She spoke but Murel didn't hear what she said. Her words were lost in the thrum of the helicopter engine as the aircraft flew close, to hover above the marooned people.
The copter couldn't land on the island and there wasn't room aboard for the stranded shipwreck-or boat wreck-victims. It set down on its pontoons just offshore, and Da dived into the water, changing, then took a packet in his mouth as Mum, clad in a wet suit, carrying another small bundle, joined him, and both swam to shore.
"Where's your brother?" Da asked as soon as he changed shapes.
Murel, without meaning to, burst into tears. "They't-took him!" she sobbed.
"Who? Where?" Mum asked, as if she planned to dismember whoever had her son, wherever they might be hiding. She tossed a bundle to Murel.
The packet contained clothing.
Sinead sat up on her elbows then, with help from Seamus and Da, propped her back against a rock, and reached into a zippered pocket in her snow pants. She pulled out Da's dry suit. "I thought you might be needing this when we met up again."
Da tugged on the suit. Murel dug into the packet Mum had given her, donned a shirt that covered her to the knees, and handed the rest to Seamus, who was nearest.
Da opened the bundle he'd carried in his mouth. It contained medical supplies, compressed packets of thermal blankets, nutrient bars, and purification/desalination capsules one of Marmie's scientists had invented.
Puna reached for the supplies. "I am the clan healer," she told him. "I can tend our own injured and yours too."
In the open door of the copter, Ke-ola, wearing a pair of pants far too small for him, shouted to them. Although the copter had shut down its engine, his voice was lost in the roar of the surf. Da shook his head and started for the water, but Ke-ola shook his head in return, pointed his finger toward shore, and dived into the water.
Once there, he handed Murel her dry suit, back in its packet. "You need this more than me." She slipped into it under the shirt, then handed the shirt to one of the shivering shark people.
"Captain O'Shay wanted me to tell you that the coastal fishermen are on their way to fetch the survivors," Ke-ola told them.
"Excellent," Da said. "We need to organize another search party too. Murel says someone has taken Ronan."
"Da," she told him, "the someone isn't human. They look like big otters, they pretend to be otters, but they're not. Well, at least not all the time. They're aliens."
"As if it weren't bad enough that we're plagued with friendly offworlders wanting to immigrate, now we've hostile kidnapping ones to contend with," Seamus grumbled.
"They weren't hostile," Murel said. "They're the ones who saved Da, and they saved me today and probably Ro as well when the orcas attacked us. They were just curious, I think-the aliens, I mean, not the orcas. They were studying Petaybee's sea life, from what we could tell. They pretended to be deep sea otters so the real sea otters would trust them.
"They could change shapes, like we can," she said to her father. "Ro and I found out about them when we got you, Da, back from their city-or I guess maybe it's a vessel. But they made us promise not to tell. After they rescued me-and Ronan and Sky, who were caught up in the waterspout when they followed me into it- they let us rest up. They were going to wipe our memories before we left but one of
Kushtaka's-she's the leader-kids, J-J-Jeel-left the enclosure to get a closer look at the sharks. I said I could talk the sharks out of eating him but I c-couldn't, I d-didn't get there in time. And Kushtaka kept Ro and Sky there till I came back.
But she must have seen what happened to Jeel on the sursurvu-that's the big receiving dome for their surveillance sensors."
Murel's voice rose to an embarrassing wail, her nose ran, and her eyes filled with more salt water than they ever seemed to when she was swimming. "It was awful,
Da, and she is his mum and she saw it all! I know she did. That has to be it. She decided the sharks made this spot too dangerous for them to stay so she moved the city. Sky got away somehow but Ro's still inside the city, vessel, whatever. It's all my fault!"
Ke-ola beat her parents to putting a comforting arm around her. "No, no, little sistah, it's my fault mostly. If you hadn't wanted to help me bring the Honus and my people here for a better life, then the Manos would not have come to eat the alien kid."
"We never made any deals about alien kids," Puna said, stoutly defending her clan's sacred animals. "The Manos were hungry. You kept them asleep on that ship but you didn't feed them what they needed. It's a wonder they kept their promise as long as they did-back on the old world, they'd eat their own wounded sometimes."
"Petaybee's started changing them already," Da mumbled to himself.
"Well, I wish it had done a better job, and done it sooner!" Murel's grief was turning to anger. "It was horrid. Just poor Jeel screaming and the sound of all those teeth and that blue stain all that was left of him."
Now Mum moved to put her arm around Murel's other shoulder. "Not Petaybee's fault or yours or Ke-ola's, pet, or even the sharks'. They weren't to know what Jeel was."
"But I told them and they just didn't care!" Murel howled, hating how she sounded even as she did it. "And now his mum doesn't have her kid and she took Ro to get back at us for bringing the sharks, even though that's why Ro and I came out here - to warn them."
"Is it your opinion that this Kushtaka is angry enough to harm your brother?" Da asked.
"N-no, but if she took him into outer space we'll never see him again!"
"Here now," Mum said. "None of that. Ke-ola, ask Rick and Johnny to buzz the
Piaf and get the navtrack records from the ship's computer. That should let us know if any vessels have left Petaybee's atmosphere within the time since Piaf entered it. If the alien vessel has left Petaybean space, have the Piaf notify the Corps and the Federation patrol to intercept it. Tell them to use level-three diplomacy in dealing with the alien vessel-speak kindly while casually aiming a big laser cannon at it. They wouldn't use the laser under level three, but the aliens don't know that. Probably the threat won't be necessary anyway. This Kushtaka sounds like she might have cooled off enough to see reason and return Ronan if she's given a chance."
Ke-ola returned to the water, walking out a short way until the lava shelf dropped from under his feet. The water was a deep transparent blue, and the ocean floor was visible here when the water wasn't agitated. Ke-ola flattened out into a long dive and swam to the copter.
"Hmph," Da said. "The way I see it, those bloody orcas have a lot to answer for."
"But Da," Murel told him, "they were sorry-they saved me and Aunty Sinead from the whirlpool that wrecked Seamus's boat. I was trying to rescue her myself but if the whales hadn't picked us up, I'd never have been able to pull her this far in time to-to…" That was just it. Everything had been just too-too. She couldn't remember the word she wanted and finally said, "…to undrowned her."
Sinead coughed. "Thanks, pet. It's me that's undrowned, and alive to be proud of you, I am."
Murel managed a small smile. She realized that Aunty must be pretty upset herself.
She didn't usually sound so much like the Irish side of the family.
Puna rose from tending a shark man's broken arm, planted her feet as firmly as she could on the drastic sloping lava rock, and put her fists on her hips as she faced the
Shongilis. "So now there is trouble, what you gonna do with us, huh? You gonna do the same as the company? The Manos make a little mistake and eat something you don' want them to eat and you gonna send us away again someplace worse than the one we come from?"