Maelstrom

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Winter isn’t messing about this year, is it?” Charlene asked. “We saw you land. Fortunately, we hadn’t unhitched the dogs yet from picking up the new lad Sean called about or I doubt I’d have still been able to spot you by the time I got there.”

  They peeled off mittens, hats, scarves, and coats and hung them on hooks inside the door.

  “Did Sean come too?” Yana asked, doubting that could be so but hoping. “And how about my kids?”

  “I’m afraid not. Cold as he was, it was all we could do to get the young lad to come with us. He’s warming his nose over a cuppa now. You look like you could use one too.”

  Ke-ola sat at the family table near the stove. He wouldn’t look up until Yana sat down opposite him.

  “I’m sorry, missus—I mean, Colonel,” he said miserably. “I was useless. I c-couldn’t help anyone at all, not Murel or even Sean.”

  She took a deep breath of nonfrozen air fragrant with the balsam-scented warmth from the fire and said, as if she hadn’t another care in the world, “Oh, yes. I know that feeling. They have a way of making you feel like a total waste of space sometimes, don’t they?”

  “Not you, surely, ma’am!” he said, his lashes dripping water from melted snow or maybe tears when he widened his eyes at her. He was such a big fellow it was hard to remember he was only a little older than Murel and Ronan.

  “I’ll tell you something, Ke-ola,” she said. Charlene poured a cup of tea for both Yana and herself and sat down with them. A track cat slightly smaller than Nanook nudged her knee and curled up under the table, warming all of their feet with its tiger-sized body. “After all those years I spent in the Company Corps and all the action I saw, I never thought when I moved here and finally married I’d settle down to be not only the little woman but the little human in my family. Not that Sean and the kids aren’t human too, at least most of the time when I’m with them, but you know what I mean.”

  She tried to sound reassuring while wondering how the evacuation was going. There was no sense mentioning the latest emergency until Charlene’s husband returned anyway. The fact that Perfect Village had had no part in the relocation would not necessarily make them exempt from the scrutiny of the corrupt PTBs who had arrested Marmie and meant to arrest her own family and apparently most of Kilcoole besides. But even if a ship was landing at this very moment, it wasn’t any more likely to be able to find the village in this blizzard than she would have been if Charlene hadn’t fetched her.

  As they sat and watched the snow pile up to the windowsill, then halfway up the pane, she felt the big Kanaka lad relax beside her.

  She, on the other hand, grew increasingly tense and wondered all the while what she would do if her family didn’t come back. Handle the crisis, certainly. Without Sean and the kids, she didn’t care whether or not she died offworld, if she saved the world and her friends in the process.

  If Johnny, Pet, and the warlike Raj had not been taken, she could put them to good use. Her skills might be a little rusty, but she thought with four of them they could hijack any ship sent to arrest more people. First they would set traps for the would-be arresting troops. Petaybeans were used to setting traps and, she thought, would make excellent guerrilla fighters—especially when aided and abetted by the planet. Then she, Johnny, Pet, and Raj should be able to hijack the invaders’ ship. Once they were away from Petaybee’s communication problems, it shouldn’t take them long to find allies among the Federation to secure the release of Marmie and the Piaf’s human cargo.

  The same allies could stop the invaders from harassing the Petaybeans, although she wondered who might be harassing whom by then. Maybe they could go into space and complete their mission in a short enough time that she wouldn’t sicken and die. Other Petaybeans had done so in the past, but they were native born and she was not.

  Clodagh said that wouldn’t make any difference, but Yana thought that under the circumstances, it was worth the risk.

  She wasn’t sure she could bear to live on Petaybee without Sean and her kids anyway. Without them, it would be as cold and bleak as the snowstorm. She looked up at the window, expecting to see it completely covered. Instead she could see the sky again, still white but without snow blowing out of it. There was even a snowball of a sun.

  The door banged and Charlene’s husband called out, “Hey, look what I just found!”

  Something wet and brown squirmed out of his arms and ran to Yana and back to the door again.

  “It’s Sky!” she cried, leaping up so fast her tea sloshed the table. “This is the kids’ otter friend. They must be back.”

  “I had a feeling it was something like that,” Charlene’s husband said, and added to his wife, “I tried to unhitch the dogs and they started going nuts. Turns out this little guy was slogging through the drifts toward the house. I thought he was about frozen but he looks fine now.”

  “Hitch mine up too!” Charlene said. “We’ll get Sean into one basket and the kids into the other.”

  “I’m coming,” Yana said, even though she feared she might slow them down. “We have to take extra clothes and blankets too.”

  “I’ll get the neighbors to bring their sled,” Charlene said.

  “I want to come,” Ke-ola told them.

  “Okay, I’ll get two neighbors then,” Charlene said.

  “They won’t be far,” Ke-ola told Yana, his eyes shining now with joy. “I’ll bet Sean’s taken them to the new seal lagoon.

  “The new what?” Yana asked.

  WITH THE SKY clear, the temperature dropped sharply, so the new snow packed well. They took turns breaking trail and the horizon looked a long way away to Yana as they crested a hill she could have sworn was part of a snowy plain.

  Sky jumped down from his perch on her shoulder and disappeared over the hill in his undulating run.

  The sleds stopped. Ke-ola and Yana unstrapped themselves and she followed the boy. The lead dogs looked down their noses into a steamy lagoon where three seals swam in circles. The rescuers brought the clothing and blankets from the sleds and they all carried the supplies down the hill. Yana nodded to Charlene and she called the villagers to return to their sleds.

  One by one the seals rose from the steaming water and shook themselves off, making the change which was by now as familiar to Yana as seeing them rising from their bedclothes in the morning or taking off their winter clothing when they came into the house. “Where have you lot been?” she asked as she hugged them. “Quite a lot has happened while you’ve been away.”

  CHAPTER 28

  BACK AT CHARLENE’S, everyone crowded around her tiny table, sitting on whatever could be used as a chair: upended logs, toolboxes, and a stool made from a single whale vertebra. The conversation was far from cheerful.

  Their coats and pants hung steaming beside the stove, drying. Their boots were on the stone hearth and their mittens on a line Charlene had rigged around the chimney. Charlene and her husband, Dan, were outside unhitching and feeding their dogs and helping the neighbors with the other teams. It was snowing again, and through the cabin’s window, already halfway snowed in, the people out there were hard to make out, little more than shadows moving clumsily within the heavily layered draperies of falling snow.

  Mum tried the mobile but shook her head in frustration as she pocketed it again. “I hope Sinead and the others haven’t started from Kilcoole to pick us up in this.”

  “If they have, they’ll be grand, love, sure they will,” Da reassured her. “A whiteout is no big thing to Sinead and her team, or the others, for that matter.”

  “Any more news about Madame’s ship and the kids?” Ke-ola asked.

  “What about them?” Murel and Ronan said, startled by the question and alarmed by the looks passing from Mum to Ke-ola and Da.

  Mum swallowed a gulp of tea. “While we were out at the volcano and the copter with Rick, Johnny, and Pet, and Raj was coming back to help the uninjured survivors back to base, Marmie and her crew were arrested and
the Piaf was impounded with all passengers aboard.”

  “They can’t do that!” Murel exclaimed. “That’s against Federation law.”

  “Which statute?” Ke-ola asked anxiously.

  “I dunno! I can’t remember everything,” Murel said impatiently. “But it just is. It has to be.”

  “It’s against common decency and common sense,” Da agreed. “But that doesn’t always have a great deal to do with the law.”

  Mum sighed. “We’ve had no luck trying to raise other ships or any of Marmie’s allies because of the interference, but the crew was able to keep the channels open for us until the ship got out of range of the clear signals we can receive. It’s looking pretty grim. They’re apparently being hauled off—secretly from what we can tell—to Gwinett Incarceration Colony.”

  “On what charges?” Ronan demanded indignantly.

  “Kidnapping the Kanakas and stealing the turtles and sharks.”

  “I wish we could give them the sharks back,” Murel muttered. “In fact, I’d like to see the punters swim in and get them.”

  “Gwinett?” Ke-ola looked stricken. “That’s a terrible place. They’re taking the kids there too?”

  Mum nodded. “From what I can gather. And you’re right, Ke-ola: it’s bloody brutal there. I hate to think of Marmie there, much less the kiddies. But we can’t do a blessed thing about it, and furthermore, I’m afraid that’s not all there is to it.” She told them about the transmission she’d overheard.

  Da grunted. “Arrest us all so they can take over Petaybee? Must be a new generation of bullies who haven’t heard how well that works.” He looked at the window. There wasn’t much of it left uncovered by snow. “In fact, I’d say offhand that Petaybee may be taking evasive action right now.”

  “If only we could hail another ship,” Mum said, “then Pet, Johnny, and Raj could hunt up some of the other powerful people in the Federation and even in Intergal—those who are friends of Marmie’s and would put a stop to this nonsense soonest.”

  “Nonsense it is too, Mum,” Murel agreed. “You said it was that Colonel Cally and his lot that brought charges. Mum, they were going to just abandon Ke-ola’s people and not even check to see if they’d survived the meteors—just leave them there for more of the same. If we hadn’t been there, they’d be starving while waiting for the next meteor shower to squash them.”

  Ke-ola said, “It’s our fault you’re all in trouble.”

  Da snorted. “Nonsense, lad. Petaybee would have been a giant strip mine and ourselves more or less slaves if Yana and Marmie hadn’t drummed up influential people with consciences enough to prevent tossers like the one’s Cally brought in from winning. Your folks are only an excuse for them to try their same old tricks again. But the fact is, they’ll find it’s very hard to invade us in the winter, and very hard to lay siege to people who are more or less under it two-thirds of the year anyway. We’ve not allowed them to map us completely, and Petaybee has very tricky terrain. Even if they did have a map, this world is capable of changing things around just to confuse them.”

  “But Breakup will come eventually,” Murel argued. “And meanwhile, Marmie and the others will be in their awful prison. We have to do something.”

  “Have to,” Ronan agreed.

  “We will,” Mum said. “But we must each do our part, and right now for you that means returning to the cave and staying where I can keep an eye on you.”

  “Oh, Mum,” Murel and Ronan said together. As if they hadn’t already been into space twice and solved all kinds of problems.

  “Kids, there’s nothing else you can do for now. Our communications are still inadequate to reach even as far as Marmie’s spaceship. We’ll just have to wait until one of our other friends arrives and get them to help Marmie and us. We’ve no other choice. With the Piaf gone, there’s no craft to carry our message.”

  “There is one,” Ronan said.

  “OUT OF THE question,” Mother said.

  “Too dangerous,” Father said. “From what you kids tell us, the deep sea other people are just this side of hostile, though they were perfectly pleasant to me when I came to get you. Perhaps we can persuade them to take me.”

  “You can’t, Da,” Murel told him. “You’d have to take human form to tell anybody about Marmie and you’d have to leave the city also. You know you wouldn’t be able to live offworld for long, and there’s no telling how long it would take.”

  “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, lass,” Da said with uncharacteristic gruffness. But Murel knew he was only being gruff because he hated that what she said was true.

  “I will go,” Ke-ola said. “It’s because of me Madame is in trouble, her trying to help my people.”

  “I don’t think someone who’s human all the time can live in their environment, Ke-ola,” Da told him.

  “The Honu should go, then. The children will be afraid. The Honu will calm them.”

  “We may never even see the children,” Murel said. “All we have to do really is make sure Marmie’s people know she needs all of her lawyers and every friend in high places she’s got to get her and everyone else free and off our backs.”

  “None of you are going and that’s final,” Mum told them. “You twins are at the top of the Most Wanted list. If you stay here, they’ll never find you and you can help the rest of us hide by keeping us informed of intelligence the animals might gather.”

  AWAKENING IN THE sulfur-smelling darkness, Murel knew she was not back in the cabin in Kilcoole. Then she remembered: they were in the communion cave where the village had taken refuge. The cave was too small for everyone to live in, but the white Nakatira cubes were invisible in the snow—and there was plenty of snow now.

  Murel heard the waterfall outside the cave and, beyond it, voices: her mother’s and others’, not Da’s.

  It’s Pet, Ro told her, reaching between their cots for her hand. And Johnny and that Raj guy.

  What are they saying?

  Dunno. Can’t hear for the waterfall. Let’s see what they’re doing.

  They crept out of their sleeping bags and over the bodies of other people and animals sleeping nearby, then walked down the path from the communion cave to the one under the waterfall, stopping just outside it.

  “Let us handle it, Yana,” Johnny was saying. “You stay here and take care of your family and the planet. It’s my ship that was taken.”

  “And my boss,” Pet said.

  “And we’ll be using my firepower,” Raj said.

  “Right. And it’s my family and my home that’s being threatened, folks. Besides, the Federation will want to talk to me. Better to do it offplanet where nobody else is going to be exposed.”

  Johnny laughed. “You just don’t like hiding. What does Sean think of his co-governor as a hijacker anyway?”

  “He doesn’t know. And we haven’t hijacked anything yet. They haven’t sent the ship. Maybe they won’t. Maybe Marmie’s friends found out what they were up to and were all over them before they got her to Gwinett. If the next ship that comes is friendly, we can ask them nicely to help. If not, we go with my plan. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” they said.

  The twins crept back to their sleeping bags, where Sky slept between them. Murel stroked his fur and cried a little. Adventures away from home were one thing, but having to leave your home to hide because it was under attack was far more worrying. Mostly she was worried about Mum doing something foolish while forbidding everyone else to take action that she thought was foolish, even when she didn’t understand what was involved.

  She finally fell asleep, awakening only when Ronan shook her shoulder. Sky was gone, no doubt already fishing for breakfast. Outside the cavern, wan light glanced off the snow sifting into the sulfurous steam of the communion pool.

  Murel and Ronan stripped down and dived in.

  At the river, Aunt Sinead’s partner, their Aunty Aisling, was standing guard. She looked very strange with a hunting rifle inste
ad of a piece of needlework across her lap. She looked up when they swam past her.

  “Where might you young rascals be off to this morning?” she asked. “Worrying your poor mum into a head full of gray hairs again, are you?”

  They barked that the truth was just the opposite—it was Mum that was worrying them—but Aisling didn’t speak seal; she just waved and they swam onward.

  Along the way, they spoke to the animals they met on the riverbanks. They told them about the threat to Petaybee and asked them to let Da know about any strange ships in the sky, or any men on the ground, as soon as they saw such things or heard of them from others. All along the length of the river they spread the message.

  When they reached the sea, they expected to be met by Sky’s relatives and cousins. Instead they saw only Sky, climbing up an icy bank, searching the horizon, then sliding down and climbing up again.

  Sky! Murel called.

  Hah! There you are, river seals. Good. Sea otter cousins are coming.

  Where have they been? Ronan asked.

  You will see, Sky said.

  And then they did see. Offshore, to the north and just beyond where the sea otter island had been, the water parted in a great whirling path that sucked it down then released it into a wave that swamped both the twins and Sky.

  Sea otters began swimming ashore, and then, to the twins’ amazement, they were followed by the larger variety of sea otters, the deep sea otters. Mraka, Puk, Kushtaka, and Tikka floated offshore. Sky joyously dived in to join them.

  Come, river seals, he called. Otters know the wishes of relatives who are not otters. You wished to see the deep sea otters again. Sky otters cannot swim so far again so soon, but sea otter cousins can. Deep sea otters come to see you.

  The twins swam out to the big otters, who were being loaded down with gifts of clams, crabs, and shell-cracking rocks by their sea otter hosts.