Maelstrom

by Anne McCaffrey

  An octopus or squid perhaps? She thought their ink was black.

  She had little time to think after that because suddenly the boat lurched and she fell hard against the railing. It listed severely onto its starboard side, spinning in a huge circle. She had a fleeting impression of Puna and the others thrown into the water amid the sharks, who were also whipped around helplessly. An enormous whirlpool drilled into the sea floor.

  Suddenly, Sinead was torn from the boat and gulping frigid saltwater. She spun in an ever narrowing and deepening spiral as she was sucked downward to the bottom of the sea. At the same time she was being pulled apart, she felt crushing pressure from her burning lungs and freezing body. A primordial roar filled her ears, and her eyes were blinded with churning water.

  By the time the whirling ceased, releasing her, she hung in its depths like a broken doll.

  KUSHTAKA’S CITY WAS gone! Murel swam straight to where it had been. Only an open trough remained. The volcanic vents within the trough glowed dully, their heat momentarily dimmed by the push of cold water from above.

  Murel blinked. Ronan? Ro? she called, but heard nothing, sensed nothing. Her twin was gone.

  But when she looked up into what had been the vortex of the whirlpool, she saw her aunt floating in the water above her. For a second she didn’t react except to think, What’s Sinead doing here? She doesn’t swim. Then she thought, more clearly, She doesn’t swim! and rushed up to the drowned woman, grabbing her by the back of her windbreaker and hauling her to the surface. The water was full of sharks with people attached to them. The sharks had rescued their own human relatives, but the boat and the other Petaybean crew members were nowhere to be seen.

  Murel had been so shocked by what happened to Jeel, the whirlpool, and the disappearance of the undersea city, that she hadn’t realized what the maelstrom had done to the boat.

  This was horrible, horrible. Without someplace solid to lay Aunt Sinead, without someplace dry to transform herself, she knew she had no hope of reviving her aunt.

  Da! Mum! she cried into the sea and air, not knowing where her parents were or even how long she and Ronan had lain unconscious in the room in the underwater city before Sky awakened them. Sky, oh, Sky, another loss—her otter friend gone with her brother, her aunt, with the boat’s crew. Everything was suddenly too awful to bear. It couldn’t possibly be worse.

  Then she saw the black fins bearing down on her. The killer whales had returned.

  CHAPTER 17

  THE WHALES CHARGED straight at Murel, and though she tried to outswim them, she was hampered by the need to keep Sinead’s face above the water. She wasn’t sure it mattered, since it seemed her aunt was already drowned, and it wouldn’t matter if they were both eaten by orcas, but she was afraid that dragging her aunt facedown would mean certain death and she couldn’t bear that. If she hadn’t been so focused on warning the deep sea otters about the bloody sharks, if she hadn’t stupidly fallen asleep and become separated from Ro and the Honus, the stupid whales wouldn’t have almost got her, and the wretched aliens wouldn’t have sucked her and Ro into their stupid city. And if Jeel hadn’t been so stupid about sharks, and if Kushtaka hadn’t been so suspicious and poky about letting her go rescue him, she could have saved him from the sharks and Kushtaka would have let Ronan and Sky go and they would have had their memories wiped and none of this wretched stuff would have ever happened.

  Meanwhile, she had to swim backward, towing her poor drowned aunty, while those awful orcas came on faster, ready to ram into her.

  As the lead whale drew close enough for her to see the water running down his head, he dived. Suddenly, the surface was full of black-and-white whale tails.

  Oh, great, they were going to attack from underneath and scoop Sinead and her into their open mouths! On the positive side, there was no longer a shark to be seen anywhere.

  Murel felt something brush her tail and called a mental good-bye to her parents and Ronan.

  Then she was hoisted aloft, precariously balanced on her back on the back of one whale while two others flanked him to catch her or Sinead if she fell off. Not a single thought did they send her, but she saw the rest of the pod split from the group and swim away. Keeping her balance was impossible. When she started to fall, she released her hold on Sinead, who was now well above water, and twisted her body out from under her aunt’s. She slid down the whale’s side into the space between him and one of the adjacent whales. The whale on the side moved to allow her to fall into the sea but made no move to retrieve or attack her. Sinead still lay on the back of the middle whale.

  For the first time one of them thought-spoke. This way. Land is near.

  You’re saving us?

  Isn’t it obvious?

  Why didn’t you say so?

  We didn’t want to alert the sharks. They are a nasty-looking lot indeed and wouldn’t have been above attacking us while we were answering your distress call.

  But I called for Da and Mum. I didn’t cry “Whale!” at any time, she argued—peevishly, she knew, but too much had happened and she wasn’t feeling very rational at that moment.

  We heard. We, uh, knew there was a father missing some younglings, although frankly we expected you both to be seals.

  We are! That’s my aunt Sinead riding on your back. She’s my da’s sister but she’s always human.

  Where is your sib?

  He’s—it’s kind of complicated. Look, why are we headed for the volcano island? It’s dangerous. It could erupt again and kill us at any time.

  Do you see any other land where we could release your father’s sister without beaching ourselves? The island is the only place. And you will not be alone.

  That turned out to be true. Puna and her human family members were already sitting on the folded black rock far beneath the rim of the volcano’s summit. To Murel’s relief, Seamus and Liam were there too. The Honus who had apparently saved them were swimming away, having just deposited them. There was one more form, smaller, furrier, and looking slumped and unhappy until Murel flopped onto the beach beside him.

  Sky! You escaped.

  Otters are very cunning, he answered. But not cunning enough to save Ronan.

  She felt no need to cover herself this time as she turned into her human shape. None of the other people had retained many clothes after their dunking either. If Aunt Sinead hadn’t laced her warm clothes to her so securely, she might have lost hers too—which could have lightened her burden enough so she might have been able to reach the surface, Murel thought. Her boots alone must have weighed a ton.

  The other able-bodied occupants of the island lifted Sinead from the obliging orca’s back and began trying to revive her.

  She was glacier blue with cold and lack of oxygen. Now fully human, Murel tried mouth-to-mouth to help her breathe, but Sinead’s chest didn’t move. Seamus pushed her aside and bent over her aunt, sticking his hand into her mouth and pulling out a glob of seaweed. Then he pushed her onto her side to let water run out. Some spilled from her mouth and nose but she didn’t stir of her own accord. He tried mouth-to-mouth and thumping on her chest with the same results.

  He flipped her over and pumped on her back three or four times. Now more water gushed out and she gave a weak cough. Turning her back over, he resumed the mouth-to-mouth until she fought him off, weakly but determinedly, and tried to sit up.

  She spoke but Murel didn’t hear what she said. Her words were lost in the thrum of the helicopter engine as the aircraft flew close, to hover above the marooned people.

  The copter couldn’t land on the island and there wasn’t room aboard for the stranded shipwreck—or boat wreck—victims. It set down on its pontoons just offshore, and Da dived into the water, changing, then took a packet in his mouth as Mum, clad in a wet suit, carrying another small bundle, joined him, and both swam to shore.

  “Where’s your brother?” Da asked as soon as he changed shapes.

  Murel, without meaning to, burst into tears. “Th
ey t-took him!” she sobbed.

  “Who? Where?” Mum asked, as if she planned to dismember whoever had her son, wherever they might be hiding. She tossed a bundle to Murel.

  The packet contained clothing.

  Sinead sat up on her elbows then, with help from Seamus and Da, propped her back against a rock, and reached into a zippered pocket in her snow pants. She pulled out Da’s dry suit. “I thought you might be needing this when we met up again.”

  Da tugged on the suit. Murel dug into the packet Mum had given her, donned a shirt that covered her to the knees, and handed the rest to Seamus, who was nearest.

  Da opened the bundle he’d carried in his mouth. It contained medical supplies, compressed packets of thermal blankets, nutrient bars, and purification/desalination capsules one of Marmie’s scientists had invented.

  Puna reached for the supplies. “I am the clan healer,” she told him. “I can tend our own injured and yours too.”

  In the open door of the copter, Ke-ola, wearing a pair of pants far too small for him, shouted to them. Although the copter had shut down its engine, his voice was lost in the roar of the surf. Da shook his head and started for the water, but Ke-ola shook his head in return, pointed his finger toward shore, and dived into the water.

  Once there, he handed Murel her dry suit, back in its packet. “You need this more than me.” She slipped into it under the shirt, then handed the shirt to one of the shivering shark people.

  “Captain O’Shay wanted me to tell you that the coastal fishermen are on their way to fetch the survivors,” Ke-ola told them.

  “Excellent,” Da said. “We need to organize another search party too. Murel says someone has taken Ronan.”

  “Da,” she told him, “the someone isn’t human. They look like big otters, they pretend to be otters, but they’re not. Well, at least not all the time. They’re aliens.”

  “As if it weren’t bad enough that we’re plagued with friendly offworlders wanting to immigrate, now we’ve hostile kidnapping ones to contend with,” Seamus grumbled.

  “They weren’t hostile,” Murel said. “They’re the ones who saved Da, and they saved me today and probably Ro as well when the orcas attacked us. They were just curious, I think—the aliens, I mean, not the orcas. They were studying Petaybee’s sea life, from what we could tell. They pretended to be deep sea otters so the real sea otters would trust them.

  “They could change shapes, like we can,” she said to her father. “Ro and I found out about them when we got you, Da, back from their city—or I guess maybe it’s a vessel. But they made us promise not to tell. After they rescued me—and Ronan and Sky, who were caught up in the waterspout when they followed me into it—they let us rest up. They were going to wipe our memories before we left but one of Kushtaka’s—she’s the leader—kids, J-J-Jeel—left the enclosure to get a closer look at the sharks. I said I could talk the sharks out of eating him but I c-couldn’t, I d-didn’t get there in time. And Kushtaka kept Ro and Sky there till I came back. But she must have seen what happened to Jeel on the sursurvu—that’s the big receiving dome for their surveillance sensors.”

  Murel’s voice rose to an embarrassing wail, her nose ran, and her eyes filled with more salt water than they ever seemed to when she was swimming. “It was awful, Da, and she is his mum and she saw it all! I know she did. That has to be it. She decided the sharks made this spot too dangerous for them to stay so she moved the city. Sky got away somehow but Ro’s still inside the city, vessel, whatever. It’s all my fault!”

  Ke-ola beat her parents to putting a comforting arm around her. “No, no, little sistah, it’s my fault mostly. If you hadn’t wanted to help me bring the Honus and my people here for a better life, then the Manos would not have come to eat the alien kid.”

  “We never made any deals about alien kids,” Puna said, stoutly defending her clan’s sacred animals. “The Manos were hungry. You kept them asleep on that ship but you didn’t feed them what they needed. It’s a wonder they kept their promise as long as they did—back on the old world, they’d eat their own wounded sometimes.”

  “Petaybee’s started changing them already,” Da mumbled to himself.

  “Well, I wish it had done a better job, and done it sooner!” Murel’s grief was turning to anger. “It was horrid. Just poor Jeel screaming and the sound of all those teeth and that blue stain all that was left of him.”

  Now Mum moved to put her arm around Murel’s other shoulder. “Not Petaybee’s fault or yours or Ke-ola’s, pet, or even the sharks’. They weren’t to know what Jeel was.”

  “But I told them and they just didn’t care!” Murel howled, hating how she sounded even as she did it. “And now his mum doesn’t have her kid and she took Ro to get back at us for bringing the sharks, even though that’s why Ro and I came out here—to warn them.”

  “Is it your opinion that this Kushtaka is angry enough to harm your brother?” Da asked.

  “N-no, but if she took him into outer space we’ll never see him again!”

  “Here now,” Mum said. “None of that. Ke-ola, ask Rick and Johnny to buzz the Piaf and get the navtrack records from the ship’s computer. That should let us know if any vessels have left Petaybee’s atmosphere within the time since Piaf entered it. If the alien vessel has left Petaybean space, have the Piaf notify the Corps and the Federation patrol to intercept it. Tell them to use level-three diplomacy in dealing with the alien vessel—speak kindly while casually aiming a big laser cannon at it. They wouldn’t use the laser under level three, but the aliens don’t know that. Probably the threat won’t be necessary anyway. This Kushtaka sounds like she might have cooled off enough to see reason and return Ronan if she’s given a chance.”

  Ke-ola returned to the water, walking out a short way until the lava shelf dropped from under his feet. The water was a deep transparent blue, and the ocean floor was visible here when the water wasn’t agitated. Ke-ola flattened out into a long dive and swam to the copter.

  “Hmph,” Da said. “The way I see it, those bloody orcas have a lot to answer for.”

  “But Da,” Murel told him, “they were sorry—they saved me and Aunty Sinead from the whirlpool that wrecked Seamus’s boat. I was trying to rescue her myself but if the whales hadn’t picked us up, I’d never have been able to pull her this far in time to—to . . . ” That was just it. Everything had been just too-too. She couldn’t remember the word she wanted and finally said, “ . . . to undrowned her.”

  Sinead coughed. “Thanks, pet. It’s me that’s undrowned, and alive to be proud of you, I am.”

  Murel managed a small smile. She realized that Aunty must be pretty upset herself. She didn’t usually sound so much like the Irish side of the family.

  Puna rose from tending a shark man’s broken arm, planted her feet as firmly as she could on the drastic sloping lava rock, and put her fists on her hips as she faced the Shongilis. “So now there is trouble, what you gonna do with us, huh? You gonna do the same as the company? The Manos make a little mistake and eat something you don’ want them to eat and you gonna send us away again someplace worse than the one we come from?”

  “Don’t be daft, woman,” Da said, far more irritably than he usually would. He was too worried about Ronan to want to worry about the shark people’s fears. “It’s enough of the taking and giving of the blame we’ve been doing here. Let’s leave that until we get my son back from the undersea otters or aliens or whatever they are. Had they been a bit more open about their presence, we’d have known to ask your Manos not to eat them, wouldn’t we? Everything has to eat something. While I’m sorry about the loss of the alien lad, that was no call for the undersea folk to go runnin’ off with our Ronan. I trust we will get him back, and in time your Manos will learn—with your help—what prey they may take and what prey they may not. Right now there are more urgent issues to deal with, so don’t you be givin’ out to me about eviction notices I’ve never sent and have no intention of sending.”

  P
una gave a huff as the wind left her sails. She pretended to see another wound on someone and returned to her bandaging.

  CHAPTER 18

  BY THE TIME the giant otter guards dumped Ronan into another of their poky little rooms, his flippers ached from being used as handles. There was no need for them to be so pushy. It was fine with him to stay here while Murel swam out to negotiate with the sharks. He had hoped to spend the time taking a closer look at the city, though, and was disappointed to be penned up again.

  Then Tikka vanished a wall, which seemed to be the alien equivalent of opening a door. If they closed a door, no opening was visible in the wall at all, and when they opened a door, the wall vanished. Otherwise, people just came and went through the open holes in the walls. He didn’t know if that meant those rooms were without doors. From what he’d seen, they were probably more public places.

  He was alarmed to find that the formerly playful Tikka was angry with him. It’s all your fault, you and your mean fish! she told him, sending her thoughts so hard that his poor furry head seemed about to burst with the force of them. This was the downside of being telepathic. If someone yelled in regular talk, it was possible to ignore or escape them. When someone started yelling their thoughts, however, it hurt. It was impossible to think of anything else until they stopped.

  Whoa, whoa, lassie, he told her in the tone he’d heard his father use with the female family members when they were upset with him. Slow down, will you? I hear you but you’re sending so hard I don’t understand what it is I’m hearing. What exactly is my fault? Has something happened to Sky? He’s not with you, but as you can see, he’s not with me either.

  They ate him! she wailed.

  Someone ate Sky? Who would do such a terrible thing to such a great little guy? I thought your people were friendly to otters. You are otters part of the time. That’s cannibalism, eating Sky. He was as upset as she was by then, and close to tears.