The Farpool (29 page)

Pakma listened. “Nothing. The wavemaker is
quiet.”

“Maybe the Umans turned it off. But they
could turn it back on again. If I can find the center of the Pomtel
current, we can’t be that far from Kinlok.”

“Let’s go,” Pakma said. She pushed Kloosee
away and began securing their cockpit bubble down.

Kloosee and Chase went back to their own
kip’t.

Together, none the worse for wear after their
encounter with the seamothers, the two kip’ts lifted off the bottom
and turned toward the north. Kloosee pulsed ahead and soon enough,
found the reassuring echoes of the great northern river known as
the Pomtel Current.

They headed north, toward the Pillars of
Shooki, toward the polar ice pack… toward the Farpool and the Time
Twister.

Chapter 10

Seome

Kinlok Island, T’kel District

Time: 766.2, Epoch of Tekpotu

The Pillars of Shooki lay at the very top of
the world. Surrounded by vast sheets of floating ice, far to the
north of the Ponk’el Sea, the shrine sat at the very edge of the
polar ice cap itself. A swift but narrow current, the Pomt’or,
rushed by some two hundred beats to the south, curving across the
bleak Northern Hemisphere until it split apart near the island of
Likte.

The Pomt’or was the northern arm of the
Pom’tel and it was the only current that directly approached the
Pillars. Moreover, according to Kloosee, it was the fastest and
safest way to reach Kinlok Island. To get there would still require
a tedious trip through the eastern Orkn’tel. The waters there were
dense and sluggish, stagnant at the equator, and brimming with
foul-tasting and dangerous
mah’jeet
fields, so thick in patches that no kip’t could get safely
through without clogging its jets.

“I don’t want to go through
mah’jeet
again,” Pakma decided.
Nobody did.

But there was no quicker way to the
Pillars…and to Kinlok.

The seas east of the T’kel ridge were unknown
to Kloosee. Even Pakma could help him little here; Omtorish kelke
seldom crossed the ridge and had never sounded these waters
completely. There were rumors surfacing out of the kel Ponk’et of
renegade kels that inhabited these waters, kels that had split off
from one of the great families thousands of mah before, but there
was no proof of them. There were even rumors that these outcast
kelke were descendants of the seamother herself, though Kloosee
tended to discount that.

Kloosee’s plan was to cross the Orkn’tel
until they had reached the junction of the Orkn’t and the T’kel,
then turn north into these unsounded waters, paralleling the ridge
until they felt the first faint tugs of the Pomt’or. That current
would take them to the very edge of the ice cap. The Pillars of
Shooki, and beyond them Kinlok Island, could be reached from
there.

Kloosee was glad that Orkn’tel sounded
calm,
litor’kel
, today. The
bottom pulsed fifty or so beats below them, thick with mud and
hidden from time to time, by a tricky layer of warmer water. The
two kip’ts slid easily through the trackless wastes. Inside the
vast swirl of the Great Ork’lat Current, the Orkn’tel was as barren
as any sea in the world. The water was a clear blue-green, almost
sterile of life but for the ever-present gruel of
ertesh
, thin and oily in this sea.
Few creatures found it appetizing enough to school here.

From time to time, they would pulse a school
of eelot below them. They were fearsome-looking beasts, with huge,
billowing heads and maws so wide that could have swallowed a kip’t
whole if they had had the stomachs to digest it. The eelot’s body
was more whip than flesh and covered with nearly invisible prickle
hair. It could emit a paralyzing substance from these hairs and
Kloosee was careful to give the school a wide berth. From their
distance, the eelots looked like rubbery globes but that was
deceiving. Fortunately, they preferred the bottom waters.

They traveled for the better part of
another day with Kloosee and Chase taking turns in their kip’t at
the controls. It was clear to Kloosee that the
eekoti
male called Chase was becoming more and
more used to his new form and appearance; no more raspy breathing,
sucking or coughing. Kloosee, and later Pakma over the comm
circuit, regaled the humans with stories from Omtorish mythology,
stories they had learned from their earliest days as
midlings.

Kloosee told them about Kreedake and
Pomel, the First Mortals, and how they had come to life in the
midst of a terrible storm,
azhpuh’te
it was called, spun out of the very
substance of the water itself, and how they chased each other the
world, before settling on the edge of the Om’metee plain near Likte
Trench. Kreedake and Pomel made love for six metamah, burying their
offspring in caves carved out of the sides of Likte. Thus was born
the Omtorish race.

Then the two kip’ts were silent for a while.
It was Kloosee who interrupted Chase’s thoughts as the human drove
the kip’t along the heading Kloosee had given him.

“Chase, I haven’t given thanks for how
you helped us on our last visit to your world. Without you…and
your
eekoti
healer, we would
have died.”

Chase shrugged. At least, he thought it
was a shrug. You couldn’t tell after
em’took
. “You mean after you were shot by that
cop on the beach? Yeah, I guess Dr. Holland did pretty much save
your life. Both of you.”

Kloosee considered that. “On my world,
when someone is greatly indebted, the holder of the debt usually
offers shame-bonding to repair the relationship. But you’re
eekoti
…we cannot expect that of you.
It would be wrong to expect that.”

“No, no…it’s okay. I want to learn. I’m on
your world…I want to follow your ways. What is this
shame-bonding?”

Kloosee tried to explain. “This is the
act of binding oneself to the will of someone you have hurt, in
order to make amends for denying them
Ke’shoo
and
Ke’lee.
Kind of an apology…a way of allowing the
one in debt some honor.”

Chase concentrated on keeping the kip’t
centered in the current. Some tricky cross-currents were trying to
push them off-course; Kloosee had warned him that might happen.

“Ke’shoo and
Ke’lee
…I’ve heard that before. It means love and
life.”

“More or less. Fertility and friendship. You
are learning—“

“So what would I have to do if we did this
shame- bond?”

Kloosee said, “Anything I asked.”

“Wow…that could mean a lot, couldn’t
it? Yeah, no question that cop shouldn’t have blasted you like
that…but I can kind of see his point, you know? He didn’t know what
you were. He was just trying to protect his
people…
eekoti
, I guess you
call us, on the beach. I’d say it was an accident. Still, I want to
do the right thing. How do we do this shame-bond? What do I
do?”

Kloosee spent a few minutes helping
Chase adjust his course. He was still unsure of the controls; they
weren’t meant for
eekoti
hands.

“I would like you to consider staying on
Seome…forever. Make your life here. Putektu needs you. There’s so
much we could do together. You know things I don’t. Here, I know
things you don’t.”

Chase was honored. Still, he decided it was
best to be cautious. Already, he and Angie had witnessed instances
of kel politics. He didn’t want to get sucked into something he
really didn’t understand. “This Putektu…this is your em’kel, isn’t
it? Like your family?”

“It is, exactly that. You learn
well,
eekoti
Chase.”

“It’s a great honor…what you’re asking
me. I mean, to be accepted into your world, with Angie and me both
outsiders. Off worlders, I guess. I want to help with your
problems…the Sound, these Umans. But that
is
asking a lot. Me, I’d probably be okay with
it…maybe not forever, but I like to see new places, do new things.
Angie…” Chase tried a shrug again, then gave up, realizing the
gesture would mean nothing to Kloosee…”—Angie, I’m not so sure. She
came along, mainly because of me, I think. We’re pretty much in
love…someday, I expect we’ll get married, have kids and all
that.”

“Excuse me…what is this marriage, you speak
of? I search my pods and find nothing—“

Chase laughed. “I’m not sure you have
anything like that here. From what I’ve seen and heard, you don’t
have husbands and wives.”

“Our lives are in the kel…and the
em’kel.”

“And ya’ll sleep around a lot too, I’ve
noticed. Not that this is a bad thing—I mean…there is
Ke’shoo
and
Ke’lee
, right?”

“We are not attached to one individual for
long times, if that’s what you mean. Pakma and I are good friends,
we couple as all Seomish do. We enjoy each other’s company. But
she’s not of Putektu.”

“Pakma’s not in the same family…em’kel. Is
she in a different em’kel?”

Kloosee’s voice became softer, almost tired.
“I try to interest her in Putektu…but she doesn’t view exploring
the Notwater, discovering the secrets of the Puk’lek, the
seamother, the way we of Putektu do. Pakma has her own em’kel…it’s
called Ot’lum Tek’ek. They are devoted to the arts…scentbulbs.”

“Pakma’s an artist? I had no idea.”

“It’s true. Pakma loves creating and
enjoying scents. She has an artist’s temperament and she likes to
experiment. That’s why, as a midling herself, she once went into
the seamother waters to gather their scents in ways nobody had ever
done before. She was slightly injured but she used this time of
injury to gather scents related not only to the local caves and
T’kel but her own scent response to this time of injury. Her bulbs
would later become very inspirational and popular as other Seomish
fans used them to help them through times of stress. Pakma called
these bulbs “
Opuh’tee
Kek’ot
,” which means literally “my whirlpool
mind.”

Chase figured he needed to learn a little
more about Pakma…there was just so much he needed to learn.

He was about to ask more, but an insistent
beeping distracted them. The kip’t sounders were indicating
something.

Chase threw up his hands. “Now it’s beeping
at me…what do I do? I didn’t touch anything, I swear—“

Kloosee checked some instruments. “Kinlok
Island is near. I recognize the echo…let me take over.”

The two of them swapped positions, awkwardly
and Kloosee spoke briefly, in a tongue that Chase couldn’t
decipher, about something.

“We will slow and ascend near the surface. I
told Pakma I would activate the signaler in a few moments.”

“The signaler…is this like a radio or
something?”

Kloosee indicated it was a communication
device that had been devised to enable crude exchanges with the
humans. “Like you, the Umans respond to sound. But they live in the
Notwater. Their understanding of sounds, the sounds they use to
communicate, we cannot make. Nor can they make sounds we
understand. The signaler is a type of echopod, like you have used,
for us to signal the Umans and talk with them. It has a great
range. We talk from below the water. The Umans talk from the
Notwater.”

“Long-range, like. I get it.”

With that Kloosee brought their kip’t to a
dead stop. Pakma did likewise. The water had lightened
considerably, though it was still turbid and silty. But even
through the murk, Chase could just make out the faint outlines of a
craggy slope in the distance.

That was Kinlok Island, Kloosee told him.

And the Sound of the wavemaker was deafening
here. The pulses of the Time Twister had been growing louder by the
day and more uncomfortable. Now, it had reached a point of being
particularly uncomfortable, like when the Croc Boys had their
woofers and tweeters tuned wrong in a jam session. Chase now
understood in a visceral way why the Seomish were so desperate to
stop the Twister.

If I can help them, I’ve
got to try,
he told himself.
Angie may not like that. But it’s the right thing to
do.
For the moment, this place is our home
too.

But he wanted to learn more about these
Umans.

Kloosee drove their kip’t upward, toward the
surface. The waters became rough and turbulent in the coastal zone
of the island. Pakma followed behind.

A few beats from the Notwater, with the Sound
hammering the water like a fist, Kloosee stopped. He extracted the
signaler from a small pouch. It looked just like an echopod, with
several horn shaped protrusions on one end. Kloosee pressed the
signaler against the sled’s cockpit bubble and activated it.

At first, Chase heard nothing. Kloosee
explained that the signaler worked on sound. It emitted pulses of a
certain frequency that the Umans had recommended.

“I’m telling the Umans that we wish to meet.
I’m telling them we wish to discuss matters of great
importance…that we have new kelke to introduce…that the new kelke
offer ideas on how to alter their machine so it doesn’t have
destructive effects. We’ll see what they say.”

Chase heard nothing. All he could hear, all
he could concentrate on, was the wavemaker, the Uman Time Twister,
slamming the cold waters with thundering pulse after pulse,
rattling his teeth, jarring his whole skeleton.