The Farpool (51 page)

Chase drifted off to a fitful sleep after
that.

And the monotonous drone and pulsing din of
the Uman wavemaker went on, bit by bit, slowly but surely tearing
apart the lives and homes of his Seomish friends.

Chapter 17

Seome

The Northern Ponk’el Sea

Time: 767.9, Epoch of Tekpotu

Halfway to Kinlok Island, the Omtorish
expedition was set upon by a scout force from Ponk’et. The attack
came on the fourth day, well within the holy waters of the Pillars
of Shooki, and it came without warning, from a convoluted series of
hills and ravines known as the T’kel Ridge that fronted the great
shrine along the northern Ponk’el Sea.

Such violence inside the holy waters in the
very shadow of the Pillars was considered the worst apostasy that
could be imagined.

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 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 Kinlok Island.

The Pomt’or was the northern arm of the
Pom’tel, and it was the only current that directly approached the
Pillars. To get there meant a long 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 through without clogging its jets. But
there was no quicker way to Kinlok Island.

The scout force consisted of twenty Ponkti
prodsmen, in formation. They quickly surrounded the small kip’t
formation and closed in.

Kloosee turned the kip’t nose on to the
closest prodsmen. He accelerated and tried to ram his way through.
But the prodsmen were quick and skirted the speeding sleds. Several
prodsmen slashed at the kip’t as it went by and the electric charge
shot through the sled’s frame. In an instant, Kloosee was stunned
into a stupor, Chase too. Pakma, only slightly injured, managed to
control the sled and brought them to a halt just before smashing
into the side of a cliff.

In moments, the Omtorish had emerged from
their sleds and engaged the Ponkti force. Chase shook off the worst
effects of the shock.

“Don’t you have weapons?” he yelled into his
echopod.

Kloosee produced a ceremonial scimitar
from the back of their sled. Another kip’t, this one piloted by an
Academy scholar named Lohket had an older prod, one unused for
several
mah
, barely full of
charge. He appeared out of the murk, brandishing the thing as if
were a seamother’s beak.

“We have these!” Kloosee yelled back.

That’s when Chase figured they were in
trouble. “Try to distract them—“ he told Kloosee. “I’ll circle
around, see if I can get behind them.”

Kloosee wasn’t buying it.
“
Eekoti
Chase…there are too
many…you can’t—“

But Chase was already gone. Kloosee
feared for the
eekoti
’s life.
There was no way the human could expect to out-maneuver a squad of
ten, maybe more Ponkti prodsmen. It’s was madness. It was suicide.
But he had no choice. Kloosee motioned for Lohket and the others to
charge at the Ponkti, swinging what they had, in an attempt to give
Chase a chance.

They closed the distance in seconds and the
melee erupted in a shower of prod zaps and thrashing tails and
swinging armfins. The water boiled with fury and combat, made worse
by a steady rain of ice shards and chips drifting down from bergs
and ice floes at the surface.

Chase found himself on the other side of a
large stalactite of ice projecting down from above. An idea
suddenly came to him: the ice itself. It was hard. It was sharp. If
he could just break off a few pieces…they’d make great weapons
themselves.

He tugged and pulled on the shards, until at
last one broke off, jagged and cocked. Just in time, he swung
around, backpedaling to avoid the Ponkti prod which flashed out and
nearly swiped against him.

Can’t let that touch
me
.

He lunged and managed to spear the side of
the Ponkti attacker, drawing a stream of blood. The Ponkti
withdrew, recoiled and came at Chase again.

They struggled for leverage. The Ponkti was
bigger, quicker, more efficient at moving. But Chase was determined
and for each slash of the prod, he managed to make a lunge and
strike the larger attacker. Soon, the water was stained with blood
and Chase was beginning to find more and more openings. Some of the
schoolyard brawls he’d joined in at school came back to him.

Then there was a deafening explosion. The
shock wave came like a slap in the head and punch to the gut. Chase
reeled, stunned, and found himself momentarily drifting, his head
spinning, his ears throbbing. He caught a glimpse of his Ponkti
adversary and saw a huge gray mass, barely moving, equally
dazed.

Moments later, both combatants had recovered
enough to regain the fight. The Ponkti swiped and thrashed with the
prod and once managed to brush Chase’s scaly skin. The shock jolted
him but somehow, he managed to recover. Just as he was about to
lunge again, another explosion thundered in the water, slapping
them both with fists of shock waves. Chase and his assailant both
went reeling.

That’s when Chase saw what he was sure was a
dream…materializing out of the ice-choked debris. An apparition
floated before them, tiny and serene, almost petite. Pure white
skin and delicate fins that seemed more like tissue. Her beak was
knobbed at the point and Chase sensed tingling again—like the
k’orpuh, like the Ponkti prod, clearly she carried voltage.

In her tiny hands, she held a small
fist-shaped object, oval, with projections at each end. The
apparition shook the object and another deafening explosion came, a
boil of bubbles and froth and heaving shock waves that flattened
Chase and drove him deeper. The Ponkti prodsman was nowhere in
sight.

Kloosee’s voice came stuttering over his
echopod.

“Eekoti
Chase…back away quickly! It’s one of the priestesses. One of
the
mekli
—let go of your
weapon--“

The Ponkti had already done likewise, warily
drifting at the outer edge of visibility. Chase was dimly aware
that the entire fight had stopped and all the fighters were coiled
and poised, but no one made any movement.

Kloosee drifted up beside him and physically
dragged Chase away, relieving his fingers of the ice daggers he had
fashioned. .

His echopod chirped. “This is one
of
mekli
priestesses. We’re
inside the holy waters…the Pillars of Shooki. The
mekli
won’t let the fight
continue…we’ve done a terrible thing.”

Chase was still recovering his senses. His
ears rang like a bell. “Didn’t they start it?”

“It doesn’t matter. Now the
mekli
have put a stop to the fight.
We’ll have to accompany her…make recompense to Shooki. Look…they’re
all around us.”

And Chase saw that Kloosee was right. Dozens
of the whitish figures hovered above, below, all around them, each
bearing the strange oval suppressors.

“They can detonate the water,” Kloosee
explained. “It’s a chemical reaction…closely guarded by the
mekli
. They enforce the
shoo’kel
here. The
mekli
will let nothing disturb these
waters. Only the most serene are permitted.”

“But why—“ Chase had about a million
questions. “The other guys attacked us—“

But the circle of
mekli
was already closing in on them, herding
both Ponkti, Omtorish and Chase into a tighter group. Kloosee
didn’t object. The Ponkti seemed resigned. Chase decided it was
expedient to go along.

“Where are they taking us?” he asked
Kloosee.

Kloosee seemed a bit nervous. Something came
through Chase’s echopod that didn’t translate. Then: “Inside the
Pillars, I think.”

“What’s going to happen to us?”

“I don’t know.”

And with that, the circle of
mekli
priestesses, with their
grenades and a line of fearsome-looking spearfish behind them,
nudged their captives into motion. Above them, the ice floes
groaned and screeched as the bergs bumped against each other. And
beyond all of it, the Uman sound droned on.

Chase found the pace easy enough to keep up
with, despite his scaly suit and webbed feet. The ice pack played
strange tricks with the light. It coalesced in patches, forming
apparitions that frightened and confused them at the same time.
Schools of scapet and tooket swirled in the twilight. Thick clouds
of sediment rolled along the bottom, obscuring everything.

And the huge floes rained chunks of ice down
on them from above.

The captives bore on for what seemed like
hours. The sameness was monotony, agony, even misery. They seemed
stuck on the same course, wedded by sheer exhausted numbness to a
heading that never changed. Beat after beat of frozen tubegrass and
ice mounds. Unending hail from above. Nothing living, save for
themselves. Only ice and ice and more ice: ice kels, ice kip’ts,
ice tillet, ice ompods. The image of it burned in their minds,
searing their vision into a gray-white void. For a brief instant,
Chase felt himself falling, as if a whirlpool had reached out and
grabbed him. He welcomed the giddiness gladly—it was something he
could still feel. It washed over him like the great currents
themselves, strong, overwhelming, a wonderfully delicious feeling
of helplessness.

And then, there it was.

The berg was so large that it blocked a clear
view of anything beyond, refracting most of what little light there
was off its chalky white slopes. But even with that, the presence
of a vast structure, dense and hard, could be felt.

They slowed their approach and came
into the holy waters of the Voice with hushed awe. Chase watched
the reactions of both the Ponkti and Pakma and Kloosee and the rest
of the Omtorish.
Guess I’d better act the
same way
. The Pillars rose up out of the silted
bottomland like legs of rock. Cruising near the seafloor, the
captives and their guards circled the Pillars completely, gulping
in the scented waters voraciously. There seemed to be no way in.
After several circuits, they halted and settled in a clump of
tubegrass half a beat away.

The
mekli
seemed to be waiting for something,
perhaps a signal.

Then it came. High on the side of the
nearest Pillar, a ring of bubbles swirled around the edge. The
stream was emanating from a narrow elliptical crevice. One of
the
mekli
separated herself
from their guard detail and poked her beak into the
crevice.

In that moment, powered by some device
Chase couldn’t see, the entire side of the Pillar grated and
groaned and started moving to one side. The
mekli
entered. The captives were herded inside
after her.

Kloosee pulsed gently. He had never been here
before. Inside, steep ramparts scattered echoes in all directions.
Chase hung close by, watching his friend’s amazed reaction. A
complex network of chapels, crypts, cells, catacombs and other
chambers would be dimly sensed. Above the ramparts, heavy bedrock
foundations loomed like a crest, tapering out of sight as they
extended upward into the Pillars. It was a tight and uncomfortable
wriggle to get inside. Chase hesitated, then squeezed through.

They were in a tiny cave, sectioned by a post
in the middle that seemed to have buckled. It was dark—the only
light came from glowfish trained to float through the corridors in
set patterns, casting their spectral copper light in diffuse ovals
in the bare stone walls. They went half a beat or so, then came to
an intersection. More corridors merged in the crossing, leading out
in every direction, above, below, and beside them.

“Where are they taking us?” Chase whispered
into his echopod.

Kloosee’s voice came back hushed, strained.
“The Judging Chambers, I suppose. Be quiet.”

They could have taken any of the
corridors, but the
mekli
leading the convoy chose one passageway that angled off on
the other side of the post. It was soon apparent that the corridor
wasn’t really a corridor at all, rather more like a tunnel, low and
cramped. Chase could barely kick his legs. It was quite
uncomfortable—he could hear someone behind, maybe one of the
Ponkti, grumbling at the effort, hard even to get a full breath in
such close confines, but the discomfort was alleviated somewhat by
a savory blend of scents that filtered through the waters, an
amalgam of smells that would have really been delightful if he had
been able to breathe more deeply.

Chase tried a pulse—it sounded more
like a bad cough, earning a glare from several of the
mekli
—and found that the tunnel
widened a few beats ahead. There was more light too—glowfish he was
sure, since the
mekli
seemed
to abhor anything artificial inside the Pillars. But it was pitch
black in the tunnel. Almost like a burrow, hollowed out down
through uncounted spans of time, the tunnel sides had been worn
completely smooth, for which they were all thankful. Otherwise,
they would have skinned themselves badly.