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.
The thought escaped somehow, and Otter answered her directly. Hah! Murel could not make sea otters come. Sea otters come when they wish to come.
Where are they, do you think, Otter? she asked.
They live on the island- there. She received a slightly distorted otter-generated image of an offshore island and also Ronan's image of the same place. But sometimes they are gone. They go hack to where they lost Father River Seal, hack to where they gather the big big clams.
Big big clams?
Yes, and very large white crabs as well. They are easy to catch if you are a sea otter. They cannot see and they are easy to find against the black rock sea bottom.
I never heard of white crabs and giant clams before, she told him.
The sea otter's song says the crabs and clams live in the folds of the black rock sea floor beneath the tall black rocks that puff hot bubbles.
It took a lot of river otter chatter and a few turns on the mud slide-which made Murel, who thought she'd outgrown such foolishness, feel sharply envious of her brother-but at length Ronan and Otter spotted the sea otters swimming from the offshore island. One of them carried a giant white clamshell. It was almost as big as the sea otter carrying it, Ronan told her.
It made everything easier that the twins were famous among the otters. Where is the other river seal? the sea otters wanted to know. This river otter-
Hah! Sky otter, Otter corrected. Now there is a sky otter. Me.
Sky otter?
Ronan explained. My sister, the other river seal, is in a sky machine with our -mother, who is not a river seal but a human all the time. The sky otter bravely rode with us to the sea so we could meet you and ask you about our father.
What sky machine? the sea otters asked, swiveling their heads from side to side, to the back, up, and back down to face Ronan again.
I will call it so you can see, Ronan told them.
Murel told Mum what he'd said, and she spoke to the pilot, who lurched the copter skyward and flew to the shore to hover a little ways away from the otter colony.
Can your sister come and -play with us too? We want to hear her song as well.
Hah! Murel said. I can. To her mother, she said, "Excuse me, Mum, but if you'll have the pilot fly a little lower so I can dive in, I have to make an appearance as a river seal for the benefit of my otter public. They know about two river seals, the song is about two river seals, and two river seals are more believable than one."
"Fine. Meet the otters, but then tell them you have to be a sky seal when Ronan goes to find your father." Mum let a small smile play at the corners of her lips, though her eyes were still sad and anxious.
Murel didn't like seeing her mother sad, but then again, she didn't mind leaving her in the copter either. After all, Mum had sent them away for three long years without even asking what they wanted, so now her mother could get left when she herself wanted to go. The girl shucked her clothes and dived out the copter door into the sea. No need for her suit since she would be returning to the copter.
The water was cold cold cold after the warm and regulated pool at Marmie's, but it felt wonderful, especially when her skin covered itself with its seal coat. It smelled fresh and exciting and full of life and adventure and-fish! She gobbled three small ones as she swam toward the otters. Delicious! Nothing like Petaybean fish.
Feeling like some sort of a seal celebrity-the kind that never appeared on the vids available on Marmie's station-she joined Ronan and the otters.
Yes, that is right, Otter said, being the official spokes-otter either for them or for his relatives.
Now there are both river seals and that is the right number. Ronan is not enough river seals.
Gee thanks, she said. Then she and Ronan listened as Otter sang the song he'd made about them again. It was no good for them to sing their own song because it was in the human language and lost a lot in the translation. Otter's version was far more appropriate to the audience at hand, or paw or flipper.
The sea otters then favored them with a song of their own, about finding the great clams and leading the father river seal to the beds. Ending the song, the sea otters sang, But he swam away. He did not want clams and had no paws to hold them. He swam toward the great smoke and the thing beneath it. He swam to the great mystery and the otters who guard it.
Otters guard it? Murel asked.
Yes, the sea otter said, sounding a bit nervous.
But is it not a big fiery underwater mountain? Why would it need otters to guard it?
That is a mystery.
Surely not to the otters who guard it. Do you know them? Are they a related clan of sea otters?
We have seen them, we have spoken with them, we have shared food with them, but we do not know them. They are not sea otters like us. They are deep sea otters and live beneath the waves.
Beneath the waves? But otters are- otters need air like seals, don't they? Otters cannot always live beneath the water.
The deep sea otters do, the sea otter told them. They can stay above the water too but have to go down into it to breathe the same way we have to come up above the water to breathe. It is very strange.
Are you sure they're otters?
Oh yes. They look just like us only they live beneath the sea.
Weird, Ronan said. But if they live near the big volcano and that's where you think Da was swimming, then they may have seen him. Will you take us to them?
We will take you as near as the clam beds and call to them. If the smoky mountain is very busy, they might not hear.
That would be good, Ronan said. My sister and mother will follow us in the sky machine, okay? That way they can help us if there is trouble.
Your mother who is not a seal nor any of your human people can know about the deep sea otters, the sea otter said. They are very shy. They do not want to be taken by scientists for study as the river otters say they were.
I suppose if they stay below the waves, Mum wouldn't see them. But she and Murel do need to follow. It's entirely possible nobody but Mur and me will be able to tell one sea otter from another. Do they look much like you?
They look almost exactly like us. Maybe larger.
Then nobody will know. Besides, there's no one here now to give any of you sea otters or your larger friends the kind of trouble Dr. Mabo gave the river otters.
"Hah!" Otter said. Sea otters do not know about that trouble the way river otters do. But river otters cannot swim in the sea, so if sea otters and river seals are in trouble, this otter and his hundreds of relatives cannot help them out of it.
Murel heard the disappointment in Otter's thought. A river otter may not swim in the sea but a sky otter could fly over it if he wanted to, she said. Then if the kind of help a river or sky otter could give was necessary, that otter would be there.