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...
Placing his hands on the rim of the tank, he pushed with all his might, trying to raise himself. He slid up out of the water but was still too wet to change into human form. He raised himself and suspended all but his flippered tail above the water, but his arms began to shake and he felt himself caving. In order to keep from losing the gains he’d made, he twisted to one side and bent his torso over the rim. He felt the tank shift slightly beneath him, but it seemed anchored to its platform well enough to prevent it from tipping under his weight.
After a rest, during which he tried to suppress his panting so it wouldn’t wake Kai, he started sliding his hands and middle along the edge of the tank’s side, working his way back toward the ladder.
He had one hand on the back edge and was ready to shift when he heard footsteps outside, coming toward the doorway. He let out a sigh and dropped back down into the tank.
“Kai?” It was a young girl’s voice. “Hey, Kai, it’s me, Pele. You hungry, sistah?”
Ronan groaned as he heard his guard stirring, then rising from the chair.
“’Course I’m hungry. Isn’t everybody?”
“We got special treats tonight and I snuck one for you,” Pele said. “Didn’t want you to miss out just because you were helping the old woman.”
“Good of you, since you hate my guts for joining up.”
“Naah, you are my sistah. Besides, you’re just smarter than we were. Joining up is the only way to get out of this place. It’s the only reason they keep us around. They say our folks are dead, even the ones back on the new home. We don’t join up, maybe soon they stop feeding us anything.”
Kai grunted with satisfaction and tore off a big bite of doughnut, chewing it noisily.
Ronan was turned sideways to the girls and pretended not to watch. Pele and the others had certainly changed sides quickly enough, he thought bitterly. Petaybee was right about Ke-ola, but Ke-ola seemed to have far from the usual temperament in his tricky family. Exhausted, sore, and scared about what was going to happen next, Ronan wished they had just left the rest of them behind for the meteors to finish off.
Then Marmie would never have been arrested, and he and Murel would never have come to this horrible place where Mabo could pounce on them.
He fully expected that soldiers would soon be dragging Murel in, to be subjected to the same treatment he’d been getting.
While Kai was munching, Pele caught him watching them. Without changing the rest of her facial expression, she gave him a one-eyed squint. A wink? Why?
She said a friendly good-bye to Kai, with a promise that she too would soon be in uniform, and departed. Kai finished her treat and settled back down beside the door. What tatters of hope and courage he’d still had deserted him. She could see everything he did before he could tell if her eyes were open or not, and even if he escaped from the tank, he’d never make it past her to the door. She’d had her nap and a snack. She’d no doubt stay awake just to push her wretched button once in a while to watch him writhe in pain.
But he was wrong. No sooner had the bully girl sat down than her snores filled the hut. That was heartening, but it didn’t solve the problem of how he was to escape.
Then he heard the door open, and he feared Mabo had returned. Kai grunted and stirred but didn’t wake.
Ronan waited tensely until the person who had entered walked in far enough to see. It was Rory, in uniform, holding the collar control.
Almost silently, Rory climbed the ladder and deftly undid the collar around his neck. Ronan held his hands up, and Rory cut his bonds. A wave of anger and disgust emanated from him. Silently, he tried to help Ronan out of the tank, but it was slow going. Ronan was surprised Kai didn’t wake up. “Put that around her neck so she won’t call out if she wakes up,” he whispered.
“No worries on that score, mate,” Rory told him. “There was poppy dust on that sweet. She’ll do for now. I’m saving this jewelry as a gift for my dear old gran, if you must know.”
“It will suit her,” Ronan said. He couldn’t have spoken louder even if it were prudent. The collar had affected his throat, and he could barely whisper. The whisper was a raspy one, at that. “But I’ve no idea how to get out of this tank, even with your help.”
“We could bail, but there’s nothing to bail with,” Rory said. “It’s an awkward arrangement altogether, even for them, I’d think. I can see having it up in the air like that to make it hard for you to get out, but she wouldn’t have had time to have it built especially for you, would she?”
“No,” Ronan said. “This looks like the smaller tanks she kept in her lab on Versailles Station when I was her lab assistant-not the tanks the Honu was kept in, but some others with different sorts of fish.
But those had levers for raising and lowering to clean and-”
“Where were they?” Rory asked.
“Under the lower right-hand corner of the tank.”
“Found it!” Rory said, and Ronan, battered, hungry, and exhausted as he was, felt light-headed for a moment as the room seemed to rise around him, though in reality he was going down.
So was Mabo. He intended to see to it.
“WHAT ARE YOU doing?” Marmion cried as Captain Terry pushed the throttle of the little boat so it spat forward so fast she doubted the hull touched the water. “I saw Murel and Sky. You did too! What game are you playing?”
In the time it took her to say that, the boat had covered the better part of a mile, and still the water swelled around it and tried to drag it backward and sideways.
“Did you see that thing plunge into the water? Look!” He pointed sternward, where the water coiled in snakelike swells, increasingly dark as they spilled into the center. With surprising velocity, the boat fought the waves, spurting away from the danger behind them.
Adrienne said, “Even sea creatures can’t survive that.”
“I think perhaps Murel and Sky will be able to,” Marmion said, pursing her lips thoughtfully. “Something of this sort happened on Petaybee before the Piaf was seized. If this is the same force, it is something Murel can manage.”
Zuzu appeared at Adrienne’s feet, winding herself around her ankles.
“The cat’s cool, so they must be okay,” Captain Terry said thoughtfully. “They talk, you know. The cat, the otter, and the girl. I guess her brother too. So I’d expect the cat to be upset if the others were drowned. But then, you never can tell about cats.”
MUREL AND SKY saw nothing when the vessel entered the water, but Murel’s sonar told her exactly what it was, and she and Sky dived into the center of the vortex as the waters whirled around them.
What are they doing here? she wondered, as if the otter might have an answer.
Tikka missed us! Sky replied. With no otter friends, she had to slide alone.
It seems a long way to come for a sliding companion, Murel said. According to Sky, most issues had otters at the center.
The vortex pulled them in deeper than Murel ever remembered diving. They were in the middle of the trough containing the squid, and in the coils of water rising above them she spotted several of the creatures, or the parts of them not obscured by the turbulence of the spinning water.
The vortex was calm, a straight shot down the center, and there was air sucked from the surface.
Multicolored lights blinked and beckoned from the towers inside the invisible dome. Murel feared that the alien Petaybeans, as she rhymed them in her mind, would not see her and Sky seeking entrance. Having just landed, the creatures would not have the benefit of their sursurvu equipment to show them what was going on beyond their city.