Chapter 19
Kinlok Island and Scotland Beach
Time: (Seome) 768.2, Epoch of Tekpotu
(Earth) November, 2122
Within two days, the dismantling project was well underway. The 1st Time Displacement Battery had a complement of ten Umans, in addition to Ultrarch-Major Dringoth. The Omtorish fleet consisted of ten kip’ts, carrying nearly thirty members of that kel.
Neither side had ever really believed in the existence of the other.
When the entire kip’t fleet surfaced outside the bay, floating among the wreckage of dozens of chronotron pods, Lieutenant Golich remarked to Captain Acth:On’e on the sight.
“After nearly twenty terr in the Corps, I thought I’d seen everything. Talking fish…driving boats.” Golich just shook his head, wondering if there was any bug juice left in the crews mess.
The hut on the sand ridge overlooking the bay became the de-facto headquarters of the mission. Dringoth told Chase, Kloosee and, now, Pakma, that rounding up the chronotron pods was the most important step needed at the beginning.
“They’re irreplaceable. The pods generate the twist field. Without the pods, the Twister’s a big pile of metal.”
So, the Omtorish fleet set to work corralling all the pods which wave and wind action had torn off the top surface of the Twister and littered across the waters around Kinlok. That job took a day. When they were done, a large tchin’ting fiber net had been draped across the waters of the bay, inside of which clanked and jostled most of the damaged pods.
Kloosee mentioned that it was like herding pal’penk into their pens. “Except you don’t have to feed them and talk to them.”
The Time Twister itself was a vast, twelve-kilometer pie-shaped structure, segmented into quarters, moored to the seabed with stout anchors and surmounted with hemispherical caps, which were the chronotron pods. Fully operational, the machine resembled an enormous inverted dinner plate, studded on top with dimples and balls. The entire apparatus was linked by thick ganglia of cables to the island itself, for power and command and control. The hut where most of the conferences and planning took place housed tracking instruments. The control center was housed in a bunker like structure on the other side of the island, nestled in a small ravine near the summit.
The project was planned to gather all the repairable chronopods together, so the Umans could sort out what worked and what didn’t. Those that could be repaired would be. Those that couldn’t would be discarded and Sector would have to furnish replacements. The Time Twister was still operating, although at a reduced level of effectiveness.
“There are still Coethi ships in the sector,” Dringoth explained one day. “Even damaged, the Twister can still yank the bastards to the other side of the galaxy if they come within range. The Halo still needs us…thank God for that. We may be damaged but we still pack a pretty good punch…just staying up and operating will keep the Coethi honest.”
Chase was curious about how the Twister worked. Golich took him on a little tour of the command shack one day, just for the novelty of showing off a ‘monster’ to his Uman comrades. He enjoyed watching them jump out of their seats, then waved everybody back.
“It’s okay…he’s one of the fish. And he speaks English too…imagine that.”
Golich explained the Twister’s operation.
“The Time Twister is designed to manipulate space and time over short volumes of space. Any object caught in the Twister’s field of influence is accelerated out of the existing space –time field and flung through a wormhole into unknown and hopefully very distant reaches of space, perhaps even into other universes.” Here, Golich called up a display of the machine on a nearby console. Chase moved closer, causing other crewmen to scatter abruptly, backing away from Golich’s ‘monster. The Lieutenant just smirked and went on.
“The Twister contains a naked singularity at the core of its field. Fifty-five terr ago, we learned how to use existing stars and their extreme gravitational fields to compress matter enough to create such a singularity. The distorted space-time field around this singularity core of the Twister is known as a twist field.
“Our engineers now have a way of creating, maneuvering and regulating the effects of the twist field. This is done through a screening field and a series of filters known as twist buffers, or just T-buffers.
“Like a nuclear power plant with its core always on, but regulated by control rods, the Twister is also always on. The singularity engine at the core, once created and activated, can’t be turned off. But it can be regulated through a series of T-buffers. These moderate the twist field. The control station manned by these crewmen here essentially operates a system of T-buffers.”
Chase thought about the Farpool. “You said one of the side effects of the Twister is all the whirlpools around here, in the water.”
Golich agreed. “We’ve seen those. Just side effects, as you say. Your own people—what are they called--?”
“Seomish…actually, these kelke are Omtorish—“
“Yes, certainly…they told us about the whirlpools. Frankly, we use them for sport. The twist field pinches spacetime just enough to create these vortexes…harmless enough, I suppose. Sometimes, when we’re bored we catch fish and throw ‘em in…just to see what’ll happen.”
“One of those vortexes is a whirlpool we call the Farpool.”
Here, it was Golich’s turn to seem perplexed. “And you say this Farpool can fling you across time and space…even back to Earth? We had no idea. Not that it would have mattered…” Golich looked up, seeing through the roof visions of the Coethi enemy. “We have our own mission here.”
Chase agreed. “It can. The Seomish call this mother of all whirlpools the Farpool. By accident, they’ve learned that at certain times of the year, under certain conditions created by the Time Twister, the Farpool can send small objects…a few Seomish and their gear…to other places and times. One of those places turns out to be Earth itself. Home…Scotland Beach. That’s how I got here.”
“You told me they brought you here.”
“I came willingly. In effect, the Seomish have learned how to travel in time and space, at least to Earth.
Golich frowned. “We heard that Urth had been quarantined…too dangerous to expose them to Coethi attack. An awful lot of strategic timestreams converge at Earth…the Corps had to shut them off.”
“The Seomish are pretty smart, Lieutenant. They’ve catalogued the conditions they need and built an algorithm to help predict when these conditions will occur. When the right conditions appear, they know to be ready to enter Farpool. That’s how my friends, Kloosee and Pakma, wound up on Earth.”
Golich still found it hard to believe. “You know nobody around here really buys this. They still think your friends are a bunch of freaks…some kind of talking fish. But what’s happened the last few days---helping us round up the pods, helping us segment and break down the foundation, severing the mooring lines, the support cabling…no pet fish could do that. I mean, just look at you…you look like a bad dream, something I’d see after eating too much of the slop they call food around here. Too much bug juice.”
“It’s that procedure—I can’t even pronounce it--“
Golich held up a hand. “I know, I know. You told me. But still-“
Now Chase asked the question he really wanted to ask. “You’re going to keep the Twister operating as long as you can?”
“We have too…this sector of Halo Alpha depends on us.”
“And the whirlpools will still be there?”
Golich shrugged. “I suppose so. Why--?”
“That means the Farpool will still work.”
“If you say so.”
Chase knew what he had to do. Kloosee and Pakma both had parried his questions about going back through, seeing Angie again. Now, he thanked Golich for the tour of the command shack and scrambled back across the ru
bbly terrain of Kinlok to the sand dunes overlooking the bay. The Omtorish fleet was mostly submerged, now helping tie off and secure the Twister’s mooring lines. Several kip’ts still lolled in the shallows of the bay, while their crew made repairs and stowed provisions.
One of them was Kloosee’s. Chase hiked down to the water’s edge.
Kloosee and Pakma were still in their lifesuits. They were shoving the kip’t out into deeper water. Chase came up, gave them a hand.
“Can I talk to you?” Chase asked.
They managed to get the kip’t off a sandbar and then all three of them climbed in. Kloosee drove the kip’t toward one of the Twister’s mooring cables, anchored to the seabed. The Twister was still operating so the concussive booms of the chronopods slammed the water. But Kloosee had lined the cockpit with seaweed strands, partially muffling the noise.
“We’ll have to use mah’jeet to sever the mooring cables,” he decided. “They should be able to eat through the fibers, given enough time.”
“Kloos, I want to go back through the Farpool. It’s not far from here…I know we’ve discussed…tried to discuss this. I want to see how Angie’s doing.”
Kloosee settled the sled on the sea bottom, opened the cockpit and slipped out to examine the cable anchoring. Pakma and Chase followed.
Pakma spoke up. “Eekoti Chase, we don’t have a lifeship with us. You can’t go through the Farpool without a lifeship.”
Now Kloosee weighed in. “The Metah would have to approve. The Farpool is risky. We don’t send people through without preparing, consulting the Academy, talking with Longsee. His scientists have learned how to time the Farpool, minimize the risk.”
Chase was not be deterred. “One of these kip’ts would do. Sure, maybe with some modification…I’m willing to risk it. It’s my life anyway. And the Farpool’s nearby.”
Now Kloosee turned from the mooring cable and regarded Chase grimly. He could pulse the echoes of determination inside the eekoti. Theirs weren’t so hard to read. Chase and Angie had both been open books, hiding nothing. They didn’t yet know the Omtorish way of layering echoes and bubbles, the art of concealment and subterfuge.
“Chase, this is a bad idea. We need you on the project. You know the Tailless, you think like a Uman, you are Uman. You can help us keep the misunderstandings under control. To move the wavemaker, Uman and Omtorish have to work together. Look at you…you’re part of both worlds. You’re Uman, yet with em’took, you live among us. There’s no one else like you here.”
Pakma added, “Chase, it’s just that we can’t afford to lose you…and you’ve been through the Farpool, so you know how dangerous it can be. We can’t even be sure you’ll get back to the right time and place. And there is the em’took…to reverse this is also dangerous.”
“It’s never been done,” Kloosee admitted.
“I don’t care. Can you at least ask the Metah? Ask Longsee? See what they say? I mean, it’s great that I’m needed, that I can help. But—“ here Chase struggled to find the words, hoping the echopod would convey what he meant, maybe even fill in where he had no words to describe a feeling, “—I’m not really like you. This—thing—“ he indicated his modified body, with its scales and armor and ridges and projections and gills and—“—lets me live with you. But you know I’m Uman…human, I should say. I like helping. I like learning about your kel, your world, the Pillars, the seamothers, even the Ponkti scumbags. But I can’t stay here forever…I’m not sure I want to. Hell…I don’t know what I mean. Does any of this make sense? Is it coming through the pod okay?”
Now Kloosee and Pakma looked at each other. Thoughts passed between them, not by words. Only the echoes inside spoke volumes. They pulsed each other and they understood.
“I’ll find Longsee,” Kloosee said at last. “I’ll see what he says. If he agrees that a kip’t can be modified and go through the Farpool with a decent chance of surviving, then maybe you can do this. But we still need the Metah’s approval.”
Now, Chase showed them just how much he had learned living among them. “You’ve got repeaters with us…I know one of them…Pekto something or other. Can’t they send a signal…like call home, through that deep sound channel?”
Kloosee had to admit this was true. “Longsee, first, Chase. Here, help me with this sack…careful…it’s got mah’jeet inside. We’ll wrap it around the anchor bed and let them eat their way through the sack…and then the cable.”
Longsee was intrigued by the prospect of modifying a kip’t for a Farpool trip. “We’ll have to strengthen it, seal it better. Kloosee has some ideas.’
Chase was encouraged. “Then you think it can be done?”
Longsee was examining a piece of a chronopod that had been torn off and sunk into the sea. The scientist had located a small grotto behind a bed of coral and set up a temporary location there, from which to help oversee the dismantling. The drumming of the wavemaker was audible, but muffled and more bearable.
“It can be done, eekoti Chase. The question is should it be done. The Farpool is variable…it intensifies. It relaxes, almost like breathing. The wavemaker creates all azh’puhte…all the vortexes, including the Farpool. The Umans have changed the way the wavemaker operates. We don’t know what effect this change will have on the vortexes. It might not work at all. It might send you somewhere other than what you want.”
“I’m willing to take the chance. Will you help me?”
Something in the way Chase spoke, though the echopod did the translating, made Longsee look up. He pulsed Chase deeply. Resolve, fortitude, grit, strength. All the echoes were there, though Umans didn’t reflect like anyone else. Longsee could see that Chase meant what he was saying and, worse, would likely try the trip even without approval. He didn’t want that on his conscience.
“I will help you,” he decided. “But we must put this before the Metah.”
They hunted down Pekto kim, a veteran Omtorish repeater, who had come with the expedition because of his navigation skills and knowledge of the northern seas. Pekto was working with a small group on releasing mooring cables for the wavemaker foundation.
Longsee worked with Pekto to formulate the message.
“It’s has to be done a certain way,” Pekto explained to Chase. “The format is very structured. Repeaters like me have to sing long and loud, so the message can’t be very long or complicated. Simple is better. Other repeaters who hear the message and sing it on further expect messages to done the right way.”
Chase listened through his echopod to the words that Longsee and Pekto composed. He didn’t begin to understand all of it, but the echopod itself had told him about the repeaters who were so important to long distance communication….
…the long-distance, deep sound channel is called ootkeeor….low frequency sounds can be reflected through this channel for distances of hundreds of beats…all kels maintain a force of living repeaters whose job is to roam the seas along this sound channel and listen for news, warnings, signals, various messages, anything that needs to be communicated across great distances…the ootstek hear these messages and re-broadcast them in a manner similar to songs…messages must be formulated according to strict guidelines….
“What’s it like being a repeater?” Chase asked.
Pekto was a muscular fellow, older with some gray mottling, but possessed of powerful tail flukes. “We’re all great swimmers,” he boasted. “We can swim forever, against any current, any kind of condition. But what’s it like?” Pekto thought a moment, put down his mah’jeet sack and let himself drift slightly. “Lonely. That’s the best word for it. You’re out there in the far seas, all by yourself, nothing but seaweed and pal’penk and coral beds for company. It’s stressful too…you have to listen carefully, all the time. You can’t miss anything. You have to concentrate and that wears you out. Sometimes, we repeaters just have to shut ourselves down, drift
with the current, take a long sleep, to get our strength back. Ah, but we have a great life, we do. The Serpentines, the Pillars of Shooki, the volcanoes, the Likte Trench, we see it all. Every repeater is a great story-teller. When we retire, that’s all we do. Suck gisu, get drunk and tell stories.” Pekto bellowed out a hearty laugh. Then he got down to work with Longsee to compose Chase’s message.
The message described for the Metah what Chase wanted to do. When it was done, and translated for Chase, he agreed with the content. “I just want to see Angie again…I’m willing to take any risks…I know the Farpool can’t always be predicted.”
Longsee gave the finished pod to Pekto. “Eekoti Chase, what you’re doing is very brave…maybe even foolish. But we understand the pull of your own kel…we’ll see what the Metah says.”
Chase asked, “Pekto, how do you send this message now?”
Pekto explained. “I have the bulb with the message. I memorize it while I’m traveling to the nearest point of oot’keeor…a few hundred beats south of here. From there, I orbit inside the sound channel, each leg about fifty beats and I sing the message of the pod, your message. Over and over again. I sing it for a day. Then I come back. Other repeaters will hear it and pass it on. In a few days, the message will arrive at Omsh’pont.”
“Like an old-timey telegraph,” Chase observed. Then he realized nobody had any idea what he was talking about.
As Pekto had predicted, the Metah’s response came back three days later. During that time, Chase helped Longsee, Kloosee and Pakma with unfastening the wavemaker’s mooring cables, splitting open the section seams of the great machine and rounding up the rest of the chronopods. The Umans were reasonably helpful and there were daily meetings on the beach at Kinlok. Chase was the designated intermediary, so he learned many details of the plan to break down the wavemaker and transport it hundreds of beats to the west, across the northern Serpentines, riding the Omt’chor Current, to an island chain and seamount known as T’orshpont. He began to learn more about Ultrarch-Major Dringoth in these briefings…just what kind of person he was and how he had come to command the 1st Time Displacement Battery.
He didn’t want to be there. Dringoth was a lifer. He came from a military family, as did many residents and colonists of Keaton’s World. After a brief stint as a commercial ship captain with Keaton’s Transport and Storage, he had joined the Time Corps’ Timejump Command. He needed something more than boring freighter duty from one world in the Keaton’s World star system (the sun was called Sturdivant 2180) to another, and to other worlds in the borderlands between the Lower Halo and the Inner Spiral (Centaurus Arm).
Dringoth always imagined himself a military expert and sought out experiences that would have some hope of bringing recognition, glory and fame. He came from a family where the parents, Pyotr Dringoth and Natalya Dringoth, were famous in their fields of expertise. Pyotr was a great explorer of backwater worlds and satellites in the outer system of Sturdivant 2180, which had some twenty planets and thousands of moons and satellites. The only more famous person on Keaton’s World was General Oscar Keaton himself, who lead the colony-founding expedition (“First Fall”) to Sturdivant’s fifth planet several hundred terr before Monthan Dringoth was born. Pyotr Dringoth was best known as the discoverer of the great underground ice labyrinth called the Hollows, part of the icy satellite called Gibbons Grotto in the outer system of Sturdivant. This dwarf planet was hollow inside with thousands of kilometers of caves, caverns, grottoes, mazes and warrens.
Monthan’s mother, Natalya Dringoth, was a biochemist and neuro-engineer, perhaps best known as the discoverer/creator of scope, a mildly addictive compound that has become essential for preparing Umans (and other sentient beings) for mind uploading, a process known as The Switch.
With two famous parents and some overachiever siblings, Monthan had to get out and left home for Frontier Corps at an early age, signing onto a freighter crew making the rounds of Sturdivant’s worlds. Initially, a robotics’ mate, he worked his way up over a number of years into positions of command. Ten terr after joining the Corps, he went through officer candidate school (OCS) (on Telitor, a nearby world of the star-sun Delta Recursa III). About five years after that, he was given command of small corvette called Lalande, which he skippered for another five terr, until a navigation error under his command caused the corvette to crash into a small asteroid in the Boru system. Extensive damage to the ship led to an investigation and Dringoth was found to be negligent and at fault. He was cashiered from Frontier Corps.
About this same time, new developments in temporal science and engineering led to new technological breakthroughs allowing Umans to travel through time for limited excursions. Not long after these developments, Umans learned of a new threat in the Inner Spiral and Lower Halo sectors of the galaxy. A race of machine-like swarm entities called the Coethi had also developed a means of conducting temporal operations and were beginning to alter time streams around outlying Uman settlements in such a way as to eliminate these Uman settlements from ever having been established…changing the very nature of space-time and the historical record.
Umans had to counter this threat immediately. A new military force was set up, known as the Time Corps.
Monthan Dringoth, now cashiered out of Frontier Corps and trapped in a dead end job on Sturdivant Eleven as a mining camp cook and bot repairman was immediately intrigued by this new development. He plotted to join Time Corps, mainly as a way of getting off Sturdivant Eleven and making a name for himself, independent of his famous parents.
He volunteered for service with Time Corps and signed a contract after spending nearly seven terr on Sturdivant Eleven. After passing the physical, he was sent to recruit camp on Poona-Peona, where he nearly died in physical training, after a serious fall in the Escape and Evasion course. But he recovered and did well enough as a recruit (known as nogs to everybody) to get out of Basic. His first assignment was to Hapsh’m, where he served as a systems mechanic for a small detachment of time troopers, who rode special vehicles (jumpships) into alternate time streams to hunt down, engage and destroy Coethi scouts and troopers, who were trying to alter the time streams.
Dringoth distinguished himself in one detachment mission (Operation Galactic Hammer) when a small detachment of jumpships returned to base and the base came under immediate attack from Coethi scouts who had hidden in the ships (morphed into human-like creatures) and returned with the Umans. The Time Corps base at Hapsh’m was in a hell of a fight, but Dringoth was able to rally a small force of mechanics, cooks, armorers, and office staff, including some bots, to counter-attack and destroy the Coethi, though some did escape back into another time stream. For this effort, Dringoth was awarded a Distinguished Valor medal (DVM 3rd class with star clusters) and promoted to Top Sergeant. Not long after that, he applied for Time Corps OCS and was admitted on probation (due to academic deficits). The school was at the Time Corps base on Byrd’s Draconis.
As an OCS cadet, Dringoth was an average student academically, but was good in sports and other competitions. Dringoth was always a competitive person, always driven to achieve and differentiate himself as an achiever from his illustrious parents. He always tried to take the most difficult route to achieve anything, so no one could say he had an easy time because of his name. He became an Academy legend for his exploits in many victories in the game of bangball.
Fresh out of the Academy, as a newly minted Ultrarch-Lieutenant (Academy graduates were always given the title Ultrarch in their commissions and ranks, to denote alumni), Dringoth’s first assignment was as engineering officer of a Time Corps jumpship called Pollux. The mission of ships like Pollux was to cruise in and out of time streams hunting down and engaging Coethi ships and scouts and hopefully destroying them. Jumpships also patrolled especially critical time streams, such as the streams when certain bases and colonies were established in the Lower Halo and Inner Spiral. It was vital
that these time streams remained unaltered.
Dringoth served with some distinction aboard Pollux, and later aboard another jumpship Majoris, where he served as executive officer. This was the same Majoris that almost singlehandedly engaged and ran off a whole squadron of Coethi jumpships in Strategic Time Stream S-4487, known as the Battle of the Gauntlet. Majoris was basically destroyed but Dringoth and some of her crew survived and were marooned in Time Stream S-4487 for days before being picked up by another jumpship. It was Dringoth who kept most of the group alive and together during this time. Although he and the survivors suffered grievous injuries, he received a Legion of Merit medal for this.
Dringoth knew firsthand what it was like to be marooned in alternate time streams.
During his recovery and rehab, Dringoth was approached by Time Corps senior leadership about receiving his first command: that of a Time Displacement Battery. A new defensive weapon had been developed in Time Corps labs. It was called a Time Twister. It was conceived and developed as an area weapon, able to defend large parcels of space and many time streams simultaneously. It was designed to be installed and defended and operated by a static crew on a given planet or satellite. The Battery would have primary defensive responsibilities and missions for a given sector of space.
Dringoth was hesitant but when a promotion of two grades, all the way to Ultrarch-Major, was dangled in front of him, he agreed. Here was a chance to really distinguish himself from his parents and get out from under their illustrious shadow, which was already beginning to happen. Plus, he would have the honor of commanding the lead Time Twister battery in a new command, known as Timejump Command. Dringoth figured he could almost write his own book.
He agreed. After some initial training and familiarization with Time Twister ops (he helped develop the CONOPS and wrote some of the doctrinal materials), he led his first Battery crew to a newly scouted world in the Sigma Albeth B system, an undistinguished and dreary backwater oceanic world known to Umans as Storm. The planet and the star system were strategically located in the Lower Halo region known as Halo-Alpha. It was a vital crossroads between Uman settlements in the Halo and the Inner Spiral.
So it came to be that Ultrarch-Major Monthan Dringoth and his crew of ten, with a jumpship called Cygnus at their disposal and the Mark 1 version of the Time Twister, an untested weapon upon which much hope was being placed, settled onto a small island called Kinlok on this wet hellhole of a world aptly known as Storm.
It wasn’t long before they realized they weren’t alone.
A day later, Pekto returned to the Omtorish camp near Kinlok with the Metah’s response, all the way from Omsh’pont. He located Longsee and gave him the pod on which was recorded the very words of Iltereedah luk’t. Longsee called for Kloosee, Pakma and Chase to attend the listening.
The Metah’s words were clear: Chase would be allowed to go back through the Farpool. Kloosee and Pakma would not accompany him; they were needed to work with the Umans and besides, nobody knew if the Farpool even worked the same way anymore. Iltereedah didn’t want to risk losing key people until the transit system could be proven again.
Moreover, to assist Chase in this trip, two members of the current expedition would accompany him. They were both guard-prodsmen. Pulkor rik and Veskort tu were summoned by Longsee to the gathering and told of the Metah’s command. They would assist in preparing a kip’t for the trip. Normally, special ships had been used for travel through the Farpool, but none were available and Longsee was reasonably certain a kip’t could be sealed and modified so that it would survive the trip.
The next day, Chase was introduced to Pulkor and Veskort.
Both were husky, middle-aged males, strong swimmers. They had guard and security duties and one had handled himself well against the Ponkti assault at the Pillars. Now they had been assigned to help partition the sections of the wavemaker foundation…some strength was required for this and the Umans were particular about how it should be done.
Pulkor seemed eager for the adventure. “I’ve never been through the Farpool before…never even seen it.”
Veskort wasn’t so sure. “It makes me dizzy, just thinking of it. What if we don’t come back…you said the wavemaker created the Farpool. Now, the Umans are shutting down the wavemaker. How do you know the thing even works?”
Kloosee was honest. “We don’t. But Longsee here believes the basic functions will last unless the wavemaker is completely shutdown. That won’t happen for quite some time. You should be back before then.”
Veskort was skeptical and somewhat jealous that Chase had such influence with the Metah. “He’s not one of us…he’s eekoti. Why can’t he do this himself?”’
Longsee explained the reasoning behind the Metah’s instructions. “The Metah fears Ponkti influence. Already, they’ve tried to stop us. They want the Farpool for themselves. There are rumors they’ve worked out a deal with the Umans, although the Umans don’t admit such. Your job is to make sure the Ponkti don’t interfere with the Farpool.”
Veskort sniffed at that and darted off with one annoyed slap of his tail. “We should just forget this Farpool and focus on strengthening Omt’or. That’s the best way to keep the Ponkti under control…if we’re stronger than they are, the Ponkti can’t make mischief.”
Longsee was thoughtful. “Don’t be too sure of that. If the Ponkti wind up in control of the Farpool, all of Seome will be under their influence. And all of your prods and muscles will mean nothing then.”
Veskort didn’t reply.
A kip’t large enough for three was found and modified and sealed. The work took several days. Longsee was adamant that the Umans would not know or be told of this little side trip. When the kip’t was ready and provisions laid in, Kloosee attached it by towline to another kip’t. Chase climbed in, riding in the front, with Veskort and Pulkor behind. Chase had some idea how to use sounds and clicks from his echopod to control the sled plus he had been through the whirlpool before.
Pulkor and Veskort and their prods were unwilling passengers, ordered to accompany Chase by the Metah. Longsee also gave them empty echopods and told them to record what they saw and heard.
“Each trip is another piece of the puzzle,” Longsee told them. He made sure Chase wasn’t around. “We learn more and more about the Uman world, about its waters, its currents, its indigenous life, with each trip. We may have to emigrate there, if the Umans continue to bring war to our world. The Metah wants a full reconnaissance of their world. She wants to know if it’s really suitable for mass migration…assuming we can keep the Farpool operating.”
Pulkor honked. “Kah, we’re better off saving this world…wipe out the Umans, wipe out the Ponkti…they’re all mah’jeet anyway…they’re a menace to everyone. These trips are a waste.”
Longsee said, “You prodsmen are all alike…if it bothers you, stick a prod in it and kill it. But the Metah’s got a bigger view of the situation. You’d best do as she commands…for this mission, you’re both tekmetah…free-bonded to Iltereedah. Keep that in mind.”
Chase could tell that Pulkor and Veskort were both sulking the whole way out to the field of whirlpools.
Well, this is going to be fun, he told himself. Still, he had to do it. He had to find out what had happened to Angie. And if two Omtorish prodsmen were miffed because they were ordered to come along, so be it.
The trip to the Farpool took only a few short hours.
Chase found controlling the kip’t an adventure, owing in part to being unfamiliar with the controls—controls based as much on making certain sounds as anything—and his lack of navigating expertise. The field of whirlpools surrounding the outer edges of the Uman machine was easy enough to find. All you had to do was let the turbulent currents pull you in. But then Chase had to make sure they stayed out of the smaller vortexes…he eventually learned to skirt the edges of the things and almost ride the waves from one to another, a
rough sort of surfing but underwater.
Then the kip’t control panel started pinging and clanging at him and Chase realized it was an alarm that Kloosee had set up to guide them right to the Farpool itself.
Ahead of them, he could see only blue-green sheets of bubbles and foam. But the strong pull of the maelstrom was unmistakable and they were soon caught in its clutches and speeding toward the core of the rotation.
“Hang on, guys…here we go--!” he yelled.
Behind him, he felt the body of Pulkor tense slightly. Behind him, Veskort seemed to be mumbling something…perhaps an Omtorish prayer. The sled rocked and shuddered and shimmied like a wild pony as it was inexorably pulled closer and closer. The bubbles and foam turned to a white crashing froth…
…and in a blinding flash of light, they were in….
Whenever he and Angie talked about the experience, Chase mentioned that going through the Farpool was like riding Space Mountain at Disney: moments of peaceful weightlessness, almost a dreamlike quality, except for the bright strobing lights outside the porthole, and the wrenching neck-breaking turns and then the sudden stop.
It was like having a horse kick the crap out of you. Or maybe driving your bike headfirst into a brick wall at eighty miles an hour.
The kip’t shuddered and hurtled out of the Farpool in a flash of light, a roaring rush of deceleration, knocking Chase and his passengers hard against the cockpit windows. Still trapped in the vortex, Chase knew enough to ram the ship’s rudder hard over, while firing her jets to counteract the residual force of the spin. For a moment, they were pinned sideways against the cockpit, until the force of the jets shot them through the core of the whirlpool and out into calmer waters.
Several minutes passed before Chase recovered enough consciousness to remember Pulkor and Veskort tucked in behind him. He made sure his echopod was working, then—
“Hey, you guys okay back there? Everything still attached and working?”
It was Veskort who replied—he had a guttural way of honking and grunting that was unmistakable.
“Shhkreeeh…I think I have many broken bones—“
Then Pulkor chimed in. Chase felt him stretching and flexing behind him. “Eekoti Chase…everything in my body hurts…is this normal…the Farpool does this?”
Chase had to concentrate on bringing the kip’t fully under control. He wrestled with the controls, clicking and clanking and honking as best he could, but not having that much effect. Blast these sound controls! You had to make just the right sound, the right volume and frequency…Jesus, I’ll never get the hang of this! Fortunately, the ocean water dampened their wildest gyrations and soon enough, they were cruising slowly through dark, cold waters, toward—
Toward he had no idea where.
Chase decided they’d better come to a full stop, maybe even surface and see if he could figure out where they were. He informed his passengers of this.
Veskort was nervous about the idea. “Notwater…this is a bad idea, eekoti Chase. Notwater is forbidden.”
“Yeah, but that’s Seome. This isn’t Seome.”
Chase planed the little ship upward anyway, toward blue-green light and the surface.
He heard no further complaints from his passengers about being so close to the Notwater. When the sled breached the surface and rolled in the swells and waves, Chase saw it was daylight, early morning from the sun angle.
It was a refreshing, even inspiring view.
But it wasn’t the Gulf.
He decided against opening the cockpit, owing to Veskort and Pulkor not having any protective gear. Instead, he let the little sled drift with the prevailing currents. Initially they were in a light fog but the sun soon burned that off and that’s when he saw several ships…fishing trawlers from the looks of them, with tall masts and stout deckhouses and nets cast in all directions.
“Fellows, I’m not sure where we are exactly but there’s no way this is the Gulf. The water’s too dark and those look like mountains in the distance.”
It was Pulkor who observed, “Longsee said the Farpool can’t always be predicted…the algorithms aren’t perfect.”
“And the Umans have changed the way they operate,” added Veskort. He was clearly uncomfortable being so close to the Notwater, a low moan and something that sounded like nervous humming filled Chase’s ears.
“Well, maybe so, but we need to know where we are. I’m heading for those mountains. Land can’t be too far away and there are several ships nearby too.”
Veskort was cautious. “We should avoid the ships, eekoti Chase. We don’t know how they might react.”
“Good idea. Plus I don’t exactly look like anything they’ve ever seen,” Chase replied. “We’ll go below.”
He planed down to thirty meters depth and headed for the sound of the ships, passing under two of them. Chase had finally begun to gain some comfort with the kip’t controls, just making the right series of clicks and honks and whistles would cause the jets to speed up or slow down, the planes and rudders to turn. It wasn’t exactly natural but when an insistent beeping informed him the seabed was close and rising, he knew they were near the shore.
He surfaced the kip’t and found himself riding along the crest of a long breakwater. A sign and a signal buoy bobbed nearby. It said: PORT MCNEILL HARBOR…SPEED 5 KNOTS…NO WAKE ZONE.
He steered them around the end of the breakwater and found a sandy spit just below some wharves. He beached the kip’t there.
“I’m going topside,” Chase told his passengers.
“This is not a good idea,” Veskort insisted. “We should at least wait until there is less light.”
But Chase was not to be dissuaded. “I’ll just pop out and head up…maybe I can find something to show were we are. I won’t be long.”
After some discussion about water conditions—it was Veskort who pronounced the harbor water of Port McNeill as p’omor’te…turbid and salty…”tastes like ertleg guts,” he said sourly, Chase was able to devise a way to crank open the sled and slide out quickly, while Pulkor cranked the cockpit shut again, thus preserving as much of the original conditions as possible.
“Wish me luck,” Chase said. He slipped overboard, the Omtorish prodsmen jerked the cockpit hatch shut and he was off, kicking his way toward the bright lights of the surface. He breached beneath a wharf, clinging to barnacle-encrusted pilings, while waves slapped him back and forth.
Now what? he wondered. If I climb out, looking like a gigantic frog, somebody’ll start screaming and the guns and knives will come out.
Cautiously, he stroked out from underneath the wharf and found himself abreast of the stern planes of a small fishing trawler. Conveniently, she was drying her nets and most of the gear had been slung overboard. It seemed like climbing up the net, if it would support his weight, was the best option.
So he climbed.
He clambered onboard the deck and stood dripping, looking around for a moment. Nobody was in sight. There was a small deckhouse ahead, only a few steps, but before Chase could get there, he heard a voice from behind. A crewman had spotted him—
“Hey…Jesus Christ…hey…what the fuck?…get away…hey…get out of here…go on--!”
The crewman was a short, stout, heavily bearded man, a cigar stub in the corner of his mouth, brandishing a stick, and he came at Chase with the stick, swinging it back and forth. It clipped Chase on the arm and stung momentarily but Chase realized his outer scale and armored skin was pretty good protection. Instinctively, he lunged at the crewman, knocking the stick from his hands. His assailant stopped short, his mouth agape and turned to run.
Chase was on him in a second, hoisting the man over the railing. He went headfirst, flailing and screaming, into the water.
Now, I’ve done it. Chase was momentarily paralyzed…which way to go? The rest of the crew would be coming, already doors and hatches were slamming open, feet were drumming on the deckplate
s, clip-clopping down from the bow. He stepped momentarily into the deckhouse and his eyes were immediately caught by a poster taped to the annunciator panel…and to a picture on the poster.
It looked just like him!
On impulse, he snatched the poster and stuffed it in his mouth. How could the crew of a fishing trawler—but he didn’t have time to figure that out. Shouts filled the air.
Chase saw faces, more faces, the crew was gathering fast. He saw something flash by the door entrance…a gun muzzle, then a speargun.
Chase took a few deep breaths, with the crumpled poster still in his mouth—can’t swallow it, don’t swallow it!—then tore open the deckhouse door, pushed wildly at several bodies blocking his way, and fled for the railing. He reached the edge and heard something whistle by his ear. Someone had fired and more missiles were coming. One grazed his shoulder.
He levered himself over the side and went headfirst into the water.
He kicked and pulled to go deep, just as a few bullets hissed into the water, making little contrails of bubbles as they entered. Somehow, he managed to avoid being hit. He groped and swam and stroked until he found the relative safety of the wharf pilings.
There…he saw the kip’t. Veskort and Pulkor were still inside, looking like sardines in a can. He pulled up short, waved at them and Pulkor popped the sled canopy. As quick as he could, Chase climbed and squeezed in, then the canopy was dogged shut and latched around him.
He clicked and honked as well as he could and somehow the kip’t controls responded. The sled scooted off, scraping the wooden pilings and the harbor seabed, before Chase managed to get enough control to steady them.
They cruised out of Port McNeill harbor unmolested, though there seemed to be a flurry of boat activity overhead.
Soon, they were headed out to sea again, to the relative safety of deeper water.
That’s when Chase let the kip’t drift for a few moments and scanned the poster.
Vancouver Aquarium
Come See It!
Terrors of the Deep
See Sheena…The Prehistoric Princess
Six-Month Engagement
In the Main Ocean Gallery
9:00 am to 7:00 pm everyday
Chase studied the images and sucked in his breath. It was Angie! It had to be…he’d recognize those dorsal fins and scaly armor anywhere.
Then he almost laughed out loud. He explained it to Pulkor and Veskort.
“Guys, we didn’t land in the Gulf. Vancouver…this has to be the Pacific.”
The description meant nothing to the two prodsmen. “You know where your eekoti friend is?” Pulkor asked.
Chase said, “I’ve got a pretty god idea. Come on…let’s surface…maybe we can figure out where we are from the sun angle.”
By crude dead reckoning and sighting, Chase determined that the Farpool had deposited them in the eastern Pacific, not far from the coast of British Columbia. Vancouver couldn’t be that far away, south from the sighting.
“I’ll skirt the coast…with any luck, we’ll pick up a lot of ship traffic. We can follow them in.”
Several hours later, Chase had managed to steer the kip’t to a position just west of the main channel, just outside Stanley Park, on the English Bay side. They surfaced briefly and followed the contour of the seawall and biking trails that led around toward Third Beach and the Lions Gate Bridge. The aquarium was situated on a rocky headland near the bridge, looking from offshore like a collection of huge seashells mounted on a ridge. Pedestrians walked along the hiking paths cut into the hillside and Chase could see an outdoor pavilion where more people congregated.
“Angie’s in there, somewhere,” told his passengers. “Somehow I’ve got to figure a way to get inside and find her.”
“Perhaps there is an entrance from the sea,” Pulkor suggested, hoping there wasn’t. This eekoti was a strange beast and he already regretted the assignment from the Metah to accompany Chase. The world of the Umans, to judge from their waters, was dirty, noisy place, not suitable for intelligent life. Pulkor told himself that Longsee and his engineers should abandon any thought of emigrating to this world.
“Maybe you’re right,” Chase agreed. “But I’ll have to wait until night…if I show up on the shore looking like this—“he thought back to what had happened when Kloosee and Pakma had done the same thing off Scotland Beach…the police officer had opened fire immediately, people ran screaming in all directions.
So he parked the kip’t beside an underwater cave, just half a kilometer south of the bridge. There was a steady flow of ship traffic beneath the bridge, passing between English Bay and Burrard Inlet. Stanley Park was a small peninsula, sticking out of the north shore of the city proper. The cave would mask their presence well.
Now more or less hidden from the Umans, Chase went out with Pulkor and Veskort to reconnoiter the area…and to find something to eat. They found clam beds nearby, or what Chase thought were clams…not greatly different from ertleg. Veskort was hungry enough to give one a try, pulling off a leg and sucking the meat out. He made a slight face, but pronounced it edible.
They gorged on the clams.
“Once it’s dark, I’m surfacing again,” Chase told them. “I’m going ashore to try to find a way inside the aquarium.”
So they rested for a few hours.
Dark came quickly and Chase planed the kip’t upward toward the surface. He breached near the bridge pilings, then scootered along the shore until they came to the headland beneath the aquarium. By now, Veskort and Pulkor had grown more accustomed to the proximity of Notwater; as long as the kip’t was kept filled with water, they seemed okay. Veskort was always anxious as they approached the surface, clicking and wheezing nervously. Pulkor was calmer.
Chase found a narrow inlet and stopped the kip’t just offshore. He discussed what they would do next. After some discussion, it was decided that Chase would exit the kip’t from deeper water and swim to shore. Pulkor would pilot the kip’t back to the cave, if they could find it. In one hour, the Omtorish prodsmen would return to the same inlet and Chase would be there, ready to be picked up.
It was as good a plan as any.
Chase climbed out and headed ashore. Behind him, the kip’t disappeared out of sight quickly, no doubt heading for colder, deeper water. The Omtorish were nervous enough in Uman waters. Surrounded by land and Notwater, they were mortified.
Chase crept up onto the beach. He saw no one and began climbing the rock cliff as best he could. Here, he found his outer skin armor helpful, for the crags and folds of the rock were sharp and the footing uncertain. Finally, he made the top ground, alongside a bike path.
No one was coming, so he hoisted himself upright. Looking around, he was on a narrow path cut right into the rock hillside. Bikers and hikers had an impressive view of English Bay below, where the surf hissed and crashed against more rocks.
He scrambled along the bike path and followed it to the outer fencing of the aquarium, which he scaled easily. He found himself in a parking lot, well lit and saw a truck was following the driveway around from the front of the complex.
Chase hid behind some bushes. The truck was pulling a trailer. Chase stared in fascination at the diorama mounted on the trailer. It was an underwater scene, made out of faux coral and plastic sea flowers, with a variety of creatures—animatronic and robotic, he would learn later—stuck in a variety of poses about the display. Most of the creatures seemed, in the parking lot lamp light, to be menacing and threatening a pair of small children, themselves animatronic figures. There were several creatures that bore a resemblance to he and Angie. There were two whales, standing upright improbably on hind legs, almost a comical view of things. A few fake squids and octopi, rounded out the display. Lights above winked on and off, a litany of horror films and vids from the past…Moby Dick…The Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms…Creature from the Black Lagoon….
Wo
rkmen climbed out of the truck cab and helped guide the driver as he backed the trailer-diorama into a small garage. As Chase watched, the garage doors came down. Nobody came out again. It seemed as if the garage was connected to some part of the aquarium interior, perhaps a workshop.
That gave Chase an idea. He made his way back to the shoreline and waited for Pulkor and Veskort to arrive in the kip’t.
“It’s some kind of exhibit,” Chase explained. “They trot it out during the day, out front of the aquarium, I guess. At night, they wheel the trailer back inside. That’s my way in.”
Pulkor tried to follow the echopod translation. It was clear that he didn’t fully understand what Chase was describing.
“Eekoti Chase, what will you do inside?”
Chase hadn’t really given that much that. “If Angie’s in there, I’ve got to figure a way to get her out. We managed to release Kloosee and Pakma from a similar place in Scotland Beach. Maybe that will work here too.”
Veskort was skeptical. He clicked and wheezed and Chase’s echopod couldn’t keep up. Most of it came out like noise.
“Shkreeeah….kkkkllllccckkk….if eekoti Angie does not want to come back?”
Chase got the gist of the question. It had troubled him too. He wasn’t sure where their relationship stood.
“I have to see her. I can’t explain it better than that. You know…ke’shoo and ke’lee…life and love. We love each other…we always talked about getting married…how do you say it…bonded something or other—“
Pulkor was sympathetic. He nuzzled his beak around Chase’s nose…a common Omtorish endearment. “We are tekmetah to help you, eekoti Chase. But I do not know if we can go back through the Farpool….or if we can even find it.” This made Pulkor sad. “Here you are in homewaters. We are visitors.”
Aware of proposals to emigrate from Seome, Chase said, “Someday this may be your homewaters too.”
Veskort spat. “Kah, it’s a bad idea…Longsee—“ His whole body shuddered with disgust. “Some kelke have dreams that should stay dreams.”
The three of them occupied the rest of the daylight hours by reconnoitering the bays and inlets around Stanley Park, recording scents and sounds, taking measurements. Chase had never been to Vancouver, the Pacific or to Canada, for that matter. They ate clams and slept, cavorted with local dolphins—Veskort pronounced them crude beasts “—like Ponkti, but without prods…” As the sun dropped, Chase piloted the kip’t back to the small inlet they had first visited and hovered just below the surface of the water.
“Wish me luck,” he muttered as he climbed out.
Pulkor said, “Shooki is with you, eekoti Chase.” The cockpit hatch was closed and sealed, the kip’t scooted off into deeper waters and Chase stroked for the surface and the rock-strewn beach below the headland. Breaching, he took a quick look around, spying a few bicycles on the trail above. Otherwise the headland and cliff seemed unoccupied. He climbed out.
Chase found that by scrambling from bush to bush, he could make the roadside and soon disappeared into a hedge. He heard a distant voice and peered out.
A man in some kind of preposterous green fish suit was waving a placard back and forth at bikers and hikers and the occasional airboard as they streamed by. Squinting into the afternoon sun, Chase could just make out the words on the placard:
Terrors of the Deep
Come see Sheena
Goosebumps and Ice Cream at 4pm
Pavilion Entrance
On impulse, Chase rose up out of the hedges and walked deliberately toward the man in the fish suit. The sign-waver spotted him, froze momentarily, then slowly put down the placard and backed away, fear growing on his face.
“It’s okay, man…I’m your replacement.” Chase wondered what that sounded like, coming out of his echopod.
The man said something like: “Jeez, what the f—“, then wheeled about and fled down the side of the road. He didn’t look back.
Chase picked up the sign, waved it at some passing power walkers and didn’t miss a beat.
The walkers were two young girls. They giggled and waved back shyly.
Now to work my way toward that exhibit. He slowly maneuvered himself to the front entrance of the Vancouver Aquarium, spotted the marquee, displaying words that mimicked what he had first seen on the flyer from the fishing scow, and when he figured no one was looking, he clambered into the exhibit and found himself a comfortable sitting position, directly below a robotic man wielding a trident.
He didn’t have long to wait.
The sun had just dropped below the cliffs when a truck pulled up. Two men got out, secured a chain to the trailer upon which the exhibit was mounted, smoked and chuckled a few moments, then got back in the truck. The exhibit trailer lurched and jerked and was soon rolling along behind the truck.
They turned into a driveway and went around back of the aquarium, where the trailer was backed into the same garage he had seen the day before. The men secured the trailer and some gear, smoked some more, popped a few cans of something, then lowered the garage door and disappeared outside.
Chase waited a few minutes to be sure he was alone. When he was sure, he extricated himself from the clutches of the man with the trident and hopped down onto the garage floor.
There were two doors in the corner, both locked.
Chase soon found a crowbar in the bed of the truck and popped one of the doors. He crept inside, still brandishing the crowbar. It led into a series of workshops and utility lockers. Past the inner door, he found himself in a long curving corridor, lined with tiles done up to resemble scales and waves…a true marine look.
How tacky, he thought. Even Gulfside doesn’t do that.
There were signs posted for him to follow: Tropic Zone, the Wild Coast, Clownfish Cove. He wondered where they might have put Angie. Then he heard something. Gulfside used sentry bots for nighttime security. Perhaps Vancouver did too. Chase found a closet and hid.
Once the hall was clear again, he stepped out, now acutely aware of the security cameras above, and how exposed he was. He studied the visitor maps—You Are Here—and decided to check out both the Graham Amazon Gallery and Treasures of the B.C. Coast.
He found Angie lolling in the shallows of the Amazon Gallery.
Stifling a cry, Chase splashed into the water and knelt down. Angie startled awake and jerked back, then realized who it was. They looked at each other for a moment, all scales and fins and armored skin, then hugged tightly. They thought to kiss, but each found the other’s face so disgusting, they couldn’t.
“Chase…how…where…how’d you find me--? Chase…oh, it’s been so—“
He put a hand to her mouth. “Shhhh! There are sentry bots around…keep quiet!”
They both partially submerged in the waters while wheels trundled outside the gallery. Chase assumed there were cameras watching everything, but the bots passed by the gallery and didn’t come in.
Finally, Chase pulled Angie up out of the water. They hugged again.
“How did you—?
Chase said, “It’s a long story. I was worried about you…what happened?”
Angie told him about how the Farpool had deposited her in the north Pacific, how she had followed a pod of whales, how she’d been anesthetized and brought to the aquarium. “I’m their prize exhibit…can you believe it…just like Kloosee and Pakma. Chase…you really do look disgusting. Get me out of this place.”
“I plan to. I came with two fellows from Omt’or. Pulkor and Veskort. They’re prodsmen, kind of like police or something. We came in a kip’t.” He explained how they had found out where she was. “The kip’t is just offshore. We’re supposed to rendezvous just below that cliff, other side of the bridge. We agreed they’d be there every day just after sunset. What time is it?”
Angie attempted a shrug, then realized nobody could tell if she was shrugging. “How should I know?
I look like a frog on steroids.”
Chase spied a clock on the wall. Near sunrise. “Come on. We can make it while it’s still dark outside. We’ll just have to hide until sunset tonight, then get into the water.”
They waited until they were sure the sentry bots were not around, then clambered out of the pool. Padding as softly as they could, Chase led her back to the garage, where he showed her the aquarium exhibit and diorama.
“They roll this out to the front entrance every day at opening. It’s supposed to attract more visitors. At night, they roll it back inside here. I hid there—“ he pointed to a clump of fake rocks, and the “man” with the trident. “—right below Diver Dan there.”
The two of them crept carefully out of the garage and made their along the edge of the driveway to the aquarium front entrance. A huge sign, now dark, proclaimed the aquarium’s new exhibits and operating hours.
Angie sniffed. “I hope they charged extra for me.”
Out on the highway, Chase had an idea. “It’s a good couple of miles along this road back to the bridge. We’re bound to run into traffic if we walk. But look…there are weeds and brush along the side. What say we make like salamanders and sort of crawl, you know---through the weeds.”
Angie tried to make a face, then gave up. They dropped to their hands and feet and started slithering through the grass.
“I hope there aren’t snakes in these weeds,” she said.
Chase was ahead of her, wriggling his scaly ass back and forth like an alligator. “If there are, I’m not sure who’ll scare who. You look pretty frightening.”
For that, he got a pinch right in the rump.
They made it to the bridge and slithered down the rocks and grass to the stony spit of land that passed for a beach. Chase saw that the sun was already peaking over the tops of the cliff to the east of Park Drive. At least, no cars or trucks were coming.
“We’d better hide here, Angie. Make yourself invisible…just cover yourself with weeds and brush…here, I’ll help you.”
They spent the next ten hours like that, buried in high grass along the north shore of Stanley Park, fighting off flies and fleas and gnats and other things that made Angie cringe. The irony that she looked like an enlarged version of many of the creatures wasn’t lost on either of them. They cuddled, sort of, and talked.
Finally, Angie said, “I’m thirsty.”
“Well, I don’t have a canteen. Swallow a few times. It’ll go away. Hey, did they feed you right at the aquarium?”
“Oh, sure…some cod, some herring, whole fish too. I thought I might ask for some fillets with French fries, but I didn’t.”
Chase sat up on his side, propped on an elbow, chewing on the stem of a grass blade. The sun overhead was warm, not hot, and low, hidden partly by clouds scudding by overhead. It looked like rain.
“Hey, Cookie—“ he knew perfectly well she hated that sobriquet. “—I was worried about you. I came back, to see if you wanted to come back. To Seome, I mean.”
Angie lay back in the grass and watched the clouds roll by. “I’m glad you came back, Flip. Really I am. I don’t know what I was thinking…I wasn’t expecting to wind up like this. I sort of thought I’d be okay going back through the Farpool. But I want to stay here…it’s home. I just want to be home.”
“You’ll have to come back if you want Kloosee and Pakma and the Omtorish to change you back…go back to what you were. It won’t happen here. Reversing the em’took can’t be done here.”
“I know that,” Angie said softly. She felt something like a tear forming in the corner of her eye—jeez, now I’ve got actual crocodile tears. “But that place, Seome, Omt’or, Ponk’et…it’s so…so---“ What was she trying to say? “So different. I mean I like Kloosee and Pakma and me were getting close…I guess I sort of miss her. Learning about the scentbulbs and all. But there’s so much conflict there, Chase. It’s like a war could break out any day. And the Umans. And that machine…how do they live with that noise?”
“I don’t know,” Chase said. “There is a plan to emigrate here, occupy Earth’s oceans, come through the Farpool and set up shop right here…the Pacific, the Atlantic.”
“What?”
“It’s true. It’s controversial…nobody’s said anything official. But the guys with me, Pulkor and Veskort, they’re supposed to take more measurements, do some recon, that sort of thing.”
“Chase, tell me the truth. You like living on Seome, don’t you? You want to stay there, make a life there, don’t you?”
Now Chase was quiet. Offshore, a small boat puttered by the rocky beach…early morning fishermen hunting schools of something. They both lay back down in the weeds, reasonably sure they couldn’t be seen. Above them, horns honked. Traffic was building by the hour along Park Drive. Hikers and joggers could be heard too, clip-clopping along the trails.
“I don’t know. Really, I’m not sure anymore. I like trying to help Kloosee and Pakma…it’s…, I don’t know…it’s like I have to prove something. Dad thinks I’m going to follow him into the shop business. Hawking T-shirts and giving scuba lessons. There are times I can dig that, but most of the time, I want more. On Seome, it’s like…I’m somebody other than Mack Meyer’s son. I’m important. People listen to me. I have ideas and they listen. That’s never happened before. So yeah, I’d kind of like to stay.”
Angie rolled over and stared right into his eyes. “Then we have a problem, don’t we? You and me, I mean. Chase, do you love me?”
Now Chase tried out several answers before opening his mouth. “Of course, I do…you know that. I want us to work…be together.”
“We can’t do that…not if you’re on Seome and I’m here. Even if I go back and get unmodified---or whatever, I still want to come home. Scotland Beach…Florida…that’s home. I can’t stay on Seome anymore…not for long. I came with you because I thought it’d be a great adventure…it sure beats Algebra II and World History and Mr. Winans. But I miss Dr. Wright and the Clinic and running with Gwen and my girlfriends. I want to go to school. I want to be somebody too. I can’t do that on Seome.”
Chase decided to focus on practical things. The other stuff was just too…hard to deal with—“You still have to come back to get fixed. I mean…you know, unmodified. The em’took.”
“Christ, you make it sound like I’m a cat about to be neutered. Chase, what are we going to do? You know that song the Croc-Boys sing—‘Lovin’ in the Dark’?”
“I know it. I wrote part of it.”
“’When you pitch it too fast’—“
“…’you wind up dropping the pass’…yeah, yeah…what about it?”
Angie sat up, looked right into Chase’s eyes. Then she closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see the gray scaly thing that he’d become. She wanted to see what she remembered: the faint blond beard and moustache, the blue eyes, the scar above the right eye due to a fishing accident, the chin dimple and the big, floppy ears.
“Chase, that describes us. We’re going too fast. We’re dropping the pass.”
But he didn’t want to hear any more. “Look, the sun’s already gone down. I’ve got to get back to Pulkor and Veskort. I came back for you, to bring you…well, maybe not exactly home, but you know…back to Seome. So…you coming or what?”
Angie sighed. It always ends like this. Whenever there was a decision to be made, it couldn’t be made simply, with no argument or fuss. No, there had to be drama, pain, tears, fights, stomping off. And in the end, she always gave in. That’s what Chase did to her.
“Let’s go.”
The two of them slithered through the grass, down the rocky slope, then dived into the cold waters of Burrard Inlet. They swam at a gentle pace past the pilings of Lions Gate Bridge and headed for deeper water.
Chase finagled with his echopod until he was sure Angie could hear him okay. They stroked side by side for a f
ew minutes, until they were west of the Park, abreast of Third Beach and headed out to sea.
“We agreed to meet just after sunset, a few miles off shore. I’m supposed to swim in a big circle and they’ll home on me.”
“Just so we don’t get eaten by sharks or speared by fishermen,” Angie said.
They swam in circles for nearly an hour, with Chase grumbling under his breath “Where are those bozos, come on, come on, we haven’t got all day….”
Angie had to smile at his mutterings, while she was dodging curious schools of cod and herring that swam alongside them. Patience had never been one of Chase’s strong points.
It was fully dark and cold when something bumped against Chase’s legs. Afraid it was a huge tuna, or halibut or who knew what, Chase kicked out but realized that his foot had struck something harder than flesh or skin.
It was the nose of the kip’t. Barely visible inside the cockpit, Pulkor and Veskort had found them. By prearranged signal, the kip’t drifted down to the rocky seabed and lodged itself between two banks of coral. Chase led Angie down and introduced her to his Omtorish colleagues.
Angie found Pulkor much like Longsee, with exaggerated politeness and a disarming, almost bemused smile on his face. Veskort was another matter. Typical soldier, thought Angie. Prodsmen were all alike. Gruff, curt, perpetual scowl, though how she knew that she could never explain, even to herself. They all look alike, she told herself, though she’d been around enough Omtorish and Ponkti and Eep’kostic people to detect subtle differences, even when she couldn’t really ‘pulse’ them like she was supposed to.
“Is the Farpool still there?” Chase asked. Somehow, with some grumbling and mumbling, the three of them managed to make room for Angie, who was jammed in the rear like a bag of gisu shells.
“I can still hear it,” Pulkor insisted. “The tone is different…we should hurry. The vortex may be collapsing.”
“Then get going,” Chase decided. That earned him a derisive grunt from Veskort, who was piloting.
They spent the better part of ten hours homing in on the unique sound signature of the Farpool. Pulkor described it as like a whistle, higher than most whirlpools, owing to its intensity. It was that whistle that was lessening in intensity with every passing hour.
Both prodsmen agreed that it was foolish to even consider sending more kelke through the wormhole until the thing could be stabilized. “And that depends on the Tailless People,” Pulkor added. “And you,” he added, meaning Chase.
Chase decided to bring up the phantom proposal that everybody knew about but no one would acknowledge…emigrating from Seome.
“Do you think our oceans are hospitable enough for you to make a home here?”
Veskort honked. “Never. Too cold. Too salty. We call it p’omor’te—disgusting, if you ask me.”
“He means turbid,” explained Pulkor. “There is much sediment in these waters. Perhaps…if we had more time to explore, we could find suitable regions. Most Omtorish would suffocate here…or throw up. The currents are rough too, like the Pom’tel, maybe worse. This idea must be discussed thoroughly. And more data gathered.”
“But if your sun goes dark, all life on Seome will cease. Then you may not have any choice.”
Pulkor granted that. “True enough, but if we can keep the Farpool operating normally, we can go to many worlds, many times and places. It’s just a matter of understanding the Farpool, really, predicting it, controlling it, using it wisely.”
“Kah,” spat Veskort as he turned them slightly to left. The kip’t was cruising along at a good clip, occasionally rocked by currents and crossflows. “Having my guts scrambled inside a vortex…who wants that? I’d rather stay on Seome and take my chances. We can defend ourselves, with the right weapons.”
In time, the currents became rougher, with greater energy and a definite direction. Pulkor announced that the Farpool was near.
I guess I’m going back, one way or another, Angie thought. She decided it was probably for the best. But she planned to push for Longsee and his scientists to undo the em’took, put her back the way she had been. I don’t care about the risk. I don’t want to live like a circus freak anymore.
She said none of this to Chase. But she didn’t have to. His look at her meant he knew just what she was thinking.
Veskort struggled with the controls, working the planes and rudders and stabilitors as hard as he could, trying to stay in the center of the rapidly growing tunnel they were being inexorably drawn into. All around them, foam and froth and bubbles and every imaginable species of fish came barreling past, caught up in the spin of the vortex and sucked onward into its roaring mouth.
Soon, the little kip’t began a slow spin, which only increased, despite everything Veskort did. Angie felt something hot rising in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t want to throw up but the vortex was tossing them about like a feather in a hurricane…she’d lived on the Gulf Coast of Florida long enough to have gone through several of those.
Then came the banging as the clashing currents threw them one way then another and before she could brace herself, they were in, grabbed as if by a giant hand and spun madly to blinding velocity…she didn’t remember it being like this…was something wrong…were they all going to die?
Angie tried to scream out loud but the tunnel was collapsing and her vision blurred and then she passed out.