The Farpool (45 page)

They said nothing to each other.

The newly approved trip would consist of a
single kip’t, towing a lifeship. Amanh tel, an engineer with
Longsee and the Academy would pilot the kip’t. Pakma tel would come
along as well and train Angie on operating the lifeship. Angie was
quickly reminded of how much she had to re-learn…just making the
right clicks and sounds to control the lifeship was harder than she
remembered. But she was glad to see Pakma again and they embraced
when she showed up at the kip’t shop, nuzzling each other in the
Omtorish way.

“I’m glad you’re coming along, Pakma. It’s
good to have someone I know.”

Pakma pulsed the
eekoti
female. Her normally bemused smile wasn’t
there. She could sense the sadness roiling inside Angie.

“You’re not happy,
eekoti
Angie. I can see that. We all pulse it.
This is a distressing and unhappy time for you.”

Angie had to admit that. “I’m sad to leave
all my Seomish friends behind…especially you and Kloosee. We’ve
grown to know each other so well…you’re like family to me. It’s
been special…what we’ve had together.”

“But your real family is not
here,
eekoti
Angie. You wish
to return to your own world.”

“Yeah, that’s true…I miss my Mom, my friends.
Especially Gwen.”

Pakma and Angie watched several technicians
outfitting and checking the sled for its long journey. Supplies and
small pouches were laid in, fastened to the inside of the kip’t.
The jets were fired and tuned. Circulators tested. Control surfaces
exercised.

“Eekoti
Angie,
you do understand that
em’took
can’t be easily reversed. Longsee said to try it might be
fatal. Perhaps the Farpool will take you back to your world. But it
may not be the same time and place. And you will be different. You
will not be the same as before…this concerns you, I can tell
this.”

“If you mean…do I realize I’ll look like a
giant frog, I do. I don’t care. The Farpool will make it right. I’m
sure of it. The Farpool will put me back.”

Now, Pakma was truly sad for it was
clear that
eekoti
Angie did
not fully understand. “There is no proof of this…Longsee himself
has said such a change is unlikely, probably
impossible.”

But Angie was undeterred. “Pakma, I just want
to go home, that’s all there is to it.”

And Pakma could pulse that it was true.

The kip’t departed the very next day—Amanh,
Pakma, and Angie, with the lifeship in tow. Before lifting away
from the dock at the Academy, Chase and Angie said a tearful
goodbye. At least, they thought it was tearful. With their modified
bodies, you couldn’t tell if there were really tears. But they
hugged and rubbed noses anyway

“Are you sure about this?” Chase asked
her.

Angie, aware that others were watching and
probably studying them like lab rats, nodded, whispering into
Chase’ echopod-enhanced ear: “I’m sure. I just need to go home, and
be home.”

“Even looking like this…you know what’s going
to happen, Ang. You’ll be scooped up and wind up in a zoo…or worse.
You don’t even know if the Farpool works in reverse.”

Angie looked at Chase. He really
did
look like a frog, with jowls and
bulbous eyes. She had to laugh a little
. I
look the same way
. “I know. I don’t care. I just can’t
stay here any longer, Chase. It’s not me. It’s not even—“she wanted
to say
human
, but some inner
sense told her not to “—it’s not right. I came along ‘cause I
wanted some adventure too. I guess…I don’t know…I guess I didn’t
think it would really happen. I thought we’d leave the aquarium and
fool around at sea with Kloosee and Pakma and that would be that. I
never dreamed---“

“You know I’ll come home…some day. Just not
right now. I have to do this. Kloosee, Pakma, all of them, they
need help. Ang, I can help them. I know I can.”

Angie pressed fingers into his rough,
scaly cheeks.
The eyes are still Chase.
Em’took didn’t change that.
“I know that. Let’s don’t
make this any harder than it is, okay? Just come back as soon as
you can.”

Chase heart sank. It was the
way
she said that. “You’ll be there?
You’ll be…I mean, you know…us—“

Angie put fingers to his big lips.
“
Shhh
. Just come
back—“

With that, she climbed into the kip’t. Pakma
pulled the cockpit bubble down. Amanh revved the propulsors and in
a cloud of bubbles, the kip’t and lifeship were off. They
disappeared into the rain of silt and swirling dirt in seconds and
were gone.

Chase went back inside the Academy em’kel.
His heart was in his mouth. He felt like crap and was momentarily
overwhelmed with sadness, wondering if he would ever see Angie
again.

He had to believe he would. He told
himself that, out loud, over and over again. It
would
happen.

Pakma had told Angie the trip would
take five days. Amanh would pilot the kip’t south, paralleling the
outer bands of the Sk’ork Current, around the southern flanks of
Likte Island, then across the equator into the vortex fields of
Pul’kel, to catch the great sweep of the Pom’tel Current. Its
counter-clockwise movement would then take them around the Ponk’el
Sea, past the Pillars of Shooki and the edge of the polar icepack
to the region of the
azhpuh’te
, the whirlpools and the Farpool.
Kinlok Island and the Uman base wouldn’t be far away.

As Pakma described it, Angie
thought:
this is like going around your
ass to reach your elbow
. But the currents of Seome
were the currents of Seome and she figured Amanh knew what he was
doing. After Angie had left the kip’t and hopefully ridden the
lifeship into the Farpool, Amanh and Pakma would continue on to
reconnoiter Kinlok and the surrounding seas, collect measurements
on the sound and vibration and recon any weaknesses in Uman
operations that could be used in future attempts to rid the world
of the hated wavemaker and its Tailless operators.

Conditions were growing steadily worse
everywhere. Even Angie could see that. Despite wanting to go home,
she did fear for the future of her Seomish friends.

The three of them spent many hours in
silence, as Amanh drove them southeast across the great abyssal
plains of Omt’orkel toward the lower Serpentine. There wasn’t much
to see. The water was black, flecked with brief bursts of
luminescence as small creatures lit off when the kip’t disturbed
their feeding. Once, they came upon a field of flickering lights,
moving slowly a few beats below them.

“Ter’poh,” said Amanh as they passed over the
moving river of light. “They glow like that when they feed.”

Pakma laughed. “Omtorish mothers tell
their babies that the
ter’poh
will come if they don’t eat all their meals…we all grew up
afraid of them. But really, they’re pretty harmless…unless they
clog our jets. Amah will keep us a safe distance away.”

“Sounding the Southern Gap ahead…maybe thirty
beats,” Amanh told them. The sounder echoes flickered on some kind
of screen on the sled’s instrument panel. “I’ll slow us down—“

They reduced speed to navigate the narrow
chasm and the waters became turbulent and frothy, cross-currents
mixing in a maelstrom of crashing flows. The kipt and lifeship
waggled and whipsawed and careened until Amanh brought them down to
a creeping speed, just barely making enough way to overcome the
water’s resistance.

Finally, when Angie was sure they would be
dashed against steep escarpments on either side, an invisible
current reached out and grabbed them, pulling them through the
gorge into the Ponk’el Sea. Ahead, the conical shapes of the Ork’nt
range were dim shadows and they were buffeted by choppy waves and
clashing currents as they picked up speed again.

“It’s like roaming through Omsh’pont
during
vish’tu,”
Amanh
mentioned. “When everybody gets out and roams, you can’t go
anywhere…people are thick as stew. You have to twist and turn and
slide and slither…the Pul’kel is like that. Vortexes and whirlpools
everywhere, right on top of each other. Normally, we wouldn’t come
this way, but if you can get through, the Pomt’or Current will take
you up north quickly. We need to get to the Farpool as fast as we
can…no one knows if it still works the same way…or even if it’s
still there.”

This made Angie anxious and Pakma pulsed it
right away. “You mean the Farpool might disappear? I thought it was
a permanent disturbance.”

Pakma chose her words carefully; she didn’t
want to say something that would upset Angie any more. They still
had several more days jammed together inside the kip’t.

“Longsee thinks the Farpool is just an
especially strong whirlpool…something the Uman machine, the
wavemaker, creates as a side effect. He doesn’t think the Umans are
even aware it exists…or if they are, they don’t care. Here—“ Pakma
pulled out an echopod from a pouch inside the cockpit and activated
it. “Longsee recorded his own findings some time ago…listen—“

“
One of these whirlpools is
especially deep and intense. In this whirlpool, the twist field has
spun off a sort of miniature or daughter wormhole. It isn’t very
big. It isn’t very stable, fluctuating daily in intensity and
location. But it will send objects that enter to other places,
other places different in both time and space.

We call this mother of all
whirlpools the Farpool. By accident, we’ve learned that at certain
times of the year, under certain conditions created by operating
the Time Twister, the Farpool can send small objects…a few
explorers and their gear…to other places and times. We believe one
of those places turned out to be the home world of the Umans
themselves.

In effect, we have learned how to
travel back in time and space to the ancestral home planet of the
Umans. The Umans don’t know this. And they don’t care, as they are
engaged in running duels with local forces of their mortal enemy,
whom they call Coethi.

Using the Farpool to reach other
places and return to Seome requires exquisite timing and control of
the whirlpools generated by the Twister. Use of the Farpool is
basically at the mercy and sufferance of the Umans and how they
operate the Twister. But we have learned much. We’ve catalogued the
conditions we need and built an algorithm to help predict when
these conditions will occur. When the right conditions appear, we
know to be ready to enter Farpool.

There have been several occasions
when Farpool didn’t work as we predicted. In all these situations,
the travelers failed to make it to their destination, or failed to
return to Seome. Where or when they went is unknown. When this has
happened, we have memorial services and try to learn what went
wrong. This process has led to our ability to predict and manage
how to use the Farpool. In recent months, we have been able to
reliably go and return from the Umans’ homeworld.

And no one outside of Omt’or,
especially the Ponkti, knows any of this.”

This made Angie thoughtful for a few moments.
“What will happen if the Farpool isn’t there? Is there no way to
make sure it works?”

Pakma tried soothing her.
“
Eekoti
Angie, we must trust
in the benevolence of Shooki in this matter. The currents will be
as the currents will be. If we reach the Farpool and there are
obvious problems, you don’t have to go through. You can come back
with us to Omsh’pont…see your mate Chase and be happy with
us…wherever we wind up.”

That didn’t make Angie feel any better.
“First of all, Chase is not my mate. And what exactly do you
mean…
wherever we wind
up
?”

“There is talk—“ and here Pakma paused, for
Amanh had given her a stern look from his pilot’s position “—that
we may leave our homes. Go elsewhere, through the Farpool.”

Angie hadn’t heard this before and she
was intrigued. “Where would you go? Where
can
you go?”

“Oh, there is great conflict and debate about
this…in Omt’or, in all the kels…even Ponk’et. One of the reasons
Kloosee and I came to your world was to learn if it is livable…for
us. You have vast oceans, many waters, like our world. The waters
are different, but there are proposals—“ Here, Amanh spoke
sharply.

“Eekoti
should
not know of this, Pakma tek. The Metah has pledged us
all-“

But Pakma wouldn’t be dissuaded. “I
don’t report to you, Amanh tel…
eekoti
Angie should know this. There are
proposals…serious proposals, even plans, to emigrate. From our
world to yours. Seome to your Earth. Live in your waters. Kloosee
and I were there in part to observe, collect information, take
measurements…a kind of surveillance.”

Angie’s head swam with the idea. “Emigrate to
Earth…all of you? Through the Farpool…could that even be done?”

“There is talk among the scientists…ways to
do this…but we haven’t discussed this with the kels. But you must
promise not to reveal this when you go home. The project could be
jeopardized.”

Angie’s head churned with all kinds of
thoughts. The Farpool…mass migration…alien invasion…jumbled images
of bad science fiction movies erupted. She wasn’t sure what to make
of all this.