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.
Before, you were gone. I looked for you hundreds of times, but Father River Seal said you were gone.
"Mum, it's Otter!" Ronan said, sliding off Chapter and stooping at the edge of the river, reins still in his hands. Murel did the same.
"So I see. I don't suppose I can compete with that. Just make it snappy, will you? I want to make one foray to the volcano with you aboard before we lose any more light, okay?"
Mum looked all tight through the back and military again, so Murel handed the reins to her brother, caught up with her and touched her calf. "Mum, sorry, we really are glad to see you, but Otter might know something about Da. They talked too, you know."
Mum's expression warmed a bit and she put her hand on the top of Murel's head. "I know, sweetie, I know. Visit your friend, gather your intelligence, and come home, okay?"
"Right, Mum. Love you. Can't believe we're home again."
"Me too, sweetie. Me too."
Coaxtl and Nanook lay a discreet distance away from Chapter and Page, and Murel turned their way for a moment to give them each a stroke.
But Nanook asked, What's he doing'' and bounded away.
Ronan had his shoes and shirt off and one foot in the river.
Good question, Murel said. Ro, wait! No fair turning when we just got here. We can play with Otter later.
He saw Da, Mur. He swam off with some sea otters. I want to go talk to them.
Swimming to the sea will take too long, she said, shaking her head as she ran to the bank in case her brother decided to jump in before they'd finished talking it over. Otter watched them, first one face and then the other, with a wary eye cast in Nanook's direction. Otter, she said, we are flying out to the sea in a little while. Do otters like to fly?
Hah! Otters love to fly. Otters always fly when they can.
So you've flown before, then, have you?
I would have flown hundreds of times when I could, but I never could, Otter admitted finally.
Well, river seals have flown hundreds of times too. If an otter flew with river seals, that otter would see things no otters have seen before and we would make sure he was very safe and went home to his hundreds of relatives.
But why fly? River seals can swim. Swimming is fun, and there are mud slides along the way and fish to eat. Are you sky seals as well as river seals?
Nooo, but humans fly all the time. We are sky humans. We fly because flying is very very fast, much faster than swimming, and we want to talk to those other otters about our da, the father river seal.
Hah! Flying, huh? On a smelly man thing?
Smelly and noisy, but we could carry you personally with us so you could just put your nose inside a shirt and not have to smell anything but river seal. And it is very fast, as I said.
You could be the first and only sky otter, Ronan said slyly.
Hah! That would make the other otters of all other kinds very impressed. Yes, this otter will be a sky otter.
"The thing is, Mum, Otter trusts us and maybe his relatives do too, but the sea otters don't know us and they're the ones who were with Da. So we should talk to them ourselves, without you or the copter or anything around. If you drop us off by the river upstream from the shore, we'll swim with Otter to meet the cousins, and maybe they'll even show us where Da went.
It's a lead," Ronan said.
"What I'm thinking is that you two have this psychic contact, right?"
The twins looked at each other, shrugged, looked back at their mother and nodded. "Uh-huh."
"Well, then, how much distance can there be between you before you lose it, have you any idea?"
"It's pretty strong," Murel said. "I could hear him from Marmie's when he was levels and levels away."
"Yeah," Ronan said.
"And it works underwater too?"
"Especially there," Murel said.
"And you've the same thing with your father?"
"Yeah, but maybe not quite as strong because we aren't with him as much as we're with each other," Murel said after pausing to think about it and trying to remember.
"Well, then, my strategy would be for one of you to go with the otter and get the goods on where your father is, while the other one stays in the copter with me and relays information from below. That way I don't lose contact with you both at once, and if one of you gets in trouble, the other can help us with the finding. If you both got in trouble, I'd have no way of knowing it unless I went with you, and I'm not really a diver."
"Well, I guess so," Ronan said. "I'll go with Otter and Murel can stay with you."
"I wanted to go with Otter!" his sister protested at once.
"He had dibs," their mother said, settling it. "Now let's go collect the otter and get out to the helipad."
CHAPTER 20
Since Ronan was to be the one swimming with Otter, Murel insisted on holding the little creature on the way to the ocean. Otter had other ideas.
Otters do not need to he held. Otters can stand on their own paws, Otter told her as they settled into the helicopter. He ran to the window and put his front paws on the glass.
Then the blades started rotating, chuck-a, chuck-a, chuck-a, and in a moment the aircraft lifted up, tipping slightly and spilling Otter onto the floor. He leapt back into Murel's lap and buried his nose in her armpit for a good deal of the rest of the trip.
When they reached the broad river delta, all ice for most of the year but now with braided channels of free flowing water, the copter set down, Mum grabbed Ronan for a quick hug, and he opened the copter door.
You can come out now, Otter. We're going to swim.
Otter disentangled himself from Murel, who combed her fingers through his soft thick fur as he left. Hah! Yes, swimming is good, though sky otters can also fly.
Ronan ran to the water, shucked off his outer clothes and, with the suit that Marmie had given him so long ago strapped in place on his back, dived into the water and emerged in seal form.
Otter splashed him happily and swam off downstream.
Murel felt aggrieved. No fair. I haven't even got to swim since we arrived, she said.
Ronan barked a laugh. This mission is much too dangerous for a female river seal. Only males and sky otters can do this bit.
She sent him an image of her sticking out her tongue at him. She supposed she was being silly. This was a serious mission, after all, and the point was to find Da and bring him back safely. It didn't matter which one of them talked to the otters. The other one could hear and ask questions too. She just preferred to be there than up here above everything.
It was even more frustrating that they couldn't even fly out to the volcano where Da had said he was going until Ronan finished interviewing the appropriate otters. It took quite a long time too. Otter etiquette, which seemed to involve a lot of rocks changing paws, had to be observed. Ronan held back during this part of the negotiation, as the river otters all gathered around and declared themselves pleased to see him, though he could tell by their thoughts that some of them hadn't a clue as to who he was. Otters were live-for-the-moment creatures.
Their otter friend was exceptional in that respect.
Murel caught all of this from Ronan and Otter's internal conversations and passed it along to her mother, to make the time go faster, if nothing else, since it was hardly the sort of information they'd come for. She liked to think she could have moved things along more quickly had she been in Ronan's place.