The Farpool (5 page)

Tulcheah sniffed indignantly at a bulb.
“Pleasing myself with old odors…these are from childhood…remember
when you used to chase me around the Torsh’pont, pinch my tail and
belly?”

“I’ve got something better than old bulbs,”
he told her. Kloosee swam up close and bumped her. “Look, I’ve got
to get back to Tamarek’s place…how about we—“

But she put a hand to his mouth, fondling his
beak, the way she always did. “Kloosee, you never change. Come with
me, o’ great and famous traveler. I’ll show you things you never
imagined—“ And she slapped her tail at him, disappearing into a
small cleft in the space, a narrow fold in the rock. It was dark,
but the scents were strong. Kloosee followed.

They made love for hours.

A day later, Longsee and Tulcheah and a
small crowd of onlookers watched as Kloosee and Pakma loaded up
their
kip’t
with supplies.
Tamarek made sure the new pod was secured with towline to
the
kip’t
. The trip to the
Farpool would take many days.

The privy councilor to the Metah was also
there, one Encolenia mek’t. She represented the Metah and her
council.

“Our prayers are with you, Kloosee ank
and Pakma tek. You have a long journey ahead of you and what you’re
doing is critical to Omt’or, indeed to all the kels.
Litorkel ge,
both of you. The Metah
hopes and prays that you will be successful in your mission. Bring
us
eekoti
who can help
us.”

Pompous old
windbag
, thought Kloosee as he boarded the
kip’t
. Pakma was already in the rear
cockpit. The new pod was attached. The lifesuits and other gear
were refurbished, now with new mobilitors, like legs,
like the seamother’s limbs
, Kloosee
suggested, to give their lifesuits ground mobility in the
Not-Water. “You’ll waddle like a pregnant seamother,” Tamarek
described them. “But at least, you can move around.”

Longsee had one last word of advice.
“Don’t be heroes. You’re not immortal, Kloosee. Omt’or needs you
both to come back, alive and in good health and with
eekoti
specimens if you can. But
don’t jeopardize yourselves for a specimen. Others can make the
trip after you.”

Not if I can help
it
, Kloosee thought. He lived for the chance to
explore Not-Water; it had been in his blood since childhood, since
the Circling, since he’d seen seamothers breaching the surface like
drunken revelers.
Nobody’s taking this
away from me.

Kloosee closed and sealed the
kip’t
cockpit. He waved at the
assembled crowd, then fired up the sled’s jets and rose on the
current, climbing swiftly through the domes and floats of Omt’or,
past the Torsh’pont until they felt the first tugs of the Omt’chor
Current.

They would have to tack and beat against that
current to reach the P’onkel Sea and the Farpool.

The trip would take days and there was no
guarantee the great vortex would even be there when they arrived,
not if the Umans continued to tweak and adjust their Time Twister
weapon.

Both of them were grim and silent as
Kloosee steered them past the seamounts and set course for Ommetee
and the abyssal plains to the north. He tried to occupy his mind
with more pleasant things: the smell and taste of Tulcheah kim, the
gisu and tongpod he’d gorged on the evening before, the swoosh of
the water against the
kip’t
cockpit.

But he was troubled and he couldn’t say
why. Just a feeling. Maybe a foreboding sense that this would be a
different kind of journey. And the knowledge of how much Omt’or was
depending on them….that was a lot of responsibility to put on
someone the kelke called an outsider, a loner, a
tchuk’te
who liked licking icebergs
more than pulsing his family.

That hurt. But it was probably true. Kloosee
shook himself out the funk and tried concentrating on his
instruments, on the tug of the current, on the echoes that gave him
their course.

Three days to the Farpool. He knew he would
do a lot of thinking in that time.

Chapter 3

Scotland Beach, Florida

July 20, 2121

5:30 pm

Traveling through the Farpool was like no
other trip Kloosee and Pakma had ever taken before, though they had
made the trip five times now. It was hard to describe. Spinning in
a great vortex, being pinned to the side of the lifeship. Blinding
light, strobing and flickering and flashing until your eyes hurt.
The roaring sound. The weight of centrifugal force, the smells…of
your own fear, your own sweat, your own body waste coming out—

It was getting rougher every time, a jolting,
jarring, shuddering ride and when it was over, you slammed to a
halt and had to spend a few moments collecting yourself, cleaning
yourself up, trying to regain your senses and get the blood going
again, reminding yourself to breathe again.

Kloosee had the knack for how to manipulate
the Farpool—really, it was a matter of where to press, where to
turn and roll the lifeship, when to thrust and when to back off.
Again and again, he had shown he could hit their targets in time
and space with very little error.

They slammed into the
eekoti
waters with a blood-draining
deceleration and Kloosee fought the lifeship controls to bring them
out of the spin. The lifeship rolled nearly upside down before he
had the thing stable and shooting out of the core of the whirlpool.
As soon as they were clear, he punched up the forward jets and
brought the craft to a complete stop. They drifted, settling gently
toward the seabed.

“Check the pod, Pakma…hope we didn’t lose it
coming through—“

Pakma tek craned around in her cockpit and
examined the fittings. “She’s still attached…connections look good.
I don’t pulse any exterior damage. Inside, it’s hard to tell…I’ll
have to get outside and take a peek.”

“Let me find us a quiet spot first—“

Kloosee fired up the jets, massaged some
kinks out of his forepaddles and hunted along the sandy seabed for
a place they could tie up. The lifeship pinged ahead and all
around—now something was in front of them, a few beats. It was a
dark pile, dead ahead.

The pile was like nothing either of them had
ever seen before. Misshapen, jumbled metal structures jutted at an
angle out of the seabed. It was an irregular pile of junk but there
were plenty of edges and corners the lifeship could be secured to.
Kloosee jetted down and hovered just next to the pile, then settled
them gently onto the bottom. He cut the jets and secured ship’s
power. The instrument panel went dark.

“Glad we wore our suits this time,” he
muttered, climbing out of the cockpit. “I’d be all black and
bruised from the ride.”
Eekoti
water was always too warm for his taste, salty but
clear,
onk’kel’te
was the
word here. Not like Seomish waters at all.

The two of them wrestled the lifeship
into position, then Pakma uncoiled the tie-line and secured the
ship to the junk pile. Tying the line, she noticed some words on a
dented metal panel: it said
Chevrolet.
Perhaps a warning to others, she
surmised. They would have to work at deciphering the
eekoti
written language, though the
echopods might work for translating voice. Time would tell with
that.

Clad in their lifesuits,
puk’lek’te
was what Tamarek lu had
called the new designs, they headed off toward shallower water,
following the gentle rise of the seabed.. Kloosee had to laugh at
the word; it meant ‘seamother limbs’. Tamarek had insisted they
could venture into the Not-Water and waddle around just like
seamothers on the beach.

That should be good for a few laughs.

Cruising along the seabed, which was
remarkably flat, sandy and clear, Kloosee became aware of just how
quiet Pakma had been. She’d been that way through the whole trip,
even before, during the ride up from Omsh’pont. Something was
bothering her; he could pulse turmoil inside of her…even through
the lifesuit, the bubbles were jumbled and fizzing and crashing
about. But she said nothing and even drifted off several beats
away, like she wanted to be alone, paralleling his course.

Finally Kloosee could stand it no longer. He
veered closer, pulsed her once more—the bubbles and turmoil were
still there—and pulled up alongside. She made no move or any
reaction to his presence. It was like she was roaming in a dream…on
auto.

“Pakma, something’s bothering you…you haven’t
said five words since we got here. Are you sick? Are you upset…I’m
pulsing a lot of turbulence inside…I need you whole and well for
the mission—“

At first, she said nothing, but drifted away
again, opening up a half beat between them. Kloosee got mad and
slapped his tail, sending him sharply toward her, then he crossed
in front of her and she had to pull up quickly to avoid a
collision.

“Watch where you’re going,” she said sharply.
She went on and Kloosee hustled to stay up with her.

“What’s wrong? You’re upset…and you’re
not doing a very good job of hiding it…Longsee would throw a
fit…you know how he is about keeping
shoo’kel
.”

Pakma seemed resigned to having Kloosee right
next to her. He tried nuzzling at her belly, but she slapped him
away. “Don’t do that, okay?”

“What is it…did I say something wrong?”

Pakma suddenly pulled up abruptly and
stopped. She hung vertically in the water, clad in the suit like a
forlorn baby in its birth shroud, and glared at him. “She’s all
over you, you know. I can smell her every time you come close. It’s
cloying…it’s like overripe
tong’pod…
the really mushy kind.”

Immediately, he knew she was talking about
Tulcheah, about their coupling in Omsh’pont.

“Pakma, Tulcheah and I are em’kelmates. We’ve
been together for dozens of mah, since we were kids. It was
nothing…just a little hello. I pulsed her sad, a little needy and
did what I had to to…em’kels are like that.”

“You didn’t have to spend so much time there.
I thought we were---“ But she didn’t say it. Instead, she gave an
abrupt tail slap and plunged ahead, nosing along the sea
bottom.

Kloosee hustled after her. “Pakma…Pakma, wait
up…you know how I feel about you…the mission depends on us…we have
to get along…we’re comrades here—“

Pakma shimmied and scraped along the sand,
intentionally throwing up a cloud of silt in his face. “I thought
we were more than that—“

“We are…we are…you know, you
could
join the em’kel too…Putektu’s
open to anyone.”

“Sure, all you ever do is talk about
Not-Water, about seamothers, waddling around like drunken
puk’lek
…what am I supposed to
do…Not-Water’s like hell…we’re not supposed to be there. Shooki
warns against it…it’s death for anyone…your em’kel just likes to
stir up trouble, Kloosee, that’s all it is. And you won’t be happy
until every female in Omt’or is clinging to your tail. I’m not that
desperate.”

With that, Pakma scooted up toward the
surface, now only ten beats above them, and breached in a spray of
foam, taking a look around.

Kloosee went after her, doing likewise.

They rode the surface waves for a few
minutes, now grateful for the lifesuits, though Kloosee felt
awkward and constricted, the way he often did in Not-Water. Maybe
it was just a reaction. Not-water was
ee’kootor’kelte
, the pressure was too low to
sustain life, it was death and damnation. Pakma was right about
that.

Not only that, but it was bright up here too.
Blinding bright. Painfully bright. Kloosee breached and immediately
tuned down the darkness setting of his helmet visor.

The beach was ahead.
Eekoti
were strolling along. Some
were in the shallows, playing in the waves, splashing and laughing.
Small vessels throwing off plumes of water jetted back and forth;
they’d have to watch out for those.

Kloosee decided now was the time.

He reached the shallowest rise in the
bottom and actuated his mobilitors, the
puk’lek’te
, that would give him and Pakma ground
mobility. Then he reared up, placing his full weight on the limbs,
standing in several feet of water and wobbled unsteadily back and
forth before the stabilizers kicked in.

He waved his arm limbs back and forth.
He had seen
eekoti
do that.
Longsee surmised it was a form of greeting. He couldn’t pulse
anything. Then he pushed forward through the waves and approached
the beach. Behind him, more hesitantly, Pakma was doing the
same.

It was so painfully bright he had to dial
down the helmet several more notches.

Kloosee kicked and splashed through the
waves, trying to imitate the smaller
eekoti
. Longsee had recommended that:
similarity and parallelism in gestures may make
them more comfortable with your presence.
He had
recorded bulbs on the subject.

Now, Kloosee saw many
eekoti
scattering, running away from
him, waving and screaming, flinging sand everywhere. What was going
on? He turned to check Pakma; she was just clambering up onto the
beach.