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.
Murel realized that she thought the same thing, but she didn't see how that was going to happen. The lifeboat had not yet completely detached from the yacht, Mother and Father and Johnny were still arguing, the yacht was still dead in the water, and the waves began slapping ominously against the side of the hull again. Slap-slap, slap-slap.
She hoped it was her imagination that made the dome look bigger-and as if it were throbbing steadily.
"Shite on a shingle," Mum said. "Here comes another contraction."
Steam jetted up suddenly from vents around the dome, and the sea started shaking again, rumbling as if it were full of bones. Which it could be pretty soon if they weren't careful.
"A contraction." Ke-ola smiled and turned to them, asking casually, "Maybe I got to thinking of the wrong chant at that. You remember that one song I sang at your party-the one I didn't translate?"
"Which one?"
"The one with the stomps. Like this." He stomped, bringing the opposite leg up sharply, then stomped again so the rhythm was stomp-stomp, stomp-stomp, like the slap-slap of the ocean against the boat. The stomps shook the whole boat.
"Oh, yeah, that one! I like that," Ronan said. "It's fun. Only- maybe not now."
"Now is a real good time, I think," Ke-ola replied. "You do it too. You too, Mama and Papa and Captain," he called back, continuing the stomp.
"Like a heartbeat!" Murel said.
"That's it, sistah. Because it's a birthing chant. Like I told you, all we got to do on that asteroid where we live now is make babies, and because of the gravity, it ain't easy. So everybody has to help the mamas. The men's part, with the stomping, goes something like,
'Swim swim,' to the baby, with the stomps being like canoe paddles. To the mama we say
'Breathe breathe,' until it's time to 'Push push,' and the verse that just repeats is something like,
'Have no fear your men are here. We will protect you,' to put it in your language, which is, sorry, really not good for poetry. There's a women's part that goes something like, 'Take it slow, sistah, take it easy, be calm, breathe easy, the birth is a beautiful dance, bring your child into the sunshine so he can dance with his relatives.' Or something like that. But I think if you just clap, soft, like this," he showed her, "in the same time, that will get it across."
"Okay," Murel said. "So, you think we should do this now?"
He shrugged tidally once more. "Can't hurt. If your world is as willing to listen to you as you say, maybe we can make her hear, before she's making too much noise again." He kept stomping and shouted again at the twins' parents and Johnny, "Mama, Papa, Captain, do what we do. You folks in the lifeboat, drum on the side. Paddlers, strike the sea with your oars."
More fumeroles gushed steam, Petaybee exhaling through her teeth. The sea rocked the yacht, but Murel liked to think that the stomping feet and clapping hands steadied it somehow.
Ke-ola called out the first words of the chant, addressing the laboring volcano not as a goddess, but as he probably already had sung many times to his mother, aunt, or sister. He waved his hand to Murel and Ronan and sang the words to them. They repeated them after him as loud as they could, matching his beat. Then he called out some more. This time he added a little lilt and melody to the words.
The dome swelled and throbbed, the fumeroles spewed and steamed, and the column of steam and ash rose into the coral sky, deepening its hue to bloodiness.
The rumbling got louder, but not as loud as before.
Ke-ola stamped and chanted. Murel and Ronan, and soon their father and mother, stamped and chanted after him, their words finding an unbidden harmony with his, so accustomed were their voices to songs in a mode more familiar to their world. Marmie and most of the people in the lifeboat drummed on its side or with paddles against the sea. Johnny didn't join in, nor did the chief engineer. They chose the more pragmatic path of going below and trying to fix the engine with the time they hoped the chant might be borrowing for them.
Ke-ola looked straight out at the volcano the whole time, his head held high and his body erect as an arrow, shooting his words into the horizon. His bare feet alone shook the entire yacht. Amplified by the stamping of the other feet, the sound gave a heartbeat to the rising waves, measured the rising smoke with its cadence.
The twins stamped and sang until not only their feet, but their knees hurt. The throbbing dome could burst at any moment and send a fountain of lava into the sea and onto the yacht, but it didn't.
But their throats began to burn with the singing and with the little particles of ash that should have made them cough but didn't.
Ke-ola did not cough or falter in his singing either.
They stamped until their hips ached and their soles began to bleed. Their throats longed for water but they could not stop singing.
From the corner of her eye Murel saw Sky dive into the sea. Following him, she watched him swim after the Honu, both of them toward the cone being joined slowly in the middle of the ocean by other cooling lava being spewed by the lesser volcanoes around it.
Honu and Sky swam back and forth, back and forth, and before long it seemed other creatures were swimming as well. Among them were some sea otters and great shoals of fish, dolphins, orcas, and larger whales that came right up under the boat without touching it. Instead of swimming back to the boat, however, these creatures swam to either side of the cone and onward. Only Sky and
Honu went back and forth. Soon Murel realized their journeys were in prolonged counterpoint to the stamping.
The dome could have blown, should have blown, all at once, but didn't. It seemed to recede a little, the throbbing developing into a regular pulse. When it opened, the top of the dome didn't blow. Instead its sides opened and pumped rather than spewed the lava into the sea, to be cooled almost at once by the water.
As the volcanoes blew and the islands formed and joined, it seemed to Murel that the sea itself was working with their party, a pathetically puny bunch of humans, occasionally some seals, plus an otter and a sea turtle. Instead of swamping the boat, the waves picked it up and carried it away from the volcano. They had been perhaps a mile away from the throbbing dome to begin with, but soon the swells carried them two miles, then five, then ten miles farther from it. By the time the cone's pumping escalated into the fountain they'd been expecting, they were safely away from it. The lifeboat, still attached to the yacht, was also carried to safety. Honu and Sky ceased swimming back and forth and watched as the other sea creatures paraded past, greeting the new arrival, which would breed food and shelter for them in time to come.
Ke-ola did not stop singing and stamping, however, and neither did the twins or anyone else, though they badly wanted to. Surely it was safe now? But maybe not. There were still those volcanic beds beneath the sea even this far out. Murel thought they would be agitated too.
But she got out only another half-dozen stomps and another line of chanting that she wasn't even sure got from her sandpapered throat to her mouth. Then her legs gave out and she sat down on the deck. To her surprise, she saw that Mum and Da were also both sitting down and no longer chanting. Ronan almost fell on top of her. Still, the rhythm and melody of the chant rolled on toward the volcano, as strongly as ever, and the beat seemed even stronger. Maybe the people in the lifeboat, sitting as they were, could carry on with more force?
But as she glanced back she saw that something different was happening. A line of fishing boats bobbed along on the yacht's port side, and more were fighting the waves to reach them, the paddles keeping time with the chant. No motors were running now. With the ash in the air, they would suffer the same fate as the yacht's engines.