been discovered to be not just living, but thinking creatures, capable of independent decision and subsequent action. Two schools of thought had developed, debated even by the ignorant villagers amongst whom I dwelt: to wit, that the oceans had always been alive, from the dawn of time, but either they had never had the opportunity to display this aspect of their nature or oblivious Man had just simply never noticed when they did; or that the oceans had just recently undergone the transformation from large, unconscious, and inanimate bodies of water into vast creatures who appeared just as before, but now had the ability to think and move. Not even the controversied theories of Mr. Charles Darwin could account for an event such as the latter supposition, though a number of atheistic scholars, spurning the biblical account of Man’s creation, maintained that the soup of organic compounds coursing through our veins and sloshing about inside our skulls was but the simmering counterpart of the salts and other chemicals filling the sea-beds to their brims. If some portions of that great primordial ocean had had the notion to separate themselves from the larger aquatic body, evolving from gelatinous, tendrilled jelly-fish to the sort with eyes and fins, and then on through that grand procession of lizards and scurrying rat-like things, then monkeys and apes and other foreigners, culminating at last in those sturdy English yeomen who were just as we are today, except for their habits of wearing furs without undergarments and eating their meat raw— then why not other divergent possibilities? Perhaps the development of Life and Reason had occurred before all that jelly-fish folderol, and the bits of coalesced ocean that had stumbled dripping up onto the land, en route to becoming Mankind, had been cast-offs from the great thinking and living stew that had spawned them?
Such were the matters being debated even now, in shabby pubs and learned parlours alike. I supposed that if I had desired the most scholarly opinion on the subject, I might have applied to those few distinguished persons who might still have remembered me, in connection with my father’s creations. But for me to initiate such a request, it would have been necessary for me to—frankly—even care about the issue, at least in regard to how and when the oceans had acquired these hitherto unremarked characteristics. In this regard, I fancy I had much in common with other Englishmen: all very fine to while away an evening over one’s pints, going in one door of the controversy and then, as the Arab poet puts it, leaving by the same. It was the practical aspects, however, that demanded the attention of both sailors and the landbound.
“Continue with your exposition.” I suspected that Stonebrake was of the same mind. “To this point, you have only told me that which I already knew.”
“Then I can assume,” said Stonebrake, “that you know much else besides. You are no doubt aware that here in Britain, we find ourselves surrounded not by a single sentient, active ocean, as might be the case if we were some small speck out in the tropical Pacific. We are instead swarmed about by waters composed of many sentient, liquid organisms. The currents off the Outer Hebrides islands are apparently one organism, as reported by both mariners and coastal observers. The Irish Sea is another organism, and so forth.”
“So I have heard.”
“You heard correctly.” He pointed to the dark, rolling waters before us. “What we see here is as separate a creature from its brethren off East Anglia and Humberside as you and I are separate examples of the human species. That these living seas appear to merge at their edges does not alter that fact. As with all living organisms, they might be coöperative with each other or antagonistic.” He smiled as he gestured between the two of us. “Just as it is with us.”
“The bulk of Humanity has displayed more hostility than kindness
Such were the matters being debated even now, in shabby pubs and learned parlours alike. I supposed that if I had desired the most scholarly opinion on the subject, I might have applied to those few distinguished persons who might still have remembered me, in connection with my father’s creations. But for me to initiate such a request, it would have been necessary for me to—frankly—even care about the issue, at least in regard to how and when the oceans had acquired these hitherto unremarked characteristics. In this regard, I fancy I had much in common with other Englishmen: all very fine to while away an evening over one’s pints, going in one door of the controversy and then, as the Arab poet puts it, leaving by the same. It was the practical aspects, however, that demanded the attention of both sailors and the landbound.
“Continue with your exposition.” I suspected that Stonebrake was of the same mind. “To this point, you have only told me that which I already knew.”
“Then I can assume,” said Stonebrake, “that you know much else besides. You are no doubt aware that here in Britain, we find ourselves surrounded not by a single sentient, active ocean, as might be the case if we were some small speck out in the tropical Pacific. We are instead swarmed about by waters composed of many sentient, liquid organisms. The currents off the Outer Hebrides islands are apparently one organism, as reported by both mariners and coastal observers. The Irish Sea is another organism, and so forth.”
“So I have heard.”
“You heard correctly.” He pointed to the dark, rolling waters before us. “What we see here is as separate a creature from its brethren off East Anglia and Humberside as you and I are separate examples of the human species. That these living seas appear to merge at their edges does not alter that fact. As with all living organisms, they might be coöperative with each other or antagonistic.” He smiled as he gestured between the two of us. “Just as it is with us.”
“The bulk of Humanity has displayed more hostility than kindness
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