught her to hold in her mind as many as four contradictory ideas at once, and to act as if each was the truth, never quite losing her ability to sort the truth from the lies. This last skill was the hardest to learn, but proved handiest in the long run.

Some of these newly acquired skills brought corresponding disadvantages. Because of her skill at mending circuits, she was responsible for mending all the circuitry of all the administrators at the school. And her knowledge of a questioner’s thoughts tempted her to tell people what they wanted to hear. But her ability to find the truth in a mess of lies prevented her from believing too deeply in the lies she told other people.

She wrote letters to her parents in the language of the carp-eyed people. Her parents did not write back, but she knew that was because they could neither read nor write that language, so she was not as disappointed as she might otherwise have been. She wondered sometimes whether one or another of her brothers might learn, and if so whether he would write to her, but she never read a line from any of them. And she wondered all the time what she had done that her parents had sent her away and kept her brothers with them, and vowed to ask them when she returned home.

When the seven years were over, Lichen was told, she would be sent home, and she looked forward to that day. When it arrived, she was presented with a bill for the food she had eaten and the lessons she had learned. Since she had no money, she signed on for another seven years of service as payment.

But Lichen soon regretted her decision to stay. She spoke with people who had been there much longer than she, and they said that they always owed the school money, whenever they wanted to leave. They said that finally, when they were too old to work any more, they would be given silicon implants with gold and platinum leads and told that through the generosity of the carp-eyed people they were free to go. They said that this had happened to others, and was happening to them, and would happen to her.

So Lichen promised herself that she would never again mend a circuit or answer a question, and she ran away.

At first, running away was worse than staying where she was. At the school she had food when she was hungry and shelter when it was raining, but now she was cold and wet and had nothing to eat. She was separated from her friends and far from her family. At least, she thought, I don’t have to repair circuitry all day.

She hid during the daytime and walked at night. And she expected nothing from other people, because she found that if she expected people to help her, she was sometimes rudely disillusioned, but if she expected nothing, she was often surprised very pleasantly.

When she arrived in her homeland, she discovered that her people had changed since she had gone off to school. They had been retooled, and parts of their bodies seemed to be attached in the wrong places — heads at the ends of their arms, hands where their heads should be. Instead of feet they had hearts or livers. Some used their lower arms as long, narrow feet and, raising their legs straight up into the air, thumped about with noses in the dust and hats on their toes.

When they spoke to her, they issued strange farts from the aorta, or wiggled eye-level fingers in frustration. Their mouths, at the ends of their arms or opening in the middle of their bodies or appearing like tattooed roses on their kneecaps, moved silently, like the mouths of fish.

Who had done these awful things to them? How did they manage to walk and talk and think when their heads and feet and mouths were every which way?

Lichen asked a woman who gave her a handout what had happened and why everyone looked so strange.

We look strange to you? said the woman. Why, my dear, to us you look a bit old-fashioned — a bit boring, if you don’t mind my saying so.

The new setup works just fine, said the woman. Ever stepped on a tack? Your feet can be pretty tender, you know. There are quite a few people whose hearts are much tougher than their feet. As for livers, well, it’s true they are complex and delicate organs, but there’s no arguing with some people. They just know they can use their livers harder than their feet.

But why, Lichen asked, have hands where your head should be?

Very simple, my dear, said the woman. Some people think better with their hands than they do with their heads, and it’s only right they should look that way. And if you’re the type to act before you think, you’re better off with your hands up there like a headdress. It’s a little clumsy, but it slows you down and gives your good sense time to catch up.

But why, asked Lichen persistently, would people walk with their arms instead of their legs or have their mouths open out of their knees?

Ah, said the woman with a shrug, there are always people who do something odd just for the sake of being different. I don’t worry much about them, myself. And she shuffled off on her little heart-shaped feet, trailing dusty purple blood vessels.

As she got to know people better, Lichen decided that their peculiar anatomy worked as well as anything for them. They loved their children and lived their lives and weren’t any more or less unhappy than people had probably ever been. And the soft, liquid sounds that issued from deformed mouths, like the rush of waves and the cooing of doves, were more beautiful than words.