{"id":556,"date":"2021-02-12T17:01:37","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T17:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=556"},"modified":"2022-06-09T10:46:36","modified_gmt":"2022-06-09T10:46:36","slug":"556","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=556","title":{"rendered":"The Realms of Water by Robert Reed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Realms of Water<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Reed (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, January-February 2021) is one of his \u201cGreat Ship\u201d series and gets off to a picturesque start with a group of travellers crossing a desert in a slow and uncomfortable six-legged machine (the native Grand Many make travellers endure this to dissuade them from making the journey to their city). The story opens with one of the passengers, the male of a Janusian couple (who grows out of the back of his female partner) addressing the other seven humans in the cabin about the illusion of friendship produced while travelling in such straitened circumstances. After going on at some length, he eventually concludes with this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little laugh. Then, \u201cNow imagine that we remain trapped inside this minuscule space for even longer. Oh, let\u2019s say for the next three hundred cycles. I guarantee, it won\u2019t matter how noble and decent each one of you believes yourself to be. You will come to hate everyone else. Indeed, after three hundred cycles inside this miserable cabin, you\u2019ll find yourself wanting the strange old lady in back to please, please step outside and die. And why? Because you\u2019ve grown so tired\u2014all of us are so very tired\u2014of that goddamn endless smile of hers.\u201d
The janusian fell silent, and everyone else laughed.
Loudest of all was the old woman sitting in back.  p. 165<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The woman at the back is eventually revealed to be Quee Lee, a very old and wealthy woman from the Great Ship who, when their machine is damaged after stumbling into a pothole, suggests they divert to a nearby house where one of the Grand Many lives in isolation.
When they arrive Lee pleads for help at the door of the home, but they are ignored until, eventually, two robots appear and begin repairing their machine. Then Lee wanders off into the desert night and stumbles upon one of the Grand Many (presumably the owner of the house). Lee and the huge creature start talking, and she provides, at its request, and after \u201cripping away thousands of years of existence,\u201d a brief autobiography. Then she learns that the creature she is talking to is a male, and his name is The Great Surus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI took the name from human history.\u201d Then he said it again, in a very specific way. \u201cSurus.\u201d
She repeated the word.
\u201cDo you know the name?\u201d
Quee Lee asked her bioceramic mind for advice, a thousand potential answers dislodged from a long life full of curiosity. Because of cues in the diction, one possibility felt a little more appropriate than the rest.
She began to answer, offering a first word.
And Surus repeated the word. \u201c\u2018Elephant,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cYes. To be specific, Surus was Hannibal Barca\u2019s favorite war elephant.\u201d
\u201cAnd why take that name?\u201d she asked.
\u201cI was studying your species,\u201d he said. \u201cLong before I arrived on the Great Ship, I came across the elephant\u2019s story. And somehow his life and his miseries found a home inside me.\u201d
\u201cOh,\u201d was the best reaction that she could manage.
Silence came, and then a distant voice crossed the ridge. A human male was calling to someone else. But whoever was shouting fell silent again. Just the two of them were sitting on that slope together, and looking at the golden dome, Quee Lee finally asked, \u201cDid you also walk across the Alps?\u201d
The giant\u2019s hand moved, swift and gentle, one finger touching the human shoulder and then gone again. Leaving behind the heat of a giant electrically charged body, and stealing some of her perspiration, too.
\u201cThe Alps would be nothing,\u201d said that quiet, sorrowful voice. \u201cYou cannot begin to guess the life that I have marched.\u201d  p. 171<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Most of the remainder of the story tells of The Great Surus\u2019s life history, something that, in some respects, parallels the story of Hannibal and his elephants (this and the Roman Carthagian wars are mentioned in the introduction to the story). This account begins with the birth of the city of Samoon, and how their army one day marches to the Lithium Wash to dig up thirty-nine Grand Many orphans. The Great Surus is one of them, and we see how he and the others are raised by an old woman of their kind, and later trained for the defence of the city. We also learn of the Grand Many\u2019s electrical physiology, and how they communicate by microwaves (one day, when Surus climbs a mountain, he can hear many others of his own kind in the distance).
Then the commander of the army dies and his son takes over, starting a war with the Mistrials. The next few chapters detail the long conflict (spoiler): how the Samoon army cross the mountains by using carriages and massive batteries to extend the range of the Grand Many; the use of the Many as fireships in a huge land battle; the siege of The City of Promises and the near mutiny among the Many, only prevented when they smell the \u201csweet electric\u201d over the wall. Eventually, after a huge battle on a peninsula, the Samoons build a fleet of rafts to return home, but are ambushed at sea. Surus walks off the raft to avoid capture and descends into the depths.
The story then skips forward eight hundred thousand years, to a point in time where the seas of the planet have boiled into the atmosphere. Surus\u2019s body is found by scientists and recharged, and he comes back to consciousness. Eventually he decides he doesn\u2019t like talking to the scientists and he leaves, travelling to the mountain that separates the lands of the Many and the water people.
At this point in the tale Lee\u2019s machine is fixed, so The Great Surus brings his story to an end. She travels on to the City of Copper Salts, where the natives\u2019 initial irritation at the modifications to their machine is quelled by the revelation that they were completed on the orders of The Great Surus.
I\u2019m not sure this story forms a particularly coherent whole but the individual parts are fascinating and, if you are looking for a story that is part Roman history, part weird alien ecosystem, and part time-spanning epic\u2014a story that is vast\u2014then this will fit the bill. I almost rated it as very good, and probably would have if it hadn\u2019t been for one or two parts that are not as clear as they could be (e.g. the initial meeting between Lee and Surus is a little confusing when it comes to what he looks like). Nevertheless, possibly one for the \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 anthologies.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 19,850 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Realms of Water by Robert Reed (Asimov\u2019s SF, January-February 2021) is one of his \u201cGreat Ship\u201d series and gets off to a picturesque start with a group of travellers crossing a desert in a slow and uncomfortable six-legged machine (the native Grand Many make travellers endure this to dissuade them from making the journey […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[156],"tags":[50,46,4,29,157],"class_list":["post-556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robert-reed","tag-50","tag-3-3","tag-asimovs-sf","tag-novella","tag-robert-reed"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4435,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions\/4435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}