The Little Homo Sapiens Scientist Read online

  THE LITTLE HOMO SAPIENS SCIENTIST

  by S.L. Huang

  Book Smugglers Publishing

  Contents

  The Little Homo Sapiens Scientist

  Inspirations and Influences

  About the Author

  About the Artist

  Book Smugglers Publishing

  Copyright Information

  My fellow travelers

  You who are spit on

  Denied

  Erased

  This book is for you.

  I see you.

  I stand with you.

  Let our voices drown the sky

  In blackened thunder.

  THE LITTLE HOMO SAPIENS SCIENTIST

  Dr. Alan Zanga is to blame for this.

  He’s forcing me to do it. “They want to see the human side of things, Caddie,” he said to me. “Think of the grant money! People want to know what it’s like to swim with the mermaids.”

  First of all, for anyone listening to this recording, I’m a scientist, not an entertainer. And second, they’re not mermaids.

  Of course, I said that right to Dr. Zanga’s face, for what felt like the zillionth time. But he just laughed me off. “Oh, yes they are. To the public, at any rate.” And then he told me popular science was here to stay and I may as well get used to it. We argued back and forth for half an hour, and he won because he’s technically my boss. Then he gave me a subvocal recorder to wire into my gear and insisted I use it. “Just record your impressions in the moment. You won’t have to put any extra time into it. Maybe we’ll hire a ghostwriter and get a book out of it—Swimming with the Sirens.”

  What an ass. See, Dr. Z? I just called you an ass. Will that make the book?

  And by the way, they aren’t sirens either. Ugh.

  So here I am, sitting in a Neptune-class deep-sea submarine with several hundred kilos of gear packed in around me, waiting for the depth meter to tick down and for the pressure to equalize, and talking to myself. Dr. Z probably means to drive me mad.

  I suppose if this is going to be recorded somewhere for posterity, I should set the record straight. The ghostwriter will probably cut it all, but hey, it’s the principle of the thing.

  My name is Dr. Cadence Mbella, and I specialize in piscianthropology—the study of atargati culture and society. The popular fascination with the atargati demeans them, in my opinion. They’re an equally intelligent life-form to homo sapiens, and when I say we study them, I mean it in the same way I might talk about the study of a human culture. We respect them, we try to communicate as clearly as we can, and we moderate our activities according to their express permission.

  Though when I say we study atargati culture, what I really mean is that we try to communicate with one sect of atargati in this one place, and add a speck or two to the microscopic amount of knowledge we have about them. The magazines all like to call us experts—ha!—but there’s still so much we don’t know.

  We don’t even have a firm grasp on their level of science and technology. Human arrogance always seems to assume we’re ahead, but I think it’s more likely that their technology has developed along different axes, given their different environment. The fact that they have no nudity taboo and don’t use clothing causes people to underestimate them—but I’ve seen glimpses of how they live that I wouldn’t know how to explain with our science.

  Maybe one day they’ll trust a human being enough to share everything. Wouldn’t that be amazing? God, I’d die to be that person.

  We’ve cycled through the airlock out of the sub now, out into the pressure and the pitch black. And—wow. Okay, that… that is… just listen.

  You know, I don’t actually know how this thing records—I should look it up. But if it picks up outside audio, you hear what I’m hearing, and that’s the atargati singing.

  It’s beautiful. It’s just… indescribably beautiful.

  Gah, maybe I’ll cut that bit before giving these tapes to Dr. Z. I feel almost guilty about it, how stunning atargati song is, because they’re not doing it as a performance. This is how they communicate. But their language is so pitched that we’ve called it “singing” from the start, before we understood what it was, even though we should more properly call it “speech.”

  I get hot under the collar at the way humans have such an exotic fascination with the atargati, and yet every time I come out of the pressure lock and hear this… I almost cry with how beautiful it is. What does that make me?

  Note to self: Cut this bit later, Caddie.

  But seriously, whoever’s ghostwriting this book—more people should study atargati languages. I’m not messing. I know what people say about me—that the reason I’m one of only a few humans who’s been able to learn is that I also just happen to be the only PhD in atargati studies with a mother whose arias were feted at the Central African Opera, Sydney, and the Met. I’m the closest we have to a human researcher who’s fluent in an atargati tongue, and I know that’s the first and often the only thing they all say about me. God, you probably saw that article in TIME last year, “The Woman Who Talks to Mermaids.” Mermaids. I ask you!

  But I think more people could learn. At least to understand it. Listen to how beautiful that is…

  I count three overlapping conversations right now. One is about us—they’re not ready for us to approach, so I’m hanging back, waiting for—ah! There. That’s the invitation.

  It’s something like, “We know you’re out there” and something like the feel of a door opening and—oh, I’m ridiculous at translating because it feels wrong not to capture all the nuance of pitch and tone. But we’re swimming in now, me and Dr. Hansen—this deep it’s too dark to see Hansen. My visual is pitch black, but I’ve got a transmitter to communicate with hir if I need to, and we’re both in contact with the sub.

  I say we’re “swimming” but that’s a misnomer; the equipment is more like a human-shaped submarine. You’ve probably seen pictures. It’s clunky and cumbersome and I always feel like a right fool next to the atargati, who are about as graceful underwater as it’s possible to be.

  That’s not stereotyping, is it? I think that counts as biology. Uh. Shit.

  You know, maybe I won’t strike these bits. Maybe it’s helpful to, uh—hear those questions, about how we think, that sometimes even I’m not sure about.

  Where was I?

  Okay, yeah, we’re closing in on the outpost. I can see the light up ahead: a soft glow diffused by the many layers of water still between us. The light is for our benefit. Remember what I said about atargati technology? They don’t even see on the visible spectrum, yet very early on they realized we did, so they brought bioluminescent lamps. For us. And whether those lamps were a great feat for them to invent or the most mundane of considerations for their guests… well, we don’t know.

  And that’s Òiôaaa, coming out to greet us. She’s some sort of matriarch here. Though maybe only with regard to their delegation to the humans—their greater social structure is still a mystery.

  By the way, I said “she”—that’s wrong, too. Allow me to shatter all your illusions about the so-called “mermaids!” We started using female pronouns for them because their shape imprints as feminine for us, but it’s wrong. Their upper body curves aren’t mammary, and they all identify as one gender—probably a hermaphroditic one. Put that in your fantasies, folks.

  We did try to describe binary genders to them once. Of course Dr. Hansen jumped in and tried to expand the conversation to sex versus gender, and to explain intersex and genderqueer people, and I tried to stop hir because I thoug
ht that would be too confusing, but it turned out that part made more sense to them than what we tried to tell them about men and women. They said they understand the biology of sexually-dimorphic species—like I’m always telling people, they must have their own scientists—but I think they were befuddled by a sentient race feeling the need to categorize along those lines. Confused why we’d see it as so defining.

  Hansen was pretty smug after that conversation.

  Hey, I wonder what the public would say if they knew two queer scientists were the ones trying to explain human sexuality to the much-romanticized atargati. There’s something else they’ll probably leave out of the book.

  Of course, being scientists, after that we became even more intrigued about how the atargati reproduce biologically. Say it with me, now: We don’t know. And we haven’t been able to get them to tell us. But I digress.

  Oh, look—Òiôaaa is almost to us now. She’s silhouetted against the lit outpost. I admit I do see why we wanted so badly to call them female, as her shape does recall that of a human woman—one drawn with some artistic license. The atargati are larger than we are, lean and strong, with dark, mottled gray-green skin from top to tail. They have long faces that are almost featureless, like a human head with a sock over it—if that sock were woven of seaweed—and round seersuckers for mouths. And what we see as hair clouding around them in silhouette is a profusion of fins and tails trailing from a crest that goes from the tops of their skulls to halfway down their backs.

  But their lower bodies are where all the human art gets it right: powerful fins that whip through the water with incredible strength.

  Hear that now? That’s Òiôaaa singing at us. Greeting us.

  I’m going to sing back, and we’ll begin our meeting with them. I don’t know if this recorder will pick up the conversations, but I’m sure they’ll be in the official log reports.

  How can so much change in a day?

  How can my world turn inside out and upside down until nothing makes sense anymore? How can everyone I know and respect be—be evil, be ruthless, be this?

  Thank goodness the subvocal recorder is still here, with my equipment. I need to tell people what happened. To get the truth down somewhere. God knows what they’re saying about us on the surface. God knows what they’ll say we did.

  I’m in the sub right now. I don’t know what will happen when I come back up.

  Where do I begin? I thought we were doing well, in our relations with the atargati. I thought we were sharing the world with them.

  Dr. Zanga accosted me yesterday as soon as I came back up. All excited. “Caddie,” he said, “come to my office right now, I have something to tell you, it’s amazing…”

  I got there and there was this American military guy there. I didn’t know what to think.

  The military guy had all this nondisclosure paperwork for me to sign to give me a security clearance. I kept asking what it was about, and he wouldn’t answer me until I signed, but Dr. Z was practically bouncing on his toes. So I sign everything—bemused—and then Dr. Z bursted out, “We caught one, Caddie. We caught one.”

  “One what?” I said. Maybe I should have caught on faster, but I didn’t—I never would have thought—

  “A mermaid!” he said.

  The first thing I thought was, For God’s sake, they aren’t mermaids! And then my brain caught up to me and I understood what he’d said, and then it stalled out completely because—I just—I couldn’t. You don’t—you don’t catch—

  I think I blurted something out like, “What are you talking about?” and he started going on about how one of the atargati got stranded alone during a storm and some trawling fishermen brought her up injured and how lucky we were to be able to swoop in before any of the other atargati realized and—and—

  I started yelling at him then. About how the atargati aren’t subhuman, they are just like us, that we can’t kidnap one, and had that been our mission all along?

  And then the American military guy said something about how part of the reason the Institute had been founded in the first place was to determine what threat, if any, the atargati posed, and how we could arm ourselves against that threat if necessary.

  “The public won’t stand for this,” I said. “I won’t stand for it.”

  The military guy waved the nondisclosures at me and as much as told me that revealing anything I’d learned here would be considered some sort of international treason. “The atargati are an unknown foreign body,” he said. “This is a global security issue—humanity’s security.”

  Dr. Z started wheedling me then, like I was a recalcitrant child. “We need you, Caddie” and “you’re so lucky I managed to get you clearance for this” and “nobody else can speak their language the way you do.”

  So that was why they’d looped me in.

  I was so close then, so close to tearing into them to their faces, quitting, walking out and calling the first news station I could find. But I stopped myself, thank God. I swallowed it back. Because it hit me in time that if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to learn more. I wouldn’t be able to learn what I needed to so I could stop this.

  I took a breath and pasted on a smile—the same smile I stick on my face in news interviews when they can’t stop asking me about “mermaids”—and apologized for overreacting. I told them it was just such a shock, but of course I could see their point. I think I trowelled it on a bit too thick; the military guy seemed suspicious, but Dr. Z thought I was right with him.

  They took me down to see her.

  They had her in a tank. A tank—good God. Like she was in an aquarium, but worse, because all they wanted to do was study her, pry her apart, and extract all her secrets. She was whipping her tail in a frenzy, flying around the tank from wall to wall with her fins beating the water, back and forth and back and forth.

  Pacing her cell.

  They brought me over to a microphone. “Talk to her,” said Dr. Z. “Gain her trust. Tell her we won’t hurt her.”

  Gain her trust? It was so ludicrous. We didn’t even know if she spoke the atargati language I had learned.

  “We need as much information as possible about the mermaid nations,” the military guy said. “Tell her if she answers our questions, she’ll be treated well. If not…”

  I hope that man dies a painful death. Alone.

  So. I started singing to her. I didn’t know what to say.

 

  She stopped stock-still in the middle of the pressurized tank. Swam over to the glass, slowly. Put her hands up against it, the webbing fanning out from her arms in the water. She jarred me for a moment, because…

  I don’t know what the atargati aesthetic is. I think I’ve said—they don’t see on the visual spectrum. But to human eyes, she was so—well, she was stunning.

  It sounds so stupid to say that. Especially because I know, psychologically, that part of the reason we find some atargati more aesthetically pleasing than others is that we’re shoehorning them into the template of a human woman, but I—I couldn’t help thinking it. She was tall and slender and muscular, and her crest floated up behind her in a magnificent halo.

  She sang at me.

 

  I tried to convey I was a friend.

 

  I took a risk. The atargati—at least the ones I’ve been learning from, Òiôaaa and her delegation, Yÿe and Eà and Ûoëwaë, and the rest I’ve met—they have a very strong tribal mindset. An insider/outsider slant to their culture. It’s one reason, I think, why we still don’t know more than the barest smatterings about them, because humans are Outsiders.

  So I said,

 

  but I added the overtone that put me on the Inside with her, made us one tribe, with “they” as the
Outsiders. I’ve heard that overtone more than once among the atargati—it conveys anything from ridicule to disinterest about those not Inside and means they are either going to ignore the Outsiders or contradict them entirely.

  The atargati are low-context communicators, but she went still, her crest fanning out in the water. I couldn’t tell whether I’d gotten the overtone right, and if I had, whether she believed me.

  “Ask her about their ability to survive above the surface,” said the military guy.

  “No,” I said back. “You need me to bond with her first. If I start popping off questions like that, it’ll never work.” I made up something about atargati codes of etiquette and culture that didn’t have more than a little bit of truth but sounded good, and hey, who was going to call me on it? Dr. Z already deferred to me in all atargati knowledge. He was standing there grinning, just grinning, and I suddenly saw him for what he was, a paper cutout obsessed with the romanticism of the atargati. Not a real scientist at all.

  The military guy grumbled at me, but I guess they thought they would have all the time in the world, because he told me to go ahead.

  So I sat in that room at that microphone and talked. I didn’t ask her anything else. I told her about me. I told her about everything I’d learned talking to her people. How much I wanted our two peoples to be able to know about each other. But then it almost felt like that was getting too close to the Stockholming the military guy wanted from me, so I started telling her about my life: My sisters, growing up, and how they’d scoffed at me when I’d gone into science, told me I was odd, different… I told her about coming out to my father and grandmother, the years of fights and doubts… losing my fiancée because I put my career first, but how I can’t regret it…

  I don’t know why I’m repeating all this here. I don’t know why I told her all this. I didn’t want to give the military guy time to do anything else so I just kept babbling, and Aíoëe stayed still and bobbed against the glass and listened…