The Farpool (10 page)

Angie sniffed. “Instead of doing your actual
job at the shop.”

“Hey, this is science. This is exploring,
like Nat Geo.”

“Right. This is a crime and we both know
it…just get on with it. I’m cold, standing out here—“

They slipped under the drainage channel and
headed for the recovery pool room. As before the door was
unlocked.

Ralph and Alice were still in the pool, now
dimly lit, circling endlessly.

Must be pretty
boring
, Angie decided. Chase was his usual
bull-in-a-china-shop self, coming right up to the edge of the pool
and squatting down.

Ralph had noticed them and swam up to the
edge. His beak came up and he chittered and clicked and whistled,
with what looked like some kind of greeting. Behind him Alice, rose
up too, slapping the water with her flippers.

Ralph handed the pod to Chase, who put it to
his ears.

…My voice…your voice….understand?....this is
(screeeh!)(kloook!)…derstand? I speak…you hear….?

Chase felt his throat go dry. Angie listened
in too, pinching herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.

“I kind of understand…you’re breaking up…lots
of strange sounds—you understand me?”

Ralph slapped the water hard with his beak
and shook his forepaddles. Chase didn’t know what all that meant
but it looked happy.

…I understand you…can…you…help? We
want…to…depart…leave…this water….

Chase understood that and Angie nodded at
him; she had heard Ralph’s translated words. “That makes sense,
doesn’t it?” she said. “Look at this place…it’s a like a jail…a
watery jail.”

Chase had about a million questions. “This
thing—“he held out the pod, “—what do you call this? Some kind of
translator?”

Ralph clicked and grunted and words spilled
out of the device.

...called…echopod…your voice is my voice….my
voice is your voice…this you understand…?

An echopod. Chase ran the words over his
tongue. It sort of made sense. He looked at Angie, who seemed
distracted, listening for something.

Bots?
she
mouthed.

Chase listened too. He nodded.

“Ralph, we have to hide for a few
minutes…security bots are coming…we’ll be right over there, behind
the tool cabinets…don’t say anything, okay?”

Ralph seemed to understand. He resumed
circling and Alice followed behind, sweeping around and around the
small pool in near perfect synchrony. Moments later, the double
doors swung open and a bot with a red light on its dome came
trundling in. By that time, Chase and Angie were well hidden.

The bot scanned all directions, rolled
forward, scanned some more, then did a complete sweep of the pool,
completely ignoring Ralph and Alice. They might as well been part
of the furnishings as far as the thing was concerned. It was
programmed to seek and apprehend humans and it looked only for
humans, or their thermal, acoustic or olfactory signatures. The bot
rolled back to the doors, sniffed and sensed some more, then,
seemingly satisfied, rolled out of the room and the doors swung
shut.

Chase took a deep breath. “Good catch,
Ang…that was close. One of us should listen up at all times.” They
went back to the poolside.

“I thought you had this figured out?”

“I do…I was just---I don’t
know…pre-occupied…I mean, this is so cool…talking with
dolphins.”

“Or whatever they are.”

The conversation went on. Chase put the pod
up to his ear.

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

Ralph and Alice both rose up out of the water
and balanced themselves on their tail flukes, holding the position
for a few minutes. Chase and Ralph just eyed each other
carefully.

…called…Seome…(shcreeehhh!)…we say
litorkel
ge…
calmwaters for you…we look…or help…help
from your world….

“Help…what kind of help? Are you saying you
came from another world?”

Ralph acknowledged that. He described the
mission that he and Alice had come to complete.

…perhaps echopod… will not translate… but…a
great noise, sound, vibration, we say azh’tu…or is Pul’ke…a great
bad thing…an evil…destruction….

And Ralph proceeded to describe things,
things that when Chase thought about it later, seemed like a dream,
a really bad dream. Angie held her hands to her mouth, listening,
scarcely believing the scratchy words that came out of the
echopod.

They had come to Earth from an ocean planet,
a place called Seome. They had come through something they called
Farpool…”…that must have been the spout we saw,” Angie decided.
“Remember how it looked…how long it lasted--?”

Chase nodded, holding up a hand for quiet, to
let Ralph’s words continue pouring out. Alice joined in too. The
pod translated her screeches and whistles with a slightly higher
pitch.

They needed help. The best Chase could make
out, Ralph and Alice had made several trips through the Farpool,
each time capturing creatures from Earth’s oceans, dolphins,
whales, other cetaceans, believing that these were the most
intelligent beings on Earth. But their captured dolphins could not
survive well in the waters of Seome, nor could they do anything
about this terrible noise, sound or vibration, that was slowly
destroying their world.

Now Ralph and Alice had come back with a new
mission, to contact what the pod translated as Tailless People of
the Notwater…the creatures that lived on land, breathed air.

“That’s
us
,” Angie realized. “They came to contact
us—“

Chase bent forward and barely touched Ralph’s
forepaddles. “We call you Ralph and Alice…some old TV show, I
heard. You have real names?”

Ralph ducked under the water for a moment,
then came up quickly, splashing Chase in the face. He didn’t seem
to mind. The echopod spit out more words and sounds.

…I am…Kloosee…other
is…”
More splashing.
…is
Pakma…

Chase formally introduced him and Angie,
motioning his girlfriend to come closer. Angie squatted down, let
Chase guide her hand to Ralph…Kloosee’s…forelimb. They touched.
Alice…Pakma…joined in.

For a brief moment, all four of them had
touched.

…litorkel ge…this means
calmwaters for you…we pulse that…you are not
shoo’kel
…many nerves….

“I
am
kind of scared,” Angie admitted. “I mean, it’s like really
creepy…sitting here talking with dol--, or with you, I
mean.”

Chase listened for the approach of the bots,
hand motioned Angie to go check the corridor. She balked at first,
then gave in. She peeked through the double doors, saw nothing and
came back. “I didn’t see anything…but for all I know, they could be
right outside the door. Maybe you should—“

But Chase was too intent on his newest
friends.

“What kind of help do you need, Ralph…I mean,
Kloosee?”

What came out of the echopod was a story that
Chase and Angie could scarcely believe. Interrupted only by
occasional visits from security bots, the teenagers listened
spellbound to every halting, scratchy word they could make out.

Kloosee and Pakma had come from a world
that the echopod translated as Seome. It was an ocean world. Their
entire civilization was underwater; the world had only a few
islands that poked above the surface. But for many years—as the
Seomish reckoned time…it came out as sounding like
mah
—a devastating sound had been
slowly destroying their civilization. The acoustics and the
vibrations came from a machine. Kloosee called it a wavemaker. It
was sited at the ocean surface, near an island he called Kinlok.
The machine was a weapon being used by another race of
airbreathers. Tailless People of the Notwater, the Seomish called
them. The Tailless were fighting a war with an unseen enemy and
their weapon created destructive waves, vibrations, deafening
sounds that made life unbearable for the Seomish.

…we have talks…we talk with…Tailless…to stop
sound but they listen no…they fight war but we are casualties…

Angie thought the story was sad and
depressing. “Can’t you just attack these airbreathers…destroy the
wavemaker? I mean, after all, it
is
your home, isn’t it?”

Pakma’s voice came through the echopod,
higher pitched. Angie could see the female was becoming agitated,
her forelimbs fluttering, her beak slapping the water. Both of them
spent most of the time beneath the pool surface. They were not
airbreathers, she realized. Below the water, they chirped and
whistled and clicked and grunted in a steady stream.

…we have attacked…Tailless have suppressor
weapon…we paralyze and must retreat...talks have no end…they say
war must go on…enemy they call Coethi….

Chase was curious. “You said you came here
through something called the Farpool…is that the waterspout we saw
a month ago? I didn’t see any spouts the last few days.”

This time, it was Kloosee who tried to
explain. The male circled the recovery pool once, then poked his
beak up, showing them what looked like an enigmatic smile, crinkly,
almost mirthful eyes that made him look like he was about to tell a
great joke.

…(shkreeeeh)…Farpool is a
tunnel…we say
opuh’te…
we
enter pool and travel…great distance….great time…the wavemaker
makes Farpool….

Chase didn’t quite understand. “You’re saying
the wavemaker, this weapon that’s creating such a terrible noise,
also makes this Farpool. Is it like a whirlpool…a vortex?”

Back and forth the words flew, haltingly out
of the echopod along with untranslatable screeches and chirps,
until at last Chase and Angie understood. The wavemaker created
dozens of whirlpools as a side effect of its operation. One of the
vortexes was especially long lasting and had turned out to be, in
effect, a wormhole in time and space. The Seomish had discovered
this by accident and they had lost many brave citizens trying to
tame the Farpool and explore its possibilities. The Tailless were
aware of the Farpool but they didn’t care. Their weapon and their
war was all that interested them. It came out, from Pakma, that the
Tailless regarded the Seomish as little more than intelligent
pets.

By accident, a team of explorers had used the
Farpool once and wound up on Earth, some years ago, as best Chase
and Angie could figure out Seomish timekeeping. In Earth’s oceans,
they had encountered dolphins, whales and other intelligent
cetaceans. Thinking that dolphins were the dominant intelligent
life on Earth, they had ‘imported’ some of the creatures, only to
find the dolphins didn’t fare well in Seomish waters and had no way
to help them in their conflict with the Tailless. The possibility
of intelligent life in the realm of the Notwater had not been
seriously considered…until now.

That’s when Kloosee admitted he and Pakma
were on a mission to bring back specimens of these strange
creatures that lived in the Notwater, creatures that had technology
and inexplicable devices and seemed intelligent enough to help the
Seomish.

…we must succeed…time is
small…
opuh’te
grows stronger
and some kels abandon their ancestral homes…many die…

Angie was sympathetic. Chase wasn’t sure.

“This is all…what’s the word…so
incredible. Hard to believe, Kloosee.—what can
we
do?”

“I believe them,” Angie blurted out. For
several years now, she’d had worked at Dr. Wright’s clinic. She had
a sense about these things. Even when she’d been a Red Cross
volunteer at Creekside Medical, she could tell about patients.
That’s where she’d met Chase, after his Dad had been wounded in the
holdup at the surf shop. You could tell when a patient was making
stuff up…and when they weren’t. You could see in their eyes, how
they wouldn’t look right at you, and their lips…how they got licked
a lot. Angie studied Kloosee’s face. Sure, he looked a lot like a
dolphin, but the eyes didn’t lie. They were desperate and you could
even hear it in their tone of their words, not the words
themselves, but the sounds behind them…what was the word:
plaintive, sorrowful, mournful, even a little melancholy. Some
patients wanted to live so badly you could taste it. Some wanted to
die. Some were fighters. Some were quitters.

Kloosee, and Pakma too, were fighters. She
was sure of that.

…we pulse you not
shoo’kel
…there is dis…belief…in what
is said…you wish help…yet…

It was true. Chase had to admit it. The
whole thing seemed like a dream. “I don’t know what we can do. I
think I believe what you’re telling me. And what the hell is
this…
shoo’kel
, thing
anyway…that keeps coming out of the pod. What does it
mean?”

…(shkreeeh) to
explain…
shoo’kel
means…balance…inner calm…I will release Kelk’too
here…

Kloosee dipped below the water and did
something with his own pod. Instantly, the pod in Chase’s hands
changed color, flashing from a warm soothing orange to a bright
blue-white. Chase was so startled he almost dropped the thing. But
now there were words coming out…calm, monotone words, and he
realized it was explaining something, like a dictionary….he put the
pod back to his ear tentatively, listening cautiously.

…The desirable state of keeping one’s inner
fluids in balance so that any pulse of you is clean and regular.
Any other state is vulgar or obscene. A form of personal honor and
dignity. Control of excessive emotion is necessary to efficient and
accurate pulsing. Also used in a general or universal sense to mean
tranquility, peace, the natural order of things, stability,
etc.