Changelings (15 page)

Ronan wanted to ask if she meant the death of the turtle or his own death but figured he shouldn’t push his luck. Instead he said, “I thought they just pulled back into their shells when they’re scared. I never heard of attack turtles before.”

“These turtles do not have the ability to retreat into their shells,” she told him.

“So they turn into something else?” he asked.

“Apparently so. I have witnessed the phenomenon briefly, but it was all rather a blur and unfortunately my photographic equipment was not yet unpacked at the time.”

“Before I open the tank, I’d like to know what it changes into,” Ronan said, hanging back. “If it’s really a bear or maybe a crocodile or something, I don’t think I want to see it very much.”

“Of course it’s not a crocodile, you silly boy. I would not have a crocodile on a space station. And I postulated an ursine transformation only as an example. If it were to change into anything aggressive, it probably would have done so previously. It is a vegetarian and not dangerous, except, as I said, for the beak. Mostly it is like others of its kind, torpid and lazy. The tank is kept at fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit, so the cold-blooded creature is quite lethargic now.”

“Okay then,” he said, and lifted the panel by the handle at its top. From inside he heard a slight scrabbling, then, inside his head, a plea.
Help me.

It’s okay,
he told the creature.
I’m a friend.

You understand! Oh, joy! I thought I would never again know communication. Are you a Honu also?

No, I’m a human. Mostly.

Mostly?

I change shapes. The professor says you do too.

So you are also a captive?

No, I’m her assistant. She doesn’t know about me and my sister. At least, I don’t think she does. Anyway, she told me she wants you alive. She just wants to see you change.

Oh, yes, I’m aware of that. Please don’t let her torture me. I may have a hard shell but I’m not very good at withstanding pain.

I don’t think she wants to hurt you.

“Is it coming out, Ronan?” the professor asked.

Are you coming out?

You will protect me?

Yes. I will. And my sister will too. And Marmie. You’ll be safe. All you have to do is change and she’ll probably want you to go right back into the tank.

You speak as if it were a small matter for me to transform before her, and yet you say she does not know that you also transform. So, if I understand you correctly, you are wishing me to do something you yourself are afraid to do?

I’m not afraid. It’s just that our changing is a secret, not just ours. It belongs to the place where we live.

You do not live here?

Well, yeah, we do right now, but—Never mind. Are you coming? You won’t bite me, will you?

Only if you provoke me.

The turtle crawled very slowly from the sand-strewn floor of the tank, struggling out onto the metal table on which the container rested.
Uh-oh! Owww, oooh, my aching flippers! Oh, my shell and scales, I think I’ve broken something. Oh, mercy! I’m sorry, boy, but I can go no farther.
Far more quickly than it had emerged, the turtle backpedaled into the sandy-bottomed tank.

Ronan felt sympathy pangs in his own arms and legs. He did not weigh as much in proportion to the size of his flippers, when in seal form, as the turtle did, but dry surfaces that didn’t slide or give were more difficult for seals to navigate too. Of course, for him and Murel, it posed no problem since they could quickly morph to their human form so flippers were no longer an issue.

“What is the matter with the wretched creature?” the professor asked.

“Looks like maybe he’s too heavy to take all his weight on his flippers where there’s no give to the surface,” Ronan told her, thinking that if she was such a hotshot biologist she ought to know stuff like that. “I’ll go find some more sand or dirt or something in the ‘ponics garden.”

“You will do no such thing,” his teacher said. “We’ll flip the thing over onto its shell and examine its underside. If its flippers are a problem for it, then perhaps on encountering a situation where the flippers are of no use, it will take its alternate form, which is presumably one that does not have flippers.”

Oh, cruel! Oh, pain and agony! Oh, anguish!
The turtle groaned, and big tears rolled down its face.
Please don’t let her put me on my shell. It’s humiliating and I’m so helpless.

She doesn’t listen to me real well, but maybe when she grabs you, you should bite her. Not me, mind you, her.

I abhor violence.

Why?
Ronan asked. He didn’t underestimate creatures who were not human, but he didn’t ascribe codes of morality to them either.

I’m not fast enough to get away when it starts, usually,
the turtle replied.

Yeah, I can see where that makes sense. But if you could lower your standards long enough to just bite her and hang on, then you won’t have to be fast enough to get away from violence because you’ll be the one being violent. And besides, she sort of expects you to.

No, no. If I bite her, she will retaliate when I finally have to let go. But if I don’t come out at all, she’ll have no choice but to go away and pick on someone else. I hope.
Saying this, the turtle retreated all the way back into the box.

“Never send a boy to do a scientist’s job,” Professor Mabo said. She shoved Ronan aside, shoved the metal tank to the end of the metal table, kept shoving it until half of it was suspended over the floor, then upended it.

Uh-uh-uh-oh!
the turtle cried as it slid out and tumbled, flippers and feet over shell, onto the floor.
Now I’m done for. Don’t let her torture me too long, boy.

Ronan stooped down, picked up the shell in both hands and gently righted the turtle.
I’d tell you to run for it but I don’t imagine that’s a practical suggestion,
he said.

“Now that it’s out in the open, we’ll immerse it and see if that causes it to change,” Dr. Mabo said. “Pick it up, Ronan. Come on now, what’s the matter with you? Afraid of a little turtle bite?”

He wasn’t, actually. He was just trying to pick the poor creature up without harming its flippers or any of its tender bits. The professor slid a wall panel aside to reveal two tanks, each about eight feet deep and just as wide, side by side.

One was clearly freshwater, since it was, well, clear. “In here first,” the professor said. Ronan climbed a metal ladder up to the top of the tank, not an easy thing to do with his hands full of turtle. “Release it!” she snapped. Ronan did, and the turtle first sank like a stone then struggled to right itself. To the professor’s disgust, however, it remained a turtle. It was a very angry and frightened turtle but that was all. It did not change into anything else. It did demand of Ronan,
What is this stuff? It feels like water but there’s no buoyancy.

Ronan said, “Professor, if this is a saltwater turtle and people where it comes from claim that it changes, don’t you think that it probably does its changing in salt water, since that’s where it lives?”

“I suppose so, but we must be thorough in exploring which stimulus is the one that activates the change. Scientific method, my boy, scientific method.” She handed him a sturdy net to fish the turtle out of the freshwater tank, which he did, and directed him to release the creature into the saltwater tank instead.

The turtle, so clumsy on land, was graceful as an otter or a seal in the salt water. Its flippers flowed beside it like wings as they propelled it around the tank. It was in raptures.
Oh, oh, my dear boy, you are a wonder! This is fantastic! Look! Backward roll! Forward roll! Sideways flip!

By then it was quite late, and the professor said, “We can leave it there for now. Tomorrow afternoon we’ll try electrical stimuli and a few other methods to see if we cannot persuade the specimen to display its alternate form.”

Not if I can help it,
Ronan thought, and Murel answered.

Huh?

Professor Mabo locked up the lab with the old-fashioned key, grumbling because she didn’t have access to the high-tech facilities of the station guarded with “proper” retinal scan locks. The flitter waited for them in the corridor outside.

Climbing into the vehicle beside the professor, Ronan sent his sister images of the turtle, telling her,
We have to help it escape.

Where does a turtle escape to on a space station?
she asked.

Eventually back to its home world, if we can manage.

Where’s that?

I dunno, but he said something about a place called Honuania.

That’s on Ke-ola’s world!
Murel said.
Remember his holo? I think he even mentioned the turtles, come to think of it. Called them “the sacred Honu.”

Great, I wonder if he’d have some idea how we can get the turtle back where it belongs.

Marmie could make Professor Mabo return it, couldn’t she?

Maybe, but I’m not sure it would be good to try to make her do anything. She thinks the turtle is her personal property and refers to it as “the specimen.” She might just kill it if Marmie told her she couldn’t have it here. She plans to “stimulate” it with electric shock tomorrow, Murel. She’s trying to make it change into another shape, but the turtle doesn’t understand what she’s talking about. I have to help it get away.

No, you were right the first time, bro.
We
have to help it get away. Just because we’re not together all the time anymore doesn’t mean I don’t still care about the same things you do. I haven’t ever met a sea turtle before, but I’m sure I’d like him. And I’d help him escape torture and maybe death even if I didn’t. You
used
to know that.

Aw, sis, I still do. I’m just worried. And the professor is right here next to me in the flitter so I can’t think straight.

I can. Has she got the key to the lab on her? Can you nick it?

Yeah, as a matter of fact, I think I can. It’s in the pocket of her lab coat. Sometimes you’re really quite brilliant, you know. I suppose that’s why I keep you around.

Yeah, yeah. Now all you have to do is sneak the keys away from her.

Oh, well, if that’s
all. His thought was accompanied by an image of him rolling his eyes.

Look, when the flitter lands,
Murel said,
I’ll create a diversion. I’ve been watching lots of vids. Creating diversions is how people always manage to swipe things. There’s an accomplice or two, and while one person creates a diversion, another one does the actual stealing.

Mum and Da are going to be really pleased to know they’ve sent us here so far from home just so you can study how to lead a life of crime.

Do you want to save the sea turtle or not?

As the flitter set down, Murel ran up to it. Her eyes were red as if she’d been crying, though Ronan suspected an onion had more to do with it, and she seemed very upset. “Professor Mabo,” she whined, poking her head into the flitter and blocking Ronan’s exit. The professor leaned forward to hear her over the flitter’s motor.

“What is it, Murel?”

“When do I get to be your assistant? Ronan and I always share everything, and now he gets to do all this interesting stuff and—and—you don’t let me do anything. It’s not fair! I’m just as smart as he is. I’d be just as much help.” Murel reached in and grabbed the professor’s hands.

Now,
she told Ronan.

The old-fashioned keys were outlined by a bulge in the lab coat pocket nearest Ronan’s fingers. The way Professor Mabo was leaning toward Murel, the pocket was practically in his fingers. He slipped the key from her pocket as easily as he slipped through the water in seal form.

When the professor snatched her hands away from Murel’s grasp with a cutting remark, Ronan jumped out of the flitter.

CHAPTER 17

J
OHNNY
G
REEN KNEW
something was wrong the moment he saw Yana Maddock-Shongili waiting at the dock, her hands folded behind her at parade rest, her eyes first on the ground, then looking up as he climbed off the gantry. Her jaw was set and her eyes were blazing.

“Yana, how good it is to see you. And how is Sean? Busy as always, I imagine.” He always talked too much when something made him nervous, and women wearing that look—especially women with advanced training in sophisticated weaponry—definitely made him nervous.

“He’s not here at the moment, Johnny,” she said, her voice as tense as her jaw looked.

“What a shame. I’ve a message for him from the children.”

“They sent their father a message, but not me? Why? Is it in seal-speak or something?”

“Worse. It’s about biology and genetics and such.”

“I know a bit about that too after all these years on Petaybee. And I am their mother.”

“Yes, Yana—”

“Whatever anyone thinks, I
am
their mother. Petaybee may have given them to me, but it’s a planet. If it had children, they’re—let’s not get into that right now, actually. But my kids are mine too, and they’re half human. I never meant, in sending them off to Marmie, that they should stay three years. I would never have agreed to that.”

The normally taciturn Yana was babbling like a brook let loose from the winter ice. He knew something else was bothering her too, though. It wasn’t just the kids’ absence.

“You can send for them at any time, Yana, you know that. Marmie would never keep them from you. She is only trying to help you keep them safe.”

“Well, their father and I have a disagreement about that. I thought, after they’d been attacked by wolves and almost snatched by those otter-napping biologists, that they’d be safer away. But the truth is, Johnny, I can take care of my children better than anyone else. I’m trained to be able to care for the people under my—you should pardon the expression—command. They are safer with me than anywhere else.”

“I’m sure they’ll be glad to hear you feel that way. You see, the message I had for Sean concerns their own worries about some security issues. I don’t know if you can answer for him, but once the kids are back here, they can ask him themselves.”

“Fine. But we have to find him first.”

“Where is he?” Johnny asked.

“He went for a long swim. Out to the coast, and then to explore a new volcanic mass building up at the equator. He’s been gone ten days now and we’ve heard not a word. That little otter the kids are so fond of seemed to come looking for him, but I am the only member of my family who doesn’t speak otter, so I haven’t a clue what he wants.”

“I don’t speak otter either, Yana, but I do fly helicopters. Has anyone gone out to have a look?”

Yana nodded. “Scads of people. I’ve gone out there too. But the ash and steam are so bad out that way you can’t see anything. Divers can’t get near the place. I don’t know why the man thinks that just because he’s a man who turns into a seal and vice versa that it makes him superseal or something. He’s a mortal man and a mortal seal, and I am mortally afraid he’s got himself into more than he can handle.”

“He’s been in scrapes before, I’m sure. Superseal he may not be, and mortal man he may, but he is a most resourceful fellow and wise in the ways of this world.”

“Yeah, I know, and too cocky by half about it sometimes. Clodagh has been petitioning the planet for news, and Sinead and her posse have joined up with the coastal folk to patrol the shoreline looking for—in case Sean swims ashore. But so far all they seem to be doing is annoying the local wildlife, including some otters. Possibly that’s what the kids’ little buddy is here about.” She gave a small smile that bloomed on her anxious face like a flower in the snow. She had a sense of whimsy, did Yana, and a connection with natural things that had come with her to Petaybee despite her offworld life. “He wants to protest the human invasion of his territory to the Petaybean government officials.”

“Or perhaps he’s just looking for his friends.”

“Yes. I can’t blame him there. As for fly-bys, Bunny has tried it in Frank Metaxos’s single-engine plane, and Aoifa organized the divers right off. But the bloody volcano is hampering any efforts they have to make a good search.”

“It can’t hurt if we go out there again, Yana. You still have a chopper available?”

She shook her head. “Not until the last one that went out searching returns. I can try to get them on the radio, but the com unit has been fried by the quakes and the electromagnetic waves Petaybee is putting out. I guess I could feed you while we wait.”

Johnny had eaten Yana’s cooking in the past. “Let’s just go see if Clodagh has had any luck with the planet, shall we? She could tell us over dinner.”

C
LODAGH SEEMED OUTWARDLY
as imperturbable as ever, large, round as Petaybee, moving about her cabin with a fluid grace that seemed strange in such an enormous woman, as if she were swimming through the air instead of constrained by gravity like the rest of them. Though her eyes lit with welcome when she saw him, Johnny felt she had known all along he’d be showing up at her door. Yana had already told him that she’d been haunting Clodagh when she wasn’t haunting everyone else.

Clodagh dished each of them up a huge bowl of rabbit stew and served it with blueberry bread and rose-hip jelly. As soon as she served the food, however, she slung her pack onto her shoulder and went to the door. “You can leave those things and I’ll clean them when I get back, Yana.”

“Going to the spring?”

“Yes.”

“Wait and we’ll come with you,” Johnny said. “Unless you’d rather be alone.”

“No, you should come. Petaybee is pretty excited right now. I have a hard time getting any attention. We should have a latchkay, but folks are too busy looking for Sean to get organized. A couple more voices might get heard better than just mine.”

On the way to the spring and the communion cave, Johnny nearly fell twice with the force of the quakes shaking the ground. Petaybee had always been prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity, the legacy of its comparatively recent rebirth by terraforming, but this was quite energetic shaking, even so.

“Is it safe in the cave, Clodagh?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I guess.”

Johnny was more reassured by that than he would have been were he not a native-born Petaybean. He was a brave man, the veteran of many years of military service in the Company Corps and numerous hazardous missions on behalf of his civilian employer. Still, he found himself reluctant to step into the tunnels leading deeper into the planet’s grumbling bowels, which sounded as if Petaybee could use a dose of antacid and a nice cup of tea.

However, though the walls shook and the footing was uncertain, though the water sloshed and rolled in the little hot pool as if it were a miniature ocean, they reached the communion cave without incident. The major pieces of rock all seemed inclined to remain where they were.

Clodagh pulled out a thermos and four cups, as if she’d read its mind about the planet needing tea. “There now, just you simmer down, love,” she murmured to Petaybee.

Yana smiled and said quietly to Johnny, “Clodagh’s talking to the planet like she did to me when I was going into labor with the twins.”

“Our Sean is still missing,” Clodagh said conversationally, not to Johnny or Yana. “We’d like him back safe, please.”

After a while other people began filing into the cavernous room, people with drums and other instruments.

They started singing songs. Yana and Johnny sang a couple too, then Yana said, “I can’t sit here. We have to go look. Call Marmie and have her send another chopper if we must, but we have to go back out there. He could be hurt, clinging to a log or something.”

But one of the search copters had returned by then, and the pilot, who had been out since daybreak, was more than willing for Johnny and Yana to take the evening shift. With summer, evening was very long—it lasted until twilight, and somewhere around midnight the sun, which had only taken a slight dip in the sky, began to rise again.

Even so, the weather was hardly bright. Debris in the air almost obscured the sun entirely. Johnny didn’t expect to be able to find anything farther away than the copter’s nose.

Unfortunately, his expectations were fulfilled. He and Yana ventured as close as they could get to the steaming smoking vent in the ocean, closer than they should have gone, but to no avail. They spent hours circling it, waiting while the quakes grew greater and subsided, backing off as the rumbling grew more intense and edging closer when it stilled, but they couldn’t see more than the surface of the water, and even then infrequently. They had to return to refuel twice, and both times he could almost hear Yana fretting that they had missed Sean at the very moment when they might have saved him.

At her insistence, they did the same thing after the next crew went up, and again the following day. They spoke very little the entire time. Yana’s focus was total and she could not seem to bear a word to break into her thoughts.

But finally, after the third search shift, Johnny said, “I think I’d best give you the children’s message, Yana, and you pass it on.”

At once her eyes snapped to his like an eagle fixing claws on its prey.

“They want to know if people can tell about their selkie nature from a blood sample. Their new science teacher, Dr. Mabo, was seen to pocket a handkerchief Murel bled into after cutting herself in lab class. They thought it suspicious and figured their father would know.”

They were on their way back to the helicopter, but Yana turned and pointed in the direction of Johnny’s ship. “Go get them now and bring them home, Johnny,” she said, and as an afterthought added, “Please.”

“I guess the answer would be yes to that question then?”

“I don’t know about the blood, but a Dr. Marie Mabo was one of the scientists—the head one, if I remember correctly—Sean and Sinead arrested for, as Sinead put it, ‘unlawful detention of river otters.’ Mabo and the rest were deported. It may not be the same person, but I don’t want to even entertain the possibility that the woman might be anywhere near my children. Losing Sean is bad enough.”

“I’ll go then,” he said, his hand on her shoulder squeezing a little, trying to be reassuring. “But you’ve not lost him yet. He may have swum to the other pole to get out of the way, for all you know. Communications haven’t been the best so we wouldn’t necessarily know. But I’ll get the kids nonetheless. They’ll be glad to be returning.”