Changelings

Marmie's not cross. You're the one being bossy. What do you think? Now that we don't have Nanook and Coaxtl to mind us you get to be in charge? Not likely, my girl!

Now you're being snotty. I just want us to make a good impression. Marmie is our friend but she's a very important lady.

So? Mum and Da are governors. That makes them just as important.

Yes, but not us. Mum and Da are our parents. They have to love us. Marmie doesn't.

Maybe she'll get mad at us and send us back, Ronan said. I wouldn't mind.

You'd mind by the time Mum got done with you, and once she was through, Clodagh would be after us. We'd bring disgrace to all of Petaybee if Marmie sent us back because we were too big a handful for her.

I don't think that will be a -problem. If she gets tired of us, she can just hand us over to the cadre of chauffeurs and their fleet of flitters. With this he began shaking again with another fit of the giggles.

You're impossible, you are, Murel said, and tried to keep a straight face, but then couldn't do it with him tee-heeing all over the place. Apparently, the chauffeur asked Marmie what the children were laughing about, so Ro told Marmie and Marmie told him and he started laughing too, then Marmie. By the time the flitter reached the upper level where Marmie's house was, Murel really had to use the outhouse bad.

But even that was forgotten as she took in as much of Marmie's house as she could.

To begin with, it wasn't a house, it was a whole section of the space station, the upper section.

As the flitter rose to cross the garden and fountains, the broad pathways, and, oh yes, the beautiful little river running around the living area, it seemed as if the house was right on top of the space station, with no hull around it. Space showed all around them, a night sky made large by proximity to the nearest planet and its moons, which seemed even more huge than moons and the sun on Petaybee.

"Don't you worry that you'll fall off?" she asked Marmie, feeling a little dizzy.

"Cool!" Ronan said, and then thought about it and wondered how the water in the fountains could fall and the river could flow and the flowers grow without atmosphere. How, in fact, were they supposed to breathe?

Marmie dimpled mischievously, then reached forward and touched a button. Instant sunrise.

The blackness and the huge planet and moon were eclipsed by a skyscape very much like the one on Petaybee, the sky blue, the sun distant, and everything else had more color too. The flowers became blue and purple, yellow, red, orange, and pink. The grass was green without even a puddle of snow, and the fountains, made of some pretty pink stone, overflowed just enough to cascade into the river.

"How'd you do that?" Ronan wanted to know. He was watching Marmie's hand on the controls instead of looking at the scenery.

"It's just a hologram. What you saw when we came is how it would look with no illusion and no hull. Oh, I do have an observatory-several, in fact, in various strategic locations on different levels. But one feels so closed in living on the station with no real atmosphere or the boundaries of a horizon, so I had the holos created. We can even have weather if you like.

Shall I make it snow?"

"Oh, no. Not when it looks like springtime," Murel said. "It would kill your flowers. But-could we have a thunderstorm? Once in a while, right around breakup, Petaybee throws tantrums, so Da says, and they're ever so exciting."

"In that case I suppose we must have one. I like them too, actually. Do you want lightning or just thunder? Rain? Sheet lightning or the cracked forking variety?"

"Can we have it all please?" Ronan asked.

"With that attitude, you should go far, Mr. Shongili," Marmie said with a smile.

"Could the lightning strike something?"

"Ronan! You want Marmie to burn down her house so you can see how it works?" Murel scolded.

"No need for that. My lightning can only hit virtual trees. We can feel the wind but we will not get wet from the rain or cold from the snow, and once I turn it off, the ground will not be white or wet afterward."

"Oh," Murel said, disappointed. "Then, why do you do it?"

"For a little variety, mood, atmosphere. I can make it rain, you know, by switching the irrigation system from the belowground sprinklers to the overhead ones. And I have a device that will scent the air with that wonderful ozone smell that comes after a rain. So, do you want to see it?"

"Yes," both children said politely. Marmie's fake weather couldn't compete with Petaybee's extremes.

At least, that was how they felt when they first arrived. Everything seemed very tame. The little river was nothing but an oddly shaped swimming pool, with jets in the rocks creating the illusion of riffles or eddies. It never iced over, of course, and there were no other creatures to be discovered along its banks. And there were seldom fish. Even someone with Marmie's resources couldn't keep the artificial stream stocked with enough fish to keep the twins happily catching their own meals for as much as a week.