The Farpool (21 page)

“Angie, look around…these people need help.
They just asked for our help. You can start helping right
here.”

Angie spluttered. She went to the walls,
glared at the passersby and stuck out her tongue. Several paused in
their ceaseless roaming and stared back through the veil.

“People…give me a break. Look at them.
They’re not people. They’re fish. I don’t know about you, but no
way am I going through that procedure Kloosee mentioned…that
em’took
.”

Chase licked off his fingers and got up. He
went over to her and put his arms around her waist. “Angie…we’ve
got to think this through.”

“Oh, yeah, like you’re the brains of the
outfit. You’re the one who got us into this. Just get me
home…that’s all I want.” She twisted out of his embrace and wrapped
her arms around her shoulders. She began pacing around the Notwater
pod, poking into the pliable walls, jabbing at eyes staring back at
her from the other side. “This place gives me the creeps.”

“What do you think Kloosee and Pakma were
thinking when they got shot by that cop on the beach? Just minding
their own business—“

“And scaring the crap out of people on the
beach….”

“They took one hell of a big risk
showing up like that. They did it because they were desperate.
You’ve been outside…you’ve heard that blasted noise. Look what it’s
doing to their world. I don’t know how they stand it…it’d drive me
nuts. And the Umans, whatever they are, they don’t want to listen.
Maybe we
can
do something
good here. Just once, Angie…just once I want to do something more
than take inventory every Sunday afternoon at the surf shop.
Something more than dust shelves, unload trucks, put T-shirts on
hangers. There’s got to be more to life than that.”

Angie stopped her pacing and glared back at
him, hands on hips. “You could go to college. You could enroll in
Net tutoring, make something of yourself, you know. We’ve talked
about this like a million times.”

“That’s not what I am. I wanted to go with
Kloosee and Pakma because…I don’t know, ‘cause it’s what I am. Kind
of like an explorer. There’s two things I like, I mean besides
you—“

“Hey, thanks for including me.”

“No, really…I like the ocean and I like
techjam, playing my
go-tone
with the Croc Boys. Maybe I’m just an artist. I’d like to
find a way to combine them. But the surf shop—Dad wants me to go in
with him as a partner—that’s not me. No way. Plus, maybe cave
diving. That’s a rush…going into places nobody’s ever seen before.
A little bit dangerous…”

“A lot dangerous…you almost didn’t make it
out that one time—“

“Yeah, but it’s so cool.” Chase got up and
went over to the translucent wall. “I don’t know, but I feel like
I’m supposed to be here. I want to go through with that
procedure.”

Angie was unconvinced. “Not me. I don’t
want to be some kind of monster or freak. I don’t want to look
like
them
—“ She gaped back at
faces staring at the two of them. “I like my long legs and cute
butt. I like my perky little curls.”

“I still think your face looks like a
chocolate swirl cookie. Cookie—“

“Flip
,” Angie
shot back. It was a nickname from years ago, because he had such
big feet. Chase was a natural swimmer.

“Well, suit yourself. I thought we were a
team. Me…I’m doing it.”

“Chase, just get me home. That’s all I want
now. I don’t think we can help these people.”

So they stood there along the walls of the
Notwater pod, glaring and pouting at each other. When Chase started
to stick his lower lip out like a five-year old, Angie knew it was
all over. In spite of herself, she burst out laughing. Then the
laughs became tears. She let him cradle her and sobbed for a few
minutes.

“I’ll tell Kloosee we’re ready,” Chase said
quietly.

And that’s how life-changing decisions were
made.

The
em’took
procedure would be conducted in the
Kelktoo chambers. After Chase had let Kloosee know they were going
through with
em’took
, a pair
of bed-like cocoon pods were situated just outside the Notwater
pod. Through the echopod, Kloosee explained what they were to do.
Longsee and Pakma joined in.

“Open the
em’took
by pressing on the side…you’ll feel a
series of bumps—when they’re both open, lie down inside, face up.
Fold your arms over your chest. Then relax…we’ll do the
rest.”

Chase said, “I thought we’re supposed to be
unconscious…anesthetized, before you start.”

The echopod whistled. A different voice came
through, older, harsher, gruffer. It was Longsee.

“After you lie down inside, contractile
fibers will unfurl and extend. They will envelop your body. The
fibers have sharp tips. You won’t feel it but the tips will inject
a potion. You will sleep. And when you wake up, the
em’took
will be done. If all goes
well—“

Angie shuddered, held tightly to Chase’s
shoulders. “Ugh. If all goes well…I wish he hadn’t said that.”

“I think we understand,” Chase said. He
looked at Angie. They kissed for a moment, then both took a deep
breath together, like they often did going overboard before a dive.
That made them laugh.

“Just like going under,” she said, laughing,
to keep from shivering.

Then, the two
em’took
cocoons began squeezing their way
between the wall segments, like they were being excreted into the
pod. They did look like beds, big oblong beds, encased in some kind
of scaly outer covering. Chase decided they looked like gigantic
watermelon halves, even down to the black seeds scattered around
the interior.

Angie made a face. And the two of them lay
down carefully inside their pods.

For a long time, nothing happened. Chase
dozed off, then awoke hearing a faint whistle. He sniffed
something, it smelled like oranges. Then he noticed a faint mist
issuing into the pod.

This is like being in a
coffin
, he thought. He’d been cave diving in tight
spots like this, so he told himself he could get through it. But he
wondered about Angie; how was she doing? The mist thickened. He
didn’t know it but the mist contained the first wave of programmed
bacteria. The bacteria would begin the
em’took
process, penetrating into his nose, his
mouth and eyes, burrowing into his skin, breaking down tissues and
bone and cartilage, rebuilding structures to make him more
compatible with Seome.

“The
em’took
begins with a genetic
sequencing and neural scan. After the sequencing and scan, the
bacteria are altered and ‘tuned’ to match the recipient. The
sequencing and scanning process is known as vish’tu, which in the
Seomish language means a journey or a roam about the sea. The name
of the modification process is also used in the Seomish language to
mean birth or living space, connoting a place of new
birth
.”

Of course, Chase didn’t know any of this. His
echopod described the process in detail, but the voice was soft and
staticky and he wasn’t listening. Instead, he grew sleepy. Angie
was already asleep inside her own pod.

That’s when the dreams came.

It was Stokey Shivers who'd gotten them
both into this fix…Stokey and nobody else. He was always daring
Chase, daring him to do stuff. "
Betcha
can't do this, huh? See if you can top this, wise guy."

Chase had gotten sick of it, but he couldn't
very well back down, now could he? A boy's got to stand up for
himself. Got a reputation to protect.

Around the beginning of the year 2114, Stokey
and Chase were exploring caves out along a ridge off Coral Road.
Underground, partially underwater limestone caverns. Chase had been
warned against this by Mack, his father. They had scuba gear, but
found they didn’t need it. They dared each other to veer off the
main cave branch into an unknown and unexplored branch, known
locally as Crocodile Corner, or colloquially as ‘The Croc.” They
promptly got lost.

So that's how come they wound up lost
that cold winter afternoon in the cramped and clammy dead end
branch of a tunnel they'd found in the back of the Croc. Chase
liked caving--only wise guys called it
spelunking
, for God's sake. He liked it a lot.
You could go places nobody had ever seen before. You could be by
yourself, except that was a bad idea. You always went caving with a
buddy, so if one of you got hurt, the other could help out or go
get help.

It was after school, and Stokey had dared him
to go into their favorite cave at the back of Crocodile Corner,
down there where the streambed petered out, go into that last
unexplored branch that they'd named Yawning Mouth a few years ago,
because that's what it looked like.

Chase didn't really want to but then Stokey
was good at pestering and whining and making a scene. So they
went.

Inside Yawning Mouth, they took the dark
branch and traveled down, down, down, deeper into the earth,
through dripping stalactites and slippery limestone, playing their
flashlights back and forth, making funny faces at each other in the
dim yellow light, or shadow puppets on the veined walls.

They'd been going down for a good hour, when
Chase figured Yawning Mouth was a bit deeper than either one had
bargained for. So they stopped. They tried to get their bearings.
They tried to backtrack and see the path they had followed.

But they couldn't see anything. Then the
flashlight died.

That's when they knew they were lost.

Stokey Shivers, because he was Stokey
Shivers, started whining.

"Now what, wise guy? Now what are we going to
do?"

"Shut up," Chase said. "I'm trying to
think."

There was about five minutes of silence,
broken only by the drip-drip-drip of water from somewhere above
them. The air was cold, kind of raw and damp, and the stone ledge
where they had stopped was slippery. It dropped further down ahead
of them, but without the light, neither boy wanted to move an inch
forward.

"Chase--?"

"What?"

"I think there's a cliff ahead of us. This
ledge seems to slope down pretty fast."

"Yeah…I know."

"Are you still thinking?"

"Trying to." Stokey had the slightest stutter
to his voice. He was growing up; sometimes, he squeaked and sounded
like a bird.

"What are we going to do?"

"I don't know yet." Chase probed the nearest
wall with his hands, running his fingers along its damp glassy
surface. He swung further and managed to knock Stokey in the side
of the face. "Sorry…I was just trying to get a feel for what's
around us."

"We're stuck here, aren't we?"

"Maybe. You're the turdwipe that caused all
this. If you hadn't dared me, we wouldn't be here."

"I'm afraid…didn't you bring your
squawker?"

"Me? I thought you did." Squawkers took a
hack off the locator sats in orbit. You carried them in your pocket
and they chirped out where you were, right down to a few feet.

"Jesus…what are we going to do?"

Chase was increasingly aware of the quaver in
Stokey's voice. It wasn't puberty or anything like that now. It was
fear, probably panic. But cavers never panicked. You got hurt when
you panicked.

Cavers thought things through.

"I got an idea-" Chase said. "It might not
work--"

"What is it?"

He'd been tinkering with Bailey the last few
weeks. Dad didn't know about it; Mr. Meyer would have been furious
if he had. You didn't go tinkering with stuff without Dad's
permission. Mack Meyer was the best damned inventor Scotland Beach,
Florida had ever seen. The shed out back was full of inventions…you
could hardly get in the door without stepping on one.

Bailey was Chase's favorite. A
microflyer--they'd called it
drone
a long time ago. Powered by the sun. No bigger than a
hummingbird, with a quantum brain, all kinds of attachments--wings
that could flap so fast they were a blur, a real-life jet, some
small props--man, Bailey was a hot rod, no doubt about
it.

Late at night, when Dad had gone to bed and
the house was real quiet, Chase Meyer would fling open his
second-floor window and summon Bailey from the top of the shed. He
had a nest or a docking station up there. He'd taught Bailey to
respond to some whistles, some basic voice commands. Lately, he'd
found an olfactory program on the WorldNet, picked up some gizmos
around the shed, paid or filched the rest from the store, and
cobbled up a basic sniffer nose for the dude. He trained it to
search out and home on certain smells, especially his own. Wasn't
that a hoot? Bailey trained to sniff him out like a bloodhound,
ferret out his own bad breath and body odor.

He figured, after some tests, the dude could
sniff him out from as far away as several miles.

Not bad for a kid inventor. Dad would have
been proud. Dad would also have whipped him to Tampa and back for
messing around with Bailey too. But Bailey had become his best
friend, especially while Dad recovered from the gunshot wounds.
Late at night, hours after he called Bailey into his room for a
chat, he'd drift off to sleep, then awaken just enough to catch the
micro-drone hovering gently in the corner with his big red eye
winking on and off softly, or maybe just perched on the old Navy
trunk at the end of the bed, quietly whirring in sleep mode.