The Farpool (65 page)

Chase and Angie clambered through the surf,
Angie nearly losing her balance in the lifesuit, as rough waves
pounded the beachhead. Once they had made land, they climbed the
rock cliff, stumbling and following the narrow trail they always
followed. Dringoth and a few others were at the top.

No pleasantries were exchanged as the Umans
ushered them inside.

Dringoth got right to the point.

“Sector Command wants a detailed schedule.
They’ve now approved shutting down the Twister, subject to military
necessity. A squadron of jump ships is within a few days of this
system. Once they’re nearby, and setup to protect the critical time
streams, we can take the Twister off line. Then our people will
work with your…er, fish people, to begin breaking down the
machine.” Dringoth pulled out a small tablet. It displayed a map of
Seome. “Show me again where the Twister will be moved…I’ve got to
send the coordinates to Sector, so they can synchronize operations
and re-calculate how the Twister will work in its new
location.”

Golich was just shaking his head. “This is
insane…to shut down a major defensive system just because it
bothers the local ‘fish.’ We should have our heads examined. We’ve
got Coethi ships all around us, sniffing up and down all kinds of
time streams and we can’t defend them all as it is. Now, this—“

Dringoth shut off the discussion.
“Lieutenant, you know as well as I do the Twister needs repairs,
serious repairs. It’s on its last legs as it is. Shutting down for
a re-location doesn’t affect anything…in fact, it gives us a chance
to do some upgrades. That’s Sector’s take on this…that’s what we
have orders to do. So that’s what we’re going to do.”

Chase showed them on the map tablet where the
Omtorish had proposed to rebuild and re-assemble the Time Twister.
“It’s still near the polar ice cap. Likte Island is surrounded by
deep underwater canyons and ravines. The currents will carry the
sound and the vibration away from populated areas.”

“Wait a minute--” Angie interrupted. Golich
and Dringoth were both a little startled that there was a human
voice inside the lifesuit. To them, the lifesuit resembled the
modified outer reptilian thing that they knew as Chase. “—what
about the Farpool? You can’t shut down the Farpool just yet.”

Chase explained Angie’s concern to the Umans.
“She wants to go home. We can’t shut down until she’s gone through
the vortex.”

“Back home…to Urth?” asked Golich,
incredulous. “Likely there’s nothing left. Time stream 001…didn’t
we see something on the boards about that, Major?”

“The place is quarantined,” Dringoth
explained. “Timejump Command has pinched off all known time
streams…a lot of them converge at 001…to keep the Coethi from
wrecking the home planet. You’ll never get through.”

Chase said, “If I understand how this works,
the Farpool will take her to a time and place well before your
time. Hundreds of years before. We’ve been using it to go back and
forth to our own time…you know, the twenty-second century.”

Dringoth scoffed. “It probably won’t make any
difference what time you’re aiming for. But it’ll take a day or so
to shutdown anyway. Sector says I can’t go offline until the relief
squadron contacts me…I haven’t heard anything yet. But you’d best
get moving. Sector is nervous about this whole shutdown as it
is.”

For the next hour, Chase and Dringoth went
over the details of the shutdown and dismantling project. Chase had
brought several echobulbs, most with Longsee’s translated voice, to
verbally explain how the Omtorish would proceed. Dringoth and
Golich listened skeptically, then patiently replied to each step of
the effort, recording into a blank bulb that would be translated
back into Longsee’s tongue.

In this way, over several meetings that day,
the Umans and the Omtorish eventually came to an understanding of
what needed to be done, in what order and by whom.

Through it all, Angie grew more and more
nervous. She didn’t want anything to happen that would keep her
from going home.

As they made their way down the rock cliff to
the beach, she pulled Chase aside. They found a narrow ledge
overlooking the bay and sat there. Surf crashed and hissed below
them.

“So, this is it, huh?” Chase asked. He didn’t
look at her. He couldn’t see much anyway. Angie was hidden inside
the lifesuit. His hand groped for hers, but stopped short.

“You don’t have to talk like that, you know.”
Her voice sounded slurred and chirpy coming through the lifesuit
speaker. “Don’t make this any harder than it is.”

“Well, what do you want me to say…you’re
going home. I’m staying here.”

Angie finally found his fingers with hers.
They intertwined. Even between the lifesuit gloves and his own
scaly frog digits, there was something.

“You could come too. Nobody’s keeping you
here, Chase. It’s your decision.”

“Yeah, I know. I guess I will someday.
You know, Longsee and Kloos talk about this emigration
thing…everybody going through the Farpool to Earth, living in our
oceans. I’m not sure how well
that’ll
go over.”

Now Angie looked at him, really looked
at him. They had both changed and it wasn’t the
em’took
procedure or the lifesuit or anything
you could see. It was inside.

“The Farpool may not even work anymore, after
I go through it. If that big machine shuts down, won’t it
disappear?”

Chase shrugged. “Probably. But Longsee’s
worked out a plan…we can build another machine, at least enough to
create another Farpool.”

“But nobody can say for sure it’ll work, or
work the same way.”

“No.”

Angie now squeezed his hand. “Chase, what’s
happened to us? We came here for…what? Adventure, to see the
sights, help Kloos and Pakma….I don’t even remember why we came. I
miss my mom. I miss Gwen and running around the school and flirting
with the boys and ice creams at Citrus Grove and—“

“Making out in my canoe…” Chase sort of
giggled. It sounded more like something struck in his throat.

“Yeah, even that. Throwing sea shells at each
other on Shelley Beach….Chase, we had a future. We had plans. I was
going to be a nurse. You were going to be a—“

“It’s okay, you can say it. A ‘bum.’ A beach
bum. Selling T-shirts and boogie boards for the rest of my
life…crap, Angie, I don’t understand it myself. When I came here,
when we were trying to help Kloos and Pakma, I felt something just
clicked. Something popped into place. I could see myself working
here, helping out. Here, on Seome, I wasn’t Mack Meyer’s kid
anymore. I was somebody. A celebrity. A hero. I like that. I like
being somebody. I like being somebody needed.”

Now Angie sighed, but she knew Chase couldn’t
hear it. She had warm tears in her eyes but no way to wipe them
inside the lifesuit. They streamed down her cheeks and she was glad
Chase couldn’t see them. “I needed you…I’m pretty sure I did,
Chase.”

“You said you did. Does that mean you don’t
anymore?”

For a few moments, Angie said nothing. “Don’t
ask me that, Chase. Now’s not the time.”

“So when is it time? You’re leaving. We won’t
see each other again.”

She didn’t want to hear that, even to
think that, though a small part of her mind said it was true,
it
had
to be true, but it
just
couldn’t
be true. It was
all so confusing. Leaving some one was like leaving part of
yourself. It would have been easier to leave behind an arm or a
finger or maybe—

No, she would
not
follow that line of thinking. Focus on what
was ahead. Getting home…back to Scotland Beach. Seeing her mom.
Telling bad jokes with Gwen. Seeing all the patients at Dr.
Wright’s clinic. Graduating from Apalachee High and getting her
life started. She had always imagined Chase would be there too.
They’d start their lives together…that was the plan. That had
always been the plan.

Now—it was like she had to go back to the
starting blocks again in the 400-meter…after a false start. Line up
again, get in your crouch, get comfortable, get a good feel of the
blocks, relax…breathe deeply and wait for the gun.

“We’d better get back,” Chase said. “Kloos
and the others are waiting for us.”

Reluctantly, because she didn’t want to think
any longer about the images rolling through her mind, she got up,
unfastened her fingers from his and together, one after another,
they gingerly picked their way down the cliffs to the beach.

They dove into the first big wave—they’d
often done that off Shelley Beach and Turtle Key—but this was
different. This wasn’t the warm bathwater of the Gulf. It was ice
cold, salty, murky and the Uman Time Twister pounded like a
never-ending headache.

Yet it was that same headache that had
created the Farpool. And that was the way home.

And she knew in that moment when their heads
went below the waves that she was ready.

Longsee had decided that two Omtorish kelke
she didn’t know would accompany Angie through the Farpool. Their
names were Cheeoray tek and Mapulte tom. Both were engineers with
the Academy, the Kelktoo.

“We need more study of the new world,”
Longsee announced as they all boarded their kip’ts for the short
ride out to the vortex field. In fact, an extra kip’t had been
brought along, a three-person sled, crammed with supplies and gear,
especially hardened and sealed just for the trip. “Temperatures,
salinity, currents and pressure distribution…food sources, all of
this must be cataloged.”

Chase and Angie looked at each other. Both
had the same thought: the Omtorish were making serious
preparations, getting ready to move large numbers of kelke to
Earth. They didn’t know if Earth would be ready. The idea had never
been discussed. But it was a safe bet there would be consequences
if hordes of Seomish started showing up in Earth’s oceans.

The kip’ts cruised around to the other side
of Kinlok Island, where a field of drift ice filled the waters with
jagged deep-lying projections, stalagmites from the surface.
Kloosee parked his kip’t among the drift ice bergs and the other
kip’ts surrounded it. For the moment, they were shielded from the
worst of the noise.

Now, Angie and her passengers moved to their
newly hardened kip’t. Gear and supplies were loaded aboard, pods of
gisu and ter’poh and tong’pod, and fluids to drink. Enough for
three of them.

Transferring from one sled to another, Chase
and Angie bumped into each other. Automatically, they embraced, and
Chase hooked a leg around the kip’t’s rudders, to keep strong
currents from driving them off. The water was dark, ice-cold and he
could feel Angie shivering inside her lifesuit.

“I guess this is good-bye,” Angie said. She
knew it was Chase inside that reptilian face, somewhere. She closed
her eyes, bringing his blond surfer boy face to mind, ignoring the
reality of what floated before her. “Chase, I—“

He put a hand to her helmet, where her mouth
was. “Shhh…don’t, okay? Let’s just hold each other. Don’t say
anything.”

So they held each other for many minutes.
Chase thought he could hear something over the echobulb…it wasn’t
being translated well, but it sounded like…yep, she was crying,
sobbing. He held her tighter.

“Chase, come home. Don’t stay here. At least,
come for a visit. I want to know how you—“but she just couldn’t
finish the sentence.

“I will,” he said, and he meant that. He knew
it would be a while but somehow, he would make it happen.

They let go and Angie wiggled herself into
the rear slingseat of the sled, right behind the bulky mass of
Mapulte tom, who wheezed and chittered at the confining pressure of
the sled cockpit.

Angie closed her eyes and silently prayed.
Going through the Farpool with these two was going to be an
adventure. She decided it was enough to be going…if they made it,
if they didn’t make it…she tried to toss any concerns away, but
they kept coming back…usually brought back to her by some
persistent image of Chase…it was always Chase jogging along the
beach, loping along easily like some two-legged horse. There was
nowhere she could turn her thoughts that the image didn’t show
up…it was burned in.

Kloosee closed the sled cockpit hatch. “Good
luck,” he said. He backed off.

Cheeoray started up the propulsors and the
kip’t emerged from its berth between the icebergs. It rocked in the
cross-currents and Cheeoray drove them back to the wavemaker side
of Kinlok.

Soon, they were sliding into the vortex
fields.

Angie had drifted off into a light doze when
a faint tug on the side of the craft startled her awake.

“Are we there yet? Is this the Farpool?”

“
I don’t know, but it feels like we’re
moving sideways.” Mapulte plastered his nose to the porthole,
trying to make something out. “It’s silty out there. Dark too.
Deeper water. You feel that?”

Mapulte was shaking. He’d never been through
the Farpool before. Angie found herself unwittingly rubbing him
along his rear dorsals, stroking his skin, trying to comfort
him.

“Just hold on…it gets better. But it’s
wild ride before it does!”
Great
, she told herself.
Now,
I’m
the expert on
this thing.

Some kind of force was pushing them sideways
in the water. At the same time, the compartment picked up a light
shuddering vibration, gyrating like a top at the end of a
string.

Cheeoray squeezed the controls as hard as he
could, trying to keep them centered among wild gyrating columns of
frothing bubbles, scores of narrow whirlpools, all spinning in
synchrony with the greater vortex of the Farpool. It was like
trying to navigate the dance floor at the Apalachee High
junior-senior prom.