Free Maelstrom by Anne McCaffrey Page B

whispery, he would have been whining.
I wasn’t going to hurt him, I was carrying him to some of his two-legged relatives who are staying with our two-legged relatives.
    So what relatives of yours are swimming around us now?
Murel asked.
Two-legged or shark-finned?
    Shark-finned, of course, seal. You are so stupid I am tempted to eat you and improve your gene pool.
    They are not of our people and do not know our ways,
the Honu said. The twins realized with astonishment that the turtle was apologizing for them.
And they are young, but considered quite bright on their world.
    The shark’s thought was preceded by a shark’s version of a growl.
It must be a very stupid world.
    It is an intelligent world,
the Honu replied.
I have spoken with it myself. And meteors do not fall on it in great numbers. That is an advantage. Also, the waters, though cold, are open to the sky.
    You don’t say,
the shark replied, chewing on the thought, though fortunately not on the Honu.
    Murel had not known many sharks—or any sharks—before. Petaybee did not even have sharks, as far as she knew. She was not entirely sure Petaybee
needed
sharks. The planet had invited Ke-ola’s people and Honus, not sharks. But it seemed that the shark had the same relationship with some of the people that the Honu had with Ke-ola, so probably it was a package deal.
    We came to help your people as well as Honu’s people,
she said.
If you and your kind can keep yourselves from eating anybody we can save everyone.
    Can’t you even let us have the otter?
it asked.
We haven’t been fed all day and we’re very hungry.
    No,
Ronan said, and remembered what Ke-ola’s people seemed to think.
He is
our
aumakua so you owe him professional courtesy too, right?
    Seals don’t have aumakuas, according to any lore I’ve been told,
the shark replied scornfully.
I thought you were Honu people but you’re not. Seals look like meals to me.
    They are not seals all the time, Mano,
the Honu told him.
They are two-legged children.
    Why don’t they have a seal aumakua then, instead of a puny little otter?
    Who knows how things work with those from other worlds?
the Honu replied.
Perhaps otters on their world are the ancestral spirits of seals.
    Ronan, just to keep the shark confused, said,
No, otters are the ancestral spirits of people just as you are. The seal spirits are our father’s—
    What he means to say,
Murel said,
is that there aren’t many human seals like us. We are aumakuas in training ourselves. So, no eating us or the otter or Ke-ola or Honu. Are we agreed? If so, can we stop discussing cross-cultural theology now and save the people?
    Follow me, but if I feel you looking at my tail, I will tell the Mano halau to eat everyone but the Honu and his human.
The shark gave a long shudder. Murel realized he was not refraining from eating them out of any kind of respect, but because he was afraid of them. He was not used to being attacked and he felt instinctively that anything smaller than he was, foolish enough to attack, must be either very dangerous or so deranged, and maybe diseased, as to be unpalatable. The shark was actually quite anxious to get away from them. It shot forward into the water.
    They followed the tail, no longer lashing the water but knifing through it so sharply it seemed the shark might leave a dry trench in his wake.
    At length the lake narrowed back into the sort of canal they had seen before, then to a streamlet. When they got that far the shark told them,
You go ahead. Too shallow for me.
    I thought you were taking us to your people,
Murel said.
    They’re over there, downstream, beyond the wooden reef.
    Murel thought he might mean a ball of roots like those they’d encountered before.
How do you know they’re there if you can’t go that far?
she asked.
    The Honu answered,
Manos know too.
    In spite of the shark’s failure thus far to eat them, Murel was very happy to leave him behind in the lake while she and Ronan, Ke-ola, Sky, and