The Farpool (11 page)

Chase looked at Angie. “What did he do…now
it’s coming out super clear and understandable. “

“It’s like Google,” she agreed.

“You believe what they’re saying?”

Angie sat back on her butt, even though the
pool deck was wet, and drew her knees up. She watched Kloosee and
Pakma watching them. “I can’t put it into words, Chase, but I’ve
got this feeling. I think they’re telling us the truth.”

Chase shrugged. “I’m leaning that way too.
But I don’t know what we can do about it.”

Just then, Kloosee joined in the
conversation. It was clear he had heard and mostly understood what
they were saying. They’d have to be more careful.

…travel with us…come through Farpool…to
Seome…I will prove truth…you will see yourself…

Angie’s eyes widened.
Go through the Farpool?
Go into one of those water spouts? No way.
She
saw the look on Chase’s face.

“You can’t be serious, Chase--” The way
that scar above his right eye—the one he’d gotten in the fishing
accident—started reddening…that meant he was thinking. Angie
thought of it as a light bulb going off…
do
not interrupt…serious thought underway here
….”—I mean,
it’s nuts. It’s insane. He’s asking us to go into one of those
spouts…we’d never survive—“

All the same, she could tell Chase was giving
the idea some thought. “One thing: we don’t breathe water. Angie
and me…we’re not fish, like—well, anyway, we breathe air. We
couldn’t survive on your world.”

But Kloosee had answers for all their
questions.
…I have seen breathing gear…you
have equipment….

Chase thought. “You mean scuba gear…yeah,
there is that. My Dad’s PADI-certified. I’m not old enough yet…but
mostly I know everything…even been down to a hundred feet—“ he said
proudly.

“I’m not certified,” Angie said. “And I don’t
want to be—“

Then Pakma told them something that
made their blood run cold.
…there is a
(shkreeeh) procedure…the
em’took
…you breathe as we do…and as Tailless…

Chase was intrigued. “You mean amphibians…I
think….”

…a to modify…your body and lungs and
mind…like us…but also like Tailless….

Angie screwed up her face.
“
Eeewww
! Amphibians…we’d be
like frogs.”

“I don’t know, Ang…it’d be a great
adventure…better than cave diving, even.”

“You can have your cave diving. And besides,
we both have jobs. I’ve got school.”

Then, Kloosee became even more
agitated, splashing them both.
…help us
leave…this place…escape…go away to Farpool…

Chase said, “We could at least do that. Dr.
Holland… I don’t think she has any idea of what’s she’s got
here.”

“Chase, we can’t…I mean the aquarium….”

But the discussion soon took on a momentum of
its own and Angie found herself giving in and agreeing, even as
every cell in her mind said no.

The big question now was how would they
survive such a trip? How could they live in an underwater
world?

“Chase, I’m not going—“but before she could
finish, the doors to the recovery pool burst open. This time, the
sentry bots were accompanied by a human being…a Scotland Beach
police officer. He shined a flashlight directly at them.

For the next week, both Chase and Angie were
grounded. Chase’s Dad, Mack Meyer, increased his son’s hours at the
shop. Now, he was working from 9 am to 9pm, closing up the shop
with the assistant manager Jorge.

“Seems like the only way to keep you out of
trouble, son.” Mack said. He inspected the shelf cleaning and
stacking work Chase had been doing and re-doing for the last few
hours, a bleak sort of penance. When Chase started to argue, Mack
held up a hand. “I don’t even want to hear it. There’s no excuse
you can lay on me that I haven’t heard. You and that girl were in
Gulfside after hours, harassing the animals, helping yourselves to
God knows what---just keep sweeping. I’ll tell you when you can
stop.” Mack stalked off.

It went on like that for five days.

Late at night, the two of them texted each
other:

What’s your punishment, A?

Stay in the house and do homework, except for
when I’m in the clinic.

I’m going to find a way to get back inside
the aquarium.

Just drop it, okay? The cops said no
charges…for now. That doesn’t mean forever.

Kloosee and Pakma need help.

Yeah…so do we. What
can
we
do?

We can let them go, free them from the
aquarium.

I’m not breaking in again. I’ve already got a
record.

You’re thinking of college.

I’m thinking of staying out of jail.

A, soon as you can, go to Gulfside. Normal
hours. See what you can find out about the locks and gates…I’ll
find a way to slip out. I think there’s a channel that comes from
the ocean right up to the aquarium.

You’re going to set them free?

It’s the right thing to do.

I don’t like going there. Mom has me on a
short leash.

Try.

Ok…I’ll swing by on my way home from school
tomorrow.

I can walk down Sandy Beach on my lunch
break. I’ll check out the canal.

So plans were made and Chase went to
sleep that night with visions of a great adventure bubbling in his
head. He believed what Kloosee and Pakma had told them. He was
pretty sure Angie believed most of it too. This was way better than
working twelve hours every day in the Turtle Key Surf and Board
Shop. Chase lay in bed with his arms behind his head. He had taken
off his wristpad, but programmed the thing to project scenes from
movies and TV shows he liked. One of them was an old Disney
film:
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the
Sea
, a great adventure, lots of action, sea beasts, a
submarine, fabulous scenery. Chase watched the film for about the
millionth time, but now it had a resonant power he’d never felt
before.

Kloosee had called their world Seome.
An ocean world. A whole civilization beneath the waves. And, more
importantly, a serious problem threatening them. He envied Captain
Nemo, cruising around underwater in the Nautilus, living free of
laws and restrictions and homework and shop hours and sweeping off
the front steps and straightening up the shelves and, worst of all,
taking inventory on Sunday afternoons.
Jeez, that
really
sucked
.

Chase knew he had already made up his mind
that he would take up Kloosee on his offer. He would go with them
through the Farpool. He wouldn’t stay long; after all, the Seomish
apparently came and went at will. His Dad needed help at the shop
and Chase felt a faint glimmer of guilt at leaving him behind, but
it would only be for a short jaunt. Just to see Seome. Maybe he
could help out. Some kind of terrible sound….

But first, there were some practicalities.
Kloosee and Pakma had to be set free, which meant that he and Angie
had to understand how to get them out of the aquarium. They would
have to check out things over the next few days, when they could
grab a few minutes here and there. Fortunately, the shop was only a
ten minute walk down the beach to the aquarium.

Then there was the matter Kloosee had raised.
How they could survive in a world where everybody lived underwater?
Chase knew there was only one answer to that: his Dad’s scuba gear.
Mack Meyer was PADI-certified as a dive leader and instructor.
Turtle Key regularly organized and conducted dives every month of
the year, often to some underwater shipwrecks about five miles
southwest of shore. Chase had made dozens of dives and assisted his
Dad on many of them. He didn’t have full open water certification
but he knew the gear and he knew what he was doing.

The problem would be Angie. She’d done some
diving but she was a novice and not all that keen on it. Chase
didn’t know if he could convince her to take a longer trip, through
some kind of whirlpool, with a pair of talking, obviously
intelligent fish. It was crazy, when you said it that way.

But he intended to try.

By the beginning of the following week,
restrictions on both of them had been eased. Angie agreed to meet
Chase after school. He sped up to the parking lot on his turbo and
found her chatting with Doreen and a few other friends on the front
steps of the gym building.

Doreen was a short, busty brunette, with a
perpetual smirk. “Hi Chase…held up any banks lately? You gonna take
Angie back to the Cove this week?” She stifled a wicked chuckle and
the other girls snickered.

“Doreen—“

Chase pointed to his back seat. “Hop on. We
need to talk.”

She did, placing her bag in the rack on the
back of the seat. She pulled on a headset and now they could talk
even over the road noise.

Chase gave the other girls his best jackpot
–winning smile and scratched off out of the parking lot, making
sure to fling some gravel at the girls as he did so.

They motored over to Willie Pete’s at Citrus
Grove and took an outside table under striped awnings. Both ordered
loaded dogs and fries, with a pitcher of beer.

Chase poured them both frosty mugs full,
loudly slurping the head off his drink. “What have you found
out?”

Angie sighed. She really did love
Chase. It was hard to say why exactly. Maybe because he was so…oh,
what was the word?—
little
boy
. He really did look like a surfer dude, with his
faint blond beard and moustache, the lock of hair that was forever
dropping down in his face, sea-blue eyes, that scar above his right
eye that drove other girls wild, and the chin dimple. He had a way
of smiling that reminded Angie of a five-year old kid with his
hands in the cookie jar…not quite a smirk, but a knowing kind of
faint grin that meant he knew he was caught and he didn’t really
mind it.

Chase was wiry strong but he had an
artistic, musical side. He could slam jam with the best of them and
those long fingers could pluck tunes on the
go-tone
enough to just melt your heart. Angie
had to admit she didn’t mind hanging with the Croc Boys on some of
their gigs. It made her feel special and gave her more ammunition
in the never-ending games with Doreen and the girls.

She told him all the details she had learned.
She had even made a list and drawn up some sketches.

“There’s a utility room, just outside the
pool where we were…the rehab pool. All the controls are in
there.”

“I bet Mr. Weems told you this.”

“Who else? The man does like to talk. Anyway,
there’s a gate at one end of that pool. It opens onto what Mr.
Weems called a connector channel, a narrow waterway…Mr. Weems even
showed it to me.”

“What did you do, pull out a boob or two?
I’ll bet he was drooling like a—“

“Chase--
seriously
….what are you: five years
old?”

“Sorry…um, you said a connector
channel….”

She showed him on the sketch, running her
fingers along the route in and out of the recovery pool suite.
“Then there’s more gates and locks. But the controls are in that
same closet, he told me. These outer gates open into what he called
the aquarium channel—“

Chase snapped his fingers. “I saw that…just
the other day. It’s a little canal, maybe ten meters wide…can’t be
that deep, maybe waist deep. Runs all the way down to the sea,
right by the Sandy Beach Pier…you know that gazebo with the roof
half off?”

“Yeah, I know it. So there’s a direct path
from the recovery pool to the sea.”

“Exactly.” Now Chase rubbed his blond
stubble. The scar was turning red. Angie knew he was thinking.

“What’s going on in that little overheated
brain of yours?”

“Just this: now we have a way out for Kloosee
and Pakma. We just have to find a time.” Chase took Angie’s fingers
in his, rubbed them gently. “And get you some diving gear.”

“Chase, I don’t know…I’ve been thinking. This
really isn’t such a good idea. I mean, would you give it a little
thought, already? This isn’t Disney World we’re talking about.”

“What the hell do you think I’ve been doing,
practically night and day. Look, I got it all figured: I can dive
and use scuba gear fine and I got my own set at home. My birthday
present last year. We got lots of sets at the shop, but I need you
to try on some gear, get fitted, then we need to practice a
little…probably the public pool over near The Landings—“

“Yuck
…that
place’s all slimy and covered with—“

“Don’t sweat it…it’s just a little
practice…you need to know more about regulators, buoyancy devices,
how to buddy breathe, get in and out of your gear, clearing your
mask…a hundred little details. Angie—“ he saw the skeptical look on
her face; when she pushed her curls back like that around her ears,
Chase knew she was having serious doubts. “—Angie, you can
do
this. You’ve already done it
before.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I want to
do this. There’s school and—“

Chase squeezed her fingers. “Think about it.
Just think about it, will you? We’ve always talked about going away
from this sleazebag town…really getting away, maybe going up north,
or out west…Texas, Colorado…this’ll be even better. Just a short
trip. I promise: we’ll come right back. And we’ll both see cool
stuff, places nobody’s ever been before….”

“It sounds dangerous and that Farpool
thing—“

“It’s dangerous around here…look what
happened to my Dad…held up, shot in the leg, right in his own
shop.”