B25C20/21 - Seal

We nosed the little seal up onto the ice. Up at the feet of a strange little collection of unlikely creatures: two humans dressed for an August day, a red-tailed hawk shifting from talon to frozen talon on the ice, and Ax.

Jake and Rachel grabbed the pup and held him between them. First one, then the other, acquired the pup's DNA. They held him still as Ax pressed his many-fingered hand into the wet fur. Tobias fluttered up and landed on Rachel's shoulder. A painful thing for Rachel, though by then she was too cold to feel the bite of the talons.

The seal pup looked up, mystified but amused at the winged creature who gingerly touched him with his talon.

Cassie and I propelled ourselves up out of the water and demorphed on the ice. Not a pleasant experience. My skin froze to the ice halfway between dolphin and human. I ended up leaving an inch of Marco behind.

"Have I mentioned that it's cold?" I shivered, human once more. I touched the seal. Wet and firm and soft. Like touching a furry water balloon.

"Sorry," I said, for no good reason.

"Nothing we can do," Cassie said. She set the pup back down on the ice. He scooted to the water's edge and slid in, rejoining his - or her - brother or sister.

"They might m-m-make it," Rachel chattered.

But Cassie shook her head. For some reason she smiled sadly at Tobias. "No, they won't make it. But they'll feed some orca or polar bear, and you can't go all mushy over these guys without realizing that orca babies and polar bear babies have an equal right to live."

<Still, if we could . . .> Tobias said.

They were remembering the skunk litter we'd once saved. Tobias had eaten one of the skunk kits. Then he'd helped Cassie keep the rest alive.

"Nature, huh?" Rachel said.

<Yeah. Nature,> he replied. <Guess we better morph.>

"Or we could just stand here and freeze solid while discussing survival of the fittest," I said. I was hopping from bare foot to bare foot, trying not to let either freeze to the ice.

Rachel gave me one of her patented, insolent smiles. "You in a hurry, Marco? Has it oc-c-c-curred to you yet that if those little guys are some killer whale's meat, we w-w-will be, too?"

That had not occurred to me. Now it was occurring to me in vivid color with sound effects. "That's a happy thought, Rachel."

"Always here for you, Marco," she said. But already Rachel was changing.

I focused my cold-addled brain on the new image of the seal. And then, slowly at first, I began to morph.

My arms began to shrink. Smaller, smaller. Weird doll-sized replicas of arms that shrank till they were no more than three inches long.

My fingers shrunk, too, but from the tips grew long, ice-gripping claws. The fingers melted together, then instantly separated again, drawing a thin web of flesh between.

My legs were almost disappearing. I knew I was going to fall, but it still surprised me when I suddenly just plopped over, face first, onto ice. My feet shrank and narrowed and transformed themselves into the seal's flippers.

All the while my torso was growing smaller and yet chubbier. Blubber bubbled up beneath my skin. It was a little like that movie with Eddie Murphy, The Nutty Professor. Like that, only on a smaller scale.

I heard squishy sounds as my internal organs twisted around to fit my new body. My bones cracked and groaned, reshaping themselves to form my new skeleton. I was now an over-inflated football with flippers.

On my still-human face I grew long whiskers. My ears shriveled up and into my skull, leaving just a pair of holes! My head was no bigger than a baseball, while my nose stretched itself out until it was shaped like a puppy's.

I looked out at the frozen world through large, dark eyes and discovered that they saw about as well as my human ones.

Finally, short, thick fur sprouted all over my body, rippling across my chest and down my back like I was a Chia pet.

And then . . . and then . . .

Oh! The joy! The blessing! The fabulous, incredible, sensuous sensation! The most wonderful thing I have ever felt from the day of my birth to that very moment.

Warmth!

I was warm! Warm! If the heavens had opened and a giant hand had come down out of the clouds, giving me a billion dollars, my pick from the entire cast of Baywatch - past and present, and allowing me to grow two feet taller while magically acquiring all of Michael Jordan's skill with a basketball, I could not have been happier.

I! Was! WARM!

Cold? What cold? There was no cold.

I was on the beach at Malibu, sipping lemonade and talking trash with Tom Cruise.

I felt other things, of course. The seal's instincts were all there: an urge to run, an urge to chase fish, yadda yadda, but come on, I was warm!

My whiskers were amazingly sensitive. They felt even the slightest change in wind, the slightest movement from anyone else in our group. And part of me was still sniffing for my mother, but I, Marco, was the one in control. And I, Marco, was warm.

Did I mention I was warm? And happy? For about three seconds.

<The Venber!> Tobias yelled, blowing my happy mood away.

<Where?> Jake snapped.

TSEEEEEEEEW!

A huge bolt of blistering light hit the ice not a foot away. If it had hit rock, we'd have been blown apart in the shrapnel explosion. But it hit a patch of perfectly smooth ice.

SHWAAANGGG!

Ricochet! The Dracon cannon blast hit at a low angle, hit reflective ice, bounced, and blew a hole in the side of the ridge behind us.

It was a one-in-a-million shot. We decided not to try for two.

<Run! Dive! NOW!> Jake yelled.

Run. Yeah, right, no problem. I spun my ball-shaped body. We were only a few feet from the water, but it seemed like a mile with these weird little legs. No, not legs. Feet. Feet with no legs. Not a good land-going combination. I shuffled my fat belly right and left, right and left, and inched toward the water.

It probably looked funny. It didn't feel funny.

TSEEEEEEW!

Ka-BOOOM!

A miss, but not by much. Water and oil rose in a column behind us, Old Faithful at sub-zero temperatures.

<They must have just seen us morph!> Cassie said.

<Maybe they just really hate seals,> I said. But even in my panic I realized the importance of what Cassie had said. If the Venber knew we were human, we couldn't allow them to reach the Yeerks again.

I shuffled my fat belly over the ice, picked up momentum, saw the water's edge, kicked frantically and . . .

The next cannon blast blew the spot where we'd been into ice cubes.

But by then, I was in the water.

(...)

Awkward as our seal bodies were on land, they were perfect for the water. We couldn't swim as fast as dolphins, and our tail flippers weren't as efficient as a dolphin's tail, but we cruised, using our front flippers as rudders.

<We should be safe under the surface,> Jake said. <There's no way they can follow us, right, Ax?>

<I believe not, Prince Jake,> Ax replied.

I noticed one of the others doing it first. Making little clicking noises. Echolocation. Like dolphins. Like bats. Like Venber.

I shot off a few clicks of my own. What bounced back was an amazing picture of my surroundings: every fish, every plant, several other seals close by, every chunk of ice floating on the surface.

We swam for maybe half an hour. Back toward the Yeerk base. Back toward our mission, long-forgotten in the rush to stay alive.

It was also, we hoped, a good tactic. We would be doubling back on the Venber. With any luck at all, they'd search the ice for us till they became extinct. Again.

<Did they see us? I mean, as humans?> I asked.

<Why else would they take a shot at a bunch of seals?> Tobias wondered.