The Farpool (14 page)

Like babies in a mother’s
womb
, Angie thought, but she quickly banished that
kind of thinking.

There were harnesses and Chase figured out
how to slip into them and secure them. You had to contort yourself
like a gymnast, but it was doable. It occurred to him that the
compartment and the harnesses weren’t really designed for bipedal,
air-breathing humans.

Inside the cramped compartment, there was a
small panel ahead of them, below twin portholes. The panel was
clearly some kind of control station, though its buttons and
switches weren’t designed for human hands. The controls were more
like the round end of a spoon, a series of narrow bowl-like
depressions made for pressing with something other than
fingers.

While Chase studied the panel, Kloosee
fiddled with another set of controls near the hatch. Angie had
noticed a double row of small pod-like containers ringing the
perimeter of the compartment.

I wonder
….she
said to herself. They didn’t have an echopod for translating and
could only puzzle at Kloosee and Pakma’s gestures and clicks and
whistles. Most of the time, the Seomish managed to make their
meaning clear.

Kloosee patted Chase on his head and backed
out of the compartment. At once, the hatch swung down and was
locked. Moments later, the pod-like containers began to spew
bubbles. Initially a steady stream of bubbles, the pods soon were
discharging something at high pressure. The stream of bubbles
became a torrent, then a flood, enveloping the entire space.

Chase closed his eyes.
What are they doing now
?
Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.
Alongside, he could feel Angie squirming too.

The compartment was smothering them with
bubbles but it wasn’t long before Chase understood.

Air.
It was
air. Kloosee had called it Notwater.

The compartment was being filled with air at
high pressure. And sure enough, the water level began to subside,
first at their heads, then dropping slowly but steadily below their
faces, their necks, their shoulders.

When it was done, there were still several
centimeters of water left in the bottom of the compartment, but now
they could breathe.

Cautiously, Chase removed his mask and
mouthpiece and took a breath. It
was
air, stale, smelling like iron filings and
ozone, but breathable air. He nudged Angie and she took her gear
off too.

“Whew
…that
smells good. What the hell is that odor?”

Chase sniffed. “Must be the filters. Thank
God they thought of this…I wasn’t sure what we were going to do
when our tanks ran dry.”

Angie squirmed some more, wriggling to get
comfortable. “I don’t think I like this place…where are they taking
us? Maybe this wasn’t such a—“

But she choked off her words for in that
moment, the little craft began to move, jerking and gyrating into
motion. Chase stuck his head as close to the porthole as he
could.

“We’re underway…we’ve just lifted off the sea
bed…I can see that tow line. Kloosee and Pakma must be in the sub
up ahead…now we’re off. But to where?”

Angie just shuddered and tried to relax. “How
do we know they’re not going to kill us…or eat us?”

Chase squinted out through the dense convex
lens of the porthole. The scene outside was heavily distorted. “We
don’t actually.”

“Great. That’s just great.”

“Well, we sprung them from the aquarium. They
sort of owe us. I guess we have to trust ‘em.”

“Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any
better. Can you see anything? There’s no porthole at my end.”

Chase
hmmm’ed
. “We seem to be headed out to sea…the
seabed’s dropping off…getting deeper. I can’t see that far. Just
the tail of that sub.”

They traveled at a steady clip for nearly
half an hour.

Both Chase and Angie had drifted off into a
light doze when a faint tug on the side of the craft startled Chase
awake.

“Angie…Angie, wake up. Something’s
happening—“

She stirred. “What is it?”

“I don’t know, but it feels like we’re moving
sideways.” Chase plastered his nose to the porthole, trying to make
something out. “It’s silty out there. Dark too. Deeper water. You
feel that?”

Some kind of force was pushing them sideways
in the water. At the same time, the compartment picked up a light
shuddering vibration, gyrating like a top at the end of a
string.

“Yeah…what’s happening?”

“I don’t know, but I think we’re on the outer
edge of some kind of vortex…the water’s all rushing sideways, dirt,
pieces of things…I can’t really make it out.”

“God, I hope it’s not a spout.”

The force began to increase, a centrifugal
force that soon shoved them to one side of the compartment and
pressed them hard against the walls. Worse, the compartment began a
slow roll, a rotation that didn’t remain slow for long, but picked
up rate at a steady clip.

Soon, they were spinning enough to become
disoriented and dizzy.

“Chase…my stomach…I don’t feel so—“

Angie’s words were suddenly lost in a bright
flash of light, a searing, painfully white strobing light that
flooded the compartment and blinded Chase.

“Ow
…I can’t
see—“

The spin kept accelerating and moments later,
Chase and Angie passed out.

Early morning beachgoers at Scotland Beach
were treated to an incredible sight offshore, just before dawn.
Backlit with the orange glow of sunrise to the east, a thin ropy
waterspout formed several miles off Half Moon Cove. As the spout
danced and skipped across the waves, a bright pulse of light
emerged from the sea and vaulted heavenward along the length of the
spout, followed by a series of light pulses, as if the spout were
sucking buckets of light right out of the ocean.

The light pulses disappeared into low-hanging
clouds and vanished, leaving only a faint iridescent flicker, like
a silent lightning discharge.

Moments later, the waterspout collapsed into
the sea and the ocean returned to its restless heaving.

Unknown to the residents of Scotland Lake,
Chase Meyer and Angie Gilliam had just been catapulted six thousand
light years across the Galaxy and several hundred years into the
future.

Chapter 7

Seome

Omsh’pont, kel: Omt’or

Time: 765.5, Epoch of Tekpotu

Nine months before he was catapulted
into the Farpool, Chase Meyer had been riding his turbobike along
the Gainesville Highway, coming back from a visit with his
recovering Dad at Creekside Hospital, when the bike hit a pothole
in the highway. Chase lost control and somersaulted over the
handlebars. When he thought about this later, he realized just how
much time had slowed down in those few airborne seconds. Like his
Dad always said: “
It’s not the fall that
hurts, it’s the sudden stop at the end.”

So he had been airborne and basically
weightless for a few seconds—not uncomfortably so—then his tumbling
body had slammed into the ground inside a culvert adjoining the
highway.

Days later, when he and Angie talked about
the experience, Chase mentioned that going through the Farpool was
like that: moments of peaceful weightlessness, almost a dreamlike
quality, except for the bright strobing lights outside the porthole
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 lifeship shuddered and hurtled out of the
Farpool in a flash of light, a roaring rush of deceleration,
knocking Kloosee and Pakma hard against the cockpit windows. Still
trapped in the vortex, Kloosee rammed the ship’s rudder hard over,
while firing her jets to counteract the residual force of the spin.
For a moment, they were both pinned sideways against the cockpit,
until the force of the jets shot them through the core of the
whirlpool and out into calmer waters.

Pakma breathed hard, wiping her beak with her
hands. She checked the instruments.

“Sounding
meetor’kel
water, Kloosee….rough water but
visibility improving. I can pulse ahead…looks like we’re
home.”

Immediately, they could both hear and feel
the throbbing beat of the wavemaker. Kinlok Island and the huge
machine were less than ten beats away, to the west.

Kloosee fought the lifeship controls to bring
them under control. “Thank Shooki we came through that one…a rough
ride, rougher than most. How’s our cargo doing back there?”

Pakma checked behind. The
tchee’lum
, the transfer pod with
Chase and Angie inside, was still in tow, connected by line to the
aft end of the ship. The pod gyrated slightly as Kloosee settled
the connected vessels into a smoother ride.

“Pod’s still there…I don’t know how they’re
doing…maybe we should stop and check.”

Kloosee said, “And the Notwater. We should
surface, let them re-charge the flasks. Plus you should give them
the echopod.”

Pakma agreed and Kloosee steered the lifeship
upward toward the surface. He breached within sight of the humped
mountains of Kinlok.

Pakma left the cabin and went back to
the
tchee’lum
, cycling open
the hatch. The two vessels rolled and wallowed in heavy surf and
Kloosee had to battle the currents to keep them at the surface.
Pakma held her breath, poked her head above and popped the hatch.
Moments later, she spied a head…it was the male named
Chase
. He thrust himself up,
squinting in the spray and seemed startled at the nearby metallic
flanks of the wavemaker, less than two beats away, rounded humps
with the conical caps of its time displacement nodes looking like
small reefs in the water. Waves crashed against the wavemaker’s
arms and the lifeship rolled and bobbed unsteadily.

Pakma cruised just below the surface, took a
breath and popped her head up. Chase jumped at the sight, then
realized who it was. Pakma reached out with her hands and gave
Chase an echopod. Grateful, he snagged it from her and disappeared
below the hatch.

Pakma ducked down into the water to get a
breath---it hurt her gills to heave in too much of the Notwater—and
started to explain.

Chase heard the whistling and chirps and
finally managed to activate the echopod. Its warm orange glow
seemed comforting. Inside the pod cabin, Angie managed to contort
herself enough to partially sit up. She squeezed through the hatch,
sticking her own head out, took a deep breath of the stinging air
and promptly took a wave of seawater in her face. Coughing and
gagging, she slipped back inside.

Chase said, “There…I think it’s working…can
anyone hear me? Chase Meyer calling anyone…this is Chase Meyer
on--“

The echopod screeched and blasted them with
noise until Chase figured out how to set the volume to the right
level.

(shkreeee…)understand me…I am Pakma…do you
hear my voice—

The words were shrill, whistling, barely
audible over the background rush of sound, but both teenagers heard
them. It was the most welcome sound they had ever heard and they
laughed out loud.

“Yes…yes, I hear you! I understand you…who is
this--?”

…am Pakma…I am alongside
the
tchee’lum
…below water.
Surfaced to give you Notwater…re-charge flasks….

Chase looked puzzled at Angie. “What do
you--“

Then Angie snapped her fingers. “They put us
on the surface to give us air…she must mean put more air in those
bottles—“ she indicated the ring of containers at the base of the
cabin.

“Yeah….
hmmm
, how do I do that? On Earth…we use
compressed air to fill our tanks. But I don’t see a
compressor—“

Angie pried one of the containers loose and
worked it up through the hatch. Chase took it and almost
immediately dropped it. The thing started moving, its outer surface
morphing until something that looked like a mouth with lips had
formed on one side. Holding the container away from his face, Chase
saw the lips form a puckered sort of shape and realized in that
moment that the thing was literally sucking in air, like you’d suck
in air yourself.

“Oh my God,--“ Angie shook her head. “It’s
like a little creature…it’s taking in air—“

One by one, with brief instructions and
encouraging chirps from Pakma, Chase and Angie manage to work every
container—there were several dozen—off of their mounts, hoist each
one through the hatch, let the container draw in air on its own and
re-attach it to the cabin walls.

When they were done, Pakma said
…
you have Notwater for the trip…enough to
last…

“Where are we going?” Chase asked,
through the echopod. He was beginning to get a feel for how to tune
and adjust the translator. “And what the hell is
that
…that machine thing on the
horizon…it’s just pounding away out there—“

Pakma surfaced for a moment, sticking her
beak and forepaddles out of the water. Like dolphins, the Seomish
had a face that always seemed amused, with a broad crescent of a
smile. Pakma thrashed her beak up and down. The echopod chirped
again and both Chase and Angie drew near.