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...
“I realize, Ronan, that since you served as my research assistant previously, you are the most qualified applicant for the present opening. However, since you are to be the subject of the current experiments, I need a new assistant. This girl has showed initiative and furthermore seems to have some sort of a grudge against you. But don’t worry. I won’t let her harm you any more than necessary.”
When he had first stepped in from the sunlight, the inside of the small structure seemed dark and featureless, but now he saw that besides a desk, chair, and a metal table, there was a sturdy stand supporting a clear-sided tank about the size of a deep bathtub. It was filled with water, and for a moment he thought there might be fish in it-snacks for him? He didn’t think so. Mabo didn’t strike him as the considerate type.
“Get in,” she said, pointing to the tank.
He frowned at the tank, and another bolt of pain ran through him. “I can’t!” he said, hating the whine in his voice. “It’s too high.”
Kai walked to a shadowed corner and pulled out a ladder, which she attached to the top of the tank, then pointed to him and the ladder.
He didn’t want more agony. He climbed in, mooning Mabo and Kai as he lowered himself into the tank.
His feet began changing into his flippered tail as soon as they touched water, and he slid down, eager to cover himself with water and fur.
“Stop right there,” Mabo said before he could sit in the water. So there he was, tail to the knees, bare human thighs bound at the knees by his own transition. Mabo climbed the ladder and leaned over the edge of the tank, holding something other than the control to the collar. Despite the heat, Ronan shivered as the back of her hand brushed his skin. He felt a sharp sting just where his tail met his leg, then another one, and jumped, knocking into Mabo. She turned her face slowly sideways to meet his gaze, allowing her eyes to flick meaningfully to her hand. He held perfectly still as she straightened herself on the ladder and climbed down it. Then, while she turned to prepare some slides, he examined the sore spot. The water was bloody.
“Ow,” he said.
“I never promised it wouldn’t hurt,” she said. “I have to take specimens. You’ll get used to it.”
“Have you tried it on yourself?” he asked.
“Of course not. I’m a human being all the time.”
“So?”
“So if you don’t quit whining and leave me to conduct my work in peace, I’ll give you more of this to whine about.” The pain slashed through him again. He cried out before he could keep his vow to not give her the satisfaction. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t even paying attention to him anymore. Kai was out of his range of vision, behind him somewhere, which didn’t thrill him either.
He wished he could train himself to think past the pain caused by the collar. Whatever Mabo said, he knew she didn’t want to damage him, because then she wouldn’t have a live specimen, so even though the collar hurt like mad, it probably wasn’t doing him any real harm.
What hurt most was his tail. It was not designed to have his dry body standing on it. He eased himself slowly, slowly, down the side of the tank so he could sit. He didn’t want another taste of the collar, but he didn’t want to crush his tail either, which would mean his legs and feet would be broken when the tail changed into them again.
“Doctor, Doctor!” Kai said.
Mabo looked over and her eyes narrowed. He expected another stab of pain from the collar, but instead she stood, both hands closed, and said, “I was going to do this a bit slower, but now that you’re down that far, stick your head under too. Not your shoulders and torso, mind you, just your head. And leave it there until I tell you otherwise.”
He meant to obey, tried to obey, but the tank was too narrow and the water too deep if he tried it one way and too shallow another.
Finally Mabo said, “Fine then, Kai, you hold him around the waist and stick his head under.”
The big Kanaka girl climbed the steps, her heavy gravity body making the tank slosh and shake with each rung. She grabbed Ronan by the hair, then under the armpits, and hauled him up until she could get an arm around his body where his waist met his tail.
Though it seemed to him she lifted him as he would one of Clodagh’s cats, though he’d have been gentler, she complained, “Ugh. He’s really heavy.”
He started to return the compliment, but before he could, she took hold of the back of his head and bent him double, shoving his face into the water.
MUREL CALLED AND called, both mentally and by using her sonar song, but she heard nothing from Ronan. Not a peep. Surely they wouldn’t just kill him? They might not mean to, but accidentally? The thought panicked her until she realized with an inner certainty so concrete that if it had been an anchor it would have sunk to the bottom of the sea: If he were dead, I’d know. Followed by: Wouldn’t I?
Sky popped his head above the surface and said, Ronan river seal is not here. He is hiding?
I wish! Someone is hiding him.
We can find him! Sky said. Where are the best hiding places here?
They’re ashore, Sky, but there are nets between us and the shore. I think we’re going to have to trust the people on the boat to take us ashore-maybe in disguise.
What is disguise?
Pretending to be someone you are not.
I will pretend to be another otter? Which one? There is only one sky otter and I am the one.
I didn’t mean you. I meant me. I will pretend to be another human. There are no other otters of any kind here that I’ve found, so you’d better just hide. Come on, she said, and began swimming toward the boat, only to find it was no longer where they had left it.
She sang her sonar song again and found it, but it was very far away. Cat? she said. I thought the boat was going to stay with us?
The capitaine thought that you were going to stay near to the boat. We received a message that is causing us to return to the prison.
I thought he was going to tell you to let us know if there was a change in plans.
He did, but first I was eating and now I perform my toilette. I cannot do it all at once. So I tell you now. We return to the shore of the prison. If you wish to be with the boat, you must also come.
The otter swims very quickly. He can catch up, of this I am certain.
Sky found nothing to quibble with about the cat’s attitude, and Murel, raised with Nanook and Coaxtl and Clodagh’s orange-tabby pride, realized she was very tired and worried indeed. Of course, the cat had better things to do than take messages for them. She was a cat, after all.
No matter. Before long the boat was in sight again and the captain spied them with his binoculars. Soon they were back on board. Murel changed, and wore the now-dry T-shirt and cap once more. Sky, with Zuzu’s assistance, was eating a fish.
“I guess I don’t have to ask if you had any luck,” the captain said.
“No luck. And if we had, I think I’m too tired to do anything about it.”
“Take a nap in the cabin. We’ve about two and a half hours until we reach shore and have business to take care of. We may need your help then.”
She took him up on his suggestion, curling into a ball on the sticky, ripped plastic cushion of the long, curved bench inside the cabin. Just before she dropped off, she was aware of two furry bodies joining her, one snuggling into the place behind her knees and one climbing on top of her to sit on her upturned hip.
“WHAT ARE WE going to do with them?” Sinead asked, nodding in the direction of the longhouse, where armed villagers-the few not currently crowded into Clodagh’s cabin-guarded the soldiers. The temperature outside had risen and the blizzard had blown away, leaving deep drifts and silence as its legacy. Clodagh’s stove pumped heat into the room, and steam rose from the snow melting from mittens, hats, and boots.