Your da? Mraka asked.
My father, male parent. The first seal you rescued.
He went straight to the doctors. I never spoke to him. Did you, Puk?
Not I.
Ronan was trying to decide how to ask his next question when his head was filled with a summons. Seal-boy, where are you? You must come to me in the observation tower at once.
Kushtaka wants you, Puk told Ronan.
So I heard. But I'm not sure I can find my way back there. I've only been there once.
I'll take you, Mraka told him. Our shift is nearly done anyway. Come. She walked out of the room but then began swimming upward. Ronan, still puzzled by the way people moved inside the city, followed her. As if catching his question she replied,
Our air is so dense and moist here that it is as if it were water. We swim in it and it can sustain us, though not fish without the use of real water.
So what are you really? Ronan asked, puzzling meanwhile that the air was evidently sufficient to keep him in seal form, although it was not actual water. That was a new experience. Deep sea otters or the other form?
I might ask you the same question. Are you a seal or a boy?
Both.
We are both as well. The deep sea otter form was convenient for gaining the cooperation of the sea otters, but it is a true alternative form and one we take more often than our original one these days. Our other form was better suited for the planet's first life.
When they reached the observation tower, Mraka waved a paw over the entrance, then deserted Ronan. Hope it works out well for you, fish juggler. Visit us again.
He braced himself to face Kushtaka again, glad that all of her people weren't against him too. Aunty Sinead would have called his conversation with Mraka and Puk "puttin' on the blarney," since he had set out to charm them into helping him and giving him information. But there was nothing wrong with making friends. He liked them, though he found it easier to like these people when they were otters than when they were in their jellyfish/octopus form.
He almost swam into Kushtaka's embrace as he entered the observation room. Not that she was ready to hug him. She was in otter form, and swung her paw in an arc, indicating what lay just outside the city's force field. We seem to be under surveillance ourselves, she told him.
Perhaps a hundred seals looked into the city as if it were one of those snow globes Aunty Aisling had made him and Murel when they were kids. The seals looked huge from here-probably just because the surveillance devices were so near to them the perspective was skewed.
Friends of yours? Kushtaka asked.
CHAPTER 22
MARMION HAD EXPECTED there might be repercussions from her encounter with Colonel Cally and the Custer. The man was too arrogant and too negligent to allow her challenge to his authority to go unavenged. She was rather surprised when she saw the reinforcements he had acquired.
She met them in the transit lounge just outside the docking bay. She did not want them in the main lounge frightening the children.
Besides Cally, there were a couple of junior officers, a squad of Corps personnel in combat gear, and a familiar but not friendly looking man in the robes of a Federation councilman. Beside him was a woman clad in similar robes. She was totally unfamiliar to Marmion. Troubling. She had been neglecting her duties on the council as well as her business lately. To her cost, it now seemed.
"Greetings, ladies and gentlemen," Marmion said, arching her brow in an expression she knew gave her an air of skeptical superiority. "I understand you are under the impression that I have somehow been naughty?" She used the coquettish word deliberately, to indicate that she thought the incident in question, or at least her culpability in it, was as petty as the word implied.
"Madame de Revers Algemeine, you are under arrest for the kidnapping of Intergal company personnel and the theft of Intergal company property. You and everyone aboard this vessel are taken into custody and this vessel confiscated as evidence."
Cally recited the charges with relish and nodded to the soldiers, pointing down the corridor. They marched away, their boots thudding a double-time tattoo on her faux Aubusson strip carpeting.
"What foolishness!" Marmie said, pointedly failing to show alarm at the armed nature of the invasion. She waved a hand dismissively. "In case poor Colonel Cally's mind was unhinged by the trauma of seeing the meteor showers destroy the homes of the Intergal company personnel in question, he will recall that he gave up searching for survivors long before we located these people, homeless and soon to starve to death in that desolate, desolate place." She gave a delicate shudder. "No, no, gentlemen, this will not suffice. We kidnapped no one. We simply provided relief from a disaster that overtook them while we were there. We then issued an invitation from another far more hospitable world. They chose to come, of course. They are not idiots." Her tone said, Unlike the people I am now addressing.
"Madame, you know very well that once these people have stayed on this world for any length of time, they will become unable to leave it and thus ineligible for recruitment into the career opportunities with Intergal for which they were destined. There was a contract between their leaders and the company," Cally said.
"Slavery is illegal, Colonel, and even if it were not, the dead make very poor servants or manual laborers, which I believe constitute the main career opportunities open to the personnel in question."
"You also stole livestock belonging to Intergal."
"I allowed the refugees to bring their sacred animals with them and the few possessions they still retained. But perhaps you are so ill-informed about what actually transpired because you and your vessel, after the most cursory search, abandoned your feeble efforts and took off for what you no doubt considered more urgent duties." There. She had done it. She had totally lost her temper. She felt her cheeks flaming, her eyes blazing, her voice searing the very skin off the stupid man. She was giving Petaybee's volcano quite a lot of competition at the moment.
She knew better. Much as she loathed stupidity, slackness, and cowardice, she of all people knew the value of diplomacy even in dealing with idiots. Losing one's temper gave the advantage to one's adversary. She took a deep breath and said, "It is useless to discuss this matter. You must take it up with my attorneys."
The man in Federation robes spoke. "You are entitled to contact them from the incarceration colony where you will be held, Madame. Under the authority vested in me as a deputized representative of the Federation, I, Jorge Hedgerow, declare you to be under arrest and your properties and assets frozen until you can be bound over for trial. Unfortunately for you, I fear there is quite a full docket these days."
The man's supercilious smirk was aggravating. Nevertheless, in the absence of her own allies she knew she would have to comply in order to avoid violence and possible injury to her passengers or crew. She tried once more to reason with the officious intruders on behalf of the passengers staying on the Piaf.
"Some of the refugee families were involved in an accident since they arrived.
They are no longer on the Piaf. All we have aboard here are the children and the old ones, not workers. You will want to either leave the children here with their parents or collect the families to come with us."
"And give you a chance to rally your henchmen?" Hedgerow asked. "I think not,
Madame. If the people want to be reunited with their children, they can apply to Intergal for transport to the holding area."
Marmie widened her eyes innocently. "Henchmen? My employees are devoted, it is true, but hardly henchmen. As to whether you gather the families in question now or later, that is of course up to your discretion. As a businesswoman, I naturally point out that it is more cost effective to do it now rather than later."