Changelings

by Anne McCaffrey

  “I wasn’t going to tell you or let Johnny tell you either,” she said, shaking her head regretfully and smoothing her skirt across her knees. Marmie almost never wore ship suits. She usually wore something elegant and flowing. Today it was iridescent blue synsilk. The rings on her fingers twitched a little, which was unlike her. She was something like an old-time queen, making all sorts of decisions every day. It wasn’t like her to act nervous and uncertain. Seeing her that way gave Murel a sick feeling, and she felt the same trepidation from Ronan. “It seems unkind to make this journey last longer for you than need be, when we can have no news between now and the time we land. But your father has gone missing.”

  Neither of them said anything, but each felt the other reeling. They’d never thought, when they left Da on Petaybee, that he might not be there when they returned. Then Ronan said staunchly, “Good job Mum’s sent for us then. We can find him.”

  “Non!” Marmie said. “What I mean is, I don’t think your mother will want to risk you two as well. I certainly wouldn’t in her place. The volcano is very active. It could completely blow at any moment. Johnny says there’s almost no visibility even in Kilcoole.”

  “We don’t need visibility,” Murel said. “We can hear our da in our heads.”

  “I’m sure you won’t be able to go near enough to do it.”

  “We hear pretty good,” Ronan said, “and at least we could tell your searchers how to look—better yet, if you really want to find him, we should be leading.”

  But Marmie was shaking her head again. She unstrapped herself, rose and left the lounge. After that, when they tried to talk to her, she pretended not to hear them or ignored them or changed the subject.

  Ke-ola, who stayed close beside the tank containing Honu, watched one of these encounters with a little twist of his lips. “That Madame is very stubborn,” he said.

  Murel crossed her arms on her chest and glared at nobody in particular. “She’s not the only one,” she said. “He’s our da.”

  WHEN AT LAST the ship set down on Petaybee, the twins saw their mother pacing the ground, waiting while they climbed down the gantry to meet her. It was in some ways as if they’d never been away at all, and in some ways as if they were coming here for the first time and didn’t know anyone.

  She’s so little, Ronan told his sister. She always looked so tall and straight.

  Could be because you’re looking down on her from about forty feet, dopey, Murel said. Then relented. But I know what you mean. And, well, Petaybee isn’t as pretty as I remembered it, even in summer, but it feels good to be here.

  Can’t tell if it’s pretty or not with all that stuff in the air, Ronan replied, swatting at the space in front of his face as if to clear the air of the smog that turned everything gray. At least our river is still there.

  Murel stopped on the step she’d just set foot upon. Even if our da is not. Her throat hurt suddenly, and not just from all the particles in the air. Her heart felt as if it twisted up inside her not to see her father standing there, and Ronan felt it too.

  We’ll get him back, Mur. You’ll see. We will. We’ll show them all.

  Of course we will, she sniffed, and started down again. Fortunately, she still held firmly to both rails of the gantry because suddenly it and the ship shuddered and jumped, and when it stopped, their Mum and Marmie, who was already down, were picking themselves off the ground and looking anxiously up at the twins.

  After that they hurried down. But when she reached the foot of the gantry, Murel waited for Ronan, and the two of them walked over to their mother and let her put her arms around them. After a moment they each put an arm around her too.

  Marmie smiled, wiggled her fingers in a “See you later” gesture, and returned to the dock, where she helped Johnny Green supervise the unloading of some extremely large crates, boxes, and uncrated hunks of equipment. Among the large things was the Honu’s tank, with Ke-ola sometimes walking along, sometimes crouching, beside it, apparently soothing the Honu.

  “Marmie told you why Da isn’t here?” Mum asked them. Left to her own devices, Mum never was one to beat around the bush. The more difficult or distasteful something was to discuss, the sooner she’d bring it up. Da was the one more likely to wait for the proper moment.

  “She did,” Murel answered.

  “And you’re not to worry, Mum. We’ll get him back,” Ronan said.

  “Yes, we will,” she replied. “I’ll brief you on what we know already on the way back to the village. As soon as you’ve had a chance to settle in and have been brought up to speed, we’ll fly back out again.”

  The twins exchanged looks. “You’ll let us help?” they asked incredulously.

  “I’m counting on it,” Yana told them. “Not that you’re to take any unnecessary risks, of course, but if anyone who speaks the human tongue can find him, it’s you kids.”

  Just then Clodagh, surrounded by orange cats, strode up the river road toward them. The twins squealed and raced forward to embrace her. Clodagh smiled and patted them on the heads, said how big they’d grown, and disentangled herself, continuing on to the ship. The Honu’s tank was being loaded aboard some sort of a wheeled barge, and Clodagh stopped there, bending over to peer into the tank for a moment before straightening to clasp Ke-ola in a huge hug and even exchange cheek kisses with him.

  In spite of their excitement over their own homecoming, the twins couldn’t help being distracted by this uncustomarily effusive display on the part of Kilcoole’s shanachie. Almost as surprising was the way the often taciturn Ke-ola seemed to be brimming over with things to tell the woman he’d just met.

  Well, I guess we don’t have to worry about making Ke-ola and the Honu feel welcome, Murel said.

  I didn’t know Clodagh was so keen on sea turtles, but you’d think she’d been dying to meet one her entire life.

  Mum hadn’t noticed their lapse of attention. She pointed to where three curly coats, now shedding badly, stood flanked by Nanook on one side, Coaxtl on the other. “When I told Sinead you were coming home, she sent Chapter and Page here to help you get around on the ground. They were born last year to Book and Novella. Can you tell your aunt has been doing her bit to support the Petaybean literacy program?”

  Page, it’s them! It’s really them! The twins. They’ve come to be our humans.

  Semihumans, old chap.

  Close enough for the likes of you younglings, Coaxtl growled at the colt, then stretched and regarded the twins with narrowed eyes. Grrreetings, Ronan and Murel. One had hoped it would have been more peaceful without you to guard, but this has not been so.

  Nanook was not so droll. She rose from her haunches and rubbed each twin so hard with her body that she nearly knocked them over. Then she rubbed the side of her mouth against each of them, marking them as hers while they stroked her.

  Murel almost forgot that she couldn’t be entirely happy, what with their father missing. It was good to be home again. She gave Nanook’s neck a hug and kissed Coaxtl between the ears before mounting Page.

  They rode slowly along the river from what used to be Space Base, the former Intergal toehold on Petaybee, toward Kilcoole.

  “You guys are as tall as I am,” Mum said. “When did you do that?”

  It wasn’t a question that needed an answer, but they had other questions that did.

  “So, I get the impression Da was in seal form when he disappeared?” Murel asked.

  “Yes. He wanted to swim out to the volcanic ridge where a landmass has been developing. I can only guess that he may have wished to talk to the ocean creatures and get their impressions of what was happening.”

  “That gives us a starting place then,” Murel said. “We can put the word out and see if anyone knows what happened to Da or where he might be.”

  “Johnny thought Sean might have fetched up on the southern continent, but no one there has seen him. He’s swum that far before but I know he’d find a way to let me know that he’s safe.”


  At the river bend just before town, they saw a once-familiar sleek brown form diving into the water.

  Otter? Murel asked.

  “Hah!” The otter popped almost entirely out of the water. River seals! You are here now. 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 be 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.

  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 back to where they lost Father River Seal, back 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.”