Deluge (20 page)

We can probably keep most people alive with the help of the aliens, until rescue arrives anyway.

You saw what that mess was like on the mainland,
Ronan scoffed.
How long do you think it’s going to take them to notice what’s happening over here and divert some attention to us? And when they do, we’ll be right back where we started—worse even. They’ll round everyone up and take the kids to prison too, and they’ll know then that we’re selkies and—

Stop it, laddie. You’re borrowing trouble. Let’s just do what we can do when it needs doing and keep going till we can’t anymore. Then, if we can, we’ll figure out what else to do. Deal?

All of that goes without saying. Just trying to think ahead,
he said.

Well, don’t. It’s depressing.

On shore, Kai ignored everyone else while she danced and sang with more energy than she had shown since the twins first met her. Pele and the other kids were sweating as they danced. The adults looked exhausted, quivering with the effort of maintaining the beat set by Kai’s chant. Kai was growing hoarse. Finally, Pele shook her head, then changed her dance and began another chant, at first in harmony with her sister’s, then when Kai noticed what she was doing and stopped chanting and changed her dance, Pele led.

Ronan and Murel couldn’t hear what she said above the roaring of the waters and the rumble and crash of the mountain, but the gestures she used were repeated by Rory and the others trying to help. These gestures had lots of calming motions, and the sort that a guard would use to say “Stop.” Her hands flowed around her. She covered her face, then seemed to cover her head and cower, and then made beseeching gestures, hands out, palms up and cupped.

Through the jungle a wave of lava flowed toward them, far more daunting than the walls of water they had faced before.

Everyone except Pele and three of her sisters broke ranks and ran for the water. The four girls continued dancing.

Ronan flopped ashore on his front flippers and shook himself hard to dry.

What are you doing, Ro? You’re going to be seal steaks in another two seconds.

I’m going to drag them out here, is what. Wait.

But Murel didn’t wait. There was only one of him and four girls, so she too flopped ashore and dried off and then ran forward into the searing heat, grabbing at arms. The girls, as if entranced by the flames, jerked away and kept dancing.

“Are you nuts? This volcano doesn’t know you. It won’t—” She started to tell them that it wouldn’t listen.

But then, suddenly, the lava wave sank and drained into two channels that flowed away down either side of the compound and off into the sea, leaving char and cooling red-black lava behind.

Ronan and Murel turned back to the sea to help those trying to stay afloat, but as they were changing, Pele and her sisters dashed past them and jumped in.
I guess they figured there was no sense in trying the volcano’s patience for too long,
Murel said.

Yeah, especially since “patient” is not usually a word used to describe volcanoes.

The twins swam back out to help support the swimmers. Some of the first to hit the water were flagging now. Zuzu perched with her back paws on Adrienne’s shoulders, her front paws on top of her mistress’s head. The
Piaf
’s first mate dog-paddled beyond the rocks, which was about as far as any of them had gone in their efforts to evade the lava.

Already the bath-warm water was growing uncomfortably hot, just from the lava flowing into it on the side of the ocean. If a more direct stream came at them, this would not be far enough to avoid being boiled alive. Ronan and Murel, with Sky’s help, began herding the swimmers farther out to sea. They didn’t want them to be in range of the volcanic area where the city-ship was moored, but if the refugees from the land were in sight of the sursurvu, Kushtaka’s people could find them and help keep them afloat more easily. Unfortunately, what had seemed not terribly far to the seal twins was impossible for full-time humans.

People kept sinking beneath the waves, and Ronan and Murel kept diving to push them back to the surface again.

After doing this several times, they stayed underwater and waited for people to sink, then pushed them up in assembly-line fashion. Soon they grew tired.
If Kushtaka’s people are helping, they’re keeping a low profile,
Ronan observed sourly.

Maybe they’re waiting until people have nearly drowned so many times they’ll think they’re imagining being saved by otters again. I think I sense a myth budding here.

Providing anyone survives to spread it,
Ronan said, turning toward the surface again while scanning for bodies on their way down. He saw none. He noticed some swimmer’s feet, but no one sinking, and as he watched, two pairs of feet vanished.
Maybe they have arrived, after all. Maybe they’re just doing it differently than before. Look, sis!

They surfaced together and saw flitters skimming the water, human crew members leaning out of hatches to scoop up grasping swimmers.

They must have another installation near here, maybe a moon, and sent ships from there,
Ronan said.
The rescuers are wearing Corps uniforms.

Not all of them,
Murel said, as three flitters lifted off and three more bearing Federation insignia hovered over the water.
Those are Federation. Maybe they were coming to investigate Marmie’s disappearance…

Or maybe they were coming to try her for her supposed crimes. Look, there she is,
he said, pointing at a figure whose dark curls were sleeked to her head like Sky’s fur, while in the water nearby bobbed the apparently two-headed creature that was Adrienne and Zuzu.

With the rest of them gone, we can concentrate on helping Marmie and Adrienne remain free,
Murel said grimly. As relays of flitters picked up swimmers and disappeared into the red- and fuchsia-fired clouds with them, the twins dived beneath the waves and swam for the legs and feet they had pinpointed as belonging to Adrienne and Marmie.

Sky streaked past them.
Hah! Otters are good cat savers. I will save Zuzu. She is used to it now.

But just as they were within nudging distance of the women and the cat, the legs were pulled to the surface.

Ronan and Murel rose and popped their heads out of the water in time to see the women disappear through the hatch of a Company Corps flitter. Nearby, Sky had an ungrateful Zuzu by the scruff of her neck while she churned her sopping paws and snarled at him.
Oaf! Buffoon! Untooth me!

Sky, bewildered and hurt at this display of feline ingratitude, dropped her into the water. Murel dived to catch the cat on her back and suffered scratches for her efforts. The cat surfaced under her own power and cat-paddled with perfect aplomb.

They’ve spotted us!
Ronan said when the flitter continued hovering and a uniformed body reappeared at the hatch.

“There you are, you scamps,” said Rick O’Shay, grinning down at them. “I don’t know how we’re to lift you great lunks of sea life up from there now, but I suppose you’ll do grand on your own. Follow us to the mainland. We’ve a few things to sort out there.”

CHAPTER 22

T
HE TWINS DESPERATELY
wanted to sleep throughout the tedious legal proceedings but didn’t dare.

“I feel as though I’ve been awake for weeks,” Murel said. They sat on concrete benches inside the thoroughly dank common room in the main prison. The alien waterspout had thrown the bureaucracy of the prison into such disarray that they were ill prepared for the inspections of the illustrious Federation Council members and Marmion’s influential friends in the company. Since Colonel Cally and his superiors and allies had arrived just before the deluge to bring final charges and sentencing down upon Marmie and the others arrested in her name, everyone involved except those back on Petaybee was represented. The twins had the considerable responsibility of representing their planet and people in the proceedings.

They were, of course, in human form, wearing prison tunics over their dry suits. They listened to the Kanaka witnesses testify to the state of their planet before Marmie and the twins had come to rescue them. Sky came out the hero as the Kanakas said that Marmie’s “aumakua, the ship’s otter” had located them in the underground passages and revealed their hiding places to the rescuers. They told of their callous abandonment by the
Custer
and its crew and begged to be allowed to resettle to Petaybee, where they had gone of their own free will. Some Federation officials had tried to tell other officials that the Kanakas were actually under contract to the Federation and
had
no free will, but Marmie’s very unhappy and very powerful allies, rounded up by Johnny Green and the other hijackers, were having none of that.

Cally’s crew recounted its side of the story, and then Cally and his own Federation allies told of their “arrest” of Marmion and her employees and passengers and the seizure of her assets. The
Piaf
’s crew and the crew of the space station gave evidence that cast a completely different light on what Marmion’s top legal representative, who had first heard of her arrest when the hijacked ship contacted him at his home, termed “piracy.” He declared he would file countercharges of kidnapping and false arrest, as well as assault and battery charges for the beatings, starving, and even the head shaving of the prisoners.

It hurt to see them lower their eyes and wince when their children ran questing hands over their ears and bare scalps. Newly reunited with them, the children hardly believed that their parents were still alive, after the lies they’d been told. Except for Rory and his parents, who laughed when they saw each other and embraced gratefully.

When the court recessed, Murel and Ronan sought a word with Johnny. After that, on the second day of the trial, Marmie, Adrienne, Johnny, Pet, Rick, and everyone but the highest Federation and company officials on their side arrived in the common room with hairless heads.

Marmion still looked like a queen, but a queen of ancient Egypt perhaps, her finely shaped head balanced like a delicate egg on her slender neck, her chin raised, her eyes forward. “
Alors,
this is so much cooler!” she remarked. “And makes bathing much more facile,
n’est-ce pas
?”

Only Zuzu and Sky kept their fur on, and they were sensibly curled up together on the bench between the twins and Johnny. None of Marmie’s people had been returned to cells, but by the end of the second day, it looked as if that was about to change.

The prosecution called Marmie’s allies to the stand, one by one, and asked them how they had learned of her “detainment.” They all said they had been contacted by her captain, Johnny Green. The prosecution asked how, if Marmion was being persecuted, they supposed Johnny got a ship and crew, and they said their understanding was that the governors of Petaybee and some local villagers had found one they loaned to their guests for the purpose. They said it with a straight face.

Then they called Johnny to the stand and acted like they were tricking him into “admitting” that he and the others, with the “criminal complicity of the rogue world’s denizens,” had hijacked a Federation ship and no doubt murdered the crew.

“They wouldn’t do that!” Ronan yelled, jumping up from his seat. Murel agreed, but pulled Ronan down beside her again.

Not the murdering part, at least,
she said to him.

Instead of trying to shut her brother up, the prosecutor, a handsome blond man with a lineless face and eyes as hard and cold as an ice floe in winter, dismissed Johnny and called Ronan to the stand.

“State your name.”

“Ronan Born-for-Water Maddock-Shongili.”

The prosecutor’s eyes narrowed a bit at Ronan’s middle name but he said nothing. Murel grinned to herself. He was going to go slitty-eyed if she told him her middle name was Monster Slayer.

“How did you come to be here, Ronan?” the prosecutor asked, using his first name in a condescending tone so everybody was sure he knew he was talking to a child.

“My sister and I went to
Versailles Station
looking for people to help Marmie—Madame de Revers Algemeine—after she and the
Piaf
were captured by Cally and his buddies.”

“How did you get there?”

“We hitched a ride.”

“On the hijacked ship?”

“No.”

“How then?”

“With friendly aliens,” Ronan said.

You shouldn’t have told them that,
Murel said.

They won’t believe me anyway. Besides, it’s going to come out sooner or later. The Federation is about space exploration. They have to realize there are nonhuman cultures out there.

They probably do. They just don’t think they’re in here, as well as out there.

“The witness will please answer the question seriously, out of respect for the court,” the prosecutor said sternly.

“I did,” Ronan said, widening his eyes and trying to look innocent.

“Council is sidetracking this proceeding. How the witness believes he arrived at the station is immaterial to this case,” Marmie’s lawyer told the tribunal. “What does matter is how he and his twin sister were forcibly removed from
Versailles Station
along with the other personnel in Madame Algemeine’s employ or under her protection.”

“We were discussing the hijacking of an Intergal Company Corps vessel,” the prosecutor argued.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Ronan said. “I think we were already gone. But my folks and the people in Kilcoole wouldn’t murder anyone, and neither would Johnny. They just borrowed the ship, like they told you.”

“Your unbiased faith is touching, Ronan,” the prosecutor said sarcastically. “You’re excused.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Marmie’s lawyer said to the tribunal, “council spoke somewhat dismissively of Ronan’s faith in the innocence of his friends and relatives, but so far, most of what we have seen and heard of this situation hinges on what people believe happened during these incidents. How the Corps vessel came into the possession of its present crew, or how the Maddock-Shongili twins arrived at
Versailles Station,
has little to do with our inquiries concerning the kidnapping of Madame Algemeine and her staff and guests, and the piracy of her ship. We have seen that the crimes she is alleged to have committed were acts of mercy, and her arrest was an act of petty vengeance on the part of some, avarice on the part of others. I move for immediate dismissal, after which some of these other matters may be pursued.”

The prosecution was listening to the Federation official who had been whispering to Cally off and on during the trial. Now he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, please do not dismiss the accused yet. We can bring witnesses to show that this woman and her accomplices have committed other unspeakable illegal acts and—”

“I’m sure the prosecution can bring witnesses, but that does not mean they would be truthful ones. Many vested interests are represented in this room, before this tribunal.”

“Prison officials have observed certain acts—” the prosecution began.

“And Madame Algemeine and her first mate have gathered certain evidence that casts doubt on any allegations made by those same officials. Evidence of corruption, sadistic cruelty, unlawful detention, and even murder of prisoners in custody.”

He pulled a tiny object from the pocket of his ship suit and handed it to the head of the tribunal. “Perhaps the tribunal would care to view this, which has little bearing on the present case but offers many answers to past disappearances, deaths, and power plays among company and Federation officials. Madame Algemeine and her officer copied these records while hiding in the archival vault in the lower level of this structure.”

“She was never down there!” the prison warden objected, although he wasn’t supposed to speak without permission. Murel enjoyed shushing him with a finger to her lips.

“Oh, but she was. But again, that is another matter.”

In the end, after unsnarling the tangle of accusations, counter-accusations, crimes, alleged crimes, lies, and misdirections, the tribunal found Marmion and her people blameless of wrongdoing, though they didn’t say as much for her accusers.

The twins cheered and hugged each other and every bald person they could lay their hands on.

Maybe we can get some sleep now!
Murel said, yawning.

Or go catch a meal without worrying about Mabo,
Ronan said.
Where
is
Mabo, anyway?

I think she saw which way the wind was blowing and decided it was time to disappear. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her since we tried to get the aliens to help us evacuate people.

We should let them know I, er, mentioned them. I wonder if they’ll want to stay here or come back to Petaybee?

Murel snorted.
That’s a no-brainer. There’s nothing here for anybody. I even feel sorry for the squid getting stuck here. It’s hot all the time, Ronan. Who would want to live like that?

Apparently people do,
he said.

They snuck away from the proceedings, thinking they were leaving Sky still nestled next to Zuzu, and slipped into the water, swimming out to the squid trough, where they very carefully remained close to the surface.
Mraka? Puk? Don’t suppose we could get a lift in the fishing beam, could we?

Halfway across the trough they heard a ripple behind them, as of something coming at them very fast through the water, and Sky said,
Hah! Where river seals go, otters go too.

We thought you were napping with the cat,
Murel said.

The cat does not need help napping,
Sky replied.
So I followed you instead.

Before they could say anything else, the telltale bump of surface water that hid the projecting whirling ray beneath it shot out like a frog’s tongue and snapped them into it.

They were so used to it now, they had come to regard it as Sky did, a wild ride and rather fun.

Mraka and Puk were in the control room, but Kushtaka, Tikka, Kisha, and some of the others they had met were there too.

Why do I get the feeling this is good-bye?
Murel asked.
You want to stay here, on your original home planet, don’t you?

Kushtaka said,
Stay for now. There are no sharks here to eat my children.

The humans who’ve been in charge here are just as nasty as the sharks on Petaybee,
Ronan said.
Fortunately they haven’t found your city yet.

One did,
Kushtaka said.
We’re sorry.

Sorry why?

We didn’t mean for it to happen,
Mraka said.
She came after you left. We let her in. We thought she might be like you. But—well, you can see. Bring the human,
she said, and four of her people left, to return a short time later bearing the stiff uniformed body of the small dark scientist.
She did not survive our atmosphere. We tried to push her back out into the sea when she began dying, but she was gone. Do you want her back?

Murel and Ronan exchanged looks.
What do you usually do with your dead?

We give them as fuel to the vent.

The twins consulted each other briefly. Would Rory want her back? Would his mother? They thought not.

Seems like as good a place as any for her to me,
Ronan said.

They watched while the package that had contained their enemy was shoved into the glow below. Just a brightness enveloping darkness, a feeling of heat, a dip of the power, and nothing was left of Mabo.

That was the end of it then. They said their good-byes.

Mraka and Puk waited for them to jump into the ray again, but after a quick glance they declined.
We’ve a lot to think about. We want to catch fish and have a leisurely swim and hope everything will be sorted by the time we return to the mainland.

Good,
Tikka said.
I will swim with you. Sky and I will fish and play along the way.

Sky and Tikka popped out through the dome’s membrane.
Aw,
Murel said.
I think the little guy likes her.

It’s about time he got interested in other otters,
Ronan said.
But trust Sky to go in for long-distance romance when it comes to choosing a mate.

Maybe Kushtaka will change her mind. Or maybe Tikka will bring some of them back with her and start her own colony. Oh, Ronan, I do want Sky to be happy.

He could stay,
Ronan said.
Surely he knows that.

I don’t want him to do that! I’d miss him terribly.

Me too, but you know, when we get home, I think we should make some other friends as well. Boy friends, girl friends, not all of them completely other species from us, you know?

What are you saying?

Well, take Pele, for instance. She’s really young, but kind of cute, don’t you think?

I hadn’t noticed. But she’s noticed
you.
She looks at you like you’re Petaybee’s gift to little girls.

He dived, splashing her hard with a flip of his tail.