Maelstrom

by Anne McCaffrey

  She met them in the transit lounge just outside the docking bay. She did not want them in the main lounge frightening the children.

  Besides Cally, there were a couple of junior officers, a squad of Corps personnel in combat gear, and a familiar but not friendly looking man in the robes of a Federation councilman. Beside him was a woman clad in similar robes. She was totally unfamiliar to Marmion. Troubling. She had been neglecting her duties on the council as well as her business lately. To her cost, it now seemed.

  “Greetings, ladies and gentlemen,” Marmion said, arching her brow in an expression she knew gave her an air of skeptical superiority. “I understand you are under the impression that I have somehow been naughty?” She used the coquettish word deliberately, to indicate that she thought the incident in question, or at least her culpability in it, was as petty as the word implied.

  “Madame de Revers Algemeine, you are under arrest for the kidnapping of Intergal company personnel and the theft of Intergal company property. You and everyone aboard this vessel are taken into custody and this vessel confiscated as evidence.” Cally recited the charges with relish and nodded to the soldiers, pointing down the corridor. They marched away, their boots thudding a double-time tattoo on her faux Aubusson strip carpeting.

  “What foolishness!” Marmie said, pointedly failing to show alarm at the armed nature of the invasion. She waved a hand dismissively. “In case poor Colonel Cally’s mind was unhinged by the trauma of seeing the meteor showers destroy the homes of the Intergal company personnel in question, he will recall that he gave up searching for survivors long before we located these people, homeless and soon to starve to death in that desolate, desolate place.” She gave a delicate shudder. “No, no, gentlemen, this will not suffice. We kidnapped no one. We simply provided relief from a disaster that overtook them while we were there. We then issued an invitation from another far more hospitable world. They chose to come, of course. They are not idiots.” Her tone said, Unlike the people I am now addressing.

  “Madame, you know very well that once these people have stayed on this world for any length of time, they will become unable to leave it and thus ineligible for recruitment into the career opportunities with Intergal for which they were destined. There was a contract between their leaders and the company,” Cally said.

  “Slavery is illegal, Colonel, and even if it were not, the dead make very poor servants or manual laborers, which I believe constitute the main career opportunities open to the personnel in question.”

  “You also stole livestock belonging to Intergal.”

  “I allowed the refugees to bring their sacred animals with them and the few possessions they still retained. But perhaps you are so ill-informed about what actually transpired because you and your vessel, after the most cursory search, abandoned your feeble efforts and took off for what you no doubt considered more urgent duties.” There. She had done it. She had totally lost her temper. She felt her cheeks flaming, her eyes blazing, her voice searing the very skin off the stupid man. She was giving Petaybee’s volcano quite a lot of competition at the moment. She knew better. Much as she loathed stupidity, slackness, and cowardice, she of all people knew the value of diplomacy even in dealing with idiots. Losing one’s temper gave the advantage to one’s adversary. She took a deep breath and said, “It is useless to discuss this matter. You must take it up with my attorneys.”

  The man in Federation robes spoke. “You are entitled to contact them from the incarceration colony where you will be held, Madame. Under the authority vested in me as a deputized representative of the Federation, I, Jorge Hedgerow, declare you to be under arrest and your properties and assets frozen until you can be bound over for trial. Unfortunately for you, I fear there is quite a full docket these days.” The man’s supercilious smirk was aggravating. Nevertheless, in the absence of her own allies she knew she would have to comply in order to avoid violence and possible injury to her passengers or crew. She tried once more to reason with the officious intruders on behalf of the passengers staying on the Piaf.

  “Some of the refugee families were involved in an accident since they arrived. They are no longer on the Piaf. All we have aboard here are the children and the old ones, not workers. You will want to either leave the children here with their parents or collect the families to come with us.”

  “And give you a chance to rally your henchmen?” Hedgerow asked. “I think not, Madame. If the people want to be reunited with their children, they can apply to Intergal for transport to the holding area.”

  Marmie widened her eyes innocently. “Henchmen? My employees are devoted, it is true, but hardly henchmen. As to whether you gather the families in question now or later, that is of course up to your discretion. As a businesswoman, I naturally point out that it is more cost effective to do it now rather than later.” Also, of course, while she remained in custody she would be unable to ensure her passengers’ safety or well-being. Given Cally’s prior depth of concern for them, having the families together, preferably on Petaybee, was the best way to protect the children, quite young mothers, and elders, all so vulnerable to abuse or neglect.

  The gilt com unit in the replica Louis XIV board gave her personal signal. She started toward it but one of Cally’s minions blocked her way. She half turned to Hedgerow. “My crew will want a final order from me to surrender peacefully or there could be unnecessary injury or loss of life, and not only to my employees.”

  Cally gave a curt nod and the minion stepped aside. First Officer Robineau said from the com screen, “Madame, there are two armed soldiers demanding access to the bridge. Your orders?”

  “By all means show them in, Adrienne, and stand down,” she said, using her officer’s first name as if she were an innocuous housekeeper instead of a highly trained navigator and engineer. She could not beat the intruders at this point but if her crew gave the appearance of joining them insofar as to offer them hospitality instead of resistance, everyone might survive this situation. If open resistance was futile, killing them with kindness might yield intelligence advantages at the very least. And Adrienne Robineau was quite an attractive woman highly adept at social interchange. “Offer them wine or tea perhaps since they are still on duty, and some of the excellent croissants from the galley. They will be with us for the rest of the voyage.”

  “Oui, Madame. It shall be as you say.” Marmie smiled to herself at her officer’s quick grasp of the situation. Adrienne, despite her French heritage and name, had no personal ties with La France Nouveau at all. And yet her speech already reflected a strong trace of Marmion’s own accent. “And Adrienne?”

  “Oui, Madame?”

  “Pass along to the others that our—guests—are to be accorded courtesy and cooperation from all crew members. I do not wish to entertain further interruptions while I am in conference with their superiors.”

  “Oui, Madame.”

  “The conference is at an end,” Cally said. “We will now depart for Gwinnet Incarceration Colony, where you and your crew will be—accommodated—pending your trial.”

  IT WAS A long swim and Murel was weary. She wanted to go ashore, dry off, fly home with Mum, Da, and Ro, and sleep in her own bed, maybe after a steaming hot chocolate and a biccy or two. She and Ro could dream together as they sometimes did and share what they’d done while they were apart. He was okay. She was certain he was okay. She’d know if he weren’t.

  Sky brushed against her consolingly. Deep sea otters will not harm Ronan, Murel. Seals—bad seals, not river seals—sometimes eat otters, but otters do not eat seals.

  As if mentioning otter-eating seals had somehow alerted the species, she received another message. Do not worry, half cousin. Our relatives have surrounded the strange new thing in their fjord and are keeping a close eye on it. No harm will come to your sibling with them watching.

  But it was such a long swim. She wished she could have trusted the orcas enough to beg a ride with one of the powerful creatures for her and Sky. B
ut in doing so she’d bring death to the very seals helping her locate Ronan. Perfect Fjord was another day’s swim at least, and she didn’t see how she could make it without rest. Sky wasn’t made for this sort of swimming either. He normally frolicked in freshwater. Long-distance saltwater swimming was completely foreign to him, and he had been through as much as she had.

  Sky, you can go ashore if you want to, she said. You are not a sea otter, after all.

  I am a sky otter, he told her. And a space otter and an underground otter as well. I can swim in the sea, so although my face is not pale and round, I am also a sea otter.

  In his own way, Sky was as much a shape shifter as selkies or the Honus. He simply didn’t bother changing his physical form when he changed his mind about who he was. Her former biology teacher, Dr. Mabo, had an unhealthy fascination with shape shifters—unhealthy for the shape shifters at least. But she would never understand one like Sky, no matter how many otters she tormented.

  The farther north they swam, the closer and more wintry the shoreline grew. The ice reached out in broad flat plains from the land. When pieces broke off and upended, they formed the icebergs that seemed to float like castles above the water. Beneath the water they hung in the depths like upside-down mountains. In places along the shore, cobalt cracked glaciers rose high above the ice floe. The sky grew duller and grayer until time for sunset, when it blazed with volcanic-ash-filtered light before dying altogether. The full moon rose, and for many many kilometers they saw little in the blackness of the sea but moon and ice, ice and moon.

  Murel used her sonar to keep them off the ice, singing to herself in the night, hoping to hear the other seals soon, the ones who were the relatives of Pork and her herd. Apparently Pork and the others had lost interest in her problems. Probably they were keeping busy evading sharks and the killer whales.

  Before long we should be close enough that I can reach Ro, she told Sky, if our thought-talk can go through the alien city’s shield—and I guess it can, since we talked the alien otters into letting Da go.

  For once, Sky did not answer.

  She turned her head to the side where he had been swimming and saw only water. She looked all around her. No otter. She dived and surfaced and swam back to the last iceberg. Sky! she called. Sky? And her sonar returned an otter-shaped image to her, just beneath the surface of the water, not swimming but slowly sinking.

  “THE HONU SAYS Murel went to find Ronan,” Ke-ola told Yana, nodding at the smallest of the turtles swimming along beside the fishing boat that had picked him up. “She says bring the copter up to Perfect Fjord, but only her papa should swim out to find them. Everyone else should wait on shore in case they’re needed.”

  “Anybody got an ulu?” Yana asked, referring to the semicircular knife women traditionally used in cleaning and dressing animal skins. “I’m going to skin my daughter alive when we catch up with her. Why didn’t she wait for the copter if she wants us to use it?”

  “She needed to be a seal to find Ro,” Ke-ola said reasonably.

  “Sean is in seal form too. Why didn’t she get him?”

  Ke-ola consulted with the Honu again.

  “He was busy, missus,” the boy replied. “Murel needed to go quick.”

  Sean, swimming along beside them, raised his sleek gray-brown head from the water to look first at the Honu, then Ke-ola, then Yana. He lowered his head as if to roll into a dive. “No! Don’t you go swimming off too, Sean,” Yana called. “We’ve got multiple crises and I need to keep track of one member of this family at least. Hop in the boat and change. I have a lot to tell you.”

  Hopping into the boat was easier to say than do for him, but Ke-ola and the fisherman rescuer cast a fish net and he swam into it and allowed himself to be hauled aboard.

  Yana had sent the copter back with Puna, Keoki, Pet Chan, and Raj Norman. After what happened to the Piaf, the Kanakas needed to be with their wounded and what was left of their families, and Pet, Raj, and Johnny needed to strategize while she and Sean sorted out how to retrieve their kids as well as the others.

  “The Piaf, its passengers, and crew, including Marmie, have been hauled off to some Federation Incarceration Colony,” Yana told Sean once he was in the boat. “Intergal had Marmie arrested for kidnapping Ke-ola’s people and ‘stealing’ the Honus and the sharks. Johnny said once the ship’s crew knew what was going on, Com Officer Guthe made sure the channel was open so Johnny could hear what happened on the bridge.”

  “I don’t see what we can do about that at the moment,” Sean said, pulling his dry suit on over his lean, muscular body, which was momentarily covered with goose pimples. “We can hardly go after them, and with communications as they are, contacting Whit Fiske or one of our other friends who might be able to help Marmie is going to be difficult, to say the least.”

  They sat together in the boat, Yana impatiently scanning the sky for the copter while Sean wished he were swimming after the kids, even knowing that he would never reach them before the copter could fly him to the fjord.

  At last they heard the deep drumming of the rotors again, and the two of them, as well as Ke-ola and Sinead, climbed up the rope ladder to be ferried to the fjord. Rick O’Shay had come alone, with bundles of survival gear and warm clothing, plus collapsible kayaks for the strictly human among them. “Reckoned it being a seagoing matter, you’d need boats,” Rick said. “Seamus thought these ones would work for you in a pinch.”

  The sea looked so cold from the copter, all ice and rolling steel, turning briefly salmon in the volcanic sunset before darkening to black. Yana helped Ke-ola zip into snow pants, mukluks, and a parka, but the boy was still shivering. He sat by the copter door when he was dressed and watched the moonlit icebergs and the black sea rolling beneath the copter’s pontoons as the aircraft thudded its way northward toward the fjord.

  “What’s that down there?” he asked through the headset they all wore to keep in touch with Rick.

  “Where?” Yana asked.

  “A dark patch on that iceberg down there. Looks like a seal.”

  CHAPTER 23

  SKY? SKY! OTTERS don’t drown, Sky. You can’t drown, Murel thought forlornly as she nosed the half-frozen little body to the surface and kept him bobbing there while she steered him toward an iceberg to try to revive him. It was almost certainly hopeless, though, and she knew it. Even if she got him breathing again, he couldn’t survive this cold. She should never have let him come.

  Why had everything turned so horrible? All they had been trying to do was find a home for Ke-ola and his people, and all of a sudden everybody was drowning and getting eaten, and maybe worse, it seemed like everybody out here was trying to eat everybody else. She guessed that was what “dog eat dog” meant, not that she’d ever seen dogs eat other dogs. All poor little Sky ever ate was fish of one kind or another. He should never have come. He should have let her know he was too cold and too tired to make it.

  She nosed him up onto an ice ledge and after three tries dragged herself onto it too. The sea pounded them so relentlessly that even though she was not still in the water, she could not change, and that was all to the good, she thought. If she changed, she’d have that instant before she put on the dry suit when she’d be freezing—maybe shiver her way back into the water. Even if no harm came to her, she’d be no good to Sky.

  In seal form, though, she was warm enough, her body well-insulated and furred. Awkwardly, she nosed Sky’s inert form into a ball and then curled her own around him, taking the brunt of the sea’s beating with her own back. She tried to preserve what little warmth remained in the otter’s body with hers while infusing him with her own heat and life force.

  I NEVER SAW those seals before in my life, Ronan told Kushtaka.

  Your sister is not there, or your father?

  No, neither one of them. This lot could be keeping an eye on us for them, though.

  Tell them to go away, Kushtaka said.

  If Ronan had been in human form he’d have
shrugged. What difference would it make if a herd of seals saw the city and knew he was inside? Still, he didn’t want to antagonize Kushtaka.

  Hey there, you seals, what are you lookin’ at? he called. Haven’t you ever seen the den of the deep sea otters before?

  Who’s that? A seal thought penetrated the city’s barrier.

  I dunno. I don’t see anybody, do you? another seal answered. Other than the big otters?

  Nobody worth seeing, no, the first seal replied. You lads see who was talking?

  He could be inside one of those tall things, a third suggested. Ronan was pretty sure he knew where the thoughts were coming from. Three of the seals were crowded close together, studying the city with more intensity than the others. You there that did the talking. Are you a part-time seal? Because there’s a part-time female seal looking for you if you are.

  Yes, it’s me, Ronan told them. Now go tell my sister I’m fine and stay away from here, will you? You’re making the natives restless, and when they get restless, they make whirlpools big enough to drown you all.

  Right, fine, we’ll do that. Where is your sister?

  Because the twins’ childhood had been somewhat sheltered, confined to freshwater prior to their being sent offplanet to school, Ronan had never met wild seals before. He was not impressed with their brilliance. How should I know? he asked. I’m stuck in here.

  We could get you out, the most enterprising among them suggested.

  No, you can’t, Ronan said.

  No, we can’t, one of the others corrected the first seal. Shell’s too hard. Claw it. You’ll see. It’s like it’s iced over, only the ice is thicker than it looks.

  The scratching of seal claws against the outside was seen but not heard.