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...
Not too many people still know much about the old ways.”
“You might want to talk it over with Clodagh. I’ve always found her very helpful where interspecies relations are concerned. I’d stay and help you myself, but I have to try to reach Johnny and his merry band of pirates and tell them plans have changed. Someone has to get my kids out of that old wagon’s clutches.”
“Wagon?”
“A hateful female. Does one come to mind?”
“Dr. Mabo?”
“The very one,” Sean said, but he called it over his shoulder. He was already striding back toward the com station, hoping he could still get a message to the hijacked ship.
MARMIE AND ADRIENNE kept busy while waiting for Christian’s return. They each slept briefly while the other kept watch, but afterward, and when they’d eaten, they both felt the need to do something. Following Christian’s description of how the records were generally organized, they covered their faces and went to work hauling the dusty files from their tombs out into the office. It was hard, heavy work even with the use of the little wheeled cart that could carry a stack of six boxes at once, but they had cleared most of one set of shelves and were halfway through another one when Marmion sat down, heavily and without her usual grace.
“Madame!” Adrienne said. “Are you unwell?”
But Marmie was staring at one of the file boxes. After a few deep breaths, she reached for it, opened it, and began flipping through the files. Selecting one, she pulled it out, spread it on the table, and began reading. “Aha!” she said at last, pointing. “There it is. Read this, Adrienne.” She pointed with the wreck of a formerly well-manicured forefinger, and Adrienne did as directed, but at first did not understand.
Then Madame enlightened her. With renewed vigor, the two of them returned to the files, piling up more and more of the boxes until, once more, Madame chose a particular file from a particular box, and found another of the items that interested her. After another break for food and rest, they continued. They were still at it when they heard the scrape of a key in the door.
“We’re very busy here,” Adrienne barked toward the door. “Why are you interrupting us?”
A timid female voice replied, clearly having no idea what she was saying or why. “I come with news from General Bonaparte regarding the retreat. You’re to come with me right away.”
CAPTAIN TERRY WAS glad to see the heads of the seal and otter surface beside his boat just before he crossed the squid hole and headed back to shore.
“Maybe we ought to stop and load them back aboard before we land,” Lloyd suggested. “That way we won’t lose track of them,”
“Nah,” Terry replied, “They can hide easier in the water. The cat can hide aboard ship without too much trouble, but the girl isn’t likely to be anything but an escaped prisoner, and these yahoos would probably shoot the otter, thinking it was a really big rat.”
“Well, yeah, but once we load the cargo aboard, there’ll be two female escaped prisoners here anyway…”
“And once we have them safely away from port, the seal girl can come back aboard any time, and the otter too. But we don’t want to attract any more attention to ourselves than we’re already likely to.”
A strong wind blew up, ruffling the water and rocking the boat. The men looked up for a moment. There were no clouds, though there was a definite disturbance in the air. They could feel and almost see the air currents swirling past them. Terry and Lloyd pulled their hats down more firmly on their heads and watched the shore intently, praying that if a storm was coming it would not blow up until the transfer had been made.
Two soldiers hefted a body bag between them and heaved it onto the dock where Terry’s boat routinely made its pickups of squid fodder. Shutting down the motor, Terry guided his boat in through the wind-driven waves. Then he and Lloyd hauled the heavy bag on board, unzipped it, and rolled the two bodies it contained onto the deck. The empty bag was tossed back onto the dock for reuse with the next lot. It’d never do to pollute the ocean or choke the squid with those nonbiodegradable bags, and the bags were reusable. The stiffs normally didn’t mind.
One of them winked at him, which was kind of eerie, as was the warmth of the bodies under the uniforms they wore. Bodies ordinarily went out of the world the same way they came into it. Clothes, even the rags most of the longtime prisoners sported, were also thought to be damaging to the delicate ecology of the ocean and its only large denizens.
The cat sniffed the two bodies. One reached up as if to stroke the cat, but the feline gave a snort and turned its curly tail on them. The younger of the two rolled her eyes comically but refrained from saying anything. Lloyd stepped over them to start the engine again.
“Stay down until we’re out of visual contact with the shore,” Terry told his newest set of passengers.
They were silent as the dead while the boat chugged out to sea, until it reached the place where Terry and Lloyd would usually offload their cargo.
Then the younger woman asked, “How did Zuzu get aboard?”
“She swam,” he told her. “It’s getting downright crowded out here lately, if you want to know the truth.”
He was watching the stern from his binoculars and saw the heads of the seal and the otter pop up again.
He expected them to swim toward the boat, but instead they were looking skyward. He followed their gaze but saw nothing. Then something dropped down to the surface of the water, obscuring his view of the two sleek heads. He thought for a second that his eyes had played a trick on him, that the seal and the otter had dived, but then the water began to bubble and churn as a hole opened in the surface to admit-something.
CHAPTER 18
RONAN THOUGHT MABO would never stop prodding, poking, shocking, and cutting him. She was far worse than the giant squid, who had only been trying to feed themselves when they attacked. They probably didn’t know the food had feelings. But Mabo did, and while she didn’t seem to actually take pleasure from hurting him, she didn’t exhibit any sign of pity either. At first he’d thought she was getting revenge for the time he and Murel had thwarted her attempts to experiment on the Honu and eventually caused her to flee the space station in disgrace, but she never mentioned it or actually gloated over him.
Her attitude was more impersonal. She didn’t care if he screamed or winced unless it spoiled her aim when she was trying to snip off another piece of him. He was one big specimen to her, not even a living creature.
Kai, after her intial expressions of dominance over him, seemed to get bored with the process, maybe even annoyed with Mabo’s brisk orders, and didn’t go out of her way to so much as sneer at him. It was little enough, but he was grateful that when Mabo decided it was time to sleep and left Kai with the collar control and instructions to guard him, the girl looped the strap of the control around her heavy wrist, gave him a meaningful look as if to say, “You know what will happen if you cross me,” and walked around behind him. She probably thought he wouldn’t know what she was doing if he couldn’t see her, but her snores gave her away.
If she hadn’t had the collar control, he could have tipped the tank over and escaped that way. But he had to do it without waking her.
The other problem was that with his bottom half in seal form, he had no leverage to raise himself out of the tank except his arms and hands. His tail was heavy, heavier than just his legs and rear. According to physics, that wasn’t supposed to be possible, but physics didn’t need blubber to keep its butt warm in arctic waters. Futher-more, he would stay seal-tailed as long as that part of him remained in water, which it would in the tank. He didn’t see how he could dry out enough to get his legs back without flipping water onto Kai and waking her. And there was no way to climb down the ladder with a seal tail. He’d just have to figure out the water-flipping issue when he got to it. Maybe if he flipped away from her…