Changelings (14 page)

He could go no farther without another breath. He shot for the surface, thinking of the lights and what appeared to be buildings where none should be. Though his mind was occupied, his eyes saw the boulder crashing toward him from the murk, and his seal reflexes responded. Those reflexes were fast, and sent him into a dive, but they were not fast enough to evade the impact. A single boulder avalanche smashed into his body, and the pain of it was the last thing he knew.

CHAPTER 16

H
OW’S IT GOING?
Murel asked from class, as Ronan pushed a broom around the laboratory.

So far all I’m doing is housework,
he told her.
She won’t even let me ask any questions. I think we were worried about nothing. She’s like every other scientist we’ve ever met, so wrapped up in what she’s doing when she’s working that she doesn’t even think about other people.

Yeah, that sounds familiar. She loaded us down with homework too. But so did the others.

After a while Murel stopped checking in with him, which gave Ronan a lonely feeling. Professor Mabo kept him for a couple of hours every afternoon after classes mostly picking up after her and tidying the lab.

D
URING THE FIRST
week Ronan worked for Professor Mabo, Murel had the feeling she’d forgotten or had lost something. She wasn’t used to being alone, even in her own thoughts, and it felt weird.

She went back to Marmie’s alone the first couple of afternoons, but it was just too lonesome with nothing to do but try to get Ro to tell her what
he
was doing. She knew how lame that was. Other kids could spend five minutes without their brothers around. What did
they
do?

She made the mistake of whining about it to Pet Chan, who said, “For pity’s sake, Murel! Here you are on a space station with a computer that holds the knowledge of the universe in its data-banks, holo decks to play on where you could be anything and do anything, and you’re
bored
because your brother has to work after school? Give me a break!”

She made a mental note that security personnel, even those who made great cookies, were disinclined to be sympathetic about catastrophes that didn’t actually involve explosions, break-ins, beatings, or murders. But she had one more whine coming. “Yes, but I don’t know how to use half this stuff. Remember us, the hick kids from the low-tech world? How do you turn on a holo deck anyway?”

She thought she had shamed Pet into feeling sorry for her. Maybe the security woman, who did after all sometimes make those great cookies, would see how mean she was being to a poor twinless girl and would put aside what she was doing and take her down and make up some story to play with her on the holo deck. People did that, Murel knew. She just didn’t know how they did it exactly.

Pet did turn aside from the security cameras, and for a moment Murel thought she was going to get her way, but then Pet said in a tone worthy of Nanook or Coaxtl, “Not my problem, child. I understand there’s a whiz kid student aide on call, so call, already, and let me get my work done.”

Murel scrubbed tears from her eyes as she climbed into the flitter that took her to the holo deck. She’d do that. She’d show Pet and Ro and all the rest of them. She’d make up some holo where they were all getting chased down by polar bears and if they screamed loudly, she might decide to rescue them. Maybe. Maybe not. She was pretty sure the bear would probably eat Dr. Mabo before she could be rescued. Of course, that wasn’t a very good thing to do to the bear. Probably break its teeth on the stringy old bat.

She flounced in, not paying much attention. Most of the time the holo lab was a big blue grid, but now there was a sandy beach and huge blue waves breaking off it. Ke-ola sat on the beach playing some kind of a little guitar while people danced a swaying dance with a lot of hand motions and sang beautiful songs and ate roast pig. Everybody had flowers around their necks. It looked like a lot of fun, but Ke-ola was sitting apart from everybody else, his fingers barely touching the instrument, staring out to sea. He wasn’t in a good mood either, for the first time since she’d met him. Maybe it was something in the ventilation system that day. Big tears were rolling down his broad brown cheeks.

“Hey, Ke-ola, can I come to your party?” she asked.

“Better you go away, little sistah,” he said. “This luau is just for us ghosts.”

“Ghosts? You’re not a ghost.” He really
was
in a bad mood.

“Oh yes, I am,” he said. He clapped his hands, and now they were standing on a dirty street between two tall buildings. The sea was still out there but it rolled in a sluggish way and it was a muddy brown color. Where they had been before, with all the happy people, was an island clearly visible from where they stood now.

“You know what happened there, to that place? That second place where we lived?”

“You said there was something there the company wanted so they made you move,” she said.

“No. This,” he said. And suddenly a blinding light flashed. When she could see again, the island was bare of people and palms, and the sea and sand were slimy with bits of dead fish and seaweed. “What our new home had that they wanted so much we had to go? It was far from other places. So they set off bombs there to see how much damage they did. Better to blow it up than to let us live there.”

“That freezes,” she said.

“We have this kinda luau now,” he told her, and flipped a couple of buttons on the little guitar, which was actually the remote for the holo suite. It changed into a pokey little room with no color, no sea, no sand, and a bunch of ragged, discouraged-looking people tending some anemic plants.

He switched it off and they sat in the blue-gridded room she remembered.

“I’m sorry, Ke-ola. But that’s all past, isn’t it?”

“Is it? That’s no place for us. Only place good for us is too good for us, the company says. Madame brought me here, but so what? Where my family lives now, they’re gonna die. They live in little boxes and little fake ecobubbles. We are people of the sea bubbles, not ecobubbles. I miss my family, Murel. I love them. But I got no place with them. One more mouth, one more breather, one more kid to hear the ghost stories about what all of us used to be.”

He never sobbed, but the tears kept rolling until they didn’t. Murel patted him on the shoulder, feeling helpless. His questions didn’t have any good answers that she could think of. The funny thing was, he was mourning a place he’d never been as much as he he mourned the family that was too big to hold him now. She felt that way about being away from Petaybee sometimes, except she knew she and Ro would be going back sometime soon. Wouldn’t they?

W
ORKING WITH
D
R.
Mabo was frustrating. Ronan thought that once she got used to him, she’d be ready to teach him the things she hinted that only she knew. But usually, even after several weeks of working together, when he tried to ask her a question, she’d grunt impatiently and wave him aside.

Boredom was what finally forced him to confront her. He couldn’t take much more beaker washing, computer dusting, or floor sweeping. “Professor Mabo?”

“Um?”

“I have a really important question to ask you. It’s the reason I wanted to work with you, so I’d appreciate it if you’d be kind enough to give me your attention for a few moments.”

“I’m very busy, Ronan. Can this not wait?”

“It cannot, Professor. Well, I mean, I suppose it could, but you are always very busy, Professor, and if I’m to give up my free time to help you, the answer to this question is what I would like in return.”

She sighed and pushed back from the worktable. “Go on,” she said, with a grimace that he thought was supposed to pass for a smile.

“It’s about your research, Professor. I—well, Murel and I both—are really interested in shape-shifters. We have some species on Petaybee that shift shapes, and we were wondering—do they ever get to control when they turn from one thing to another or is it strictly environmental or what?”

“Gracious, boy, I don’t know how to answer that. For one thing, it surely varies from species to species. But as far as I know now, the change is always triggered by something environmental. A full moon is a classic example, although how susceptible species who live on planets that have more than one moon respond to that is not something we’ve had much chance to study. Tidal or seasonal differences are another influence. But I have not been able to document much of this material—a lot of what has been written about shape-shifters is more folklore or myth than science. Probably, back on Old Terra, the stories were exaggerated or untrue. Sometimes they were about an illness that afflicted certain people. The only creatures it’s ever been said that totally control their own shape-shifting are vampires. Which is, of course, a to-tally silly and romantic notion that is a combination of a misunderstanding of the nature of certain flying mammals and a high incidence of live burials during epidemics way back in the ancient history of European Terra. None of these things have conscious control, Ronan. None of them are capable of such complex thought.”

“But how about the ones that change from human to something else—some animal maybe?”

“Human to animal? Like a werewolf? Oh, child, these things don’t occur with humans. We are far too complex in our physiology and too complicated in our mental and emotional makeup to translate easily into some other beast of lesser intelligence. Why, if a human were to transform into a beast, most likely the person would stay the beast because it would not know what to do to change back again, unless by accident. I thought your question was a serious one, Ronan.” She waved him away with an air of dismissal. “Now, finish your sweeping while I finish this entry, and I will call the flitter so I can take you home.”

Ronan was only too happy to oblige, and that night he confided in Murel that at least they didn’t have to worry about the professor suspecting their own shape-shifting abilities since she didn’t believe it ever happened to humans.

“She was really scornful about it,” he said.

“It could be just an act,” Murel said.

“Well, if it is, she did a good one,” he answered. “She thinks it only happens to what she calls lesser beasts. She’s not so bad, really. I know she doesn’t seem to like
you
anymore, but she was decent to me. It was boring, but when I came right out and asked her, she gave me a straight answer right away.”

“Don’t trust her,” Murel said. “You’re not as good at figuring people out as you think.”

“Well, neither are you. You always think you’re cleverer than I am, and you’re just jealous because I got picked instead of you.”

“I’m not either. I certainly don’t want to spend all of my free time slaving away for a teacher I don’t even
like.
And you do realize, don’t you, that she had promised before she came that Rory could be her assistant, then gave the job to you?”

“Not my fault. Rory isn’t that keen on the subject anyway, and I am.”

“Yeah, now that she’s chosen you as her favorite.”

“Look, let’s not fight about this, okay? I’m finding out stuff we need to find out, and that’s the only reason I’m doing it. It’s for both of us, and Da too. I wish we’d hear from him soon.”

“Me too. Marmie said Johnny had been delayed on Petaybee but he’s due back in a couple of days. He ought to be bringing us an answer then.”

P
ROFESSOR
M
ABO WAS
unusually nice to everyone in class the next day, and when she met Ronan in the lab, she wore a rueful smile. “My boy, I realize I was unfair to you yesterday. You had every right to ask the very intelligent questions you asked, and I—what is the expression?—blew you off. One of the reasons I chose you as my assistant is that I noticed you displayed an interest in these mutant shape-shifting or bimorphic life forms. I had a headache yesterday and was in pain, and therefore in an unreceptive mood.”

Ronan wondered if she had a headache every day then, since she hadn’t seemed any more grumpy yesterday than every time he’d seen her since she arrived. Even if she was nice to him, she was always cutting to someone—usually Rory, although lately she’d been picking on Murel too.

“As a matter of fact, your questions anticipated our experiments for today. I was vague on the subject of the shape-shifters, or bimorphs as we call them. Today we will be working with one.”

“Live?” he asked.

“Certainly. I could not very well expect it to alter its shape if it is already dead.”

Ronan perked up. “What is it, then?”

“A Honokuan sea turtle is its common name. Or one of them.”

“What other names does it have?” Ronan asked. Did she mean scientific names or something like Seymour the Sea Turtle? He was afraid to ask. Although Dr. Mabo seemed to be in what, for her, passed for a talkative and friendly mood, she definitely believed there was such a thing as a stupid question.

However, she continued explaining. “That is what we shall discover today,” she said. “I have it on good authority that this creature is able to alter its shape into quite another species altogether. Once we properly stimulate it to perform its metamorphosis, then we will know what other names would best describe it.”

“Like what?”

“For instance, if we discover that the turtle turns itself into one species of—oh, bear, for instance, we would naturally name it ‘chelonia mydas trans ursidae Mabo,’ to indicate me as the first to identify it.”

Ronan thought about that for a moment. That would make him and Murel what? Pinnipedia; Phocidae Sheperdus trans homo sapiens Shongili? Since Da was a scientist too and the first selkie on Petaybee, so the first to “discover” their species. Whatever. Just so they never had to be named after Dr. Mabo. “What if it just stays a turtle?” he asked before he could stop himself.

She snorted a snort that clearly accused him of lacking the proper attitude.

“Well, where is it?” he asked.

She pointed to a long metal tank he had mistaken for a covered sink before. He wondered why the tank wasn’t glass if she wanted to observe the creature. “Please fetch the turtle for me. You will have to open the front of the tank by sliding the panel upward and encouraging the creature to emerge. Careful, it is rather large and heavy, although it is relatively young. A fully mature adult may weigh as much as 115 kilograms, or 253 pounds, but this one only weighs roughly eleven kilograms, or about twenty-five pounds. A sturdy lad like you should have no problem managing that much. Still, it has a nasty beak. If it bites you, nothing will make it let go short of death.”