The Farpool (72 page)

“Meaning
you
will make the rules—“

Lektereenah slapped Loptoheen with a sharp
spank of her tail, then speared him with her beak, not hard enough
to draw blood, but hard enough to get his attention.

“I’ll deal with you when we’re in the
new world. Just make sure the
eekoti
and none of the Omtorish come
back.”

With that, Lektereenah darted upward, plowing
through a shower of glowbits, which blossomed in a silent explosion
of light as she passed through them.

Loptoheen watched her disappear into the
black void, leaving a decaying trail of glowbits, then followed her
up to the top of the Trench.

If we come back at
all
, he told himself.

The precise location of the largest
whirlpool, thought to be the Farpool, had been established the day
after the Metahs had come to Likte. Now, the two specially equipped
kip’ts carefully approached the vortex field, with Kloosee
piloting, but Chase right behind him.

Loptoheen was their third passenger.
Chase thought
tuk
masters were
naturally courageous and fearless, but he could feel the Ponkti
shaking uncontrollably behind him. The three of them were crammed
into a tight space, beak to tail, with little room to move. Chase
could even feel the
tuk
master’s heart hammering away inside his
chest.

This should be
fun
, he told himself. Then he swallowed a bit of
nervous saliva rising in the back of his own throat.

Kloosee was fighting the kip’t
controls. “Tricky currents here,
eekoti
Chase. It’s hard to steer in
these—“

“Just feel for the big pull,” Chase
told him.
Yeah, like I really know what
I’m doing.
Still, he had become something of a
celebrity on this water world. He figured he’d better act like he
knew what he was doing, even if he didn’t.
This will either be one small step for the Seomish…or a
complete disaster.
Chase didn’t know how his friends
and family would react to the knowledge that another race was
planning on dropping by, living in their oceans for like forever.
The potential for conflict and misunderstanding was high, probably
incalculable. Yet somehow, the Metah had essentially made Chase an
ambassador of sorts.

Half human. Half Seomish. And now, leading
the great trek earthward, if all went well. Chase figured he was a
kind of pioneer, like with the wagon trains that headed west in
America’s frontier days.

Feeling Loptoheen’s heart jackhammering away
right in the middle of his back, Chase found himself wondering if
there were any Indians waiting for them out there.

“I’ve got it!” Kloosee cried out. “Feel
it…we’re being pulled in strongly. I can’t even steer this thing
anymore.”

Chase did feel it. The kip’t rolled upside
down and slammed all of them hard against the cockpit. Then the
spinning and corkscrewing began.

Chase’s last thought, when the white
flash exploded all around them, was:
Cowabunga! I hope to hell this thing works!

Chapter 24

The Western Atlantic Ocean and Scotland
Beach

August 11, 2199

8:45 p.m.

Coming through the Farpool was like the
craziest, neck-snapping roller coaster ride Chase had ever ridden.
Rougher than Space Mountain. Faster than Monster Kong. When you
first hit the water on the other side of the wormhole, it felt like
your stomach was going to fly right out of your mouth, and take
your intestines along with it.

The two kip’ts jetted out of the Farpool in a
blinding light, a roaring rush of deceleration, throwing Kloosee,
Chase and Loptoheen hard against the cockpit windows. Caught in the
whirlpool, Kloosee rammed the ship’s rudder hard over, while firing
her jets to counteract the centrifugal force of the spin. For a few
moments, they were all pinned sideways against the cockpit, until
the force of the jets shoved them through the core of the whirlpool
and out into calmer waters.

Chase breathed hard, wiping his face with his
hands. He checked outside the cockpit.

“I wonder where the hell we are now?”

Kloosee managed to stabilize the kip’t and
ascertained that the second kip’t, with Habloo, Koboh and Yaktu,
had come through the Farpool intact as well. The two kip’ts
exchanged messages, with Kloosee and Yaktu, the Sk’ortish pilot,
doing most of the talking. Chase’s echobulb translated some of
it.

“What’s he saying?” Chase asked. They were in
a tangle of seaweed now with Kloosee trying to chop their speed to
negotiate the forest of waving stalks.

Kloosee said, “Yaktu says we should get our
instruments going. Both kip’ts have recording instruments to take
measurements and samples of the waters here. We need to setup a
scan pattern, so the instruments will have some background
measurements. Already, I pulse these are different waters than we
saw before.”

Chase agreed. “This ain’t the Gulf, that’s
for sure.”

Loptoheen was the third person in their sled.
“Perhaps your Uman machine operates differently now…it was rebuilt,
after all.”

Chase was defensive. He’d led the rebuilding
effort. “So what are you saying…that I screwed up?”

Loptoheen seemed puzzled until the
Chase’s echobulb settled on the right translation. “No,
eekoti
, I am just saying that if the
Uman machine operates erratically, the Farpool may operate
differently as well.”

“Crap, I hadn’t thought of that. I hope
we’re where we’re supposed to
be…Earth…22
^nd
century. We
might be somewhere else.”

“I think this is your world,” Kloosee seemed
satisfied.

“I’d really like to find out if Angie’s
around, Kloos.”

Now Kloosee honked some commands into the
sound controls of the kip’t. The sled settled down to a set course
and speed. “I’m putting us on a spiral course for the time being.
Yaktu will parallel us as we go. I’ve started the recording…now the
Kelk’too will get their data.”

“Ponk’t gets the same data,” Loptoheen said.
“We share everything.”

“Of course,” Kloosee said.
Stupid Ponkti
. “
Eekoti
Chase, I brought along a special
instrument too, something that Pakma developed.”

“What kind of instrument?”

“Pakma loved scents. She was an artist
in the scentbulb…all her scents are famous. Three mah before we
went to Likte, she had worked out a new sniffer. Very
sensitive…parts per trillion sensitive. She trained it on
eekoti
Angie’s lifesuit, just to get
started. It still has that trace in its memory. I could deploy this
sniffer and see if it can detect your friend.”

“Yes, yes, let’s do that.”

“Not if it interferes with our
mission,” Loptoheen said. “We’re all
tekmetah
here…we have to get as much data as we
can. The emigration councils need it. We can’t deviate from
that.”

Kloosee found the Ponkti
tuk
master increasingly annoying.
“We’ll get all the data, Loptoheen. All we’re doing is sniffing for
extra traces. More data.”

But before Loptoheen could retort, Yaktu’s
worried voice came over the comm circuit from the other kip’t.
“Kloosee, I’m pulsing something coming this way, something big. A
seamother, perhaps…we’re changing course to avoid it—“

“We don’t have seamothers,” Chase muttered.
“Whales, maybe but—“

Kloosee studied his instruments. “I’ve got
it…very large…dense, solid…not like anything I’ve seen. I’ll stay
with Yaktu…turning now—“

The kip’t banked to starboard and took up a
position a half beat off Yaktu’s bow. The two kip’ts slowed and
scanned the approaching object with all their instruments.

A strong wave rocked them just as a monstrous
cylindrical casing barreled right by them. It was easily scores of
times bigger than a kip’t, perhaps a full beat in length. It was no
seamother but it was as big. It was no animal either, but a
manufactured ship.

“It’s a submarine!” Chase marveled. Gray,
featureless, except for her bow and fairwater planes, the submarine
droned past, seemingly an endless wall of metal. As she passed by,
the two kip’ts rocked violently in the backwash of her single,
shrouded propeller. Only after the submarine had put some distance
between them, did the waves subside.

“Fantastic,” Chase said. “Fantastic. I never
saw one this close.”

Loptoheen was intrigued. “This is a
ship,
eekoti
? Some craft your
people have built? Not a beast of some kind?”

Chase explained what he knew. “It
carries a crew of
eekoti
, my
people. They cruise around underwater, attack other ships, launch
missiles, that sort of thing.”

“Then it is a weapon, “ Loptoheen questioned
him closely. “Perhaps we should follow it.”

Now it was Kloosee’s turn to point out their
mission. “Remember why we’re here…to take measurements and samples.
Study the seas.”

Loptoheen just clicked back with irritation
but he said nothing.

“I have Pakma’s sniffer deployed now,”
Kloosee told Chase. “There do seem to be traces, very faint
traces…Pakma tuned the scent bulb to Angie’s
ot’lum
, her lifesuit. Just to test it. The
traces bear off to our left. I pulse a very strong current in that
direction too...stronger than the Omt’chor.”

“Can we investigate?”

Kloosee turned the kip’t toward the current
and advised the other kip’t what they were doing. “We’ll alter our
scanning to follow this trace…perhaps the waters are different in
this direction.”

Loptoheen scowled and glared out the
cockpit, but said nothing.
In time,
mah’pulte Kloosee…in time, at the right time, you will be food for
the beasts here.

The kip’t was soon rocking and rolling in the
throes of a fierce underwater river. Kloosee fought the controls
for awhile, then decided to change course to put them just beyond
the core of the strong current. The traces detected by Pakma’s
sniffer were detectable, but faint and scattered.

“I know what this current is,” Chase
announced, after they had cruised for a few minutes. “It’s the
Gulfstream.” He explained it all to Kloosee and Loptoheen. “We must
be going against the current, moving southwest. Now I have an idea
where we are. Wow, the Farpool really put us down in another
ocean.”

“The traces are almost not there,” Kloosee
announced. “I’ll put us as close to this current as I can…the outer
edges, but it’s stronger than my controls.”

The two kip’ts tacked against the
Gulfstream for half a
mah
,
while stopping from time to time, taking measurements, taking
samples, surveying, listening and recording on blank scentbulbs. On
one occasion, Habloo stopped their kip’t to chase and bag a few
specimens, one he found almost too big to stuff in their specimen
compartment in the kip’t belly. Chase helped out and reported he’d
caught a prize-winning tuna.

After half a
mah
, Habloo requested a short roam with Kloosee.
The two kip’ts stopped and drifted down to a sandy seabed, strewn
with colorful coral and limestone arches.

“I’m pulsing a very large sea off to our
left, Kloosee. I think we should split up. You continue this
course. We’ll bear left and reconnoiter this large sea…take more
measurements and samples, record on the bulbs.”

The two crews discussed the pros and cons and
it was decided. Kloosee, with Chase and Loptoheen, would continue
along the outer fringes of this great current Chase called the
Gulfstream.

Only Loptoheen expressed concerns. “We must
share all findings. The Metahs have agreed to this. No kel can
withhold knowledge.”

Habloo seemed annoyed. He could pulse
something bothering Loptoheen. For a tukmaster, he seemed awfully
anxious. “Don’t worry, we’ll make copies of everything recorded.
You can examine all samples. Nothing will be hidden.”

Loptoheen scowled at all of them. “It has to
be this way…coming to a new world, coming to this world…there can’t
be any secrets…not anymore.”

“No secrets,” Habloo agreed, heading
off to his own kip’t.
So what are you
hiding, Ponkti?
Anybody can pulse
it.
But he said nothing more and soon the second kip’t
had receded from view.

Kloosee drove them on. The
eekoti
seas were warmer here than
any on Seome, except for the volcanic regions near the Shookengkloo
Trench in the southern seas of Eep’kos. Sea life was abundant and
varied too and Kloosee wandered if any had built kels or cities in
this strange world.

Chase laughed. “None that I know of, Kloos.
The whales and the dolphins are pretty intelligent. But they don’t
have a civilization.”

“Perhaps we can teach them.”

Now it was Chase’s turn to feel uneasy.
“You’re really coming here? I mean, I heard the Metah. This
emigration…it’s for real?”

“Our world is dying,
eekoti
Chase. You know this. If the
new Farpool checks out and operates in a predictable way and our
surveys show compatible seas, the emigration will proceed quickly.
The Metahs are working out the timetable even now.”