You are listening to a ClarksWorld Magazine podcast. I'm your host and narrator, Kate Baker. Welcome to the first story for the March 2026 issue. We're so glad you're here. Thank you for taking the time to spend with us to listen to yet another podcast brought to you by your support. If you've gone to patreon.com forward slash ClarksWorld, if you've bought a subscription, if you've checked a few bucks our way via a donation, or checked out the other many ways that you can support this podcast and this magazine each and every month. Thank you. We cannot do this without you. And as I say very lovingly, every single month, you let me do something that I truly love doing. Our first story for this month is titled Bend Like the Palm and is by David D. Levine. David D. Levine is the Hugo and Nebula winning author of Space Caper novel, The Kuiper Belt Job. His previous works include the Regency interplanetary airship adventure novel Arabella of Mars, sequels Arabella and the Battle of Venus, and Arabella the Traitor of Mars, and more than 60 science fiction and fantasy stories. Arabella of Mars won the 2017 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy. His story, Tick, Tick, Tick, won the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Short Story. His story, Nucleon, won the James White Award, and he has been shortlisted for awards including the Hugo Nebula, Campbell, Sturgeon, and Locus. His stories have appeared in Asimov's Analog, Clarksworld, FNSF, Realms of Fantasy, Tor.com, numerous anthologies and websites, and multiple years best anthologies. So, my dear listener, I hope that you can sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story. Rivers do not drink their own water. Trees do not eat their own fruit. The sun does not shine on itself. And flowers do not spread their fragrance for themselves. Living for others is a rule of nature. We are all born to help each other, no matter how difficult it is. Life is good when you are happy, but much better when others are happy because of you. Source unknown, often misattributed to Pope Francis I looked to the east. Skies were clear with just a few high cirrus clouds. The trade wind relieved the heat nicely and the seas were crystalline blue. But there was a storm coming. I laid my notebook open on the railing, flipped to the page for weather, scribbled a request with my stylus. Maps and charts updated themselves with the latest satellite data. Millibars, kilometers per hour, newton meters. It was going to be a bad one. I circled the windward shore on the map and wrote another request. I didn't like what I got back. I took my notebook to my friend, Baroni, who was helping her neighbor, Joaquin, fix a broken plank in the walkway between their houses. Yoque, Veroni, I said Grabbing the end of a board So the cut-off piece wouldn't fall into the water Como, Diona Fetch us another board This one's too short I went and got another board And some more screws from the stock Than help them finish the task The storm's going to be worse than we thought I told her afterward As we swept up the sawdust for the compost I showed her my notebook She looked at the map, grunted how much are we going to lose i circled an area sketched a gesture for more detail 160 to 180 houses is the projection oh and all that infrastructure walkways gardens solar panels distillation every structure in the islands contributed its bit to what we needed to keep scraping out a living on a diminishing rock pile in the middle of the pacific Even if nobody died, it would make life just that little bit harder for everyone. Shit. And that's assuming all the proactive measures are in place. I shaded my eyes, peered to the east as though I could see over the horizon. I'm not sure we can shift enough material to the east side in time. I thought back to Typhoon Namthian, back when my Robert was still alive. lines of people at bucket-brigaded sheets of plywood and spools of steel cable along kilometers of storm-racked walkways. It had been a close-fought thing, and we'd still lost whole neighborhoods. If we can't manage that, we'll lose even more. Veroni sighed. We'd better convene a council. Nobody liked a council, but some things needed more coordination than fixing a walkway, and this was such a big issue that just about the whole community turned out. Como tata, Veroni said, thanking everyone for coming. She detached a sheet from her notebook and smoothed it into the wall, stretching it out until it was big enough for everyone to see. Here are the latest projections. Ouch, said Corazon. She stepped up to the wall, enlarged her own neighborhood. Looks like Edmundo's place is a goner for sure. And he just refurbished his garden. She made a tooth-sucking noise, then pointed windward of Edmundo's house. More riprap here, maybe. Felicito shook her head. We used the last of November's dredge a week ago. We all knew there wouldn't be time to dredge more rocks from the seafloor before the storm hit, even if we wanted to risk the ship getting caught in the storm. Corazon tapped with her stylus, and the map changed from a weather forecast to a display of land and structures. The land was now a skinny, almost skeletal collection of rocks, just centimeters above sea level in some places, with homes and offices clinging to them like barnacles on stilts. The network of walkways that connected them echoed the shape of the coastline I remembered from when I was a kid. but it was fragile. So many of the walkways that had once connected tiny islets now stretched across open water cantilevered and suspended and vulnerable to high winds and the winds we would be facing soon would be very high indeed We were living on a sugar cube dissolving in coffee and we had been for my whole life But where else could we go The islands were our home. Even if we could save Eduardo's place, I said, and a few of the others, we will still have two or three hundred people homeless. Where are we going to put them? Not my bedroom, said my grandson, Delson, and a few people chuckled at that. Delson was nine and had been very happy to get a room to himself when his older sister, Sherian, got married last year. I smiled, but as I turned my face to the chart on the wall, I felt that smile fade. Delson would almost certainly have to go back to sharing, and so would a lot of other people. The council ended inconclusively, as some folks had other tasks to attend to, so we agreed to meet again in the afternoon. and some of those who remained decided to walk around the threatened area and see what we could learn with our eyes that our notebooks couldn't tell us. You see those little rocks out there? I asked Delson, pointing out to the sea. Before Typhoon Namthian, there was a big fish processing facility there. After the storm, we got pretty hungry for a while, but eventually we found a way to divide the labor of processing the catch. Now there's still no facility, but we all have enough to eat. and everywhere smells of fish he said holding his nose and grimacing we are in the middle of the ocean i reminded him gently it's full of fish delson kicked a rock off the walkway it vanished into the water with a barely audible splash why do we even stay here anyway cheryanne's happy in australia i sighed stared out to the sea for a bit and sat on a bench nearby patting for delson to sit by me. He complied obediently enough and I found myself glad that he wasn't yet into the rebellious teenage years. His sister had turned into a real handful before she decided to leave. Sherian has chosen to start a new family in Australia and her life there is very different. She has to work in a factory now. We have our traditional ways here and we like them. Most folks would rather make small changes to stay where our parents and grandparents and ancestors live than to uproot ourselves and start over elsewhere. Having to share my bedroom with some stranger isn't a small change. I sighed again. Tell me what you know about the reconstitution. Delson rolled his eyes theatrically. On August 1st, 2071, he recited in dutiful sing-song, the Committee of Thirteen ratified the new constitution of the Republic of Ratak and Rallek, establishing the four principles that govern our republic to this day. Interdependence, adaptation, cycling, and succession. Very good, but what does it mean to you? He shrugged. We have a big picnic every year on August 1st. I took him gently by the shoulders, pulled them down to a more respectful posture, and turned him to face me. It should mean a lot more to you. Do you know that Venus Hopia Joseph was my great-grandmother? That makes her your great-great-great-grandmother. I guess. Who's she? I shook my head and tutted. Only the most important member of the Committee of the Thirteen. All the members of the Committee of the Thirteen were of equal importance, he sing-songed. Well, that's the official story, but I have read her correspondence. I padded my notebook. In any case, the important part, the part that you need to know right now, is this. Back then, the world was in very bad shape. Every country was facing storms, droughts, crop failures, fish stocks dying out. It seemed like everything bad was happening everywhere at once. And a lot of countries didn't deal with the situation well. Many of them had violent revolutions. A lot of people got killed. The Republic of Ratak and Rallik were the first to have a reconstitution instead of a revolution. We decided to reorganize our whole country and live our lives differently, to recognize our interdependence on each other instead of fighting over our dwindling resources. And Venus, Hopia, Joseph, your ancestor, was one of the ones who made it happen. So what? It happened like a hundred years ago. It's still happening today. I waved out to see where a few scrappy clouds were visible. Were they the vanguard of the coming storm? I wasn't sure. We are still facing bad things and probably always will. But the islands have survived. And if we don't forget the four principles, we will continue to do so. He was starting to fidget. Look at me. What's the second principle? Adaptation? and what does it mean? that you have to adapt? I decided that was good enough for now and do you think that adapting to sharing your room with someone else would be easy? that got his attention no, it'd be very very hard and totally unfair do you think that figuring out how to feed everyone when the fish processing plant was destroyed was easy? His face showed that he saw where I was going with this, but couldn't figure any way out. I guess not. Do you think it was easier or harder than sharing your room? He looked at his feet. Probably harder. It was a lot harder. But we made it work because it was that or starve. He didn't look away from his feet. I still don't want to I hugged him around the shoulders and at least this once he put up with it I know but sometimes sacrifices have to be made just then the group we'd been walking with came back from inspecting the jetty it's worse than we thought one of them called to me one piling and four is rotten maybe even one in three I rubbed my chin That probably meant we'd lose the whole jetty when the storm hit, and all the boats that used it would have to go somewhere else until it could be rebuilt if the resources could be found to rebuild it and if rebuilding it in the same place still made sense Update it in your notebook, I called back, and let's check the next one. Another council, another meeting. Notebook pages were spread out on every wall and discussion was turning heated. Regilio's store is a pillar of the community, Joaquin was yelling. We can't just let it be washed away. But we need those planks to shore up the Jalowit Point Bridge, Roxanne yelled back. If we lose that, my family will be cut off from the whole southern half of the island. There are boats. Easy for you to say. You own a boat. The tension was getting to me, and besides, I needed a bathroom break. I excused myself then, and after doing my business, walked out onto the veranda. Wild winds were already beginning to froth up the sea and disarrange my hair, and grey clouds were churning on the horizon. We had 36 to 48 hours before Typhoon Cimarron, it had a name now, made landfall and we were still arguing about how to prepare for it. We weren't just arguing. Preparations were already being made but there was still plenty of room for second guessing and changing priorities. If we couldn't get our ducks in a row, we'd lose a lot more than we had to. Interdependence. Adaptation. Cycling. Succession. We had already recognized our interdependence and made so many adaptations to exploit that fact instead of fighting it. Every person and every structure on the islands contributed to the common welfare. Everyone lent a hand when anyone else needed help, no matter the circumstances. Every horizontal surface was covered in solar panels. Nearly every home desalinated more water than it used. Everyone ate from everyone else's garden. Everything that could be reused or repurposed already was being reused or repurposed, and we had plans to deal with anything that couldn't be avoided. But this storm was so massive, a hundred-year event at least, that it was straining our plans to the limit. I watched the palm trees whipping in the growing wind and wondered how much damage one of them could do if it fell. But then I thought back to Typhoon Namthian. Before Robert and I had made it to the shelter, we'd seen many buildings destroyed by the wind, timber splintered and glass shattered. But the palm trees, the palms had bent and bowed and swayed, but most of them had withstood the storm just fine. Of course, some were blown down and there had been heaps and heaps of fronds to deal with after the storm passed, but in general, they had fared far better than human-made structures, which was not surprising. They had a million years of evolution in their favor. and suddenly I realized we were going about this all wrong I returned to the meeting room where the arguments had become even more contentious than my absence and wrapped my knuckles on the table to get everyone's attention we have forgotten the four principles I said when the room had quieted there were shouts of protest at that but I held up a hand for silence and waited patiently and eventually they settled down again. There were, I suppose, a few advantages of being 73 years old. I held up my left hand with four fingers extended. Oh, we know all about interdependence and cycling. I touched my pinky finger and then my third finger, which still bore Robert's ring. And we've been pretty good at adaptation. I touched my middle finger, which means finding new ways of doing things rather than doing the same things in the same way over and over. Then I closed three fingers, leaving my forefinger sticking up. But succession? Succession doesn't mean just planning for the future, but recognizing that situations are always changing. In effect, succession means that sometimes we need to find new ways of adapting, and we've been trying to adapt in the same old ways. We can't find new ways to adapt in the middle of a crisis, Sandley complained. In the middle of a crisis is when we have to find new ways to do things, I replied. There is no other time when the need is so urgent and the alternatives so clear. In any case, the crisis is already here. We can act now or suffer the consequences of inaction. Those are the only two options. I looked around the table. The committee of 13 saw that the old ways were not working. They wrote the new constitution, remade this whole republic in five days. Surely we can find a new way to cope with this storm. The group was silent for a time. So, what do you have in mind? Janet said eventually. We need to bend like the palm, or we will break like the two-by-four. Janet looked at me blankly. What does that even mean? I spread my palms. Honestly, I don't know, yet, but we're going to find out, together. We brainstormed and debated and argued together until well past midnight, as the wind and rain began to hammer on the roof of our meeting hall. We did come up with a few new ideas, though our notebooks simulations showed that none of them would be better than what we were already doing. We also continued planning to evacuate and reinforce as we had done in previous storms, but the same simulations made it more and more clear that our existing solutions wouldn't be enough this time. We had perhaps gotten too good at decentralization, with every home and business providing its share of power, water, and food. Every structure loss made the whole system weaker. We had to come up with something different. Something better. Somehow. I awoke to find Sandley shaking my shoulder, my cup of cava cold and tilting in my hand. You're dead on your feet, he said, rescuing the cup before it spilled in my lap. Go take a nap. We can spare you for an hour. I protested, but not too much, recognizing the truth of his advice, and headed back to my house. The rain was already coming in nearly horizontal, pelting my face and making my footing uncertain. Despite my ionized slicker I was soaked through by the time I reached my front door I slipped inside leaving my slicker to drain in the vestibule and tiptoed toward my room in the dark If anyone in the family was actually able to sleep, I would let them. They would need to be fully rested tomorrow. But then I tripped over something soft. And as I fell, I landed on something else, something all knees and elbows that shrieked and squirmed away. Delson? I asked the shrieking, squirming thing, for it was he. What are you doing in the living room? Delson flicked on a flashlight, momentarily blinding me. I'm adapting, he boasted. I figure I can sleep under here and leave my room for two other people. He shone the flashlight behind himself. Under the dining room table lay a pile of his things, stuffed animals, toy boats, his gaming headset. I brought everything I need. I handed him the teddy bear over which I had tripped, my heart rate beginning to return to normal. What about your clothes and your toothbrush? I brought everything important, he insisted. I smiled at that, the priorities of youth. And then I looked at the pile of toys and games and realized he might have stumbled on a greater truth. I kissed him, turned around, and went back out into the storm. I was wide awake now. we argued for another hour but the simulations were too promising to ignore so with great reluctance we agreed on a new strategy we would cease trying to protect the islands with riprap and plywood and instead put all our efforts into stripping the most vulnerable buildings of their support systems solar power desalination equipment data servers hydroponics and shifting them to safer places on the lee side of the islands this repositioning of resources was something we were already doing, of course, but now it would be our main priority. After the storm had passed, we would determine what land and structures had survived and reinstall the equipment there. In effect, we would let the storm prune away the most precarious parts of the islands and then re-inhabit whatever remained. Even with this strategy, we recognized that there would probably not be enough resources for everyone after the storm passed. We would just have to deal with that when we knew what we had to work with. Many hard choices have been made in the past, I said, patting my notebook, and more will have to be made in the future. We all knew that the population of the islands was less than half what it had been before the reconstitution, and it was never going to go up again, but we would keep trying. We put on our rain gear and went out to implement the plan. We were tired and weary and discouraged, and the storm was already raging, but we would not waste a single minute or a single urge of energy. We would never abandon our islands completely until the last scrap of rock vanished beneath the waves. One of the structures that had to be salvaged, as it happened, was what we called the Grand McCottage, the back of my family's own property. Once upon a time, it had been the only building on the lot, a tiny two-room shack that Robert had built with his own hands right after we got married. Now, it was dilapidated and musty, used only for storage. I hadn't spent more than half an hour inside it in years. But still, it had its solar panels and its desalination unit under the floor, and these could be removed and shifted to a safer place until the storm had passed. My daughter and son-in-law did most of the work, but Delson and I held to where we could, and as the adults struggled to haul the heavy desalination unit away through the sheets of descending water. The two of us were left to tidy up and make the place as watertight as possible before evacuating. Your grandfather and I had to do this all the time when we were young, I told Delson, squeezing sealant into a dripping crack in the roof. He built this house himself, you know, and honestly, he wasn't much of a builder. But still, it has lasted all this time. You still miss him, don't you? Delson said, and I realized that the water in my eyes was not rain. i do i wiped my eyes handed him the caulking gun and creakily descended the ladder i probably should have had delson do that part when i got to the bottom of the ladder i looked around the whole house shook and clattered in the wind and i was pretty sure this was the last time i would see it but there was the corner where we'd put up our first christmas tree and over there was where i dropped a whole pot of oatmeal it was probably still oatmeal between the floorboards I levered myself down to the floor and patted the threadbare carpet next to me Delson sat obediently enough and I handed him my notebook I'd like you to hold on to this for me, I said during the storm Don't you need it? he asked, but he accepted it I don't think I will, I replied The device itself was replaceable, of course and its data was safely distributed across the network but I'd carried it every day since long before Robert died, and many of the pages bore creases and tears that helped my fingers find the important information. Just keep it safe for me. I squeezed his hand where it gripped the spine, then let go. He took the notebook and started to leave, then turned back. Aren't you coming? You go along, I said with a shooing gesture. After he left, I sat on the floor and listened to the storm rage. The wind howled and the house rattled like a cracked maraca. It would probably not last the hour. The two-by-fours might break, but the people of the islands would bend like the palm. What are your thoughts on the story? You can send me an email. I'm kate at clarksworldmagazine.com. That is Clark with an E. Thank you for joining us for the story. We have a bunch more left for you for the month, and that is thanks to your support. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And I hope that you'll come back and listen to yet another, should you so choose. Until then, my dear listener, I bid you a very fond and hopefully very temporary farewell. Thank you.
