All the Birds in the Sky - Charlie Jane Anders Page 0,89
and killed a bunch of girls I turned into a cloud. There was a lobbyist who helped to block environmental regulations—they called him the Picasso of the Paperwork Reduction Act—and I conned him into becoming a sea turtle. Sea turtles live a long time, longer than most humans, so it wasn’t murder. These bureaucrats were trying to kick my friend Reginald out of Section Eight housing, and I gave one of them a rash. And so on.” She couldn’t look straight at Laurence.
“Wow.” Laurence shouldn’t have been surprised, after what happened to Mr. Rose—but Patricia had said that was one of the senior witches’ handiwork. For a moment, he felt like this steep hillside was tipping over, and then he got his center of gravity together again. “Wow,” Laurence said again. “I gotta admit, that’s not what I pictured you doing. I kind of imagined you more, I don’t know … going around and blessing babies or something.”
“You’re thinking of fairies. If I blessed a baby, it would have exactly the same effect as if you blessed a baby.”
“I doubt that,” Laurence snorted. “Babies tend to projectile vomit at the sight of me. Anyway, it sounds like you put the smackdown on people who deserve it. I don’t know. If I could turn people into turtles, there would be turtles everywhere.”
Neither of them talked for a while. The mother had coaxed her kid back into the stroller and was speeding down toward the Marina. The parrots had stopped munching and were just flying back and forth between the cherry tree and a couple other big trees flanking a massive Edwardian town house, screaming in midair. Once or twice, they flew right over Laurence’s head, green plumage extended like a salute.
“I guess I’m curious,” Laurence said. “Do you have an ethical framework? I mean beyond that one rule they kept mentioning. How do you know what to do?” He spoke carefully, because this was obviously kind of an intense conversation for Patricia—she was averting her gaze now.
“Umm,” Patricia said, raising her shoulders so her breasts lifted up inside her white T-shirt. “I mean, sometimes I’m following instructions, from Kawashima or Ernesto, and I trust them. But also … I can’t just turn everyone into turtles, I have to go with the situation. And … see those parrots?” She gestured at the candy-apple birds, which were back at their tasty cherry tree after making a few tours of the parklet.
“Yeah, of course.” Laurence watched the red spots on their heads bopping around. They seemed to be taunting anybody who might want to cage them.
“I can understand what they’re saying. Mostly, they’re pissed at their friend in the middle, who keeps almost getting eaten by hawks because he’s too dumb to stay high up. And those crows over there, too. I can understand what they’re all saying, right now.”
“Wow.” Laurence hadn’t even noticed the crows on the power line nearby, watching them intently. “So you can understand them all? All the time?”
“It takes a certain amount of concentration. But yes.”
“Can all the magic people do that, like Kawashima and Taylor?”
“Maybe, if they really need to. If they make a big effort. Not most of the time. Different people have different weird quirks.”
“And doesn’t it drive you nuts, to hear animals talking all the time?”
“Not really. I guess I’m just used to it. Most of the time, I tune it out, the same way you tune out all the people talking around you. But at the same time, I always have in the back of my mind the idea of, what would the crows think? Crows are really smart.”
The crows seemed to be having some kind of intense political debate, cawing and filibustering. One of them shook its wings, almost like a wet dog.
Laurence knew he was about to screw everything up—he should just keep his mouth shut—but then Patricia would know he was keeping an opinion to himself, and that could be worse. “Please don’t take this the wrong way,” he said. “But I don’t think that’s a basis for an ethical framework. ‘What would the crows think?’ The crows can’t fully grasp the ramifications of the kind of choices you’re talking about. A crow couldn’t understand how a nuclear reactor works, or what the Paperwork Reduction Act is.”
“Do you know what the Paperwork Reduction Act is?”
Laurence was burning up inside his too-tight collar. “Um. I mean, it’s a law, right? And I’m guessing it reduces paperwork.”