The Farpool (17 page)

“It wouldn’t take that long. But we have to
both agree.”

Pakma was stunned at the very idea.
“After all we’ve worked for…all
you’ve
worked for, how could—“She couldn’t even
complete that thought.

There was a heavy silence between them.
Trillions of
mah’jeet
suckled
against the cockpit bubble, mashing themselves into a viscous fluid
that was patiently crushing the bubble out of shape, deforming its
structural pattern, dissolving chemical bonds. An opaque screen of
purple had cut off virtually all light, leaving the
kip’t
and its attached pod in
darkness. Inside both, the water was warm and suffocating, rich in
the scents of fear.

“What about our guests? This isn’t fair to
them, is it?”

“No, it isn’t. But we all knew there was a
risk in doing this.”

The low, delicate chittering of
the
kip’t
sounder stopped,
then thumped.

“It doesn’t seem fair, Kloos…maybe it was
wrong to take them…they don’t know—“

Again, a thump, something
massive.
Thump-thump.

“—
Pakma, you’ve known me long enough to
know that—“

A louder thump-rattle. A series of
them.
Whump-thump
.

Pakma was deathly hoarse. “What…is that—“

THUMP-thump. THUMP-thump.
Kreeee…kkkthump
….

“Pakma, be still…be quiet…I think—“

They both listened for a few moments to the
sounder. The thumping continued, interspersed by muffled screeches
and whistles. A burst of bubbles erupted in Kloosee’s belly. He
smiled at the feeling.

“It’s the tillet. It has to be.”

“The tillet?”

“We were following them, remember? They
sensed the
mah’jeet
before we
did and bolted. Now they’ve come back. They must have taken a
liking to the scent of this
kip’t
…it’s familiar to them.”

Pakma could neither see nor pulse
anything out of the pod’s porthole. She hoped Kloosee was right.
“How can they survive inside the
mah’jeet
bloom?”

“They can’t. We must be near the edge, like I
hoped. Otherwise, the sounder would be useless too.”

“Then, there’s no way they can help us, is
there?”

Kloosee thought for a moment. “Maybe there
is. I don’t know if it will work though.”

Pakma’s voice seemed firmer, like she had
made a decision. “Kloos, we don’t have the luxury of selecting our
risks, do we?”

“No.”

That seemed to strengthen him.

“Pakma, we shouldn’t delay about this. The
humans are running low on Notwater. We need to surface, help them
recharge their supply.”

Pakma could pulse the
kip’t
interior even from the pod,
though the echoes were jumbled, mixed human and Seomish. Still, she
knew Kloosee well enough; his returns always stood out.

“You’re thinking of a thought-bond, aren’t
you?”

Kloosee admitted that he was. “But these
tillet are Orketish. They bond differently from ours. Everything is
different: the pulse-width, their way of thinking, their codes of
cognition. We’re not Orketish. The tillet might not respond. Even
if one of us could make a bond, it would be fragile and
uncomfortable, maybe even frightening to them.”

“So what do you have in mind?”

“I don’t know if any of the tillet
would give up its life for someone not of their kel. But if we
could somehow entice one or several of them to penetrate the
mah’jeet
swarm, with enough speed,
they might bump us hard enough to knock us out of the swarm before
they died.” He stopped, realizing what he was saying. Tillet were
valuable animals; it was likely that someone had spent a long time
binding these animals, perhaps to the very point of making a
life-bond with them—that was not so unusual. Losing them, even a
few, would be a bitter and painful loss. Their deaths might even be
transmitted across the sea, though that seemed
impossible.

Pakma pulsed her concern and Kloosee couldn’t
ignore it. “We don’t have a choice, Kloos. I’m sure the bondmaster,
whoever he us, would understand.”

Kloosee listened to the thumps again.
Pakma was right. Each time the tillet crossed the sounder beam, it
pealed its outline to them, beckoning them. If they escaped
the
mah’jeet
, Kloosee
promised himself that he would seek out the bondmaster for these
tillet and beg his understanding. Yes, even being shame-bound would
be proper, he decided.

I’m half-Orketish myself…I
know how these animals think
. “Okay, here
goes….”

Think as the Orketish would think. Yes. Now,
comes the scent, the slightly salty water of the Orkn’tel. Very
pungent, you could sniff it even on the Omtorish side of the
Serpentines. The boundary seas were always shifting, weren’t
they?

But first you have to reach. You have to find
the current. Great Ork’lat runs in our veins, swift and pure. The
world is only a tributary.

Think as the Orketish would think.

Patience. The Ork’lat is eternal, after
all. Place a finished
potu
pearl in the Current of all Currents. Let it drift and think
no more of it. When the time is right, when Ork’lat wills it,
the
potu
will come home.
Pulse alertly! It comes from the other direction. The same pearl,
untarnished by outkel odors, untouched and undiverted, the same
pearl has ridden all the rivers of the world. Ork’lat protects it.
Ork’lat brings it home.

Think as the Orketish think.

Tell me, Pakma: do you ever tire of
roaming in the boundary seas? Repeaters are so restless. They need
so much
t’shoo
, but that’s
wrong. No! Smother that. It’s not as we think. Love is our
tradition.
Ke’shoo
for all,
kelke or not. Can you pulse the smoothest echoes, and let all the
rest be stilled? That is
Ke’shoo.
Pulsing for the tender, for the delicate, for the sublime.
Pulsing for the heart.

Think as the Orketish would think.

Have you ever sniffed raw
potu
? No current ever brought a more
elegant, more glorious scent. That is the scent of this kel.
Reeking of
potu
, that is
Ork’et. The measure of things. The prize, the treasure, the vortex
of
azhpuh’te.
The center
around which all revolves. Shooki carved us from
potu
, cleaved a living being from
the gemstone itself and named her Ork’et, the Daughter. And even
today, in the dim light of glowfish, Orketish skin flashes with the
alabaster luster of the pearl.

Think as—

Who’s there?

Patience. Self is a piece of Noobit keeoh.
Self pulse his pulses, hear his echoes, scent his smells.

--drifting with no feeling; it’s a ticklish
touch you have—

Is this Noobit? My bondmaster? Koo’shet fails
this one.

I am bondmaster. Listen to me…I am…am
bondmaster…you hurt me. What is that? You ache for scent? Is that
it? I feel lost. Sore.

Kip’tscent is gone, where is kip’tscent? Self
gulps need for bondmaster. This one sniffs no kip’tscent.

Kip’tscent is here. Listen to me. I am
bondmaster. Kip’tscent is trapped.
Mah’jeet
bloom has kip’tscent. You can sniff.
You can help.

Self gulps no bondmaster. Koo’shet weak.
Hurtsting. Hurtsting. No bondmaster.

Listen to me. You must help. Kip’tscent is in
danger.

Noobit binds self to kip’tscent.

Self can help free kip’tscent. Self
must enter
mah’jeet
and find
kip’tscent. Kip’tscent will fade, disperse. You must stop it. Bring
us out—

Hurtsting.

No, don’t fade. Stay. I am bondmaster.
Don’t leave us,
kah
, don’t
leave us now.

Self gulps bad koo’shet. Mah’jeet
hurtsting.

Listen to me. Self? Kip’tscent will end.
Kip’tscent will die. Help us. Bondmaster will die.

No.

Yes. Noobit knows. Ask Noobit. If
kip’tscent dies, self will die. Kip’tscent is trapped in
mah’jeet.
Self must recover it,
quickly. Before it ends….

Self will die.

--I have no words for this feeling—

Self bound to kip’tscent.

--it is like being hollow, all my blood
rushing out—

Self?

--like the lash of a thousand prods, ripping
at me—

Self? Self!

--like the ertleg’s claw raking me from
inside, like the scalding—

Something heavy slammed into the
kip’t
, jolting them hard. Kloosee
shouted. The bubble had cracked. A trickle of purple squeezed in.
But the
kip’t
was moving,
there was no doubt of it. They were bumped and bumped and bumped
again. Outside, even the thick
mah’jeet
couldn’t muffle the agonizing shriek of
death.

More purple dribbled in, coagulating into
spheres, drifting about in the bubble. The bumping had stopped.
Kloosee dared not breathe—had he imagined it? He shook himself out
of the bondtrance and felt his tail flukes go numb. A sphere of the
toxin had brushed him. Frantically, he thrashed it off before it
could dissolve into his skin. Already, the dizziness….

But it was true. The
mah’jeet
were thinning out, sliding
off the bubble like sheets of tissue. A veil was lifted and he
could see the craggy cliffs of the T’kel. The sight made him smile,
laugh and Pakma soon joined in from the pod aft of the cockpit.
Even the humans seemed amused, though they couldn’t know why. All
that barren rock, that brown and gray mud, was more beautiful than
all the fields of
eng
he had
ever seen.

Still, they weren’t completely free of
the
mah’jeet
. Faint webs
still clung to the bubble, holding them in the swarm. Knots of
purple filaments drifted nearby. They had stopped moving and if
they didn’t act now, the natural motions of the swarm would suck
them back in deeper.

Kloosee shivered; some of the poison
had already entered his bloodstream. He tried the
kip’t
jets. Nothing. They were so
close, yet still within the grasp of the
mah’jeet.
Something…there had to be something he
could do.

They had one chance. He was shuddering,
growing more numb every second. So far, the humans hadn’t been
affected, but Kloosee could see they were both confused and scared.
He reached out and felt the circulator handle in his hand. It would
take the last of their breathable water and if it didn’t work….

He twisted the handle, to open the
water intakes. He could taste the oily excretions of the
mah’jeet
inside the bubble now. One
of the humans, the female, started to panic, thrashing about. The
male held her tightly, trying to comfort her. Kloosee’s pulses were
erratic. His vision blurred. But he couldn’t worry about the humans
now. Still, he felt for the handle.

He pushed it in.

The first second was the longest.
Kloosee was sure it had not moved. It had been jammed shut by the
weight of the
mah’jeet
and
wouldn’t budge.

The next second brought him the truth.

The force of the
kip’t’s
water being expelled kicked them hard.
The craft spun slowly, tangling in the tow line to the transfer
pod, and seemed to fly apart all at the same time. Kloosee
succumbed to the drowsiness but not before he tasted the welcome
saltiness of T’kel water rushing over his beak.

They were drifting freely now, away
from the
mah’jeet
. Something
massive darted by in front of them but Kloosee didn’t have the
strength to focus on it. Instead, he pulsed that they were
sinking.
T’kel will catch us. T’kel
will
—

The
kip’t
finally
came to rest on a
narrow ledge.

It was a tillet, nosing at his beak,
that had awakened him. Kloosee spent a few minutes testing
different parts of his body.
Mah’jeet
poison in that concentration should
have been fatal. But everything seemed all right. He wriggled out
of the
kip’t
and shook
himself vigorously.

That’s when the human male showed up right in
front of him.

Chase had the echopod. He pressed it against
his throat.

“Are you all right…we thought you were
dead—“

Kloosee reached out and pressed his armfins
on the human’s shoulders. He pulsed worry inside the creature; you
could see it in his gut, with all the bubbles churning.

…almost was…pulse worry…you are
concerned….

“Uh…well, yeah…Angie’s down to about ten
minutes’ air. Me…about five minutes. Kloosee…we need to go up.
Surface. We need air.”

Kloosee understood. The Tailless breathed
Notwater, strange though that sounded. He sounded around, saw Pakma
climbing out of the pod’s hatch.

“Pakma, we have to leave…if I can get
the
kip’t
working. The
Tailless are out of Notwater…we have to surface. Get back inside
and I’ll try to get us off this ledge.”