Maelstrom

by Anne McCaffrey

  While she was thinking all of this over, Sorka, her new seal friend, called to her, We were right! At the underwater fire mountain in Perfect Fjord there is a different thing with living creatures in it.

  How did you get there so fast? Murel asked.

  We did not go there. Our relatives called to us, frightened by a great whirlpool. They wanted to know if we knew what it was, if our fire mountain made a whirlpool too. We said yes and told them it was made by a giant bubble that was home to a herd of otter creatures and that you had lost it with your brother inside. They looked, and though they did not see your brother, they saw the bubble.

  Thanks, cousins! she replied. I’ll go right now.

  Even knowing they would be too busy to go with her, she was about to tell her parents where she was going so they wouldn’t worry, and then the copter returned. Hovering overhead, it lowered a rope ladder. Responding to Mum’s gestures, Aunty Sinead carefully stood and prepared to climb up. The noise and waves generated by the wind of the copter’s rotors made it hard for Murel to hear herself think, much less contact Da. She couldn’t see him for all of the boats and whales. The echolocation used by the whales also interfered with her own sonar.

  She thought the copter would load and take off again but Johnny climbed down the ladder and shouted something at Mum, though Murel could make out none of the conversation.

  She didn’t know which way Perfect Fjord was, and if she waited to ask Mum and Da, she was nervous that they might insist she return to Kilcoole with the copter while they waited for it to finish evacuating people before they got around to fetching Ronan. Meanwhile, the aliens might decide to take off and take Ronan with them for good. Adults could be so poky, and time was of the essence! She decided on a compromise. First she asked the closest whale how to get to the fjord.

  You’ve got a lot of tail asking anything else after you tricked us into fetching and carrying for you all day, the whale replied, blowing a fountain of water through his blowhole in a decidedly derisive manner. But he added, Swim north along the coast. You can’t miss it.

  Then she found the smallest Honu, the little one she and Ro thought of as their personal friend, and told him where she was going and why. She asked him to tell Ke-ola so he could tell Mum and Da when they asked. Tell them to come too, maybe with the copter, though it should land on the fjord’s shore and wait a reasonable amount of time for us to surface before trying to find us, she said. I don’t think the aliens will let Ro go because I say so, but they might if they think the adults will find them if they don’t. They want to avoid contact as much as possible.

  Then, with the copter still hovering and her Mum and Johnny still shouting at each other, she and Sky struck out, veering north and paralleling the shoreline as the orca had directed. They rapidly left behind the rescue boats. She hoped that with both her and Ro gone again, Mum and Da would decide their children needed rounding up before anything else happened.

  FINALLY THE WORLD stopped spinning and whooshing as the city settled over a new vent. Outside the city’s shield the deep sea waters teemed with fish. Beneath the pathways winding among the buildings, the deep geothermal rift glowed a bright cherry red. Ronan guessed it was closer to the surface than the last vent had been. So they’d moved, but they seemed to still be on Petaybee, maybe not too far from where they’d been before.

  Ronan supposed he should probably be afraid, but he was sure his family would find and fetch him before long, even if he didn’t exactly know how they’d go about it.

  With Tikka mad at him, he had no one to talk to. He was wary of Kushtaka. Even though she might not be mean, she was grieving over losing her son and therefore not in a very good mood. But there were a lot of the other alien otters swimming around, and he decided to try to find someone else to talk to. There was still so much he was curious about. Even if they wiped his mind later, he’d be satisfied now, and it would pass the time until his family came to take him home.

  But the first thing to do was find Sky. Tikka said the little otter was okay so he must be around somewhere. If she had showed him where to slide, being an otter, he might be sliding still. Lucky for him that these aliens enjoyed sliding too. Probably because they’d taken otter form, some of the otters’ other characteristics had rubbed off on them. Ronan hoped Sky hadn’t been sliding when the city started whirling or he could have had a wilder ride than even otters liked.

  Since the walls of the room where Ronan was incarcerated did not reappear even after Tikka departed and the city settled, he simply swam out of it. Looking up and down the streets, he tried to get his bearings. He remembered Tikka gesturing toward a tall spiraling tower, but now that he had time to look around, there were more of them than he’d thought.

  Who could he ask? There was that beam thing they used to gather food. His relationship with Kushtaka had been fairly friendly when they last visited, so maybe those aliens didn’t realize he’d been demoted in status from guest to prisoner.

  He found the right hole again after poking his head in a few others first.

  None of the places he investigated initially were residences. One of them seemed to be some sort of power plant, and its floor opened directly onto the cherry-colored vent below. Oddly, the room wasn’t hot, but Ronan guessed this was where the city’s lights came from. More tubes of spinning water drew fire from the vent, and at intervals big otters added some sort of rocks to it that caused it to turn colors.

  There were valves over openings in the walls where the water tubes disappeared. Ronan tried to ask the big otters coloring the water about the slide, but the collective sound of the water tubes might have made it hard for them to hear. Or maybe they just didn’t want to talk to him.

  In the next room shells were stacked and racked by kind and color, but there were no giant otters stacking or racking them.

  He saw some odd-looking equipment in the next two rooms and alien otters very intent on images hovering in front of them, but none of them responded to him either. He thought they might be monitoring the surveillance cameras, possibly focusing them on different areas surrounding the city’s new location.

  He didn’t recognize the room with the “hunting” beam until he happened upon it, and even then he wouldn’t have recognized it without the baskets of neatly sorted fish and shellfish that filled the room. Two of the aliens were tossing more fish and shells back and forth, catching them in baskets with a playfulness that reminded him of Sky.

  I’m hungry, he told them. Where could I get a couple of fish?

  Catch! the nearest one said, and flung a fish back to him. Ronan ducked under it, caught it on his nose, and after it hung there for a moment, opened his mouth and ate it.

  Good trick! one of the aliens said. Mraka, he balanced that fish on his olfactory organ! Do it again so she can see!

  I’ll be needing another fish, then, Ronan replied. A nice fat one like the last.

  Mraka was so impressed she threw him another so she could see the trick again. Then she asked, Can you show us how to do that?

  I think it’s a seal sort of thing, he replied, but he coached them nevertheless on how to duck under the fish so it landed just so, and how to hold your head so that even if your whole body moved, your nose kept the fish aloft until it just smelled so overwhelmingly good you had to eat it. I can hold a regular ball for a lot longer, he told them. But you have to eat the fish. It’s mean not to when they can’t breathe. Huh. He paused as it occurred to him that there was something a bit—well, fishy—about the state of these fish.

  Before he could ask about them, however, Mraka caught one on the end of her nose and balanced it for a couple of nanos before opening her mouth to swallow it. Ronan clapped his front flippers together appreciatively, startling both of the otterlike aliens. Good, Mraka! I guess otters can do it too.

  I can too, I can, Mraka’s friend said, fumbling his tenth fish.

  Calmly, Puk, she said. You get too excited and twitch too much.

  I can’t be
calm and concentrate with you staring at me, Puk complained, but when Mraka threw the next fish, Puk balanced it, more or less, for a brief and tottering time before it dropped from his nose and began to fall into the whirlpool beam. Reflexively, he dived under it and this time caught it at exactly the right place on his nose and balanced it even after he stood on his hind paws again.

  Very good, Puk, Ronan told him, applauding with his front flippers again. I bet even Sky couldn’t do that.

  Your little friend the odd-looking otter? Mraka asked.

  Yes, I wanted to ask you if you’d seen him or knew where the big slide is Tikka took him to play on. I’m worried that when the city moved—

  I’m sorry about your friend, Mraka said. I tried to catch him but he was after a fish, and when the beam went out, he fell into it and—well, he didn’t come back with it.

  He esc—he left the city? Ronan asked.

  Yes, I’m sorry. He probably drowned. The turbulence created by our drives is very strong and he was very small.

  Sky? Drowned? Ronan couldn’t see how that was possible, having watched the otter swim and knowing how quick-thinking Sky was. No, he thought sternly to himself. I don’t believe he drowned. I think he escaped.

  But meanwhile he decided to act as sad as if he thought Mraka was right. Oh, no. He was a very good friend.

  Yes, it has been very bad recently, Puk said. First Jeel is killed, and then your otter friend. Jeel was often difficult, not quite right, but Kushtaka and Tikka were fond of him. And I liked the otter. Sky?

  Yes, Ronan replied in a regretful way, Sky, because he was the first sky otter—he flew with us in the helicopter and went into space too. He was proud of being the first Petaybean otter ever to do so.

  Then it is good he did not find out that his assumption and yours are incorrect. All of the beings in this vessel have also flown and been into space.

  Mraka added, But we are not otters all of the time. Just as you, Ronan, are not a seal all of the time.

  I know. You’re from outer space, right?

  No, we were born on this world, in this sea.

  I’m a little puzzled, Ronan told them. Our grandfather was the one who chose the animals to come to Petaybee after the terraforming. I’m pretty sure your people weren’t among them.

  Nobody put us here, Mraka told him. She set one of the fish baskets in a certain place and it disappeared through the wall. On the other side of the room, Puk was doing the same. Our people have been here since this world’s first life, before it died and your science revived it. This vessel is a remnant of our original civilization.

  But how can that be? The terraforming made new life on Petaybee, but before the process started, the company had to make sure there were no sentient life-forms on the planet. They lie sometimes but they wouldn’t lie about that.

  Even if they didn’t recognize us for what we are? Mraka asked. Even if there did not seem to them to be enough of us to matter?

  No, Ronan said. They’ve done some pretty questionable stuff but I don’t think they’d do that.

  Perhaps it is not policy, Puk said. But there are always individuals and circumstances. Kushtaka would not normally keep a being from the outside world here longer than they wished. But with Jeel’s death, she is not behaving in her customary fashion. Perhaps the person who was supposed to make sure there were no life-forms on this world also had reasons for departing from the usual protocol.

  Mraka paused as she lifted a basket. Or perhaps they simply overlooked us. We are not many and the rest of our world was dead. Only those of us living in this enclave that is now our vessel clung to life.

  But how? According to everything, including the planet itself, Petaybee was a dead world when the Intergal terraformed it. No water, no plants, no animals, nothing to sustain life.

  Oh, well, if you count that time, it very well may have seemed unoccupied. We weren’t physically here during that period. When the great ice age came, the volcanoes died and the waters froze and most of our people froze as well. Our city was on the last vent of the last remaining volcano and we had enough power to send a final distress signal before resigning ourselves to extinction. Fortunately, offplanet observers more similar to ourselves than we would have thought possible detected our plight and sent engineers to convert our city to the life-sustaining vessel it is now. It seemed a prudent time to take a holiday and discover what lay beyond this world.

  So you were on vacation when the terraforming happened? Ronan asked. I get why you left but why did you come back if you thought Petaybee was dead?

  Our rescuers took us back to their home world. It seems our race began on that world but as its population grew it decided to colonize another planet. Our ancient ancestors were those colonists, the original settlers of this world in its first life. There was commerce between the worlds originally but they are not near to each other. Though our people are technologically and scientifically skilled, we did not develop the terraforming process as your company did. The ancestors seeking a place to colonize had to hunt a long time and a great distance to find this world. So gradually the commerce between the two stopped and we developed our own culture and characteristics. Eventually our forebears were forgotten as surely as if our own memories had been wiped, which is, now that I think of it, not unlikely.

  Puk said, Originally, our rescuers thought they could bring us back to their world to live, but in their absence, the overpopulation had escalated until the planet was so crowded as to be almost uninhabitable. While we were allowed to stay there for a brief time, we were soon banished, along with our rescuers. We were very sad to have caused them trouble but decided, since we were banished and would die in space sooner or later, to return here to die. In spite of the impossibility of the living conditions when we left, we longed to be here. You see, there has always been something about this world . . .

  Yes, there is, Ronan said. It’s alive. But Grandpa and the other scientists thought that was some kind of odd result of the terraforming.

  The life force is more evident now, Mraka conceded, but there was always something, and rather than start out on a new place alone, we decided to return here and die on our world and join the rest of our people. We found the world changed. No cities or towns at that time, and only a little animal life, but many alien plants and this great sea covering the rest of the city where our people once lived.

  I bet you were surprised! Ronan said.

  And pleased until we realized that another species was responsible for reviving our world, populating it with their chosen flora and later fauna including their dominant life-form.

  Us.

  Yes. But we saw quickly that your people did not live in the sea, only on the icy landmasses. So we resettled near our old city and found we were able to sustain ourselves on the animals and plants that now occupy the sea. Those near the volcanic vents may have begun differently when you introduced them, but they have become much like those we knew in our former home.

  So you guys aren’t aliens any more than we are, Ronan concluded. That’s brilliant! My da will wish he’d been conscious when he was here and got to keep his memory. He would so like to meet you. Or remember meeting you anyway.

  Your da? Mraka asked.

  My father, male parent. The first seal you rescued.

  He went straight to the doctors. I never spoke to him. Did you, Puk?

  Not I.

  Ronan was trying to decide how to ask his next question when his head was filled with a summons. Seal-boy, where are you? You must come to me in the observation tower at once.

  Kushtaka wants you, Puk told Ronan.

  So I heard. But I’m not sure I can find my way back there. I’ve only been there once.

  I’ll take you, Mraka told him. Our shift is nearly done anyway. Come. She walked out of the room but then began swimming upward. Ronan, still puzzled by the way people moved inside the city, followed her. As if catching his question she replied, Our air is so dense and moist here that
it is as if it were water. We swim in it and it can sustain us, though not fish without the use of real water.

  So what are you really? Ronan asked, puzzling meanwhile that the air was evidently sufficient to keep him in seal form, although it was not actual water. That was a new experience. Deep sea otters or the other form?

  I might ask you the same question. Are you a seal or a boy?

  Both.

  We are both as well. The deep sea otter form was convenient for gaining the cooperation of the sea otters, but it is a true alternative form and one we take more often than our original one these days. Our other form was better suited for the planet’s first life.

  When they reached the observation tower, Mraka waved a paw over the entrance, then deserted Ronan. Hope it works out well for you, fish juggler. Visit us again.

  He braced himself to face Kushtaka again, glad that all of her people weren’t against him too. Aunty Sinead would have called his conversation with Mraka and Puk “puttin’ on the blarney,” since he had set out to charm them into helping him and giving him information. But there was nothing wrong with making friends. He liked them, though he found it easier to like these people when they were otters than when they were in their jellyfish/octopus form.

  He almost swam into Kushtaka’s embrace as he entered the observation room. Not that she was ready to hug him. She was in otter form, and swung her paw in an arc, indicating what lay just outside the city’s force field. We seem to be under surveillance ourselves, she told him.

  Perhaps a hundred seals looked into the city as if it were one of those snow globes Aunty Aisling had made him and Murel when they were kids. The seals looked huge from here—probably just because the surveillance devices were so near to them the perspective was skewed.

  Friends of yours? Kushtaka asked.

  CHAPTER 22

  MARMION HAD EXPECTED there might be repercussions from her encounter with Colonel Cally and the Custer. The man was too arrogant and too negligent to allow her challenge to his authority to go unavenged. She was rather surprised when she saw the reinforcements he had acquired.