A couple of pieces. Why did she bother with the come-on, do you think?
Because we’re new, I guess.
Soldiers marched, singing loud songs whose lyrics were lost in the voice-over of the narrator extolling the brilliant training and physical perfection that those who joined the Corps would achieve. Shots of them eating delicious-looking food and enjoying recreational facilities came next. Then all the thrilling occupational opportunities. Pilot, engineer, communications expert…
Hey, let’s sign up to be one of those, Ro said. Then we could contact Marmie’s friends.
Uh, I think they’d catch on, since they brought us from the station.
Probably.
She told him about the baths and what she had discussed with Pele and her family. I don’t trust that Kai, though.
She’s not taking this well, that’s for sure, Ro agreed. But she knows we’re friends of Ke-ola’s and trying to help her people, so I can’t see why she’d mess with us.
Me either, Murel agreed. But I don’t trust her, all the same.
CHAPTER 8
THE NEXT DAY they were roused by the shriek of the whistle, making them jump not only from the thin mats on the floor of their hut but almost out of their skins as well.
Rory pushed ahead of the others, whispering to Ronan as he passed him. “I have to go first if we’re going to make this believable.”
There was no breakfast and nobody expected any. One meal a day, in the evening, met the company’s self-imposed obligation to care for the useless offspring of the Gwinnet prison inmates. If they wanted more to eat, there was always the opportunity to enlist offered in last night’s film. Even those too young to enlist could sometimes find jobs working for the soldiers at the adjoining Corps installation. Pele was vague about what this work might involve except that older girls were sometimes used as laundresses.
As Pele had told them, a portion of shallows just offshore was roped off and strung with nets, three of them demarcating a small pool, a fourth stretched overhead. This, Bunyon had told them, was to keep the sea monsters from reaching across the net to grab the bathers, but Pele said she didn’t think there were any sea monsters and that it was actually to keep the kids from jumping the net and trying to escape.
Some of the kids already in the water were apparently washing their clothes and themselves at the same time, as they were still wearing their tunics. Others went bare, vigorously splashing each other and soaping themselves. On a piece of driftwood on the beach, an older kid sat shearing the head of a smaller one, whose hair seemed to have grown out beyond the regulation stubble. Hard to tell the gender of either kid, Murel thought, though the older one’s corded arms seemed masculine. None of the bathers appeared older than Huy, and none of the girls had developed noticeable breasts yet. Murel thought it was odd that everyone was so young.
Lieutenant Bunyon and Captain Keester strolled along behind the new kids, herding them toward the barber.
Did you see the moony looks on their faces when they’re talking? Ronan asked. Those two are mating. I’d bet the first catch of the day on it.
They heard hurried footsteps approaching from the camp, and then a girl said, “The vaccinations for the newcomers, Doctor.” Turning, they saw that she was in Corps uniform.
Rory, meanwhile, had reached the barber, and with uncharacteristic meekness submitted his head to the shears. His wild dark curls fell onto the sand. Through its rain across his face, he shot them a look Murel hoped the camp officers would fail to notice.
At a sharp nod from the doctor, the soldier girl marched forward and shoved a small roll of flimsy cloth into Rory’s hands, then did an about-face and handed a similar roll to each of the other children, including the twins.
Ah, the fetching Camp Neverland uniform, Ronan said.
Murel started to shake it out.
“As I mentioned during indoctrination,” Lieutenant Bunyon said, taking her eyes away from Captain Keester long enough to lecture the new kids, “the company, recognizing that you children were rescued from a variety of circumstances and climatic conditions, has thoughtfully provided these simple, easy-to-wear, and easy-to-care-for garments. They’ll be much more comfortable than those hot ship suits some of you are wearing. You can put them on once you’ve bathed.”
Rory laid his new uniform on the ground beside those of the other kids and jumped into the water, wading out a ways, then dogpaddling for a while before bringing his arms together in front of him in a surface dive.
Pele and her relatives ran in the water. Meanwhile Rory and the other kids from the space station lined up for the barber. He was very quick, and one by one they left their dark hair on the beach, tossed both old and new garments aside, and waded into the water.
Pele shot Murel and Ronan a look, and Kai’s glance followed. As soon as Pele saw that Kai was watching, she pretended to be splashing her other brothers and sisters and washing vigorously.
Pele seemed to take it for granted that the twins would be able to rescue everyone, as they’d helped do on Halau. Some of the others, Murel felt sure, were thinking that if she and Ronan were prisoners themselves, they were in no position to rescue anybody. Kai was no longer openly hostile, but her hooded eyes seemed to Murel to say, “Well, hero twins, not so clever now, are you? Got us off Halau so we could come to this dump and our families could go to prison.” Or worse, “I wonder what they’ll do with you here when you turn into seals like you did in the underground canals.”
Rory had told them he felt sure his grandmother, the shape-shifter-obsessed Dr. Maria Mabo, had something to do with the families being transported from Versailles Station.
The thought that Dr. Mabo might be involved made Murel shudder. Dr. Mabo had lured Ronan into a situation where he’d been forced to change, and she knew about her as well. The doctor’s fondest wish seemed to be to discover what made them and other shape shifters, like the Honus, transform. Neither Murel nor Ronan had any doubt that their former teacher would take them apart piece by piece in an effort to find the secret of their transformation.
But Dr. Mabo had fled Versailles Station ahead of Marmie’s security. As far as the twins knew, she was still lying low. If she was anywhere near here, it was probably as a prisoner.
“Ow!” Ronan cried, and before Murel could turn back to see what had made him holler, she felt the sting in her hip. Lieutenant Bunyon grabbed her shoulder so she didn’t jerk away, but the doctor was already withdrawing the gun before she knew what was happening.
By then Ronan was sitting at the feet of the barber and having his head shaved. Then it was her turn.
Come on, Mur, her brother urged as, bald-headed, he turned toward the water. She hung back, unexpectedly and totally irrationally unwilling to give up her hair and hating to be pushed into it. She didn’t know why she felt that way. Her dark brown hair was no different than that of most of the people she knew at home, and she wore it cut just below her ears, but it was hers. She hardly recognized Ro now without his, and suddenly felt like she was losing who she was. She had given up being home, where she was loved, given up freedom, and now her hair? It was too much.
No! You look funny, she said, balking.
No, you look funny. I look like everybody else. We need to blend in if we’re going to find a way out to help Marmie and the others.
As they’d planned the night before, Rory waded out of the water and dragged Ronan, still in his dry suit, into it. Rory yelled and whooped like he intended to drown Ronan, though Murel was sure he was only horsing around. Since they’d arrived together and had apparently been friends the night before, they hoped it would look like that to the camp officials too. They also hoped the camp officials would not see fit to intervene.
Rory grabbed Ronan around the neck and pulled him headfirst under the water. Ronan didn’t seem to be struggling too much, and he wasn’t calling for help.
“Come on, kid, you’re my last for the day,” the barber said to Murel in a squeaky voice t
hat couldn’t decide if it was grown-up or not. He beckoned to her impatiently.
Cringing, Murel squatted at his feet, carefully keeping the weight off her punctured hip. The shears buzzed over her scalp, which at first felt cooler as the weight of her hair lifted and dropped to her shoulders and the ground. The truth was, the dry suit was hot, and perspiration made the falling hair stick itchily to her face and neck. The tunic uniforms would be much cooler to wear, and the water looked so refreshing.
The barber tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to the water. She rose reluctantly to her feet and took two slow steps toward the beach.
Two wet, dark-skinned Kanaka kids who appeared quite a bit younger than she ran out of the water and dragged her into it, dry suit and all. They were very strong, despite their size, and she couldn’t pull away from them. But this was Pele’s plan, and the jeering laughs didn’t match the conspiratorial looks in their eyes when they deliberately met hers.
Where were Ronan and Rory? She couldn’t see either of them now.
Ro?
To her relief, he responded immediately.
It’s okay, sis. I’m clear and so far none of the advertised sea monsters have showed up, save yours truly. Rory helped me out of my dry suit so I could change on the other side of the net. He’ll lift the net so you can get under without being seen while you’re changing. It’s open water out here, warm, but good and deep.
Good, well, here goes nothing. I hope there’s enough of Ke-ola’s kinfolk to keep the other kids from seeing me change. Except for Kai, they’re all awfully little.
You’ll be grand, sis, sure you will, Ro told her, sounding just like Da.
As the two Kanaka kids dragged Murel into the water, three more jumped on top of her as if trying to drown her, but they provided cover as her face changed and her hands became flippers, bound awkwardly by the confines of her dry suit. They swam as well as they walked. Murel found that odd, since Halau’s water supply was underground and the Kanakas had gone there mostly to take shelter from the meteor showers. If the sea turtle people, Ke-ola’s people, went down there to visit the Honus, and the shark people visited their Mano’aumakuas in the subterranean lake, then perhaps that was where they also became so well accustomed to the water. There was an awful lot yet to learn about them.
Before Murel swam under the net, two of her “attackers” peeled her dry suit over her flippers, freeing her body. Murel had explained the need for this to Pele during their talk. The little hands were quick and gentle, as they would have been with their Honus or Manos. They seemed to have even more of an affinity for her sea-creature self than they did for her as a fellow human, and to easily anticipate where she’d have difficulty with a sleeve or extricating a flipper. Since they had some interspecies communication with their seagoing aumakuas, as they called their clan’s totem animals, it seemed to impart some general telepathic ability, or at least empathy, that extended to her and Ronan. You could take the kids out of the sea, but not the sea out of the kids, so to speak. Even after generations of separation from their original homeland, they were still attuned to it and its inhabitants.
They probably would have figured out what she needed even if they hadn’t planned it all ahead of time, because it wouldn’t be a common occurrence to see a seal struggling with human clothing.
Tiny hands stuffed her suit back into its pouch on her back, and with a final pat, the youngsters withdrew far enough to give her freedom of motion.
Rory suddenly appeared in front her and lifted the hem of a weighted net. She wondered briefly what good it did to have a net the kids only had to lift in order to swim to freedom. But freedom to do what? How many child inmates could turn into seals and swim as far as she and Ronan could? Maybe the net was supposed to keep other creatures out.
Pushing that thought aside, she swam under and joined Ronan, who waited for her a little offshore. They swam out to sea, diving and leaping over each other, feeling free for the first time since they had left the alien ship.
Each of them caught a strange-looking flat fish from a school swimming past. Murel felt refreshed enough to think again. We should swim around the island and explore what’s there, she told Ronan.
And we explain our absence how? her brother asked.
We don’t. We can’t do anybody any good cooped up in the children’s camp. We’ll keep free till we find a way to release everyone else.
Okay, but we should also swim back to the main prison and see if we can find a way inside it from the shoreline. If we can, then we might be able to get our people out that way, as well. Hmmm, I’ll bet there are sewers that empty into the sea. He said it as if he liked the idea of swimming in sewers.
Sewers? she asked with distaste.
Yes, in the stories I read while we were at Marmie’s, fortresses always had sewers prisoners could use to escape.
I just hope the people who built the prison didn’t read the same stories, Murel said. What I was thinking is that we might be able to swim over to the soldiers’ encampment at night and sneak into their com shed and use their equipment to call for help.
Oh, well, yeah, if they have anything there that will go offworld, Ronan said. I doubt they’d keep their long-range equipment here. It’ll be back at the prison where the admin people are.
You don’t know that. You just want to swim in the sewer. Hey, Sky didn’t come over here with us. She looked around and started using her sonar to call.
I hope he didn’t get trapped on the ship. Ronan started calling too, but although their sonar didn’t pick up any otter-shaped creatures of any variety, it did warn of the approach of something large and threatening.
They began swimming for all they were worth, sounding for obstacles in their path and dodging or diving to evade them.
This is no good, Murel said. We can keep from getting eaten but we still can’t see what’s on the island. I want to look around.
Fine, you check the surface and I’ll swim underwater and check for trouble.
We have to stay in close to shore if we’re going to see anything, she said, so they swam in until they were just beyond an area where the shoreline dropped off steeply into much deeper waters. They soon discovered that the net strung to contain the bathing children followed the line of a ledge that ran most of the way around the island. At its widest point, the ledge extended about twenty feet from shore.
On the far side, the island ended abruptly in cliffs rising almost two hundred feet above the waves crashing against its rocky base, with a ledge receding into steep cliffs.
There’s a nice waterfall, Murel said, indicating a plume of water spurting from the cliff.
Maybe it’s from a sewer, Ronan suggested hopefully.
You and your sewers. Everything seems to be on the other side of the island. It doesn’t look to me like there’s anyplace sewers would drain from. It’s just runoff from a stream or rainfall probably. But look over there at those rocks. They look like a fine place to rest and keep out of sight while we decide what to do next.
They swam to the rocks and stretched out on the sun-warmed stones. Ronan sighed and settled down to nap. His fur started to disappear, and Murel jumped into the tepid water again, splashing him. He sat up, looking cross. Cut it out!
You were changing, she said.
So what? Who’s going to know?
In the distance they heard the roar of a motor. A small boat had zipped out from shore, a vee-shaped wake spreading behind it like a flock of wild geese in flight. They’re looking for us, Murel said. I hope Rory and the Kanakas don’t get in trouble because we didn’t come back.
Me too, but maybe they won’t even notice, Ronan replied. One kid with a shaved head probably looks like another to them. Did you notice our welcoming committee didn’t even call us by name? Pretty sloppy, I’d say, but it’s like they don’t much care who we are. I hope the little tiff with Kai didn’t call attention to us in particular.
I don’t think it did. They didn’t intervene or
anything. We all just seem to be a bunch of brats who for some reason may have our uses as far as they’re concerned. Which is a good thing. I mean, what if Dr. Mabo were here, as Rory seemed afraid she might be? She’d be over here in a flash to collect us and vivisect us. She had a worrying thought then. I suppose they might have counted us and realized that two were missing.
Maybe, but I’m not sure they’d care if they thought we’d drowned, Ronan said.
Murel flopped back up onto the nearest rock and stretched out to bask. The sun made her drowsy. I wonder if there are other seals in this ocean, she mused. If not, we may have a hard time blending in with the local sea life.
We can always hide underwater, Ronan said.
I wish we hadn’t had to change right away. We could have found out more about the camp if we had stayed there for a while.
We’ll go back and check it out later, Ronan said.
How’s that?
If they haven’t missed us, we can always just go back next bath day and put on those tunics and make like nothing happened. Even if we don’t go back into the compound, we can talk to Rory and learn more about what’s happening in the camp.
I hope we’ve done the right thing, Murel fretted. I hope they don’t punish him or Pele’s family because of us.
CHAPTER 9
ZUZU CRINGED IN the stinking shadows, her mottled brown and gray fur standing at attention. The rat glared at her through its little red eyes, and she glared at it, her ears flat, her short curl of tail jerking. This was not only a kill-or-be-killed situation, it was an eat-or-be-eaten situation. The rats here were almost as large as she was. Her personal dish full of tasty and nutritious kibble and her bowl of clear water, always kept full and fresh, were only dreams now. Her formerly fluffy clean fur was matted and almost too filthy to clean. She had lost her firm plumpness, as catching her food and avoiding capture took a great deal of energy. She ate snake, lizard, rat, and roach, and their blood and fluids were her only drink.
She did not lack prey, at least. She would have had her choice among them, except that some, like this large rat, appeared to have chosen her for prey. His fangs were yellow and broken. Hers were pearly and sharp.
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