The Farpool (54 page)

“I’ll keep this journal going for as long as
I can…until next time, girl, see if you can beat my last time in
the 440…bet you can’t, you slug…my god, what thunder thighs you
have…

“So, okay…this is Angie Gilliam, until next
time…uh, over and out.”

End Recording

Chapter 18

Seome

Kinlok Island

Time: 768.2, Epoch of Tekpotu

Kloosee drove their kip’t upward, toward the
surface. The waters became rough and turbulent in the coastal zone
of the island. Pakma followed behind in a separate kip’t. The
remainder of the little fleet stayed below the surface.

A few beats from the Notwater, with the Sound
hammering the water like a fist, Kloosee stopped. He extracted the
signaler from its pouch. Kloosee pressed the signaler against the
sled’s cockpit bubble and activated it.

At first, Chase heard nothing. Kloosee
explained that the signaler worked on sound. It emitted pulses of a
certain frequency that the Umans had recommended.

“I’m telling the Umans that we wish to meet.
I’m telling them we wish to discuss matters of great
importance…that we have new ideas on how to alter their machine so
it doesn’t have destructive effects. We’ll see what they say.”

Chase heard nothing. All he could hear, all
he could concentrate on, was the wavemaker, the Uman Time Twister,
slamming the cold waters with thundering pulse after pulse,
rattling his teeth, jarring his whole skeleton.

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 tracking hut on the hill. Where we were before. It
seems there are new developments with their enemy. A new threat
approaches so the meeting must be short.”

Chase wondered just what threats were
approaching.

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 did
likewise. Kloosee and Pakma had already exchanged ideas on how to
go about the meeting.

“We brought one
kee’too
, it’s in Pakma’s kip’t. I’m going with
you,
eekoti
Chase.”

At first, Chase didn’t understand. Then he
realized Kloosee was describing the same lifesuit he and Angie had
first used when they arrived. “Can you get around on land with that
thing?”

“Yes, it has many features. Once I put it on,
the mobilitors will propel me forward.”

Chase and Kloosee debated the meaning of the
word that his echopod had translated as ‘mobilitor.’ In the end,
Chase figured ‘legs’ would do just as well.

Once Kloosee had the lifesuit on, Chase
thought he looked like a cross between a submarine and ‘Diver Dan.’
The thing had both propulsors for in-water maneuvering and it did
have two legs, each powered by water held under high pressure.

The two of them waddled up onto the beach,
staggering against fierce wind gusts. Ahead of them on a sand ridge
was the tracking hut. Several Umans stood outside. They had
suppressor guns but no shots were fired.

Chase noticed that both Umans kept their
weapons trained on him and Kloosee as they made their way up the
sand hill. At the top, Chase attempted a sort of half wave. He
stopped when a gun was leveled right at his face.

Don’t want to go through
that again. I come in peace
…that was all he could
think of, but he didn’t say that. Instead, he spoke and let the
echopod do the translating. He wondered what his voice sounded
like.

“We want a meeting…can we meet here?”

One of the Umans was the same blade-headed
officer they had encountered before. Captain Acth:On’e. The second
Uman Chase realized was Lieutenant Golich.

Brusquely, the Umans gestured with
their weapons.
Inside
. Chase
and Kloosee waddled into the tracking hut and found Ultrarch-Major
Dringoth sitting at a table, poring over a display that he had
unrolled and laid out for inspection. Objects on the display had a
life of their own, moving about like bugs on a newspaper. The
Ultrarch-Major stabbed the edge of the display with an index
finger. The bugs stopped.

Dringoth looked up and squinted at the two of
them.

“Well, what do you two freaks want now?” He
looked closer at Chase. “Aren’t you the one who speaks English?
Your signaler said this was urgent.”

Kloosee motioned for Chase to begin. “Sir, we
have new proposals…to help with your machine. Modifications to make
it less destructive.”

Dringoth snorted. “It’s a weapon…it’s
supposed to be destructive. What are you talking about now?”

“We have a plan to help re-locate your
machine…there are other islands, away from the cities—“They had
brought echopods detailing the plan, to dismantle the wavemaker and
re-build it elsewhere. Now, Kloosee laid out a trio of echopods and
activated them. The voices were high-pitched, almost nasal, but
recognizably English, though interrupted with clicks, squeals,
honks and other untranslatable noises.

Dringoth’s eyebrows went up. “Is this a joke?
I’m not relocating anything. Look, we’re running a weapon battery
here, trying to fight off the Coethi…in fact, there are enemy
jumpships nosing around this sector even as we speak. We’re already
going to threat level one as it is. We may have to engage any
minute now.”

Chase waved at the murmuring echopods.
“Please, sir…if you would just listen…we have engineers with us,
all kinds of tradespeople. More can come—

For a few minutes, Dringoth leaned back in
his chair and put his feet up on a console, listening. Acth:On’e
and Golich stood nearby, smirking, whispering to each other. Golich
chuckled, pointed at the still-wet lifesuit Kloosee was wearing.
They could all hear the motors and mobilitors humming, trying to
keep Kloosee upright, the way the Umans were. Golich called him a
clown.

Finally, Dringoth had had enough. He slammed
his chair back down. “We’re very busy right now, trying to keep
tabs on all the targets Sector keeps sending us. The Coethi are
close…hell, they could pop out of a timestream and let fly
starballs at any time. Anyway, this is all academic…Sector would
have to approve of your plan…and that won’t happen in the middle of
an engagement.”

“Totally infeashhh…ible” slurred Acth:On’e.
“Never work.”

Golich scoffed. “Hell, your own world will be
undefended from Coethi attack if we take the Twister offline. Did
you ever think of that? There’d be one hell of defensive hole in
this sector of the Halo.”

Almost as if to emphasize what the Umans were
saying, an alarm started beeping at a console behind Dringoth.
Instantly, the Ultrarch-Major whirled his chair around, pecked at
some keys. “Just like I thought…timestream H-4499, one…no, looks
like three jumpships…jeez, right on top of us—“

“I’m on it, sir,” shouted Acth:On’e. The
Captain bent to another console, studied the displays, tapped some
more keys.

The entire hut shuddered as the Time Twister
slew around to engage the enemy ships.

“T-buffers tracking…tracking….” said Golich.
“I’ve got ‘em bracketed…target solution coming up, Major.”

Dringoth said, “Field stabilizing…just a
little closer…Golich, you may match bearings and fire when you’ve
got the solution.”

Outside the hut, across the ten kilometers of
the Time Twister’s base, scores of hemispherical caps rotated in
unison. Intense whirlpools churned up the waters around the vast
machine as her generators spun up to grab a slice of spacetime and
pinch it just enough to snap the Coethi ships across the
galaxy.

Then, Acth:On’e slammed his console.
“Starballs! One…no,
now
three
launches…three starballs in the
sky….headed this way—“

Dringoth looked back at Kloosee and Chase.
“Best take cover now, while you still can. Once those buggers hit,
the sky will light up like an inferno---“

Already an intense light glowed through the
tiny windows of the tracking hut. Outside, the sea was rising in
the bay and swept over the beach with scalding, hissing breakers,
quickly washing the Kloosee’s kip’t out to sea, swamping the sled.
Beyond the headlands, heavy swells boiled and dense hot mist soon
blanketed everything. The Omtorish who remained behind soon found
the water too hot to stand and backed away, diving deeper to find
colder water. A dull red glow glinted off the rock cliffs behind
the hut, diffusing in the mist like a false sunset.

Within the hour, the first starball would
impact Sigma-Albeth B, the sun. Already, it outshone the sun; in a
quarter of the sky from which Sigma Albeth never gleamed, a broad
swath of light burned a blinding radiance.

Against all common sense, Chase used the
commotion to slip outside. The Umans paid no attention. They were
preoccupied with operating their weapon. Even as he clung to the
doorframe, bracing himself against hot gales sweeping up from the
beach, Chase shielded his eyes and glanced skyward, as close as he
dared into the fiery disk of Seome’s sun.

Though he couldn’t be sure, he thought there
were black spots darkening the disk of the star. Whether by clouds
or something else, the level of daylight momentarily lessened. It
returned a few minutes later.

Dringoth hastily excused himself and left the
hut, sprinting across the sand dunes now whipped with furious
winds, back to the Battery command post. The Twister was now active
and whirlpools all around Kinlok were spinning up, deepening and
roaring into foaming, frothing cavities.

The Omtorish who had remained behind in the
water backed off further, to avoid being sucked in.

The battle raged for nearly an hour, with the
sky flaring, then darkening, as Sigma Albeth took hit after hit.
The Coethi starballs were clearly doing damage to the star. Great
damage was also done to the waters around the island.

Soon, Acth:On’e and Golich fled the hut and
Chase and Kloosee were alone. They hid beneath tables for awhile,
then during a lull in the bombardment, when the winds had died down
to a series of gusty tempests, they left the hut and scrambled back
into the water. They were picked up by two kip’ts reconnoitering
the island from afar. Pakma was piloting one of them.

For over a day, while the battle raged in the
skies above them, the small fleet cruised through tempestuous
waters around the island, diving deeper when the sky flared and the
waters hissed, then rising near the surface when it cooled and
calmed, signaling the Umans when they could.

For many hours, there was no response.

Finally, a brusque answer came back
from the Umans.
Meet at the hut. We must
talk.

The hut was in ruins when Kloosee and Chase
climbed the molten remains of the sand dunes and poked their heads
inside. This time, only Dringoth was there, kicking idly at ruined
banks of equipment, picking up loose wire, brushing sand and sea
salt from his consoles. The hut had no roof and a hot wind howled
overhead. The sky outside seemed like a gray veil, almost
twilight.

Dringoth was solemn. “We lost two with this
one…Leeve and Serapius. Good soldiers, both of them. Casualties of
war…I really hate that phrase, you know? “ Dringoth stared blankly
out to sea, watching the surf pile up around the headlands that
guarded the bay. “Casualties of war…there it is again…voidtime does
that to people. I lost another friend that way—an Elamoid fellow,
you know how they are, half machine and half lizard. We blipped
into voidtime together and both took a hit from a Coethi
timecrasher. I blipped back to truetime. He never returned.”
Dringoth relived the experience and sighed. “I guess three hundred
plus terrs in voidtime is enough sacrifice for any warrior.
Timejump shouldn’t keep sending them out like that.”

Chase and Kloosee both noticed that most of
the echopods were still intact; in fact, Dringoth had lined them up
a rickety table and was fiddling with the controls.

Chase asked,” Have you examined our ideas,
Major?”

Dringoth stared blankly at one pod, turning
it over end for end in his hand. “I’ve listened to most of them.
You know the Twister will have to be taken down for quite some
time, taken offline. Acth:On’e figured out what happened…one of the
starballs leaked fusium into your atmosphere. You know they’re
mostly made of the stuff. That’s what incinerated everything.
Twister took substantial damage from the waves and the wind. We
won’t be defending anything for awhile…Sector’s already sending
maintenance crews but it’ll be weeks before they can get here.
Meanwhile, Halo-Alpha’s wide open—“
Kloosee stared through his lifesuit helmet at just how much damage
had been wrought. The hemispherical caps that were the twist field
nodes of the machine had been wrenched off the top, and many now
floated like so much flotsam among other debris in the waters off
Kinlok.
“We’ve brought many engineers with us. Many tradespeople. Perhaps
we can help…if you would consent to dismantle your machine and
rebuild elsewhere…we have a place in mind.”

At that, Dringoth looked up, as if hearing
them for the first time. He had a quizzical look on his face. His
gray buzzcut was streaked with dirt and sweat, in spite of a cold
wind whistling through the hut.

“Is that some kind of suit you’re
wearing?”

Kloosee tried to explain about the
lifesuit but the echopod translator made a mash of his words.
“The
kee’too
allows me to
survive in your world, the Notwater. It allows me to breathe, move
about, manipulate things, communicate.”