The Farpool (30 page)

Jeez, how do they put up with this crap?

The answer wasn’t long in coming. Chase saw
the signaler buzz as if it were a trapped bird. Kloosee interpreted
the buzzing, with a frown.

“They say they will meet with us. For a short
time only. The usual place. It seems there are developments with
their enemy. A new threat approaches so the meeting must be
short.”

Chase wondered just what threats were
gathering. “What’s the usual place?”

Kloosee said, “The boundary…water and
Notwater…we have no word for this—“

“Ah, yeah…you mean the beach?”

“That must be it. I’ll add that to our
dictionaries.”

So Kloosee drove them to the surface. A gale
was blowing topside. Towering waves crashed over them and the kip’t
wallowed like a sick whale, rolling in all the froth and foam.
Winds screamed. It was daylight…barely, but to Chase it seemed more
like twilight. Or maybe dawn. It was hard to tell.

Moments after they had breached, Pakma and
Angie did likewise. Kloosee and Pakma had already exchanged ideas
on how to go about the meeting.

Kloosee steeled himself for the low pressure
of Notwater. He grunted out: “When I open the cockpit, climb out.
I’ll close it after you and submerge. Pakma is doing the same. Meet
Angie on this ‘beach,’ as you call it.”

Chase was just glad to help. He understood,
now in a more personal way than ever, why this was so
important.

The bubble hissed and yawned open. Quick as
he could, Chase scrambled over the side and nearly drowned in the
waves, before finally regaining stability. He pawed and clawed his
way through heavy surf and soon found himself barreling face first
into a pile of rock and gravel.

It was the beach. He dragged himself up
onto the rocks and saw a shape in the mist to his left, doing the
same thing.
That’s got to be
Angie
. He went to her, still momentarily shocked at
her lizard-like appearance. They both looked like mutant frogs from
a sci-fi flick, grown large and menacing. But that didn’t matter
know.

Standing up a bit unsteadily in the gale,
Chase spied shapes moving on a nearby ridge. He assumed this was
the Uman party. There were three.

He trudged off, Angie in tow, and
stopped at the base of the ridge. All three Umans had weapons
trained on them.
Suppressors
,
Kloosee had told him. Paralyzing weapons. He stopped and held out
his hand, not sure exactly what to say, or how it would
sound.

“Hey…uh, we’re humans! We need to talk! Can
you hear me? Can you understand me?”

Nobody had informed the Umans that the
Seomish representatives would be humans that had undergone
the
em’took
. One Uman, the
one in the middle, took a few steps forward. The others trained
their weapons.

A guttural voice rang out, barely audible
over the roar of the wind.

“Stay where you are! Come no closer!”

Chase heard the words, muffled but
distinguishable and nearly cried out. God Almighty… that’s
English
! Accented, with some odd
phrases, but it was English! He started forward but in that moment,
a Uman opened fire with his suppressor.

The jolt knocked Chase flat on his back. For
what seemed like hours—time had congealed to a crawl—he couldn’t
feel or hear anything. He couldn’t hear anything. Nothing would
move. He could breathe, more or less. But his legs and
arms…nothing.

Then a face appeared, followed by
another.

The first was Angie. A frog’s face, but
somehow, he knew it was her.

“Chase
! Chase,
are you all right…are you hurt?” She squatted down on her haunches
and bent to nuzzle him, clucking over him. Hovering behind her
shoulders, the Uman in the middle peered down.

His face was formed of hard cheek planes,
with a bit of a double chin. Even some dimples, looking almost
comical in a frame of gray-white buzzcut hair with sandy gray
sideburns.

“I told him not to come up---here, wave this
under his nose.” The Uman handed Angie a small perforated ball. She
did as instructed, waving the ball back and forth under Chase’s
nose and face.

Presently, feeling returned. Slowly, then
more feeling, like a spreading stain, until after what seemed like
days, Chase found he could sit up. His whole body tingled. His hand
and feet shook uncontrollably.

Unsteadily, leaning on Angie, and now
with help from the other Umans, Chase got to his feet. They led him
to small cut in the ridge, more or less protected from the winds,
and there he sat down on gravelly ground again, trying to clear his
head. He noticed just how cold the wind was, ice-flecked and
biting, and was glad for the tough hide the
em’took
had given him.

The Umans all gathered around Angie and
Chase.

“The message said you were Uman,” said
the one who had first come down from the hill. “You don’t look like
anything I ever saw in Uman space. What
are
you…something from Hapsh’m? Majoris, maybe?
Acth:On’e…you ever see anything like these two?”

The tallest Uman had a blade-shaped head. Two
eyes, but they were further apart than the first Uman.

“I haven’t, Ultrarch-Major. Not in many
terr…maybe they’re Coethi spies…I could believe that.”

Chase held up a hand. His own webbed hand
startled him for a second. “No, no…we’re humans, just like you.
Earth. We came here with friends, Kloosee and Pakma. The Farpool
brought us.”

The Ultrarch-Major cocked his hand. “You mean
that vortex these buggers keep talking about…that’s just somebody’s
wet dream. A fairy tale.”

“No, no, it’s true. We came from Earth. Our
Earth. Scotland Beach, Florida…it’s just a little north of
Tampa…Clearwater…got great beaches, believe me.”

The Ultrarch-Major rubbed his chin, looked at
his compatriots. “Earth? Urth? The motherworld…that’s not possible.
It’s quarantined. Too dangerous now…all those timestreams
converging….the Corps had to isolate them. The Coethi stick their
grubby little snouts in one of these main timestreams, we’re
finished. No more Urth. Corps had to cut them off, completely.
Believe me, it wasn’t easy. Controversial, too. But it was the
right thing to do…somehow, the brass blundered into a decent
tactical decision for once. What do you want to talk about…I
haven’t got all day.”

Chase decided he would stand up, no matter
how hard it was. Angie helped him. The suppressor had weakened
everything in his body and he felt like jelly. He leaned against
her and felt nauseated and dizzy, but he was determined. He stuck
out a webbed hand, assuming a handshake would be understood.

“I’m Chase…Chase Meyer. This is Angie
Gilliam.”

The Ultrarch-Major recoiled for a moment,
then reached out just enough to rub fingers with Chase’s webbed,
oily hand. He flinched, but he seemed to understand the gesture as
a friendly one.

At least,
that
hadn’t changed.

“Ultrarch-Major Monthan Dringoth, First Time
Displacement Battery. These are my officers: Captain Acth:On’e and
Lieutenant Golich. Come on…we’ve got Coethi crashers and cruisers
nearby, closing fast on this base… let’s hurry this up.”

“Right. Well, see, my friends…Kloosee and
Pakma, they and all the Seomish are being hurt by this sound your
weapon, your machine makes. It’s destroying their world. It’s
wrecking everything down there—“he pointed to the ocean.
“Everything in the oceans, all their cities, their economies, their
families. I came...we came…to ask, beg you to shut it down. Turn it
off.”

Dringoth looked puzzled. “First you tell me
you came from Urth through one of those blasted vortexes…that’s
crazy in itself. Then you tell me there are cities and families and
whatever down there underwater. That’s crap. The creatures here are
just like my pet wing-walker…smart, yes, but just animals. Pets.
Beasts. There aren’t any cities down there…what are you, cracked?
Fall into one of those whirlpools, did you?”

Acth:On’e laughed out loud, spitting and
slobbering as he did so. When he breathed, you could hear a faint
hiss. “It’s a trick, Ultrarch-Major. They’ve taught these buggers
tricks, like you teach your pets to speak, fetch things, lie down.
Just a trick.”

“We’re not pets!” Chase insisted. “Hey,
man, I’m as human as you. I look like a frog ‘cause we went through
a procedure…the Seomish wanted us to be able to survive here as
they do. We breathe Notw…I mean,
air
. Just like you.”

“They
are
breathing air,” said the Lieutenant Golich.
“I’ll give him that.”

Dringoth glared at Chase. “What did you call
these creatures?”

“Uh…Seomish? This world is Seome.”

Dringoth snorted. “We call this hellhole
Storm. In fact, one of your ‘friends’ damaged our Time Twister
several terr ago and we had to abandon the place. But Timejump
Command said we had to come back and patch the thing up.” Dringoth
peered skyward for a moment, shielding his face from the stinging
sleet. “Don’t know how long this sun’ll hold up, though. She’s
already taken more than a few starballs. We came back because we
were ordered too…took a minor miracle to get the Twister up and
running again. Now, a Coethi fleet is bearing down on us as we
speak, popping in and out of different timestreams…we can barely
track the bastards. No way are we shutting the Twister down now.
That’s suicide, even for your friends.”

Chase tried to follow Dringoth’s argument but
it was hopeless. “What is this Twister…is it a weapon?”

Dringoth had trouble hearing them. The wind
screamed across the beach, flinging sleet and salt spray in their
faces. It was Golich who suggested they retreat to the hut on the
ridge. The hut turned out to be filled with equipment, tracking
gear for the Time Twister.

“Sure it’s a weapon,” the Ultrarch-Major
replied. He fixed himself a mug of something steaming hot to sip.
“The Twister is what we use to keep Coethi from entering this
sector of the Halo…Halo-Alpha. Keeps ‘em from bollixing up
timestreams from here to Sturdivant and back. That’s our mission.
You say you’re both Uman?” Dringoth squinted, twiddled with a tuft
of moustache, looked Chase up and down. “You don’t look like
anything I’ve ever seen.”

“Maybe something from Gibbons’ Grotto,”
Golich suggested. “The Hollows and all that.”

Chase assured the Major that he and Angie
were quite human. “We look like this because we went through a
procedure-I can’t pronounce it—to help us adapt to living here, in
the sea. I’m from Florida. Earth.”

“Me too,” Angie chimed in. She wondered if
they had somehow fallen into a sci-fi flick. “Greetings from
Earth.”

“Urth.” Dringoth pronounced it slightly
different. He had a faraway look on his face, pulled himself up a
chair from underneath a small control station, turned it around and
sat in it backward. “Hmmm. Never been there. Like I said, it
was
quarantined. Timejump had to
shut down all timestreams to keep Coethi from infecting the
Heartland.”

“So what does this Time Twister do?” Chase
asked. He examined some of the instruments and controls, until
Acth:On’e intervened and politely shoved him away.

Dringoth shrugged. “Got a singularity engine
at the core. It reaches out several parsecs from here and flings
anything it finds out of local space-time. Sends it off to who
knows where…other side of the galaxy. Maybe other side of the
Universe. We don’t understand it ourselves. Timejump just gave us
the basics. First Time Displacement Battery just operates and
maintains the thing.” He patted a rack of gear. “This baby keeps
Halo space clean, free of Coethi and other nasties.” His face
darkened. “As long as you people stop trying to damage it, that is.
We’re having to fight off the Coethi and the local life too. It’s
getting old.”

“I’ve made skimmer trips out to Big Mama
myself, plenty of times,” Golich jumped in. “I’ve seen all those
whirlpools. Twister does that. Leakage effects. We used to enjoy
herding fish and whatnot into the vortexes and watch ‘em being
accelerated out of space time…lots of fun but it got old. Anything
to pass the time on this hellhole. Never seen this Farpool you
speak of, though.”

Acth:On’e was openly skeptical. “It’s pretty
hard to believe one of these whirlpools could become a wormhole…I
guess it’s possible. But then I’m no scientist.”

“Your weapon is destroying this world,” Angie
said. “The sound, the whirlpools—“

“—
the vibrations and waves,” Chase
added. “The Seomish brought us here to talk to you. You’ve got to
turn off the Time Twister…they actually call it the wavemaker. It’s
making rubble out of their cities—people are dying….”

Dringoth scoffed. “I don’t believe any
of it. Even if there
were
actual cities and whole civilizations under the sea here, it
wouldn’t matter. We have a mission and we have our orders. A Coethi
fleet’s been sighted in Halo space the last few days and is
probably bearing down on us right now. They know we’re here. They
may have even more effective starballs. If the whiz kids at
T2—Timejump Intelligence—are even close to being right, the sun up
there—Sigma Albeth B-- is doomed. So is this world, unless we can
keep yanking Coethi ships into forever with the Twister.”
Dringoth’s hard blue eyes bore in on Chase and Angie. “So you see:
if I really do what you want, you’re dead. We’re all dead. And
Coethi occupies Halo Alpha and Uman settlements start going poof.
We’re planning on a better outcome.”