Before he could ask about them, however, Mraka caught one on the end of her nose and balanced it for a couple of nanos before opening her mouth to swallow it.
Ronan clapped his front flippers together appreciatively, startling both of the otterlike aliens. Good, Mraka! I guess otters can do it too.
I can too, I can, Mraka's friend said, fumbling his tenth fish.
Calmly, Puk, she said. You get too excited and twitch too much.
I can't be calm and concentrate with you staring at me, Puk complained, but when Mraka threw the next fish, Puk balanced it, more or less, for a brief and tottering time before it dropped from his nose and began to fall into the whirlpool beam.
Reflexively, he dived under it and this time caught it at exactly the right place on his nose and balanced it even after he stood on his hind paws again.
Very good, Puk, Ronan told him, applauding with his front flippers again. I bet even Sky couldn't do that.
Your little friend the odd-looking otter? Mraka asked.
Yes, I wanted to ask you if you'd seen him or knew where the big slide is Tikka took him to play on. I'm worried that when the city moved- I'm sorry about your friend, Mraka said. I tried to catch him but he was after a fish, and when the beam went out, he fell into it and-well, he didn't come back with it.
He esc-he left the city? Ronan asked.
Yes, I'm sorry. He probably drowned. The turbulence created by our drives is very strong and he was very small.
Sky? Drowned? Ronan couldn't see how that was possible, having watched the otter swim and knowing how quick-thinking Sky was. No, he thought sternly to himself. I don't believe he drowned. I think he escaped.
But meanwhile he decided to act as sad as if he thought Mraka was right. Oh, no.
He was a very good friend.
Yes, it has been very bad recently, Puk said. First Jeel is killed, and then your otter friend. Jeel was often difficult, not quite right, but Kushtaka and Tikka were fond of him. And I liked the otter. Sky?
Yes, Ronan replied in a regretful way, Sky, because he was the first sky otter-he flew with us in the helicopter and went into space too. He was proud of being the first Petaybean otter ever to do so.
Then it is good he did not find out that his assumption and yours are incorrect. All of the beings in this vessel have also flown and been into space.
Mraka added, But we are not otters all of the time. Just as you, Ronan, are not a seal all of the time.
I know. You're from outer space, right?
No, we were born on this world, in this sea.
I'm a little puzzled, Ronan told them. Our grandfather was the one who chose the animals to come to Petaybee after the terraforming. I'm pretty sure your people weren't among them.
Nobody put us here, Mraka told him. She set one of the fish baskets in a certain place and it disappeared through the wall. On the other side of the room, Puk was doing the same. Our people have been here since this world's first life, before it died and your science revived it. This vessel is a remnant of our original civilization.
But how can that be? The terraforming made new life on Petaybee, but before the process started, the company had to make sure there were no sentient life-forms on the planet. They lie sometimes but they wouldn't lie about that.
Even if they didn't recognize us for what we are? Mraka asked. Even if there did not seem to them to be enough of us to matter?
No, Ronan said. They've done some pretty questionable stuff but I don't think they'd do that.
Perhaps it is not policy, Puk said. But there are always individuals and circumstances. Kushtaka would not normally keep a being from the outside world here longer than they wished. But with Jeel's death, she is not behaving in her customary fashion. Perhaps the person who was supposed to make sure there were no life-forms on this world also had reasons for departing from the usual protocol.
Mraka paused as she lifted a basket. Or perhaps they simply overlooked us. We are not many and the rest of our world was dead. Only those of us living in this enclave that is now our vessel clung to life.
But how? According to everything, including the planet itself, Petaybee was a dead world when the Intergal terraformed it. No water, no plants, no animals, nothing to sustain life.
Oh, well, if you count that time, it very well may have seemed unoccupied. We weren't physically here during that period. When the great ice age came, the volcanoes died and the waters froze and most of our people froze as well. Our city was on the last vent of the last remaining volcano and we had enough power to send a final distress signal before resigning ourselves to extinction. Fortunately, offplanet observers more similar to ourselves than we would have thought possible detected our plight and sent engineers to convert our city to the life-sustaining vessel it is now. It seemed a prudent time to take a holiday and discover what lay beyond this world.
So you were on vacation when the terraforming happened? Ronan asked. I get why you left but why did you come back if you thought Petaybee was dead?
Our rescuers took us back to their home world. It seems our race began on that world but as its population grew it decided to colonize another planet. Our ancient ancestors were those colonists, the original settlers of this world in its first life.
There was commerce between the worlds originally but they are not near to each other. Though our people are technologically and scientifically skilled, we did not develop the terraforming process as your company did. The ancestors seeking a place to colonize had to hunt a long time and a great distance to find this world. So gradually the commerce between the two stopped and we developed our own culture and characteristics. Eventually our forebears were forgotten as surely as if our own memories had been wiped, which is, now that I think of it, not unlikely.
Puk said, Originally, our rescuers thought they could bring us back to their world to live, but in their absence, the overpopulation had escalated until the planet was so crowded as to be almost uninhabitable. While we were allowed to stay there for a brief time, we were soon banished, along with our rescuers. We were very sad to have caused them trouble but decided, since we were banished and would die in space sooner or later, to return here to die. In spite of the impossibility of the living conditions when we left, we longed to be here. You see, there has always been something about this world…
Yes, there is, Ronan said. It's alive. But Grandpa and the other scientists thought that was some kind of odd result of the terraforming.
The life force is more evident now, Mraka conceded, but there was always something, and rather than start out on a new place alone, we decided to return here and die on our world and join the rest of our people. We found the world changed. No cities or towns at that time, and only a little animal life, but many alien plants and this great sea covering the rest of the city where our people once lived.
I bet you were surprised! Ronan said.
And pleased until we realized that another species was responsible for reviving our world, populating it with their chosen flora and later fauna including their dominant life-form.
Us.
Yes. But we saw quickly that your people did not live in the sea, only on the icy landmasses. So we resettled near our old city and found we were able to sustain ourselves on the animals and plants that now occupy the sea. Those near the volcanic vents may have begun differently when you introduced them, but they have become much like those we knew in our former home.
So you guys aren't aliens any more than we are, Ronan concluded. That's brilliant!
My da will wish he'd been conscious when he was here and got to keep his memory. He would so like to meet you. Or remember meeting you anyway.