Deluge
- Автор: Маккефри Энн, Скарборо Элизабет
- Серия: The Twins of Petaybee #3
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Deluge». Краткое содержание книги:
Meanwhile, the powerful and avaricious Company is making another attempt to take over the world of Petaybee for its resources, and the twins parents, Yana and Sean, along with the entire planet, must fight for the independence of their sentient world once and for all...
Then there were the leopard seals. They didn’t have them on the northern pole of Petaybee, but the southern pole did, and she had heard tales of how they ate other seals and anything else, including humans sometimes. What had the company been thinking to let them on Petaybee? Da would say everything had a place and a purpose, but she couldn’t think of any reason for such nasty animals except maybe for parka covers.
They continued to swim across the water from the island in the direction of the mainland, hoping their headings would fetch them up there. The water was far warmer than they were used to and made them feel sluggish.
There’s land around here somewhere, Ronan said, sounding exasperated. We know that much, but I could use a nice little rocky island to sun on for a bit now. This is farther than I thought.
It probably won’t seem so long once we know our way, Murel answered.
Their sonar picked up the landmass long before they could see it across the heaving hillocks of the sea.
On the whole, the water was reasonably calm. What swell there was they could easily circumvent most of the time by swimming beneath the surface, where the eating was better anyway. Also, staying underwater gave them the opportunity to study the topography of the sea bottom in order to identify reference points that would make finding their way back and forth less chancy.
There was actually a range of underwater mountains a couple of miles offshore, and a corresponding deep valley or trough. They dove down the far side of a mountain to suss it out.
Through the darkness and the murk they saw ghostly pale, waving tendrils with what looked like leaves on the ends of very long stems. As they drew nearer, they could see that the stalks grew from beds of shorter stalks, like grass, all of it waving, rising out of the deep ocean to meet them, seeming to reach for them.
Seeming nothing! Before they had quite seen enough to be able to count the number of blades in each cluster or how many clusters there were, they were staring into huge bulging eyes.
Hello, Ronan greeted them. What are you called? We’re selkies, seals right at the moment, as you see, but often human beings. We’re from a planet called Petaybee and we don’t have anyone like you there. What are you?
Hungry. The thought was not in any language they knew but the sentiment was perfectly clear. The leaf ends of the long tentacles were close enough now for them to see the suckers on them, and the barbs in the suckers. Four pairs of huge unblinking eyes grew even more huge as the creatures rose up.
Okay, Murel said to Ronan, we’ve seen that there are large animals. You’ve introduced us properly and said hello. Now let’s get out of here, shall we?
Why should they attack us when there are all of these lovely fish around? Ronan asked, but it was a rhetorical question, as he had already turned his nose toward the surface.
Before she could reply, she saw a whiplike movement from the corner of her eye, and a tentacle lashed out and dragged Ronan backward. He screamed.
His captor’s other tentacle was engaged in fending off its three companions, who seemed momentarily more interested in demanding that it share Ronan than in capturing Murel. Nevertheless, she shot toward the surface. She couldn’t do Ro any good if she was in the same position he was. Two of the creatures abandoned the one who had Ro and followed her at a distance, but when she was about halfway to the surface they fell back.
She broke through the water, caught her breath, and dived again, but Ronan and his captors were nowhere to be found. Frightened, she called to him, using her sonar. Hold on, Ro, I’m coming!
It’s dragging me down, he replied at last, and through him she sensed the painful suckers that held him in the constricting grip of the large tentacle pulling him toward the thing’s beak.
Can’t you slip out somehow?
No. It’s like being bitten by a school of sharp-toothed fish hanging on for dear life.
Bite it!
Can’t reach…
Murel’s sonar homed in on him and helped her evade the tentacles that were attempting to snag her flippers or head. One passed close to her nose and she snapped at it, tearing away a rubbery writhing chunk. It tasted like cat pee smelled, strong and full of ammonia.
Another tentacle had begun reaching for her, but when she bit the first one, the second one contracted as if with the pain, and the creature gave off a squeaky-feeling subvocalization. So it had a central nervous system of some kind. Good. She meant to hurt it until it turned her brother loose.
Suddenly the water around her grew even darker and she could no longer see the creature, though her sonar told her it was there and she paid very close attention to where its appendages-and its friends-were.
She had to reach Ro before the monster pulled him to a depth where seals could not survive.
Swimming through the opaque water, she dove nose first into Ro, who was being dragged toward the creature and the bottom at the same time.
She wished she were in human form and had hands and maybe a knife or a harpoon as well.
Ronan felt her coming and sent a warning, full of pain and fear: Look out for the hooks. If you bite it, the barbs will sink into your mouth and it’ll have you too.
Using her sonar more precisely than she ever had before, she maneuvered around the tentacles, out of reach of the waving arms and away from Ro, caught the creature’s fin in her mouth, then pulled her flippers forward and raked the body with her claws. Petaybean seals had long, strong, curved claws at the ends of their flippers to break through the ice on rivers or haul themselves onto icebergs. Hers came in handy for climbing higher onto the squidlike creature, giving her teeth another place to bite it as she worked her way toward the eyes, clawing and biting tracks and holes in the soft flesh as she went. Its eyes were at the front of this solid bodylike part, and she knew that its brain probably was too. One long tentacle was occupied with trying to feed Ro to the body. She just had to stay out of the way of the remaining tentacle and the arms and tear her way through to something vital or sensitive enough to make it release Ro and- Mine! Ro’s captor broadcast the distinctly possessive thought.
The club end of the tentacle of another squid lashed down at Murel, but she threw her weight sideways, still hanging on with flippers and mouth. The barbed and suckered appendage grazed her face on the side. Her fur provided some small amount of protection, but pain still shot through her cheek and into her eye socket and head. She rolled over and over with the squid’s body in her grasp, while the long, barbed tentacle rolled too, a loop of it wrapping around her shoulders, its suckers latching onto her hide.
Mine! the second squid echoed as it unwound itself slightly. Murel felt Ronan’s relief as he slipped from its slackened grasp. It flailed out to recapture him, the tentacle bobbing and weaving like a huge snake confused about where to strike, but he propelled himself upward and avoided the clubbed feeder tentacle, which instead connected with the other attacking squid.
Let go, sis, I’m free. Ro’s thought-voice penetrated her concentration. Let go and surface. It’s diving!
Can’t. I’m caught, she said. Between the tentacle and alien body compressing her throat and the pressure of the dive, the breath she’d stored was being squeezed out of her. Bite the one attacking me in the butt, Ro, but look out for other tentacles.
Let go of her, you multiarmed freak! She heard Ro’s challenge as if it came from far away. Another tentacle lashed out from somewhere but she was so weak she could no longer tell which of the two monsters it belonged to.
Soon she would not have enough breath to surface. Could seals drown? She felt light-headed already.
For a moment longer she was dimly aware of Ro’s thought-voice, and then her mind suddenly went as dark as the ink-stained water.