The Farpool (40 page)

Two prodsmen came forward and cut an opening
in the mesh. Chase squeezed out and fumbled his way, paddling and
kicking, toward Longsee and Kloosee. Lektereenah followed him,
poking and probing at his sides as he swam.

“See that Omtorish justice is swiftly applied
to this one…he’s insulted all of Ponk’et.” She stopped short when
she saw Tulcheah hanging off in the distance. “And violated the
sanctity, even the purity, of our kelke.” Tulcheah covered her
insides with her arms in shame. To fail the Metah was—

Longsee was stern as Kloosee wrestled
Chase into submission and held on to him. “Affectionate
Metah…Omtor’s justice will be swift and sure. This
eekoti
will understand that he has
done Ponk’et a grievous wrong.”

Nearby, Angie drifted up next to Chase and
whispered in his ear, through the echopod.

“Way to go, Casanova. You’ll wind up getting
us all killed.”

After that, the Metah left and the prodsmen
spent the next few minutes dispersing the crowd.

Despite the misunderstandings, scraps and
occasional insults between Omtorish and Ponkti, the shield grew
visibly every day, until it covered fully a third of the vast
cavern and had to be folded and pinned together, to keep from
dragging the floor. When it was finished, it would stretch six
beats on a side and be manipulated with draw cables at each corner,
with a steadying cable in the center. Longsee’s plan, worked out
with Kipto and other Ponkti weavers and engineers, was to take four
kip’ts with them to Kinlok Island and use them to raise the shield
into position. A fifth kip’t would then attach it to the
wavemaker.

The shield was substantially complete
by the end of the emtemah of Shookeem. Longsee was secretly pleased
at the way the Omtorish contingent had finally been accepted into
Ponk’et, as more or less equals, slowly at first, with a great deal
of suspicion, then with increasing trust as pulses became more
familiar and
shoo’kel
re-asserted itself. “The shield is worth it just for this,”
he told Kloosee one day. “To bring the kels closer together in the
face of a great threat…that is most satisfying.” Kloosee wondered
how long it would last. And he kept a close eye on Chase, whose
affections for Shoneeohnay and Tulcheah, had not
subsided.

Angie was more and more annoyed with her
boyfriend.

The kelke of Omt’or and Ponk’et shared
their meals with increasing frequency, swapped stories and lies,
slept together and even competed in the games which always seemed
to be springing up. Not that there weren’t disputes and an
occasional argument. No subject seemed to touch off more conflict
than the question of which kel was superior in the practice
of
Ke’shoo
and
Ke’lee
. But these arguments had
perplexed thinkers for thousands of mah.

When the shield was finally done and
been checked for rips and tears, the kelke working on it were
jubilant. They got up dozens of games in as many different sports
to celebrate. Even Chase got involved, when Kloosee was challenged
by some of the Ponkti to a match of
kong’pelu
. Though there was still much work
ahead of them, he relented to the pleas and jeers of the others to
join, and finally Longsee had to relent and allow it.

When Ke’shoo and Ke’lee
were ignored,
so said Longsee paraphrasing the old
saying from Shooki,
serpents took over and
drove one to despair.

It was time to regain the proper
shoo’kel
for the hard days
ahead.

So Chase took part. That’s when Angie
retreated to one of the Omtorish kip’ts and wouldn’t come out.

Angie’s Journal: Echopod 3

“Well, so here goes, Gwen…I’m dictating this
journal again into my echopod…if it’s working. Sometimes, this pod
thing goes haywire but I think I’ve got the hang of it.

“Oh, Gwen, you won’t believe what we’re doing
here. I don’t believe it myself. There’s this big machine north of
here, making a hell of a racket. Really, Gwen, it’s destroying the
cities and the lives of the Seomish. I hear it too…vibration, a
steady drone and some thumps. Mountains are crumbling. Buildings
are falling down. Its driving everyone nuts, me included. So the
Seomish have devised some kind of shield to wrap around this
machine. The thing is all the tribes…kels, whatever…have to
cooperate. And, Gwen, they fight like all the time, like teenage
girls.

“We’re leaving for a trip up north tomorrow…I
don’t know what will happen. I do know one thing. I want to go
home. Bad. I miss Mom. I miss you, girl…I miss our jogs down to
Turtle Key and back. I miss hanging out at Citrus Grove. All the
late night jam and vid parties, in our T-shirts and underwear. This
machine is near the Farpool, so I’m told. Maybe I can convince
Chase it’s time to bring this little adventure to an end and go
home. We could just jog on over and slip through…of course, they’d
have to change me back. Gwen, you wouldn’t believe what I look like
now…the Seomish modified us to live here, to survive here. Chase
and I both look like gigantic frogs. And I can’t get a straight
answer on whether we can be changed back…I don’t think they really
want us to go back. We’re like celebrities here. They actually
fight over us.

“Speaking of Chase…well, he’s living up to
his name again. Doesn’t matter whether it’s fish or mammal…if it’s
got a tail, he’ll ‘chase’ after it. Chase has found a few females
he likes…that makes me feel really swell. Honestly, Gwen,
sometimes…I could just—

“Now, he’s really done it…I think he must be
chasing somebody else’s girlfriend…and he got into a fight about
it. Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up….they sort of arrested
him and this one tribe where we’re currently located was going to
charge him, I think, but then they decided not to and turned him
over to the Omtorish…that’s our friends, Kloosee and Pakma’s tribe.
It’s all very confusing. We’re supposed to keep Mr. Don Juan on a
short leash so he doesn’t cause an incident again…I mean, really,
c’mon, man….

“Of course, one minute, I’d like to kill him.
The next minute, I love him. Maybe it’s the em’took procedure that
modified us. Although, Chase has always had a roving eye…that
hasn’t changed. In a way, I suppose that’s good. Here we are
jillions of miles from home, living like frogs with a race of
talking fish and Chase is still good ol’ Chase. Maybe I should be
re-assured…after I kill him.

“Gwen, gotta go now. They’re getting ready to
load up the sleds for the big trip. Me, I’m just looking forward to
going home. I swear, somehow, I’m going into that Farpool. I’ve had
the strangest craving for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich…they
don’t have those here.

“I’ll keep this journal going as long as I
can…until next time, girl, keep on trucking and keep running those
laps.

“So, okay…this is Angie Gilliam, over and
out.”

End Recording

Chapter 13

Seome

Ponk’t, kel: Ponk’et

Time: 766.6, Epoch of Tekpotu

The day of departure finally came. The Metah,
Lektereenah kim, arose in her well-guarded chambers and immediately
pulsed the excitement of the city, which had built steadily to a
barely contained frenzy by the time the day had come. The shield
had been removed from its pins alongside one seamount and laid out
across the seafloor outside the city the day before and Kipto and
Longsee had spent the night checking out the kip’ts and the
attachments of the netting. By the time Lektereenah arrived with
her official entourage, the pilots were already on the scene and a
sizeable audience had assembled, including some kelke who had just
arrived from the south, from Eep’kostic waters, having learned of
the shield and the project from repeaters in their own seas.

Lifting the shield away from the floor was a
spectacular sight. Even in the darkened waters outside the cavern
city of Ponk’et, it was an awesome spectacle, a vast rippling wing
taking flight. Once they were underway, it was clear there would be
continuing problems with keeping the thing steady; the Ponkti had
woven the tchinting so closely that it caught every stray current,
great or small, and billowed out, making Kloosee’s job as a lead
pilot one of frustration and reflexes. Anticipating what the shield
would do next as it swelled and flapped required an intense
concentration on the state of the water and close coordination
among the kip’ts.

Kloosee worked the center cable in one kip’t;
he was accompanied by another kip’t nearby, a Ponkti sled piloted
by Yaktu and Ocynth. Together, the two kip’ts formed the leading
element of the expedition.

Somehow they managed to keep the shield under
control.

With the Metah’s blessing and an endless
parade of speeches and toasts, the expedition finally got underway.
Chase and Angie rode with Kloosee in one lead kip’t. Longsee was
directly behind, with a Ponkti driver in another.

They had only traveled fifty beats or so, on
what would be a three-day journey, when Angie announced to
everybody onboard she wanted to go home.

Chase was really put off by her timing.
“Angie, now’s not the time. We’ve got this shield to put up. We
have to help out…that’s why we came.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “We’re already
helped out…isn’t that so, Kloos?”

Kloosee acknowledged. “You have helped, that
is true. But the great problem remains…the wavemaker, the sound,
what the Umans are doing to our world. We need all the help we can
get.”

“But what if the Umans object to this
shield…what if it interferes with their big weapon?”

Kloosee had a grim look…at least, Angie
thought that’s what it was. With Seomish, they always looked like
they had a bemused grin. You have to pulse inside to see what they
were really thinking. And Angie didn’t know how to do that….she
didn’t even
want
to do
that.

“Then we will have to take matters
further…possibly some kind of assault on their base. The Umans have
smaller weapons that paralyze our people…we’ll have to defend
against that somehow…no, the shield is best.”

Angie wasn’t going to be put off. “Kloos,
isn’t the Farpool nearby…near the Uman island?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “Perhaps twenty
beats…it’s one of many
opuh’te
…what you call whirlpools.”

They were all crammed into the kip’t cockpit,
Kloosee piloting, Chase in the middle, Angie in the rear.

She had been giving this a lot of thought.
She wasn’t going to be dissuaded now. “I want to go back through
the Farpool. After your shield is put up, take me to the Farpool. I
want to go home.”

For a moment, there was dead silence inside.
Only the rush of water could be heard as Kloosee drove them north
by northwest, riding the great Pom’tel Current to the edge of the
ice pack.

Finally, Chase said, “Angie, we need to talk
about this—“

“What’s there to talk about, Chase? We came
here to help Kloosee and Pakma. I think we’re done here. We’ve done
all we can do. I want to go home.”

Kloosee let the
eekoti
argue for awhile.
They argue like we do
, he thought. He could
pulse what was inside them. Chase annoyed. Angie…now there was a
mass of bubbles, fear, anger, anxiety, nerves, undercurrents of
resignation and panic there too.

“Angie, look at us…we look like lizards. The
Omtorish will have to un-do all the modifications…that’s not so
easy, is it, Kloos?”

Kloosee admitted that was true. “Unless
the
em’took
can be reversed,
the Farpool won’t change you back. You’ll be returning to your
homeworld as you are…a creature of the seas. Chase is
right.”

You didn’t need to pulse to hear the rising
tone of panic in Angie’s voice. “But you can do that, can’t you,
Kloosee? You can convert me back…to what I was…what we were?”

Kloosee decided to answer that carefully. He
felt the vibration of waterflow in the control handles of the
kip’t. They were in the very midst of the current, sweeping north
toward Kinlok Island. A squadron of kip’ts followed behind and the
shield itself was behaving better, carried on specially-made struts
between several kip’ts. It flapped and undulated in the current but
didn’t tear or come loose. One more day, maybe more….

“What you ask, Angie, has never been done
before.”

“Never been—“ Angie spluttered. “What
exactly do you mean, Kloos…I thought this
em’took
was a common procedure, like a gall
bladder or something.”

“No, you and Chase are the first…we’ve done
experiments. Small animals, like pal’penk calves…that sort of—“

“What!
We’re
the first…do you mean to say Chase and me are like lab rats? Like
experiments?”

Kloosee had to force himself to look
away from all her fluttery bubbles and echoes. “The
em’took
is well understood. We’ve
done it many times…just not in reverse. That’s never been
done.”

For a moment he thought
eekoti
Angie was going to explode.
Whirlpools and vortexes were calmer.

Then: “I don’t care. I don’t care. I want to
go home. When your shield is up, take me to the Farpool. I’ll take
my chances there.” She tried to glare at Chase but there wasn’t
enough room in the sled to turn around and all she saw was the back
of his neck…his scaly, crusty, slimy neck.