The Farpool (3 page)

Kloosee was glad that Ponkel sounded
calm today,
litor’kel
was how
you said it, he remembered. The bottom pulsed fifty or so beats
below them, thick with mud and hidden, from time to time, by a
tricky
ootkeeor
layer of
warmer water. The thermals of the northern seas sometimes played
havoc with
kip’t
navigation
and even the locals sometimes got lost in the churning sediment and
confusing echoes of the area. Kloosee was confident he could make
it; he’d come this way for the first time in his Circling
many
mah
ago, so the complex
echoes didn’t bother him. It was just as well that Pakma was
asleep. She pulsed like the Farpool itself when she was
scared.

The
kip’t
slid easily through the trackless waste
and outside the vast swirl of the Pomt’or Current, the sea 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 the
ertesh
, thin and oily in this area.
Few creatures found it appetizing enough to school here.

Far to the north, off their starboard
quarter, Kloosee could read the faint echoes of the polar ice pack
itself. The Pillars of Shooki were up there. He frowned, thinking
about that. Someday, perhaps—

They traveled alone for hours, droning
on and on, through the Ponkel, while Kloosee occupied himself with
savoring comforting smells from a favorite scentbulb he had opened
up, scents that spoke of faraway places and great adventures: the
Klatko Trench and the seamother feeding grounds, the
tchin’ting
forest south of Likte
Island, the caves of the Ponkti…Kloosee had always loved these
scents. They were like warm water, soothing, comforting, old
friends. Like old kel-mates.

Pakma began to stir from a drowsy nap,
stretching and flexing herself in the cramped cockpit. Kloosee
checked his sounder, noting they weren’t far from the point where
the Pomt’or and Tchor Currents separated, a place of rough churning
water. The
kip’t
was no more
than a hundred beats from the turbulent T’kel’rok zone when they
came upon a furious battle between a hungry mesodont, scavenging
through a field of scrubby bushes at the bottom and a seamother it
had startled. Kloosee braked quickly and steered the
kip’t
toward a dome of rock that
poked above the mud, unwilling to risk the attention of the
seamother
Puk’lek
when she
was angered.

Pakma was now fully awake. Her insides
bubbled nervously. She and Kloosee pulsed in awe at the fierce
struggle.

The seamother had a considerable advantage in
quickness. Her favorite weapon was her tail, ribbed with spikes and
deadly. Back and forth, the tail thrashed, scraping the tough hide
of the enemy. The mesodont lashed out with sharp pincers, seldom
striking its target, but persistent enough to avoid a direct
attack.

They skirmished for nearly an hour, each
trying to wear the other down. The seamother tried several times to
lunge in and flip the mesodont over with her tail but each time
caught a pincer in the side and had to retreat. The waters frothed
with blood and viscera and still they fought on.

The battle raged in near stalemate until the
nightwaters came. Both creatures were exhausted, yet fought
automatically, as if guided by unseen hands to destruction. The
mesodont had lost three of its eight legs, pincers and all, while
the seamother bled freely from deep gashes in her belly and head.
One eye was shut, ripped out and scabbed over. Squeals of pain and
anger had long since been replaced by a deathly chittering,
clicking away the last moments of life.

Somehow, despite its crippling injuries, the
mesodont mustered enough strength to burrow so deeply into the mud
that it became impervious to continued attack. The seamother was
enraged by this and tore furiously at the mud and silt but not fast
enough to catch up. Soon, only a bruised gray hump was all that
protruded from the mud. With that, the seamother bellowed
forlornly.

Twisting her broken body, she bounded for the
surface, several hundred beats above them. The waters of the
Orkn’tel were clear enough to see when she breached it in an
explosion of foam and bubbles. The paroxysm of anger lasted for
several minutes, then suddenly, the seamother was quiet. She
drifted at the surf ace, dragged by waves toward some distant
shore, unknown to the Seomish. They pulsed in fascination at the
sight.

Kloosee spoke first, after a moment’s
reflection.

“When they die, they seek Notwater. That’s
homewaters to them…like the Umans.”

“Amazing,” was all Pakma could say.

Kloosee waited a few more moments but
the way seemed clear and he lifted the
kip’t
on its jets and resumed their journey. “I
haven’t see
Puk’lek
in these
waters before. She was well south from her normal feeding
grounds.”

“Probably the Sound from the wavemaker,”
Pakma surmised. “Everybody’s trying to get away from it.”

Kloosee piloted them on, toward the
Serpentine gap and the rough waters where the great currents split
apart, the P’omtor continuing west and the Tchor slicing through
the gap toward the abyssal plains to the south, toward Omsh’pont
and home.

Pakma turned about her cockpit sling and
watched the cargo pod dangling behind them. For the moment, their
captive was quiet, floating without motion in the enclosure. She
wondered what it thought about the seamother. Was it even still
alive?

“Kloosee, those creatures we saw, the ones in
the Notwater…they seemed pretty intelligent. Don’t you think? I’m
wondering if we shouldn’t get a specimen the next trip.”

“Assuming Longsee approves another
trip.” Kloosee was concentrating on bearing the
kip’t
toward the left, fighting through tricky
cross-currents. “The last few times, we’ve always brought back the
same creatures…they seem intelligent, but they don’t add much to
the project. I don’t think they’re going to help us very
much…Longsee told me that himself.”

“The ones we saw that came after us…the
Tailless…did you see their eyes, Kloos? They had that look, you
know…that sparkle…like that ‘
I don’t know
what you are but I’m curious’
look. We’ve always used
curiosity as a measure…maybe we should be looking elsewhere. Are
you going to say anything to Longsee…those Tailless
did
try to attack, after all. Good
thing you had the blinder…
that
knocked them out.”

Kloosee steered them deftly toward a
huge V-shaped notch in the Serpentine. He slowed down and let the
faint fingers of the Tchor current grab them, first shaking them
like an angry fist, then hurling them through the decline.
The
kip’t
sounded ahead,
tasting turbulence and the sled shuddered as it passed through the
gorge. Steep craggy flanks surrounded them, not visible in the
heavy silt and murk, but Kloosee knew danger was near and he was
careful with the controls, adding just a touch of rudder or jet as
needed. Pakma held her breath…one little eddy, one little bump, a
few seconds drift in the wrong direction—

Only when the water calmed did both of them
catch a breath. Kloosee checked the sounder…clear ahead and the
rocky seafloor was opening up and spreading out, giving onto a
steep tongue of seafloor that led straight down to the Omme’tee,
the vast abyssal plain that covered much of the central Omt’orkel
Sea.

The seamounts of Omsh’pont were now less than
two hundred beats away.

Kloosee had been thinking about what
Pakma said. He liked Pakma; they had a lot in common. Sure, she
wasn’t too keen about joining his
em’kel
; but she was strong and smart and she had
her own ideas about things. She was an artist with the
scentbulbs….people still talked about her first big show,
the
Puk’lek
it was called.
Really, it took something special to do that.

He knew Pakma had learned to create and
appreciate scentbulbs from an early age. One of her first
accomplishments as a scentbulb artist was to capture and catalog
scents from seamothers who occasionally wandered into Omtorish
waters in small packs. In this, she exposed herself to considerable
danger, but she was able to obtain scents and smells from
seamothers in a variety of states: eating, sleeping, copulating, in
distress, fighting. The traces were in the waters of the Om’metee,
south of the traditional seamother feeding grounds…not far from
where they were now. Technically, the waters were off-limits, but
Pakma ignored the regulations.

That’s what Kloosee liked about her. He was
attracted to Pakma, so he always liked to say, because she was so
sure of herself. She was gifted, and she knew it. She was strong
willed and he liked that too. He particularly enjoyed sparring with
Pakma, physically and intellectually, though Kloosee knew he
himself was no great intellect.

“I
am
going to tell Longsee what we found,” he decided. “The
project’s not going anywhere…the Mektoo are getting restless. And
if the Metah decides to stop supporting us…” he let that lie where
it was, not wanting to finish the thought.

“I just hope they let us make another
trip…and the Umans don’t do anything to mess with the Farpool…they
don’t even realize what we’ve found.”

“No, and we should keep it that way. The
Umans can fight their wars, if they want. Leave the Farpool to
us….”

They both grew more and more excited as
the echoes of their home became stronger and clearer. Presently,
the towering seamounts of Omsh’pont sounded strong and sure and
when the murk cleared, the great city finally lay before them.
Kloosee slowed the
kip’t
down
to approach speed and homed on the signals from the Kelktoo lab,
occupying several domes and pavilions along the southwest ramparts
of the central mesa of the city.

“Homewaters—“ breathed Pakma, taking in a big
gulp. She savored the scents and odors and whiffs and aromas of
everything she had grown up with…the accumulated wisdom and noisy
clamor and clashing pulses of the only place she had ever called
home.

Omsh’pont…heart and soul, the
shoo’kel
of life itself. Calm and
clear waters everywhere you pulsed.

“Litorkel ge
,”
she breathed.

Kloosee had to agree. It was a hoary
old saying but it was comfortable too. “
Litorkel ge
—“

They drifted toward the landing pads of the
Kelktoo labs.

By sight, Omsh’pont could barely be seen in
the silt and murk of the central sea of Omt’orkel, but even a
cursory pulse would betray the outlines of a great city. The main
axes were wedged in between towering seamounts, held, as it were,
in the bosom of the mountains atop a flat mesa-like plateau in the
middle.

Pulse in any direction and you would learn of
domes and pavilions and floatways and more domes, interspersed with
cylindrical structures and pyramids and cones, a geometric forest
of cubes and humps and tent-like coverings, all of it crammed and
pungent with noisy, honking, bellowing, clicking, snorting
life…that was Omsh’pont, the city of Om’t.

The Kelktoo was the largest and most
influential of all the em’kels…the traditional house of learning
with its academies and labs and observatories and institutes and
societies and foundations and studios. The project leader was none
other than Longsee lok kel: Om’t, a name that evoked respect in
every sea around the world.

Kloosee and Pakma parked the
kip’t
and supervised lab attendants
as they unhooked the cargo pod and steered it off to a nearby
conservatory for initial exams and feeding. The two of them headed
for the floatway leading to the Lab itself, situated under an array
of tents and canopies halfway up the outer flanks of the seamount
T’or, the tallest sentinel in the city.

Longsee was studying something under a
beatscope when they arrived. He looked up, pulsed them happily and
they all hugged like long lost friends.

“How was it, going through Farpool this time?
I’ve heard it’s getting rougher…harder to navigate…did you come out
at the right place and time?” Longsee’s innards bubbled like a
steam vent; he did that when he was excited and the old Director
didn’t get excited about much lately.

Kloosee told him. “It was rough…you have to
be very precise how you control it. We were able to hit our target
within a few weeks and close to our location…but it was close.”

Longsee understood. “Instabilities are
growing. We’ll need to do more analyses, do a better job at
predicting how it operates. Probably the Umans are doing something
with their weapon that’s affecting it.”

Pakma added, “That’s what we want to talk to
you about…the Umans.”

But Longsee was already focused on other
things. The project director was single-minded in wanting to learn
more about the home world of the Umans…it was only by chance the
Farpool had made that possible. “You’ve brought back more specimens
I see.”

Kloosee looked at Pakma. “The same type. Only
one this time. We had trouble with the breathing pod…the creature
didn’t want to use it, so we had to sedate him. Now—“Beyond the
canopy of the lab, they could see their captive inside the
containment tank, part water, part Not-Water, circling and probing
the tank confines restlessly. The structure was an enclosure built
out from the side of the seamount. “—this specimen seems to be
male, possibly very young.”