Deluge

CHAPTER 5

THE TWINS AND Sky stayed under Marmion’s house until the grounds were searched, then cautiously, quietly, swam as far out as they could in the direction of the freight lift.

Very slowly they lifted their heads from the water to hear what was happening on land. The three flitters were still there; guards were posted near the mansion, but there was no evidence of anyone else nearby.

What do you think? Is it clear?

Without warning, Sky jumped out of the water and onto the bank, where he stood on his hind feet and shifted his torso and head back and forth, listening. Men who eat river seals are not here, he announced.

With that assurance, Ronan hoisted himself ashore and, propelled forward with flippers and claws, reached the cover of some shrubs where he could shake himself dry and change. When he was once more clad in his dry suit, he stood watch-squatted, actually-while Murel changed, too. Then, while Sky scampered across the fake landscape in his undulating run, the twins crawled to the freight lift, trying to stay out of range of the surveillance cameras. When the door opened, they all leaped inside and Ronan pushed the button for the com center level.

The door began to open as soon as they reached it. Before they could stop him, Sky bolted through to scout ahead.

He only had time to say “Hah!” before they heard a sizzle, then a man’s gruff voice: “Got the little bugger.

What do you think? Is there enough of him to make a pair of boots?”

Before the door had fully opened, Murel forced her way out, shouting, “Hey, let him alone, you big bully!”

She just had time to see a short soldier holding a limp Sky aloft by the scruff of his neck when a hand whipped out and grabbed her neck, hauling her away from the lift. “Ow!” she said. “Cut it out. And let the otter alone!”

“Oh, is this yours?” the soldier asked in the same voice she’d heard from schoolyard bullies.

Behind her there was a scuffle, and Ronan was pulled from the lift as well.

The soldier holding her spoke into a handheld com. “This is the last of the children, sir.”

He listened to the reply, then clicked off the device.

“Lot of kids for a space installation,” Ronan’s captor remarked.

“There was a school here. The brass is interested in knowing what exactly these kids were taught.”

“How about the critter?” the soldier holding Sky asked. The otter wiggled in his grasp, apparently recovering from the stun shot.

“He’s their pet, apparently. Bring him along. He might be good to eat, or who knows, if these two know anything, they might get extra chatty if it means the animal keeps his skin on.”

Murel’s captor had relaxed his grip, and she twisted away, rushing at the man shaking Sky. Because he was holding the otter in one fist and his weapon in the other, his front was wide open. She butted him first in the belly and then, when he doubled up, in the nose with her own head. Before she heard the sizzle and felt a jolt of pain shoot through her, she saw the man drop Sky, who twisted in midair and was halfway down the corridor before he landed.

WHEN MUREL CAME to, she had a horrible headache and everything around her smelled strange.

She sat up in a tiny room occupied by several other girls. Most of them were preschoolers, too young to have been in classes with her, but two-Chesney Janko and Lan Huy-were familiar from her time at Marmie’s school.

Lan Huy wept in a shockingly loud and heartbroken way that set the younger ones off. Between sobs, she made Murel understand that she had seen her father, one of Marmie’s chief engineers, stunned and dragged away before the soldiers grabbed her as well. Murel remembered that Lan Huy had grown up on V ersailles Station. It was the only home she knew.

Chesney Janko was younger than either Murel or Lan Huy, but she tried to comfort the older girl, making soothing shushing sounds and patting her quivering shoulder.

Murel could scarcely hear herself think over the wailing of the younger girls, but she called to her brother anyway. Ro?

I’m here, sis. Me and about ten other guys.

She looked around the little room. Where are we? I don’t recognize this part of the station. While the two lived on Versailles Station, they had had an opportunity to explore most of it.

We’re not on the station, sis. What with you settin’ such a fine example, I decided one of us with a sore head would be enough. So I whined instead and begged them, whatever they did to us, not to send us to Gwinnet Incarceration Colony. They enjoyed telling me that was exactly where we’re going. Everyone from the station. At least if we’re there, we can find out what’s happening to Marmie.

Even if we’re not in a position to do anything about it, Murel said. What about Sky?

I don’t know. I didn’t realize otters could play possum so well, but he had that eedjit of a soldier fooled and got away. There’s plenty of places for him to hide till they leave.

Hah! came an otterly thought. Sky otters are fierce fighters. I used my strong claws and big sharp teeth to get away, then followed the otter-eating men who took river seals. Otters are good hiders, and there are hundreds of places for otters to hide here.

Oh, Sky, I’m glad you’re okay, but you should have escaped when you could. They might hurt you, Murel said.

You will not let them, Sky said with perfect confidence. You do not let wolves eat otters, or sharks or even other seals. River seals help their otter friends. Otters help river seals too.

I hope none of us will regret that decision later, but I must say, right now I feel better knowing you’re near, Murel said.

Me too, Ronan agreed. But don’t let them catch you again, no matter what.

Otters are very cunning, Sky assured them. And we have big sharp teeth.

To their surprise and relief, their captors did not question anyone during the journey, or even speak to them. They didn’t seem to care who anybody was, just so they were off the space station. The kids were fed Corps rations, the kind the soldiers ate in the field-all nutrition and no taste-and given water. Their cells had flush toilets with blue chemical stuff in them and they plugged up easily. The temperature was controlled, but the number of bodies in each room made it way too warm most of the time.

The girls had exhausted themselves crying, and gradually the noise simmered to a generalized whine of anxiety, discomfort, and boredom.

Nobody was mistreating them, but neither were they exerting any effort to make things easier for the young ones.

Needing some distraction herself, Murel decided to use the kind of tactics employed by Petaybean child minders and teachers of restless classes. “If my snow leopard friend was here,” she said, “she would eat all of those bad people and set us free.”

Huy’s lips curled into a small smile, Chesney laughed, and the little girls who had heard her looked mildly interested.

“Also,” Murel added, “she’d bring us all ice cream.”

“What’s that?” asked the smallest girl, the one the others called Daf.

“It’s sweet and smooth and cold and really yummy,” Murel told her. “It comes in lots of flavors. Where I live, we make it out of snow mixed with milk from our horses.”

By the time she explained what a horse was, what snow was, what a snow leopard was, and how that leopard would manage to bring ice cream and kill bad people as well, Huy and Chesney caught on and launched into telling the tallest tales they could imagine or remember about their own worlds. Huy might have been raised on a space station, but her father had told her stories his own parents and grandparents passed down to him from the ancient cultures and peoples who settled their world.

“We had a dragon in my father’s family, and if my ancestor knew what was happening to my father and me, he would come and carry us all away,” Huy said. “If we pass by close enough to my father’s world, I’ll call him.”

“You can’t yell that loud!” a six-year-old cynic told her.

“Don’t have to. He can read my thoughts. He would be very displeased with these people, and before he took us away, he would scorch them with his fiery breath.”

The people who brought their food didn’t scold or threaten them, but neither could they be persuaded to bring extra toilet paper or wash water. They didn’t molest the girls in any way, which was a relief. On the contrary, they seemed totally indifferent to them, as if children were some inferior species beneath their notice.

“We’re just hostages,” Huy said. “They’ll use us to make our parents do what they want them to. I hope they haven’t hurt my dad.”

“My brother says they’re taking us all to a prison colony. Maybe you’ll get to see your dad there.”

“Will they try to make our parents say that Madame is a criminal, Murel? What did she do to make them mad at her?”

That was a story Murel knew all too well, so she told them about the trip she, Ronan, and Ke-ola had taken to Halau, how meteor showers destroyed the homes of Ke-ola’s people, forcing them all underground, and how the soldiers would have just left them there with nothing if Marmion hadn’t launched a rescue mission.

“If it hadn’t been for Madame’s ship picking up the survivors, then going back to find other people still trapped, they’d have all died. The officer in charge must have got his ears laid back by his superiors.

Somehow he convinced the company superiors that she had kidnapped the people of Halau and their sharks and sea turtles, and that’s what she’s charged with.”

“But that’s so lame!” Chesney said.

“Of course it is. And the people in charge will realize that when Marmie’s friends tell them what happened to her. The people who want to ruin her don’t want anybody to know she’s in trouble.” Murel explained about the magnetic field and volcanic activity on Petaybee making interplanetary communication impossible most of the time. She left out all the parts about she and Ronan being seals, and about Kushtaka’s people and their history. Who knew what might be done to the kids to make them or their parents talk? She took a deep breath and gulped as a few possibilities crossed her mind, then put those thoughts firmly away. Need to know, Mum would say. She’d tell them when and if they had a need to know.

Ronan agreed that was the best way to handle it, though in the stories the boys told, they tended to massacre the entire ship’s crew with their bare hands or, better yet, blow up the ship, once all the good people were safely ashore. Then they would storm the prison, and after battles that involved fencing with some sort of laser-beamed or edged weapons, overcome the guards, free the prisoners-well, the good ones, at least-and of course, for a happy ending, blow up the prison. When he shared some of these tales of valor with her, Murel said she thought there was an excess of blowing things up.

We males like explosions, he told her. Especially when we’re mad and helpless to do anything about it.

Not as helpless as some people think, she replied staunchly. While she was glad Ro and the boys were keeping their spirits up, it hurt a bit to hear him referring to himself as one of “we males.” Their twin-ship had always been the main “we” in each of their lives-the selkie nature they shared with their father was the second-most important group to them. Family had come third. Now Ro seemed to think being male, a condition that excluded her, was also important. She had certainly not said “we girls” or “we females.”

Although she was female and around the same age as the others, she felt-well, it wouldn’t be nice to say better than they were, but different from them. Very different. So far the people their own age who knew about their secret had been fine with it, but she was sure some of these girls would be unable to handle it.

To keep things interesting, she tried to tell the girls the boys’ stories, leaving out the explosions. She was a little surprised at the ferocity with which Huy and Chesney inserted their own torments for their captors.

Chesney even knew something about setting explosions. When Murel told Ronan about that later, he agreed that it was something worth notice.

They relied on these nighttime conversations to push the boredom and fear away when everyone else finally quieted for sleep. They tried to remember and prompt each other’s memories of the navigation and piloting lessons they’d had aboard the Piaf. Galactic geography and periodic tables filled more of the quiet time, then puns, then songs and more songs from the potlatches and night chants.

It’s a good thing we can thought-talk, Murel said. Otherwise I’d go bonkers from boredom. Huy and Chesney can come up with some good gossip from the station, but they don’t know many songs, and the ones they know have words that don’t tell stories. I’m supplying most of those.

Rory’s pretty interesting, her brother told her, but the other boys, even the little ones, talk about games a lot. I saw some of them on vid when we were at Marmie’s, but I can’t say I understand the excitement.

THE SCARIEST THING about the journey for the twins was when their captors decided the prisoners should have a shower. Fortunately, it turned out to be a sonic shower, so they were able to avoid the water exposure that would have forced their change into seal form. Other than that shower, they got no exercise, so it was hard to feel tired enough to sleep.

When Murel slept, however, she dreamed about the river at home with its clouds of ice overhead and the fish so plentiful all she had to do was open her mouth to catch some. Ronan was in the dream, and later, when he described his dream to her, it sounded like the same one.

THE SOLDIERS ON the troop ship being rocked in its moorings by gusts of Petaybean blizzard wind were also bored. All except Spec 4 Greta Forcet. Fascinated by what she saw on the weather map, she put in a call to the bridge. “Sir, I think you should see this,” she said.

Captain J. Wilbank replied, “What’s up?”

“This weather pattern, sir. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Yeah, this is quite a storm. I didn’t know it was possible for snow to occur at temperatures this low.”

“It’s not only that, sir. It’s where the storm is.”

“What do you mean? Never mind, I’ll come and see for myself.”

Not only the captain, but two other officers and three enlisted personnel came to see what she was talking about. The storm’s ferocity made all of them feel under siege and eager for information.

“Look here, where the worst of it is-the heaviest snow and the highest winds are all right here, at the port and in Kilcoole. It’s like we’re being specifically targeted by the storm.”

“The river would act as a funnel-” the captain began.

“Yes, but the winds are not nearly so fierce along the river, nor is the snow so heavy.”

“Hmm. So if we penetrate the barrier of bad weather around the ship, we could send out another party to search for the locals.”

Forcet raised her eyebrows but said nothing. He might be right, but she wasn’t going to volunteer for the expedition.

“I don’t know, sir,” Lieutenant Chu said. “It’s like this place is haunted and the ghost is really pissed off.”

“That’s not it,” Spec 5 Ortiz said.

“Don’t contradict me, soldier,” Chu said. He had just made rank and was touchy about his authority.

“Sorry, sir, ” Ortiz barked, saluting smartly.

“Let her talk, Lieutenant,” Captain Wilbank said. “Well, Ortiz?”

“It’s just that I served with a couple of guys from here, sir. From what they said, the problem isn’t anything dead. It’s what’s living. They say this world is alive and has a nasty temper.”

“WALK A LITTLE to the left, please, Yana,” Clodagh said as she reentered the cave. “That groove you’re wearing in the cavern floor should be wider so folk with bigger boots can still walk there.”

Yana knew her pacing was driving everyone else nuts, but once more her entire family had left her without saying where they’d gone. That drove her nuts. Waiting for news was very high on her list of things she hated to do. Or not do. It was the kind of thing her former superiors would have called “a character-building experience.” She had certainly acquired the family best designed to build her character. And now they were testing her patience by running off without a word at a time when she needed to think clearly and act without hesitation. Instead, concern for them left her feeling unable to make a decision about when to act.

Clodagh, dressed in winter gear, had been in the outer cave, holding a veritable reception for every land creature on Petaybee from the look of it. Pairs of wild eyes stared into the cave. In height they could have been anywhere from taller than a man-a bear perhaps?-to very small indeed. The only ones Yana could identify for certain were Clodagh’s gold-striped cats, who came and went as if the snowstorm was of no concern to them. Like Coaxtl the snow leopard, they had extra-wide feet; tufts of fur padded their paws like snowshoes, and similar tufts warmed their ears.

“Has the storm let up at all?” Yana asked Clodagh.

“Here it has,” Clodagh replied with the enigmatic brevity that characterized most of her utterances in general and nearly all of her answers to other people’s questions. Clodagh’s tall, round body, clad in her furry snow pants and hooded parka, mittens, and mukluks, made her resemble a comical bear. This was especially true since over her parka she wore a kusbuk, a flounced, mid-thigh-length, hooded covering worn in summer as a lightweight top and in winter over the parka to protect the precious coat from damage. The villagers loved sewing their kusbuks out of the brightest fabrics they could find, making them easier to spot in a snowstorm and adding a bit of cheerful contrast to the often-bleak winter landscape.

“How about at sea?”

“Sean and the kids will be fine, Yana. But those company folk are socked in.”

“They are?”

“The ones in the village hid in the longhouse. The ones on the ship can’t get out.”

Bunny Rourke, Sean’s niece, said, “I bet they wish we were still home to build fires for them and make them nice hot cups of rose hip tea.”

“Rrrright,” Yana growled. Johnny Green, Pet Chan, Raj Norman, and Rick O’Shay threw down the cards they’d been shoving back and forth in a desultory imitation of poker and looked at Yana expectantly. She smiled much as a wolf viewing a pen full of fat sheep might have. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said quietly, so as not to alert the other villagers, “perhaps it’s time to extend the planet’s hospitality to our guests.”

“I’m going too,” said Sinead Shongili, Yana’s sister-in-law.

“Shhh,” Yana said. She didn’t want to risk any of the native Petaybeans being captured, since an adult who had adapted to the planet would die when removed from it. But Sinead was a hunter who knew the land as well as she knew her beloved Aisling. She was the game warden for their area-a cool head and a sure shot. They could use her. “Fine, but keep back in the woods and cover us. We can’t risk you getting caught.”

“Nor can we risk you, Yana, but I don’t see that stopping you,” Sinead said tartly, pulling on her parka and shouldering her rifle.

MISSONI AND HIS troops listened to the woman on the recorder sing her song about a Corps legend-the massacre at Bremport Station -with interest that would have been astonishment were they not still so exhausted from fighting the storm. The voice was accompanied by a drum; in the background the wind howled, moaned, and whined around the building, now and then making a sound like the ruffling of the feathers of a gigantic bird.

When she’d finished, he cut off the recording, though there was room for plenty more data. “How did she know about Bremport, Sarge?” Inuye asked. She was fairly new to the Corps.

“You heard the lady, Private. She was there. Before she was turned by the locals, Major Yanaba Maddock was one of us, a decorated officer who served with distinction at several bases. She was invalided out after Bremport and sent here for retirement. It’s in the data banks on the ship. You can look it up.”

“I guess she had to stay here because the Corps wouldn’t listen to her poetry,” Murkowski scoffed. “Got herself a captive audience and didn’t want to leave.”

“I heard it was because she fell for the head scientist here,” Parr said.

“Sex is a lot more likely a motive than poetry,” Inuye said.

“Shut it,” Missoni said. “She was an exemplary officer before her injury. Show a little respect for the person she was. Any of us could be wounded and sent to where we’d be dependent on the goodwill of the locals to survive. When and if that happens to me, I hope to show more loyalty, but I’ve seen even worse things happen to even better people once they’re no more use to the Corps. Break out your rations. We’ll eat, sleep, and by then maybe the storm will have calmed down some.”

Murkowski grumbled, “Should have confiscated some of the food in the cabins. It’s not like they’re going to be using it any time soon.”

They had each brought along only one ration packet, thinking to strike quickly, take their prisoners, and return to the ship. Screw that scenario. “When the storm lets up, go back and collect whatever food you can find and bring it back here,” Missoni told them. “We may need it, and we don’t want them to have it.

We may have to wait them out, and a siege doesn’t work unless someone is starving. I’d rather that not be us.”

His com crackled, but he couldn’t make out any kind of message. The verbal one was lost in the general howl, and when they tried a text message, it fragmented into an unintelligible sparkly geometric design.

Pretty but useless.

When the men finished eating, Missoni posted a sentry at the longhouse’s only door. “If the storm lets up, wake me,” he told Murkowski. Then he and the others made themselves as comfortable as possible on the building’s floor. He was asleep before his head touched the floor.