Free Fish Tails by Sheri S. Tepper Page B

­people did not and never had lived in or near Tuckwhip, but those ­people had made sure each time that the right man would visit Lillis in her house and stay with her for long enough, however long that needed to be. Those ­people were not, Lillis reasoned, the same as those who lived in the House of the Oracles . Both, she assumed, might have contributed to her life and future, but the two groups were quite separate, though they might be aware of one another. She thought. Perhaps.
    Whenever she told Needly things she thought Needly might at some time need to know, Grandma was careful to identify guesses and possibilities as just that. She never said definitely that she knew who was responsible for what. Needly, in fact, made no more sense of it than Grandma had.
    More pertinently, she knew Grandma had purposefully learned herb lore and midwifery and healing because these would be useful skills in places like Hench Valley. Needly also realized that whoever had made the plans, whoever had sponsored the roll of the genetic dice, that individual had come up good for the three sons and three daughters who had departed as children.
    â€œBut they didn’t stay with you, Grandma!” Needly had cried. “It makes me unhappy! I want someone to explain things. I really do!”
    The woman had given her a long, measuring look, put the kettle on, made a pot of tea, and placed two cups on the table. She couldn’t explain. She could tell the child only what she herself had wondered over.
    â€œNeedly, one of the men who lived in our family house for a time told me our world is very sick. He said lots of ­people know this, though there are even more ­people who deny it. I’m told that several groups of thoughtful ­people have looked into the future—­using every tool they had, thinking machines, gatherings of the wise, reading of history—­trying to come up with a way of straightening things out. They all agreed, finally, that mankind simply has not evolved far enough from the ape. Mankind still has parts of his brain that are monkey-­brain . It isn’t their fault, they don’t choose to think like monkeys, it’s the only way they can think. They need immediate gratification. They aren’t able to look ahead, to consider the consequences of their own actions. It’s like an inherited disease—­no, more a condition. Monkey-­brain condition.”
    She saw puzzlement in the child’s face. “We don’t have monkeys in this part of the world, Needly, but I’ve told you about them. Let’s pretend, like we did when you were little. Let’s pretend you’re a monkey. Let’s say you and your monkey husband somehow get blown by a storm onto a little island where there’s nothing to eat except delicious fruit from one tree that bears fruit all the year around. Even the seeds of the fruit are delicious. Are you going to eat the fruit?”
    Needly nodded. “ ’F I was hungry, I would. We all would.”
    â€œYes. A monkey wouldn’t look at the fact there’s just that one tree. A monkey wouldn’t think, ‘Hey, wait, maybe we’d better plant some of these seeds.’ A monkey would just eat the fruit as it gets ripe, year-around: him and his mate and their child. They chew and swallow the seeds and shit on the ground around the tree. And the next year there’d be another child. And the year after that another child. The children would mate and have other children. And the family would get bigger and bigger. And the fruit wouldn’t quite fill them up, so they’d fight over it and some of them might be killed or hurt. And eventually there’s so much poop around the tree that it burns the roots and the tree dies. That was the only tree, so the monkeys die as well. Monkeys don’t know how to stop having babies. Monkeys don’t know how to plant trees. Monkeys just know how to be monkeys: