The Farpool (28 page)

The surface had to be near. He could both
feel it and see it now; a diffuse green light above them. For the
first time, he caught more than just a glimpse of one of the
seamothers.

Behind him, he heard Chase suck in his
breath. “My God---“

She was just below them, all mouth and snout
and black eyes. If she had chosen, she could have swallowed them
whole. Never had he been so close.

No more than three beats separated the kip’t
from her reptilian head. They could see each rib in the broad,
veined crest that crowned that head; the crest shook with each
stroke of her huge paddles. From nose to tail, the seamother
averaged maybe five or six beats—this one seemed larger than
that.

They could see her horned and spiked tail
too, whipping back and forth like a wave. Her flanks were a
rippling mass of silvery-white, mottled with gray and also with
scars from innumerable battles she had fought. Blemishing the
otherwise smooth skin were dozens of tiny, tube-shaped scapet,
symbiants who scavenged off the remains of the seamother’s
meals.

He barely had time enough to notice all this
before their kip’t was smashed by the forepaddles of another
serpent and tossed out of the water altogether.

They hurtled across the surf like a mad
wing-walker before slamming into a roaring wave. The impact stunned
Kloosee and Chase both, even before the kip’t crashed back into the
water. Another jolt nearly split the cockpit.

For several minutes, their kip’t was thrashed
about at the surface, knocked by the forepaddles of each serpent as
it surfaced. The seamothers slapped the water with loud thumps,
bellowing happily in the spray.

The fracas continued for quite some
time, long enough for Kloosee to lose consciousness a couple of
times. The ride from Omsh’pont had exhausted both of them and
even
Ke’tee
hadn’t helped
that much. He heard nothing from Pakma and Angie but didn’t have
the strength to worry about it. He felt like a mudball swept up
in
vishm’tel
, like a helpless
particle in the sea’s fastest current.

Chase was trying to squeeze past Kloosee into
the driver’s cradle, but the thrashing of the kip’t made that
impossible. “Maybe I can help…move a little and I’ll take the
controls—“

But it was useless. They were bounced
from one hump to another, from tail to tail, thumped and thoroughly
beaten. Kloosee no longer fought the pain but now welcomed it. It
would be so nice to give in, to succumb, just for a moment.
Only a moment.
He was so dizzy,
weakening fast, the cramps were tightening…wrenching his
stomach…swelling up…ready to…burst….

Blind with pain, he didn’t at first
realize it when the sea had finally calmed and the thunder
subsided. It seemed like a hopeless wish…
don’t give in to it
…but no, it was true. They
were floating, drifting, pitching lazily with the waves and he was
so tired, so very, very tired….

Gradually, Kloosee regained some sense of
where he was and, though he ached from beak to tail with racking
throbs, he was able to catch a brief glimpse of a magnificent
sight.

The entire herd had moved away, still on the
surface, happily splashing its way toward a band of low peaks
sitting on the horizon. All he could see was a glistening white
shoal of humps and necks and crested heads, bobbing away from them,
immersed in a light mist that refracted light into a faint rainbow
of colors. Long, rolling swells slapped against the side of the
kip’t. A violent storm was building and the wind whipped the water
into a foaming froth.

The stories were true. The seamothers were
heading for land.

“Pakma! Look!”

A weak voice replied, “Get us back
under…Kloosee…it’s not safe up here….”

He was nearly unconscious himself but Kloosee
was enthralled at the view.

Chase marveled at the sight. “On Earth, these
would be monsters…nightmares…people would tell stories for
generations about this—“

“Here too,” Kloosee admitted. “It’s
incredible…we’re seeing something that our storytellers have
wondered about for millennia.” He paid no attention to the hoarse
groans coming over the circuit. Pakma didn’t have the stamina that
Kloosee did.

He remembered all those tales of serpents and
demons of the Notwater and how he had been enchanted by them. They
were living those stories right now, watching a herd of seamothers
roll toward the rugged slopes of T’kel, honking, wheezing, filling
the Notwater with spray, and he was every bit as joyous as they
were—awed and thrilled and moved by it all, all at the same
time.

He heard Pakma’s voice in the distance,
scratching out something he couldn’t understand. He felt his own
eyes bulging, and his stomach ballooning. A cramp convulsed him,
squeezing out a cry of pain, but he fought it down and gasped for
breath.
Not now!
I…can’t…leave…now
….

The waves thundered and broke over the kip’t
cockpit. Swells many beats high lifted them up and flung them down
hard. A dense spray flecked the bubble and made seeing difficult.
Above, the huge puffy masses he had noticed on his earlier trips
were no longer white or yellow. Now, they boiled in heavy grays and
blacks, rippling and surging overhead like a reflection of the
water itself.

A deafening crack split the sky and Kloosee
craned his neck to see.

“Wow!” yelled Chase. “Great lightning…just
like the Gulf!”

Even as they watched, another boom rattled
the waters and a vivid white vein of light streaked through the
Notwater. It held for an instant, then vanished, illuminating the
masses with jagged branches of light, so that it seemed he could
see the very insides of Notwater, ripped open for inspection.

There was something marvelously alive in all
of it. Below, the waters were steady, the currents unvarying, the
mountains and trenches and plains unchanging. That’s the way all
the kelke liked it. But here, a mountain could be built and
demolished in an instant; there was energy here, raw and
uncontained, here the energy of an entire civilization could be
expended in a futile effort to re-sculpt the sea.

It was like the Notwater he and Pakma
had seen so many times on the world of the
eekoti,
but not like it at the same time. Here,
he gaped at things he could see when the waves lifted them high
over the water: towers and domes and obelisks of water; long,
writhing mountains and crumbling pillars; huge, crashing ramparts
and cliffs, all of it water, held for a split second in a pose of
splendor, then just as quickly destroyed in an avalanche of
foam.

“Uh…Kloosee…anybody there…hello…?”

He might have died right then and there had
not a weak voice interrupted his reverie.

It was Angie.

“…
we have a problem here…hello…anybody
there—“

“Yes—“ Kloosee replied. He could not see
Pakma’s kip’t anywhere. Was it even on the surface? “Yes…what—“

Angie must have heard his reply. “Kloosee, is
that you? Pakma’s…I don’t know…passed out or something…she’s not
moving, she’s slumped over the panel—“

“Where are you?”

“I don’t know…we’re on the surface….I can’t
see anything…those serpents have moved off.—“

Kloosee started sounding, finding only
intermittent returns. Notwater was a lousy medium for sounding. But
there was something there…a blip…a shadow of a return. Kloosee
wrestled the kip’t around toward that heading…whatever it was, it
was below the surface but not far…several beats away…and moving off
toward the islands on the horizon.

“Kah, t’alp’te
Pul’ke!
What have I…Shooki, help us!”

Kloosee took one last look and let the image
sink in. Sheets of water were beating down on them now. Somehow, he
had to get their kip’t started up again, find Pakma’s kip’t.

He tried the jets but they sputtered in the
Notwater. A numbing ache was tearing at him from inside; his eyes
were too swollen to focus on the instruments. There was only one
thing he could try.

Struggling with his last shred of strength,
and with Chase’s help, he forced the bubble of the cockpit open as
far as he could wedge it. He needed water, cold, dense, salty water
over his face and gills. He couldn’t get to Pakma if he passed out.
And Chase—

A harsh blast of Notwater scraped his gills,
burning them. But the heavy seas spilled over the lip and into the
cockpit as he had hoped and the kip’t was soon flooded. It sank
quickly plunging down through layer after layer of cold, salty
water, while both Kloosee and Chase clung to their cradles to keep
from being sucked out. Kloosee drifted in and out of consciousness
while the water cooled and grew denser. He didn’t know how deep the
Ponkel was here but a faint pulse told him the bottom wasn’t far
away.

He felt something push him aside and didn’t
resist. It was Chase, maneuvering to get at the controls. Chase,
with his long arms, somehow managed to take control of the kip’t
and slow their descent. They were still headed down but the
trajectory had flattened out noticeably.

The kip’t hit bottom and gouged into a
sandy headland, buried nose first. Cold, sweet
m’eetor’kel
water swept through the cockpit and
Kloosee raised his head slightly to let the flow wash over his
beak. It was the finest water he had ever tasted. Choking with
laughter, he collapsed in the cradle.

He was buried in a deep cave, fighting for
breath. The water was seeping out and he struggled to escape,
before he suffocated. He could feel Notwater in his gills and he
coughed blood, rasping hard to expel it. Then something warm held
his beak and he opened his eyes.

It was Chase’s hand.

“How do you feel?” came the voice.

Kloosee blinked. He let his eyes rove for a
minute, before realizing they were still in the kip’t, still buried
in the sand.

“Like a seamother swallowed me.”

“Here, eat this.” A ripe
gisu
was waved under his beak. He
let Chase pop it into his mouth. It was tart but good. After a few
more bites, he could feel a little strength returning. He groaned
and lifted himself off the cradle.

“Hey, man, don’t exert yourself. You’ve lost
a lot of…something, I’m sure.” Firmly, but gently, he pushed
Kloosee back into the cradle. He resisted, but not very
convincingly.

“Pakma…Angie…what about them? Where are
they?”

Chase sat back, waved some of water over his
own gills. It did taste better than the air topside. Maybe he was
becoming more Seomish. “I think they went to the bottom like we
did…I think they landed nearby. I’ve tried the radio thing. But
nobody’s answering. I’m worried.”

Kloosee struggled up and situated himself in
front of the controls. “We’d better look around. “

“Can you do this?”

Kloosee powered up the sled, found the
jets working, but they sputtered into life before settling down
into a smooth flow. “Can
you
?
We’ve got to find them. Pakma’s not as strong as I am…she doesn’t
hold up in Notwater. I think this is her first time.”

“What a sight,” Chase seated himself in
his own cradle, automatically made sure the bubble was secure. He’d
seen Kloosee do it, so he had an idea. He wanted to have a go at
the controls of the sled…
this is way
cooler than my turbo
…but Kloosee seemed stable
enough.

They backed out of the sand and lifted away
from the bottom. Kloosee started pinging as they began searching
for the other kip’t. A few minutes later, he had found them,
likewise buried in a cloak of silt and sand a few beats away.

Pakma was just waking up. Angie had been
nursing her and feeding her as Chase had done with Kloosee.

Kloosee left his own kip’t and nosed his way
over to the cockpit of the other sled. He found Pakma groggy, but
okay. Some food and some rest time was all she needed.

Pakma nuzzled with Kloosee. “You gave up your
precious Notwater to come looking for me…I would never have thought
that of you, Kloos. Sometimes, you surprise me…just not often
enough.”

“You’re pulsing pretty tired,
Pakma…fatigued even. Maybe we should stay here for awhile. This
water is
tchor’kel’te,
cold
but calm. Rest and food, that’s what we all need.”

“No,” Pakma waved him away. “No, we’d
better get going. Seamothers…
Puk’lek
…that
was
a coincidence, wasn’t it? You didn’t deliberately steer us
into a nest, did you?”

Kloosee pretended to be hurt. “Me? I would
never do that…true enough, Notwater fascinates me. But
deliberately…?”

“Sorry. I guess we were lucky.”

“Very lucky. And Chase here…he took over the
kip’t when we went down…kept us from being damaged when we hit
bottom.”

Chase grinned. Or grimaced, you couldn’t tell
when you looked like a gigantic frog. Angie laughed, in spite of
herself.

Pakma stroked Angie’s foreflukes. “Angie too.
She figured out how to call for help. And she got the cockpit open,
so I could get a breath of real water…she saved my life.”

Angie tried what she thought was a shrug. She
wasn’t sure it came out that way.

“Hey, what am I…window dressing? This girl’s
no bumpkin…I’m the real deal. It just took me a few minutes, that’s
all. I figured everything out.”

Kloosee made sure Pakma was going to be okay.
“We’d better get going. I’ll have to hunt around to find the
Pomtel--.”

He stopped in mid-sentence, listening
carefully. “I don’t hear the Sound…the wavemaker. Do you?”