The Mermaids Singing, Each To Each

This story originally appeared in Clarkesworld in 2009. It is reprinted in my short story collection, Near + Far.

The Mermaids Singing, Each to Each

Niko leaned behind me in the cabin, raising his voice to be heard over the roar of engine and water, "When you Choose, which is it going to be? Boy or girl?"

I would have answered, if I thought it really mattered to him. But we were off shore by then, headed for the Lump, and he was just making conversation, knowing how long it would take us to get there. He didn't care whether I'd be male or female, I'd still be his pal Lolo. I could feel the boat listening, but she knew I didn't want her talking, that I'd turn her off if she went too far.

So I kept steering the Mary Magdalena and said I didn't know, and it didn't matter, unless we did manage to cash in on the Lump before the corp-strippers got there. After that we were silent again, and everything was just the engine rumble moving up through my feet. Jorge Felipe turned over in the hammock we'd managed to fit into the cabin, hammering the nails into the paneling to hang the hooks. He let out something that was either snore or fart or maybe both.

Jorge Felipe was the one who had found out about the Lump.  It was four or five kilometers across, the guy who'd spotted it said. Four or five kilometers of prime debris floating in the ocean, bits of old plastic and wood and Dios knew what else, collected by the currents, amassed in a single spot. All salvageable, worth five new cents a pound. Within a week, the corp-stripper boats would be out there, disassembling it and shoveling all that money into company machines, company mouths.

But we were going to get there first, carve off a chunk, enough to pay us all off.  I wanted to be able to Choose, and I couldn't do that until I could pay the medical bill. Niko said he wasn't saving for anything, but really he was — there'd be enough money that he could relax for a month and not worry about feeding his mother, his extended family.

Jorge Felipe just wanted out of Santo Nuevo. Any way he could escape our village was fine with him, and the first step in that was affording a ticket. He wanted to be out before storm season hit, when we'd all be living on whatever we could manage until a new crop of tourists bloomed in the spring.

Winter was lean times. Jorge Felipe, for all his placid snoring right now, feeling desperation's bite. That's why he was willing to cut me in, in exchange for use of the Mary Magdalena. Most of the time he didn't have much to say to me. I gave him the creeps, I knew. He'd told Niko in order to have him tell me. But he didn't have any other friends with boats capable of going out to carve off a chunk of the Lump and bring it in for salvage. And on my side of things, I thought he was petty and mean and dangerous. But he knew the Lump's coordinates.

I tilted my head, listened to the engines, checking the rhythms to make sure everything was smooth. The familiar stutter of the water pump from behind me was nothing to worry about, or the way the ballaster coughed when it first switched on. I knew all the Mary Magdalena's sounds. She's old, but she works, and between the hydroengines and the solar panels, she manages to get along.

Sometimes I used to imagine crashing her on a reef and swimming away, leaving her to be covered with birdshit and seaweed, her voice lasting, pleading, as long as the batteries held out. Sometimes I used to imagine taking one of the little cutting lasers, chopping away everything but her defenseless brainbox, deep in the planking below the cabin, then severing its inputs one by one, leaving her alone. Sometimes I imagined worse things.

I inherited her from my uncle Fortunato. My uncle loved his boat like a woman, and she'd do things for him, stretch out the last bit of fuel, turn just a bit sharper, that she wouldn't do for me or anyone else. Like an abandoned woman, pining for a lover who'd moved on. I could have the AI stripped down and retooled, re-imprint her, but I'd lose all her knowledge. Her ability to recognize me.