When he saw her again—and he was absolutely certain that he would—he’d ask for her forgiveness.

  The night before his court-martial, while on leave to attend an uncle’s funeral, one of the SEALs got kneewalking drunk in a Norfolk bar, lamenting his fate and the suckiness of the Navy, and sharing the reason why he was to be tried in the morning, which was that the mermaid babe had escaped. This he told to to eleven of his newest best Mends, one of whom had a cousin who was a stringer for the New York Post.

  The story was on all the morning newscasts and material for variety show comedians by nightfall. By then, dozens of Zembla sightings had been reported: she’d been seen in all seas and oceans, in all the Great Lakes, in twelve rivers, and in a tank at the Coney Island Aquarium.

  Bemie was released the following day and taken to his lab, still under guard but without guns pointing at him. The Secretary of the Navy was waiting.

  “Get busy,” the Secretary said.

  Bernie got busy, doing science the way it was supposed to be done, slowly, meticulously, with excruciating precision and tremendous fussiness. He was bored silly, but he got the job done—he was still a genius—and, fifteen months later, a begilled embryo was growing in an incubation chamber.

  “What you gonna call her?” Jerry Hines asked him. “Zembla junior?”

  “I was thinking ‘Ariel,’” Bemie said.

  “Changed your mind, huh? Where’d…Ariel’s DNA come from? Or is that a top secret again?”

  “It is, but I’ll tell you anyway. You. Your DNA. You’re gonna be a father, Jer.”

  It was a modest enough gift to give Jerry who was, after all, a good guy.

  In late March, a year and a half after Zembla’s departure, with Ariel decanted and prospering, Bernie noticed that the lab was less populated—fewer miscellaneous people lounging around. Then, startled at his own obtuseness, Bernie realized that the miscellaneous people had been government agents and their absence meant that they weren’t watchdogging him anymore.

  The day he’d been awaiting had come, as he knew it must.

  Getting the boat was no problem, requiring only a few calls on a phone he’d made tap-proof and a large sum of money, Nor did he have any difficulty eluding any snoops that still might have been watching him. He simply established a routine: every weekday, he bought a pizza and went eat it while sitting on a bench near the marina. So, if a government spy happened to observe him on this Thursday, he or she would think the geeky scientist was just doing his usual thing and, Bemie hoped, go violate someone else’s civil rights.

  Bemie ate his pizza, stretched and yawned elaborately, and sauntered onto the dock. Just your basic old geek stumbling around, his head filled with equations and stuff. …

  He leaped into the boat, started the engine, and chugged out into the bay. He looked back at the land: no other boats, no helicopters, no guy in a trenchcoat jumping up and down and yelling into a cell phone…

  After three hours, the engine coughed, sputtered, and quit, its fuel tank empty. Bemie stood, and, struggling for balance, scanned the horizon.

  Sky and sea and nothing else.

  He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Zembla!”

  The water absorbed his voice, instantly deadening it.

  “Well, okay,” Bemie said. “I know you’re here. I know you’re waiting for me. I feel it.”

  He kicked off his shoes, lowered himself into the water and began swimming. What he was doing was not rational, nor were the feelings which prompted it—the yearning, the willingness to sacrifice everything simply to be with his beloved. Not at all what would be expected of a Nobel prizewinning biologist. More, perhaps, what some mushbrained poet might do.

  It wouldn’t take long to find her, or for her to find him, and then they’d be together.

  YOUNG AS THE MOUNTAINS by C. J. Henderson

  “The tragedy of age is not that one is old, but that one is young.”

  —Oscar Wilde

  Bollatu stood at the water’s edge, staring out toward the horizon. The sun had just begun to shatter its edge, spilling across the vast Northern Ocean of Byanntia. Dawn—not the best time to push out in search of the great fish. But then, that had only been an excuse anyway.

  They voted nay, thought the old chief. All of them. Bending his back, the Kuzzi warrior threw his still-powerful limbs into the job of sliding his hunter’s skiff across the hard-packed blue sand and into the water beyond. He reached the lapping waves by instinct, his eyes not seeing the ocean before him, his conscious mind not actually concerned with the hunt. Throwing himself into the moving boat with accustomed ease, Bollatu landed lightly in the center, managing the maneuver without wetting any of his fur.

  What did you expect, he asked himself with a bitter tone. That they would accept the judgments of a failure forever?

  The chief was the oldest of the Kuzzi, a proud warrior who in his elder years still stood an even eight feet high. A short coat of horizontally-striped fur covered his body, as it did all of his people. The blue, black, and gray markings were a natural camouflage which allowed the Kuzzi to blend well with the planet’s landscape.

  Bollatu did not differ from the rest of the Kuzzi in any remarkable way. His head was surrounded by the same thick mane, the usual single black stripe parted his forehead and muzzle. His chin and jaw were covered with the typical longer fur of the Kuzzi mane, setting off his muzzle and hard, blue lips, his shoulders broad and chest rippling with thick layers of muscles.

  But Bollatu felt different that morning. As his skiff followed the morning tide out to sea, for once he felt much older than the rest of his tribe. He felt tired. Weary. Betrayed.

  It’s you that’s betrayed them, his mind whispered in the dark recrimination. Led them astray, forced them to eat the lies of the past. Murdered them—

  “Enough!”

  The chief sat back in his boat, closing his eyes, letting his mane cushion his head against the rear panel seat. Still close to shore, the current rippled gently against the sides of the skiff. The sound was smooth and pleasant—relaxing.

  They voted nay, the voice from the back of his mind repeated. What do you have to relax about?

  Bollatu sighed. His was a nomadic warrior race that had lived on their planet since the beginning of time. Their cherished story cycle gave them a history extending back through a hundred and twelve thousand cycles. Over all that time the Kuzzi had formularized their way of life. Their population had always remained small due to the ravages of the Gr’Nar, frightful beasts that returned from a generational hibernation to destroy everything in sight. Over the centuries the Kuzzi had learned to calculate the coming of the creatures. They knew when to move to avoid their coming and to where. When the Gr’Nar arrived, they would slaughter the plainsherd, but never the Kuzzi. The nomads were too clever.

  Then others had come, outsiders from the stars—the Earth’ings. They had come to Byanntia and built permanent homes. They went where they wanted, did what they wanted, acting like children lost in the dark. Some of the younger Kuzzi had been concerned. The Earth’ings would swallow their world, they said. But Bollatu had said, no, leave them be. Soon will come the Gr’Nar and the Earth’ing bones will litter the sand.

  All had agreed. Of course, Bollatu was correct. None could resist the Gr’Nar. The greatest Kuzzi warriors—even in groups of a thousand—had been devastated by the fearsome god beasts.

  Let the Earth’ings plow and build and roam. In twenty-two cycles they will all be dead. It had been a time of great laughter.

  But the years had passed and the Gr’Nar had come, and had not destroyed the aliens. The god beasts’ arrival had not even driven them away. A few pawfuls only did the Gr’Nar kill. Pawfuls! The usual cycle of blood had been reduced to a few days. A single Earth’ing had stopped it—cold and final. And then, the alien had not even shown the Gr’Nar the dignity of slaying them. He had turned his back on the god beasts, allowing them to slink off to their lair.

  “You knew the creatures would come back to plague your land and sons, Jacob Matson,” snarled the warrior in confused contempt, “and yet you let the Gr’Nar live. Knew the deaths would have washed you in glory. And you let the beasts live.”

  Bollatu sat upright in his skiff. Rage boiled his blood, steamed the water within his brain. He had been so certain, positive the Gr’Nar would sweep the plains free of the Earth’ings. But he had been wrong. And now for the first time in all of Kuzzi history, a chief had been removed from his station.

  Bollatu stared out across the endless water. Only a pawful of times had there ever been a vote. Seven times throughout all their generations. Seven times the entire nation had been brought together to cast their stones—blue to retain their chief, black to send him out. Not one blue stone had been cast for Bollatu. Not by his smoke mates, his sister, his children—not even his wife had thrown for him.

  Why should they?

  Bollatu frowned. Why was it his fault the Earth’ings had triumphed? Millennia of tradition said they would fail. None could stop the Gr’Nar—ten thousand grandfathers wagging their collective fingers down through the centuries had said so—

  And you listened to them… …

  Disgusted, the former chief threw aside his thoughts. It was over. Fine, let the next chief do better. Tired of self-pity, annoyed with simply drifting, Bollatu picked up the double-bladed oar next to him and thrust it into the water. A smooth stroke pushed him forward, followed by another the next second. The oar shifted from side to side, silently slicing the water, the skiff effortlessly gliding faster and faster toward the horizon.

  “Good day for fish,” whispered the elder Kuzzi, as if fishing was what he sought from the Northern Ocean that day. In a tone still thick with anger, he looked over the side of his skiff and muttered, “Are you hungry down there?”

  Setting aside his oar, Bollatu pulled up his line and cast. Securing the cast’s handle in its notch in the cross brace before him, the Kuzzi held up the hooked end of his line for examination. Having not really come to fish he had, of course, brought no bait. A thin laugh grumbling through him, the elder worked his mouth, pulling together a thick wad of mucus and phlegm. Spitting it onto his hook, he cast the wicked curve of barbed metal into the ocean, shouting—

  “Well, eat this!”

  And then Bollatu laughed. No sooner had his hook sunk but a few feet beneath the surface when his line jerked. Something had taken him at his word, impaling itself on his invitation.

  Everything dies that listens to you …

  Laughing again at his own cynicism, the elder warrior watched as coil after coil of line dashed out over the stem. Something big and fast had decided to challenge him. Reaching for his hauling gloves, he told his hidden foe—

  “I accept.”

  His heavy, resin-woven gloves in place, Bollatu hauled on the line. Of course, he was not trying to drag whatever had taken his hook to the surface. This was only the opening lunge in a duel he expected would take the next half hour or more. The rate at which the coils of line had snaked overboard told him he had something big, a fellir, a houlta—twenty pounds’ worth, at least. Whatever it was, it had to be made aware that it was in a struggle. The Kuzzi’s opening tug would let it know there was a new force in its life, and then the battle would truly begin.

  As the elder warrior worked his line, easily letting a few yards play out, hauling them back in, letting them out again, he began to relax. The sun was warm on his fur, the occasional splashes churned up by his struggle refreshing. The fish began circling the skiff, going deeper and deeper, trying to find a direction from which it could not be pulled back. Bollatu easily kept the line from tangling against any of his vessel’s edges, his still strong muscles easing the line around and around.

  Slowly the elder’s cares were being left behind—forgotten. The contest had shifted his focus away from the internal. As his fingers stiffened, he would hold the line secure with one paw while flexing the fingers of the other. Then he would let his line play again, pulling the fish short with his refreshed paw while loosening the digits of the others.

  Then, finally, the line went slack. Bollatu’s hidden adversary was heading for the surface. The warrior’s forehead ridged, his lips smiled. He had tired his foe to the point where it could think of nothing else to do but to run straight toward its captor.

  “Come to me, swimmer. We’ll prove I’m not dead yet.”

  The water broke, shoved to both sides by a leaping form. Water caught the light, surrounding the fish in reflected dazzle. Bollatu marveled at his prize.

  “A geldiffa—this close to land.”

  The elder laughed, pleased with himself. Seeing his enemy, he could tell the great fish weighed forty, forty-five pounds easily. Then, in the background, Bollatu noticed the distant shore, discovering he had traveled much farther than he had realized. The warrior did not care, however. What could that matter? Forward, toward the end of his line, that was where his attention was demanded. The geldiffa, all blue and yellow stripes, hit the water again cleanly, gliding below its surface, racing for the bottom.

  He’s trying to throw the hook—he’s done this before.

  A real adversary, decided Bollatu with a grunt of admiration. A worthy foe. This would be a battle worth fighting.

  The Kuzzi found himself repeating the steps he had already made. First playing out and hauling in the line, working it around his skiff as the fish went deeper and deeper, constantly switching directions as it again tried to find some space of ocean that did not connect it to Bollatu’s line. The warrior smiled with a child’s sincerity. He had not been so happy in many a year.

  Then, once more his line went slack. Again, the geldiffa was racing to the surface. For a moment Bollatu’s breast swelled with pride. In his moment of despair, the gods had sent him a challenge, a sign, an opportunity for redemption within his own eyes. It was a small thing, but life was assembled from small moments, and he was in no position to argue. Then, his split second of joy was dashed.

  Instinct sent his free paw to the bottom of his skiff, feeling for vibrations. His eyes scanned the water around him. Something was wrong. To his left, the ocean was beginning to swell. It was a signal—the geldiffa was returning to the surface. No longer trying to escape Bollatu, instead it was running from something else.

  “What in all the gods…?”

  Bollatu’s mouth froze open in amazement as the geldiffa broke the water once more, not merely leaping this time, but shooting straight upward into the atmosphere. Before his prize catch had begun to sink back below the waves, the water beneath the fish boiled and then split apart, shattered by the arrival of a massive black form.

  “Chuln’fa’ulu!”

  Bollatu sat in his tiny skiff, his boat and himself dwarfed by the incredible monster swallowing the ocean before him. So gigantic were the chuln’fa’ulu that their skins were used by the Kuzzi to make their central meeting tents. The nomads did not hunt the great fish, of course. They only salvaged their carcasses on those fortunate occasions when one of their dead drifted into shore. Even the Gr’Nar-killing Earth’ings had been impressed by the size of the largest creature Byanntia had to offer. Unable to pronounce the beast’s Kuzzi name, they had labeled them “Melvilles,” claiming the word to be a compliment.

  There was no way to stop chuln’fa’ulu. The records spoke of insanely daring bands of Kuzzi, twenty, thirty boats’ worth, going out with spears and throwers, looking for the glory of being the first mortals to slay a godfish. None had ever succeeded. Few had ever returned.

  All these things flashed through Bollatu’s mind as he watched the chuln’fa’ulu break the surface. He smelled the terror of the geldiffa—his geldiffa—as it struggled upward, flopping desperately, only to fall pitifully back toward the ocean and the waiting jaws below.

  “Nooooooo!”

  The godfish’s jaws came closed, Bollatu’s prize disappearing from sight. With a casual shrug, the massive beast turned and headed back beneath the waves. The elder warrior stared, his mind numb, emotions racing. He had been so at peace, actually happy, and then…there was no sense he could make of the moment playing out before him.

  Had he been given his purging moment only so that he might be punished further? Was he naught but a toy of the gods? Was he to be scorned by not just his tribe, but by all life as well? To have snagged the geldiffa as he had, surely it had been a chance at redemption. Now, was it so easily taken away?

  Is what you allowed so easy to walk back from? The elder winced, his stomach churning with fury. Was your mistake that minor?

  At his feet, his line was disappearing once more. Second after second more coils disappeared over the side, leaping into the air two, three at a time. Without thinking, Bollatu’s paws reached out.

  “No,” growled the Kuzzi, his anger smashing reason. “Not this day. Not to me.”

  His left paw grabbed at the disappearing line, carefully catching a straightened segment, not one of the snapping loops which could slice his paw in half with a motion. The elder gave the line careful jerks, testing the great fish, gauging how far down it intended to sink. The line stopped.

  “Not far,” muttered Bollatu. As the line limped, he asked himself, “Coming back so soon? Why?”

  The warrior reeled his line back in as quickly as he could. Four hundred yards he returned to the floor, refusing the notion of cutting it, of backing away from the challenge he had made.

  Retreat, the back of his mind questioned with a sneer. To where? Why?