“Now what…how do I control this thing--?”
…kee’too controlled by sound…make sound like this…(shkreeah)…clickclickclickclick…krrrrr…this activates kee’too….
Chase listened carefully. “Likteek, you’ve got to be kidding…oh, well, here goes—“ He tried making some of the same sounds. At first, there was nothing. Then Dr. Holland’s legs involuntarily straightened out and the attached flukes started oscillating, dolphin-kick style, as if she were swimming.
“…don’t think you want that…” he grunted. Holland jerked like a spasmodic robot.
Likteek did something…Chase heard it over the echopod. Likteek somehow managed to stop the dolphin-kick and the suit was quiet.
Holland was grateful. “Thanks…I don’t think I could have taken much more of that—“
She looked out through the slit-eyes of the blade-helmet and saw Chase gingerly approaching. On impulse, she swung her huge armfins around and growled at him, leaning forward menacingly.
“Grrrrrr!”
Chase jumped five feet. “Stop that! Are you okay in there? Can you breathe?”
“I can breathe okay…don’t ask me how. But I can’t control anything…it’s like the thing has a mind of its own.”
For the next hour, Likteek and Manklu worked with Chase and Josey Holland, to explain how the kee’too worked.
The lifesuit was controlled with sounds and scents. Holland eventually found a small control panel inside the helmet, just below her chin. More controls were on the armfins. She learned that the echopod translated Chase’s description of the legs as mobilitors…multi-purpose propulsors, suitable both for water and Notwater…that is, land. With some experimenting and practice, Holland found she could waddle around inside the pod like a drunken penguin. Chase assured her the mobilitors would work equally well in water.
Chase had said the suits could also be controlled by scent. She wondered, started to pecking at her chin controls with her chin and wound up pirouetting into the pod walls like a klutzy ballerina, which she had once been as a child.
Well, this sucks…maybe I shouldn’t touch anything in here….
Likteek worked with both of them, with great patience and, not a little humor, to make sure the human could manage her new gear.
It was Manklu who observed: “At least, she’s not afraid to try. You can pulse the change…. I sense shook’lee now…not so much fear…more a curiosity.”
“She wants to be with us…tet’ee’ot, I pulse that too. Cooperation, fellowship…this is good…very good…she’s learning.”
Likteek was curious about this human and had come to the edge of the pod. He pulsed through the walls, was thoughtful. “She seems intelligent. Already, I pulse tet’ee’ot as well. We may need her help. When we pulse shoo’kel, that’s when she’ll be ready.”
Manklu knew it was bad form to disagree with the Kelktoo master but he couldn’t help it. “Maybe we shouldn’t expect so much of them. They’ve got a lot to learn. They’re human or at least related. But we shouldn’t think of them as anything more than that.”
Likteek told Chase to help Holland button up her lifesuit. …you have Notwater inside…do not worry…be of litorkel ge…calm and serene…we open pod…Manklu and I will guide you…
“Wait…what? Hold up, will you---? But Chase could only stare in disbelief as water began rushing through the gaps in the pod fingers, quickly filling their small pocket of air, roaring, foaming and hissing until they floated with it right up to the top, where the fingertips began parting….
“Chase…Chase…I can’t—“ Holland panicked but moments later, her voice was drowned out.
Incredibly, the lifesuits seemed to know what to do. Even as the water thundered into the pod and enveloped them, Holland’s suit sealed itself shut. Holland found she could breathe the burned air just fine…take a small breath, then another, there, see? You’ve got air.
Chase watched the whole process with some amusement, recalling his own terror when he and Angie had gone through the same procedure on Seome…but that was a long time ago, on a world long gone….
“Dr. Holland…Dr. Holland, just breathe normally—“ He didn’t even know if she could hear him. But a quick look through the narrow slit in her helmet showed she was fine, her eyes wide and her arms thrashing about, but otherwise fine. Finally, she got herself under control and let the suit take her where it wanted.
Holland found herself propelled forward, with gentle undulations of her flukes and some judicious waterjet props providing the kick.
Two figures swam into view. It was Manklu and Likteek. Likteek made gestures and Chase understood he was to help Holland use her chin controls. In time, she found the echopod switch.
…we go to Kelktoo…to lab…meet project master…I will guide…
Chase reached for something on Holland’s right arm and depressed switches she hadn’t even seen. A staccato series of clicks and screeches sounded inside the helmet. Then her tail flukes started up again, dolphin-kicking like she’d never been able to do in swim meets. She and Chase then moved off together, Likteek and Manklu alongside, out of the pod, whose fingers had now peeled back like flower petals, and off into the cold, murky waters.
Holland couldn’t see much through the helmet eye slits but she heard a steady pinging, along with a symphony of clicks, squeaks, grunts and chirps. Fully sound-controlled, she realized. Cool. And something liked sonar. The lifesuit was like a little ship, like a midget submarine, like Poseidon. With legs.
Though she couldn’t see much, she felt the presence of life all around her. Cubes and spheres, pods and strange glowing filaments flashed by. She wondered if Chase could hear her and tried just speaking in a normal tone of voice.
“Chase…Chase, can you hear me? This is so cool…look at this place. They’re all around us…look at those light filaments…what are they?”
“I can hear you—“ Chase was nearby, jetting along just behind her. “Your suit is like a submarine…it does what it wants. Now you can see some things. Look at all the fish—“
Indeed they were enveloped in vast throngs of mainly Omtorish residents, roaming in knots and groups across the ridge that served as the center of the Omtorish quarter of Keenomsh’pont, a flat tableland between towering seamounts, dense with canopied pavilions, strange coral shapes, lighted tubes and a dizzying variety of platforms, spheres, globes, pyramids, every kind of shape imaginable, some secured by lines to the seabed, some attached to the sides of the seamount, so many that the mountains seemed to heave and throb with life, as if they were alive themselves.
Ahead of them, other creatures swam, including Manklu and Likteek. Holland had trouble distinguishing one from another. And even as they headed for the Kelktoo, Holland had seen how other swimmers joined their little group for a few moments, then peeled off to disappear, only to be replaced by still more swimmers.
A gregarious place, she decided. Everybody’s out for a stroll, just like Quissett Beach on a Saturday afternoon back home.
“Dr. Holland, how’s your suit? Can you breathe okay?”
Her voice sounded like it was coming out of a barrel. “Hey, just call me Josey, okay? The air smells and tastes funny, but I seem to be breathing okay. Chase, I have no idea how to control this thing, what anything does. I don’t even see any controls….”
“It’s all controlled with sounds. You’ll have to learn how to make the same sounds they do.”
“Swell. Like learning a new language. I’m still hungry, by the way. And I have to pee—“
They followed Manklu and Likteek across the breadth of Keenomsh’pont until they came to the base of the huge seamount. Uncommanded, Holland’s suit began a shallow dive. She peered out the narrow eye slits. They were heading for what looked like a coral reef, but lit up with bioluminescent light, strings of light.
Approaching the reef, Holland could see it was a structure of some kind, open to the sea, filled with throngs of swimming, cavorting, Seomi
sh residents. Maybe they work here, she surmised. There were dozens of platforms at every level, each one an organic-looking thing lined with rough, scaly walls, but every shape you could imagine: pillows, hats, sponges, beds, brains, a kaleidoscope of structures all hanging off the side of the seamount.
The echopod in her suit clicked. It was Likteek. …Kelktoo here…we go lab…meet kelmaster and engineers….
They entered the Kelktoo along one side, swam through a maze of corridors and tubes and floatways until they came at last to an inner vault-like chamber, a chamber lined with undulating tubes on the floor and walls, and a small group attending some kind of equipment on mushroom-shaped tables in the center. One entire wall appeared to be an enclosure almost like the Woods Hole Aquarium galleries. Indeed, when Holland looked closer, inside the gallery were two animals that looked suspiciously like bottlenose dolphins.
Maybe from an earlier trip, she thought.
The Kelktoo was the largest and most influential of all the em’kels…the traditional house of learning with its academies and labs and observatories and institutes and societies and foundations and studios.
Now Likteek came over to greet them. He was smaller than Manklu, wrinkled in the face, with some mottling and stippling around his beak and fins.
“These are our labs. Here, we study all the fascinating things your world shows us.”
Holland was amazed. “You seem to have made quite a home here, from what I can see. Did you really come from another world, like Chase says?”
This provoked an explosion of laughter around the kel space. The scientists and technicians chortled at her words. Likteek explained.
“It has been a long journey. Many didn’t make it.”
Holland drifted about the lab spaces, examining equipment, continually amazed at the beatscope, the other instruments, specimen sacs, echopods full of notes. She was particularly interested in a rack of scentbulbs. Likteek opened one for her and Holland was amazed that even through the lifesuit, she could smell the scents.
“Very powerful…what is it?” she asked.
“Puk’lek,” the scientist told her. “You would call it seamother…very large beasts. Our Ponkti ‘friends’ brought some calves here before the Kel’vishtu…against everyone’s wishes, I might add.”
Holland finally stopped circling and regarded Chase, Likteek, Manklu and another technician also in the lab. “This is all so…I don’t even have words for this. Amazing. Fascinating. Mind-blowing. Chase said your world was destroyed.”
Likteek dipped a beak and looked sad. “It is true. We had warning. We had time. But the kels fight among each other. We didn’t heed the warnings. We didn’t take time to prepare. When the end came, the great ak’loosh, it came quickly.”
“Most didn’t escape,” Manklu added. “Many of my own em’kel, in fact.”
Chase did some figuring. “The estimates are that about two hundred thousand came through the Farpool. Millions died.”
This brought a somber feel to the gathering. “I’m sorry for that,” Holland said. She was still getting used to her lifesuit and to hearing translated voices through her echopod, with all its screeches, clicks and whistles. Instinctively, from time to time, she tapped at her helmet, trying to get a clearer reception. Chase smiled at the gesture; he’d done the same thing long ago, before the em’took procedure.
Now Holland really studied her audience. They’re bigger than Tursiops, she told herself, but shaped similarly. Possibly ungulate. Dorsal fins, forepaddles, flukes. But the fingers…my God, six of them.
“Just how big a settlement are you going to build here? My people…we humans…are kind of concerned about sharing Earth with another intelligence. That hasn’t happened for millions of years. We don’t know what to think about it.”
Chase started to reply but Likteek interrupted. “The kels wish only to live here in peace. We came because we had no choice. If we hadn’t come through the Farpool, our people would cease to exist.”
“It was survival,” added Manklu. “Any people, all living creatures, struggle and do what they must to survive.”
“Well, with UNISEA, at least we have a way of meeting and discussing our differences. I just hope both sides will use this method and not threaten each other.”
“Humans can’t agree on anything,” Chase said. “We fight all the time.”
“As do the kels of Seome,” Likteek added.
“Some of your…kels, is it…? are building settlements in territorial waters of humans,” Holland noted. “In the Pacific, for instance, our Chinese delegates say this is happening. Your people are encroaching on critical fishing areas, interfering with oil and gas exploration.”
Chase said, “I’ve already been to those waters. We tried to negotiate, but the Chinese wouldn’t listen. I don’t really know what to do. There have been incidents, skirmishes, that sort of thing.”
Manklu stroked about the lab in agitated disgust. “We will certainly defend ourselves. Tailless will find we know how to do that quite well.”
“Like you came ashore at Woods Hole and assaulted so many humans, just a short time ago?” Holland said. “There was no need for that.”
Manklu was incensed. “What were we supposed to do? You had Kel’metah Chase…our new leader. Should we just swim in circles while our people are taken from us?”
Holland was about to respond but suddenly the entire lab space jerked and shook violently, thrashing the water into furious, clashing cross-currents. Waves slammed Holland sideways, driving her headfirst into the scentbulb rack. Bulbs flew in all directions and soon the small cavern was thick with drifting instruments, chunks of rock and other gear.
“Ak’loosh!” yelled Manklu, himself driven awkwardly into a teetering instrument stand.
“An earthquake!” Chase cried. “Look out--!”
A seam of rock loosened from the wall and fell onto Likteek, pinning the old scientist against the floor.
Chase and Manklu rushed over and began pulling rock chunks and sediment piles away. Likteek moaned a bit, but seemed unhurt. They got him free in a few moments, while Holland watched in horror.
The chamber shook more but the walls stayed intact.
“We’d better get out of here,” Manklu said. “Come…quickly….”
The three of them wound their way back through the twists and turns of the entrance and emerged into a rain of silt outside. Behind them, the huge seamount was shedding and sloughing off gouts and seams of rock and mud, tons of it, all sliding down the slopes, crushing tents and holds and small camps at its base. Soon dozens of small structures had been buried.
And still the seabed shook and waves rolled across Keenomsh’pont, lessening in intensity but triggering yet more slides and destruction as they erupted.
The waters above the settlement were thick with panicked kelke, great swarms schooling and milling and roaming about. Even Holland could hear the cacophony of bleats and whistles and clicks, an anxious din overwhelming everything. Silt was thick in the water and pulsing was almost impossible.
It was Chase who noticed a growing disturbance from the other side of Keenomsh’pont, beyond the central ridges that bifurcated the village. A swelling knot of people were heading in that direction. Almost without thinking, Chase and Manklu turned toward the clamor, after making sure Likteek would be okay. Chase helped Holland activate her own feet propulsors, and the biologist was able to keep close and keep up with them, jetting alongside Chase as he stroked for the disturbance.
Pushing through the throngs, Chase soon found the source of the commotion. A vast swirl of kelke had surrounded a large slowly moving object nosing just above the seabed a few hundred meters beyond Keenomsh’pont’s outer perimeter bubble curtains.
It was a submarine.
Chase swallowed hard as he watched the angry crowd set upon the ship with tchin’ting fiber nets, sound grenades and prods. It was like vids Chase had seen of whalers from hundreds of years ago, stalking and harassing wh
ales until they were worn down, exhausted and could be harpooned.
“What are they doing?” Holland asked. She really couldn’t see much beyond a few meters from her helmet. “I hear a big crowd, a lot of commotion.”
Chase was grim. “It’s a submarine. I don’t know whose. My echopod’s just catching a little of the screaming but I think they believe the submarine caused the landslides and tremors. They’re really pissed. Right now, there are several hundred people trying to wrap a fiber net around the propeller.”
“What--?”
Even as he watched, dozens of Omtorish, Ponkti, Skortish and Eepkostic had drawn a huge net over the propeller and prop shroud of the submarine. The boat maneuvered slowly, and in moments, the prop was fouled and the sub ceased forward way, slowly settling down to a bumpy and precarious landing on a rock overhang beneath it.
Others swarmed quickly to the now-immobile boat and discharged prods into its hull, set off sound grenades and it was then that Chase sensed a massive presence moving into position just the other side of the submarine.
“My God…seamothers!” he hissed. “How could they let them--?”
It was Ponkti handlers who had released the puk’lek. There were two of them, settling their massive bulk into position just above the submarine sail, sniffing and bumping at the masts and antenna poking above the fairwater structures, chewing on bow planes still extended. One seamother repeatedly headbutted the base of the sail, and eventually stove in the outer hull enough to create a small stream of bubbles.
Chase realized what was happening. Below the sub’s outer hull, the seamother had created enough damage to hole the pressure hull. Now, the stream of bubbles became a torrent, then a sheet of furious bubbles and the submarine crew tried an emergency blow, forcing high-pressure air into her ballast tanks in a vain attempt to gain enough buoyancy to ascend to the surface.
This only made the seamothers mad and their huge mass and continued poking and prodding kept the boat pinned to the seabed. Kelke darted in from time to time, avoiding the massive tail and powerful flukes of the beasts and set off sound grenades and prod discharges.
The Farpool_Exodus Page 18
