Can’t. I’m caught, she said. Between the tentacle and alien body compressing her throat and the pressure of the dive, the breath she’d stored was being squeezed out of her. Bite the one attacking me in the butt, Ro, but look out for other tentacles.
Let go of her, you multiarmed freak! She heard Ro’s challenge as if it came from far away. Another tentacle lashed out from somewhere but she was so weak she could no longer tell which of the two monsters it belonged to.
Soon she would not have enough breath to surface. Could seals drown? She felt light-headed already. For a moment longer she was dimly aware of Ro’s thought-voice, and then her mind suddenly went as dark as the ink-stained water.
FLOATING ON THE surface, drifting on the sluggish tide, riding the crest of the swells and wallowing in the troughs without volition, the two battered seals washed slowly toward the shore. One had patches of fur ripped from his side, the other had a bare raw patch on the side of her face and angry-looking circular sores across her upper back. One of her claws was gone, while the male was missing a piece of a rear flipper.
Sis?
She opened one eye. The other was swollen shut. Ro? I had the worst nightmare.
Sorry, wish it was, but we’re not out of it yet.
Something was dragging us down. I was about to pop for want of air and—ow, my face and back! I remember. The monsters.
Squid, I think, he said. Like in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, remember? We watched it at Marmie’s once. Then I read the book. Now we’ve been attacked by some. I must say I preferred both the vid and the book to the actual experience, but at least we’re alive to make the comparison.
I remember the squid, but how did we get away? You had to be as weak as I was.
Pretty much, yeah, though I didn’t get choked like you did and I managed to bring my hind flipper up enough to keep the tentacle from crushing me before you made it let me go. It was the other squid attacking that freed us. Well, I did have to bite through the tentacle the second squid had wrapped around you, but it was busy fighting off the one that had had me, so it wasn’t really paying attention. I think squid one thought squid two attacked it to take its prey—that would be me, and probably you for afters. When you attacked it and then the other squid nailed it too, it released its grip on me enough that I bit myself free. Those things taste like cat piss, did you notice?
Yeah, she agreed, and if she’d been in human form she would have made a face.
Then while they were slapping at each other, I got you loose and swam for it with you. The others had lost interest in us or were placing bets on who’d win the fight, I don’t know, but nothing followed us to the surface.
She spotted something and rolled to one side. I think you’re wrong about that. Look. Two bloated-looking bodies, one with scratch and bite marks along the length of it, the other with similar but not as severe marks, bobbed up a few feet away from where the twins floated. The arms and feeder tentacles drifted listlessly, washing to and fro with the roll of the waves.
Either squid can play possum or they’re dead, Ro said. Do you think we killed them, or did they kill each other?
I don’t think we made much of an impression. But maybe their struggles with each other wounded them, or maybe they tried to follow us too close to the surface. Other ones started to but turned back before they caught me the first time I surfaced. They’re deep water creatures. Must be. If they live down in that abyss, they may not have been able to withstand the depressurization of lesser depths.
I wonder if they’re really dead, he said, and started to swim toward them.
Ro, don’t you dare! Murel told him.
He flipped in the water and came back up beside her. Just teasin’ you, lassie. I wasn’t really going to.
I’m in no shape to rescue your slippery butt this time, she told him, then added with a groan, I hate to think what we’re going to look like as humans. Everything hurts.
I’m just glad shaving our heads didn’t make us furless seals. If it wasn’t for our fur, we’d have been hurt a lot worse. As it is, I hope losing this chunk out of my flipper doesn’t make me walk funny.
We found where the large animals were hiding anyway, she said. Maybe they ate everything else.
Or maybe the company only imported these as a kind of living barrier—the prisoners might escape from the prison but not from the squid.
As if to confirm that last guess, they heard a boat motor and the water around them began thrashing, splashing over them counter to its natural heave and roll.
“Cap’n, would you look at that?” a man hollered across the waves. “There’s two that’ll never dine on Gwinnet brisket again.”
“Musta got a piece of Clem Packer,” the captain guessed in a more thoughtful tone. “A guy who massacred everybody on a freighter and ate them when the nutrient bars ran out probably tasted pretty rank, and may have picked up some kinda poison from those dead bodies too.”
“Could be,” the crewman agreed. “Wouldn’t have killed a demon like Packer, but played hell with the sensitive innards of our underwater garbage disposals here. They’re wildlife, y’know, and them things got delicate innards.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t blame ’em. It made me sick just looking at the slimeball,” the captain said. Then he added, “Speaking of wildlife, what are those?”
Before the wounded seal twins could dive, the bow of the utilitarian-looking boat sliced through the water, bearing down on them.
CHAPTER 11
THE SHIP’S OUTER hatch had to be opened manually from the other side of the air lock. Normally it kept space out; now, when it opened, the blizzard rushed in, powdering the floor and topping the heavy winter gear of the people nearest the opening with a new coat of snow. Yana saw two crew members raise their faces skyward with expressions of wonder and anticipation. But this was no weather for even the greenest newcomer to the white stuff to learn about making snow angels or snowmen or note the difference between each flake and the next. The freezing wind that accompanied the snow caused everyone to cover their heads, faces, and necks with thermal balaclavas. Ears and noses could freeze to white brittle lumps in a matter of moments at this temperature.
The captain gave the command, and one by one the crew disappeared behind the howling white torrent.
Yana followed them, somewhere near the middle of the queue, as they left the ship to brave the blizzard with handheld torches, hand warmers, generators, and anything else that they could imagine might help free the hull of ice and keep it that way. She could have told them the generators wouldn’t work in the cold, but of course she kept silent.
Keeping one mitten against the hull, she found a position between the ship and where the river should be, although she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see anyone or anything, which was the bad part, but the good part was that none of them could see her either. So while everyone else focused on their own small sections of icy hull, she turned her back to the ship and, bent against the wind like a charging moose, walked deliberately forward. Unless the storm had spread since she and the others had entered the ship, it was still only a narrow band between the ship and a relatively calm walk back up the river.
Johnny, Rick, Pet, and Raj, none of whom were Petaybean enough to be damaged by a trip offplanet, stayed behind, using the ship’s malfunctions to cover their movements. They would restore power and, once the elements that thawed the hull had done their job, take the ship into space, stranding the crew. Sinead should be dispatching a Petaybean welcoming committee, armed with the captured firearms of the soldiers in the longhouse to escort the crew to the longhouse as well. They would all be the guests of honor at the first-ever All Corps Latchkay, Yana thought with amusement. She sure hoped they’d like smoked salmon.
As she expected, within two dozen steps she was through the wind and the rest of the snow. Overhead, the ghostly green, pink, gold, blue, and red of the aurora played crack-the-whip across the sky above Kilcoole.
Her feet sank thigh-deep into th
e snow with every step, and footing on the river was treacherous. Ice lay beneath the new snow, which was too dry and powdery to pack well. Yana wished she could have brought snowshoes or skis, but that would have attracted undue attention, so she trudged forward, her hips and thighs aching with the effort of pulling each foot high out of the drift before setting it down ahead of the other.
She had made it halfway to Kilcoole when she heard the rumble of the ship’s engines and the surprised voices exclaiming just a little louder than the rumble or the wind howling around them. She turned to see the ship rise into the air, piercing the storm, showering melting ice from its surface as it climbed toward the aurora.
As if the ship’s ascent were a signal to the storm, it slackened. The wind blew off in another direction, and the snow sifted away to nothing, exposing a crowd of pointing and shouting crew members railing against the hijackers of their ship and the collusion of the planet they’d come to conquer.
Grinning beneath her balaclava, Yana watched them and took a step back. Her heavy boot plunged easily through the snow and downward. There was a slight resistance and a cracking sound where the ice should have been. She felt something give beneath her foot, and then a splash and a rushing sensation against her heavy clothing. Icy water seeped over the top of her boot, slid down her tucked-in waterproof snowsuit leg, and soaked her sock. The freezing water attacked her formerly protected flesh with only a momentary sensation of cold, then knifed into her, sending a shock all the way up her body and deep into her marrow. Trying to pull her foot out, she overbalanced and stumbled, driving her wet leg deeper into the river. Unable to maneuver her free foot, she fell backward. Damn Aidan and his fishing hole, she thought as she slid over the edge of the freshly cut hole and plunged toward the bottom of the river.
Her life didn’t flash before her. Nothing flashed before her but water and the disgusted notion that of all the people in her family, she, the one who didn’t go sealy when wet, was the one to fall into the freezing river.
Her clothing was heavy but waterproof, so for a moment or two the covered parts were somewhat protected. The balaclava rode up on her face during her plunge and blinded her, and she reached up a clublike mittened hand to dislodge the wet wool. Above her was a cloudscape of ice, eerily lit by an odd phosphorescence coming from the inner banks of the river that cast a green glow upon it. She kicked toward it, trying against all instinct not to gasp for air. All that hadn’t been knocked out of her when she fell was the single breath she’d managed to gulp in before her face submerged.
The ice did not freeze in a solid sheet underneath but in clusters separated by little dips, which she knew—from both her Corps survival training and from listening to Sean and the kids discuss seal matters—formed little air pockets. Not that air was going to help her much if her lungs froze before she found the way out. She tried not to think what life might be like if she did survive without feet, or ears, or a nose, and sternly told her inner coward to shut the frag up.
Taking in air through cold-numbed lips, she held her breath in and raised her mittens to feel along the bottom of the ice. The unevenness that held her air supply made it much more difficult to find the hole, which was hidden behind an inverted hillock.
She stuck her head up into the hole she had just made and hauled the incredible weight of one of her arms out of the water and onto the ice. She followed with the other arm. Because it had been so very cold and the hole was cut, not thawed, the ice held under her mittens, but the mittens became ice almost at once too, as did the sleeves of her coat.
She was grateful to be breathing, to see the aurora dancing in a now-clear sky as if all were right with the world. And indeed the world was doing fine. She was the one with a big problem. How to get out?
She had been able to hear the ship’s crew. Would they hear her if she cried for help? Would they help? There should be a group of villagers coming to take charge of the soldiers any time now. Couldn’t they see the ship was gone and hurry it up a bit?
As those thoughts ran through her head she tried to call for help, but all she could produce was a feeble cough. Her voice wasn’t the only thing that was weak. Her hands were slipping, and pretty soon she’d have to fight her way back up again.
She looked up again at the frozen sky, which seemed to have grown icicles. No, those would be her lashes, probably her eyelids, crusted with ice.
Oh well, she’d heard freezing to death was not a bad way to die. Already she couldn’t feel anything except vaguely sleepy. That was how it started, she knew. You went to sleep and died, and they found your frozen corpse at breakup.
SEAN SWAM UPSTREAM for five miles in open water warmed by the geothermal current that formed something of a circulatory system for Petaybee’s northern pole. The aboveground tributary ended at a mostly frozen lake, and he had to dive under the ice, swimming through uncomfortably shallow water. This place was a sink, hollowed out early in Petaybee’s formation, perhaps even before terraformation, by a natural volcanic event. Sean wasn’t certain exactly how it had happened. He was a biologist, not a geologist, and at the moment he was a seal who did not much care how the water came to run the way it did as long as it was there to transport him where he wished to go, without more danger than he could afford to brave.
This passage was a bit tricky, but unless it had changed, which it certainly could do without notice, it should be safe enough.
There was a high ridge in the bottom of the sink before it deepened until it sank down into its source, an underground spring, not as warm as the one at the communion cave but almost always open, even in the coldest weather, because of the magma channels flowing beneath the rock. This was also subject to change, of course. However, Petaybee seemed to have some control over where its fluids ran, and by now it surely understood what he and the others were trying to do to protect it, so he rather expected it would arrange itself to his best advantage—that is, stay as he remembered it—and he was not disappointed.
The opening to the underground waterway, a spring at the surface but a broad and deep underground river below, was exactly where it had been on his previous journey by the same route, and in case he had forgotten, inorganic-looking arrowlike clusters of bioluminescent material along the bottom marked the way. He’d run into this before on an underwater errand for the planet, and he was relieved to see that it had its considerable attention at least partially focused on his mission.
The force of the water increased as he neared the place where the spring bubbled into the pool, but he pressed forward, passing from the cave under the thin ice frosting the lake’s surface to the hole in the side of the bank where lukewarm water gushed into the lake bed. This hole was at the edge of the sink, boring into higher ground that rose overhead as he swam into the stream.
The warm water made him sleepy and sluggish, but he had to actively swim against the current to reach his goal, the lower level of the communion cave at Kilgalen. The river swept past it on its way to the sea, but there had been a good level place to land and change in the past. He blessed the dry suit Marmie had provided. For that matter, he blessed Marmie, and although he knew that she and they all had enemies, found it difficult to fathom why anyone would go to so much effort to create trouble for such a marvelous woman. She was herself one of the PTBs—and yet she had used her influence and money generously for the benefit of the planet and its people—and other planets and other people, from what he could tell—without worrying about what she’d be getting out of it. He was concerned about his kids, of course, but if he had been in their flippers, he’d have done the same.
There was plenty of room overhead and plenty of oxygen there, but he had spent so long in administrative chores he was not as accustomed to swimming hard as his children were, and his chest, back, and the joints where his flippers met his body ached with the effort.
When the channel narrowed again, Sean watched for more arrows, and there they were, larger and larger until the entire underground passage was
filled with the bioluminescence and he could clearly see his destination.
He was almost too tired to pull himself out of the stream before he was carried backward, but gained strength from knowing it was the end of the journey for now.
He shook himself dry and, when he was fully human, put on the dry suit, with booties, gloves, and hood, and climbed up into the back end of the communion cave.
Siobhan Chugliak, the village’s shanachie, and her husband, Floyd, met him inside the cave.
“What is it, Sean?” she asked.
He told her. “The town is under siege and we’re worried the PTBs will use the central com system to monitor and trace any calls we make on the portable ones. So I’ve come to warn you myself.”
“Very good of you, I’m sure, and we’ll start a relay to all the villages, so you needn’t trouble yourself. Come on back to the cabin with us—have a cuppa to warm up.”
“Ta very much, Siobhan. I won’t say the swim wasn’t tiring.”
“We could take you home by sled if you wish.”
“No, that’s more easily spotted, and besides, it’s downstream clear to the river on the way back. I’ll be grand.”
Over tea, he went into more detail about the arrest of Marmie and the coming of the troop ship. He had not yet drained his cup when he began to feel that he had other places to be. Floyd had already alerted the rest of the village, and six dogsled teams were dispatched to three other villages to begin the relay. They traveled in pairs in case of mishap.
“I need to return home now, Siobhan,” he told her. Another hostess would have protested that he hadn’t finished his tea, that the scones were still in the oven and would be out at any moment, and that his hair had not yet dried from the melting of the ice on the way from cave to cabin. But Siobhan, like Clodagh, though perhaps not so strong in her skills as yet, was a shanachie and knew that such impulses were best heeded.
As soon as he reached the landing spot, he slipped from the dry suit and stowed it, reentered the water, and was on his way.
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