Changelings
- Автор: Маккефри Энн, Скарборо Элизабет
- Серия: The Twins of Petaybee #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Changelings». Краткое содержание книги:
CHANGELINGS
They are Ronan Born for Water Shongili and Murel Monster Slayer Shongili. Twin brother and sister. Children of Yana and Sean. Children of Petaybee. As such, theirs is a destiny deeply intertwined with the sentient planet that is their home. For Ronan and Murel are more than human. Like their father, each can transform into a seal and converse telepathically with the planet’s creatures–such as the friendly otter whose life they save one day from a pack of ravenous wolves.
But the twins’ bravery has unforeseen results when a visiting scientist witnesses their startling metamorphosis and becomes obsessed with their capture. To protect their children, Sean and Yana send them to stay with a powerful family friend on an orbiting space station. But no one realizes that Ronan and Murel hunger to discover the origins of their shape-shifting talent–and that their search for knowledge will place them squarely in the path of peril.
Meanwhile, Petaybee is changing–and much faster than an ordinary planet’s natural evolution. It appears that portions of the sea are heating up and a landmass is suddenly rising from the depths. To investigate the startling occurrence, Sean heads out to the open water in his seal form. But the newly unstable region holds untold mysteries–and the potential for disaster.
"That won't be necessary," the professor told her. "You have kindly placed a flitter at my disposal as well. The least I can do is to give Ronan a ride." She turned and regarded him with clinical interest that made Murel shudder.
I bet she asks you to climb up on a slide and scoot under a giant microscope lens right away, Murel said.
She's not going to try anything when Marmie knows right where I am. Besides, station security wouldn't let her do anything to me.
I still have a really bad feeling about this, Ronan.
Sean swam with the sea otters, one large gray seal among their smaller forms, gliding through the water with ease for many kilometers.
He had no trouble telling when they began swimming across the volcanic ridge since a very warm column of water bubbled to the surface. Anticipation bubbled through the otters at the same time, and suddenly they all dived at once. Sean followed.
Look at them! the senior otter exclaimed, his thought filled with blissful anticipation. Such clams! Petaybee must really love otters to give them this food.
Although the seal in Sean could certainly have eaten something, the clams were not so interesting by themselves as they were as part of the underseascape.
They had to dive quite deeply, but Sean was somewhat surprised to find it was not as deep as he would have thought. Normally, seals and otters would not be able to dive to the most extreme depths of the ocean, but it was comparatively shallow here. The volcanic activity had built up the ocean floor, forming a sort of mountain range that would build the farther south it went. Sean had observed this from a distance on other swims, but he hadn't realized the planet was in such a hurry to produce its new landmass.
The water around them was milky blue, the color, as Sean knew, coming from the minerals and bacteria in which volcanic areas were rich.
Tall black rocky chimneys rose up from the ocean floor, which was paved with flowing billows and pillows of black lava rock. Each crevice and crack of the lava was stuffed with the foot-long clams. White crabs scuttled along over the blackness, going about their business. Like little gardens of animals, each of these communities had as its centerpiece huge clusters of exceptionally long tube worms, bursting like enormous red flowers among the other creatures.
Surfacing for air again, Sean told himself he had to return with a scientific team sometime and see what was down there. He was certain there were all manner of life forms that Intergal, the company that had ordered the planet terraformed, had no idea were there. He just wanted a quick look in seal form. All around him sea otters surfaced carrying large clams, though not the largest.
Are they good? he asked the nearest otter conversationally.
Delectable. Bright red meat and lots of it. But opening them is tricky. They're not of a size you can crack open on your chest without cracking otters as well as clams.
When we get back, I'll change into man form and get a heavy rock to open them for you, he promised.
You will? The sea otter's round eyes got, if anything, rounder in his round face. Did you otters hear that? Go for the big ones! The river seal will help us open them, and there will be feasting for us all!
The surface thrashed with otter bodies diving down and popping up with clams bigger than their heads. Each otter could carry only one clam. Soon, Sean knew, they'd be ready to return.
I'll just swim-ahead a little and circle back and catch up with you, he told them. I want to see the New Home where it is building the quickest.
There's not as much food there, an otter told him. Too hot, too busy. Hey! No fair slipping out of otter paws! Come back you! And his sleek rump surfaced for a moment before it smoothly vanished under the waves. For the first time Sean noticed that off in the distance what had seemed to be low cloud cover was actually rolling smoke. Petaybee surely was cooking with gas now.
He swam swiftly forward. The bubbly warm spots grew more frequent, until the entire ocean seemed to be warmer by many degrees. He caught fish simply because he had to swim through so many of them to proceed and it was easier to catch some than to go around them.
The water grew warmer and warmer, like bathwater and not unpleasant. The seawater cooled the molten lava almost at once, though that would not be the case once the volcano grew until it erupted on the surface. He wondered how close that was. He'd been feeling a bit foolish for deciding to reconnoiter by swimming over the site, but with the smoke and ash piling up on the horizon, aircraft would be in danger of getting their motors and other sensitive parts clogged.
Soon he realized that he'd left the otters far behind. He could see the bottom of the ocean beneath him now simply by looking down. The piping black smokers and the gentle lava pillows stuffed with clams and other sealife had long ago given way to some true volcanic mounds with vents in the middle. Diving down, he could see a long way into them, into the heart of Petaybee.
He got so busy looking down and diving to swim around the vents and examine the life forms there that he forgot to look up and ahead until the entire ocean shook like jelly, sloshing him about. He was startled to see that a real mountain loomed ahead of him, the summit just below the ocean's surface.
It was brilliant! What a wonderful opportunity. He wondered why he had seen no larger animal life so far, whales or dolphins. They would all love the fish and other animal and plant life as much as the otters. But he did not hear them or sense them. Perhaps the change in the depth and temperature of the water had caused them to shy away. The mineral content was much different around the vents too, some of it toxic. He trusted his seal nose to keep him away from the dangerous parts. The otters, with their curiosity, seemed to be the only mammals venturing close enough to be harmed. But they had been very clever about diving, snatching up what they wanted, and surfacing again.
The sight of the billowing smoke sobered him. It had been foolish to come out here as a seal, he thought. Better to come with machinery and instruments. Petaybee giving birth was not likely to be tolerant. For that matter, Yana, who loved him, hadn't been in the best of moods while in labor. One more dive and then he'd call it quits and follow the otters back to shore.
His dive took him to the base of the underwater mountain. Quake after quake, at first small and then larger, shook the water and sent rocks tumbling down from above.
The water was murky here from all of the sediment. Circling the mountain's base, he tried to gain some idea of its size and shape. Then, in a deep rift below the mountain's base, he spotted something curiously angular and shining, despite the sediment and rock. He surfaced, caught his breath, and dived again. It could hardly be a shipwreck since Petaybee had never had large ships on her waters. The ports were all icebound too much of the year to make it feasible. It could have been a space vessel or even the wreck of a station, but there had been no report he could recall of such a crash. And it would have been noticed. The impression he had was of something as vast as a city.
He forced himself to dive deeper than he had done so far on this journey. The area in question was indeed filled with what seemed to be manufactured structures-angular, architectural, though indistinct because of the opacity of the water. Lying in the rift as it was, it could even be the ruins of some ancient Petaybean civilization, from the look of it.
But before Intergal had terraformed the planet, it had been little more than a ball of ice and rock, and for all anyone could tell, had never been inhabited by sentient life prior to its colonization.