Angie stood up and walked down to the creek bed, dipping her toes in the brackish waters…something she would never have done normally. “Chase, if you’re asking me if I want you to be changed back, the answer is yeah, I do. Very much. But after that, I just don’t know—”
“About what?”
“About… about us, you knucklehead.” She wiped a tear from her eye. Damn it…she was not going to cry now, not now. “I just don’t know about this Dr. Holland…you and this Dr. Holland. You think she’s legit…you think this is safe?”
Chase shrugged, then realized nobody could see such a gesture dressed up like an overgrown frog. “I don’t know. I think so. I’m willing to try it. I just don’t know though—”
“About what…us?”
“No, about what the Seomish will think. If I go back, I can’t live among them, work with them, laugh with them, fight with them, the way I have been. They probably will kick me out as Kel’metah…Angie, somehow, some way, I’ve become important to them. Me, Chase Meyer, important to someone…can you believe it?”
“Hey, idiot, you’re important to me. It’s just that—” She came back and stooped down beside him. “Honestly, I don’t want to lose you to that fish doctor. Just be honest with me, okay? Do you have any feelings for her? Do you love her?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Ang. Dr. Holland is a scientist. She wants to help the Seomish. I want to help the Seomish. It’s just that…” Chase rolled over on his stomach, his dorsal fin catching light from the parking lot lamps “…I don’t know if I can help them if I get the em’took reversed. If I do that, I’m just like you…like Dr. Holland, like all humans. Now…I’m different. Now, I’m somebody special to them.”
“So this is between me and the Seomish, is that it? Chase, do you even hear yourself talking…you don’t even make any sense any more…not that there’s anything new about that. Maybe you should just go find your go-tone and crank up a song. You’re much better at that much.”
“Hey thanks…that’s not such a bad idea at that. I could be the mascot too…a real Croc Boy.”
“Very funny….be serious, for once, you bum. Chase, this is your decision. I can’t make it for you.”
He reached out and cautiously touched her on the ankle. She didn’t recoil like she usually did. That was a good sign, wasn’t it?
“It’s your decision too, Angie. That’s why I wanted to meet. You’ve got a say in this.”
That made her feel a little better. She sat down and wriggled her butt a little closer, not quite touching. You really didn’t want to rub up against something as slimy and icky as that. Chase watched her out of the corner of his eyes, wishing his eyelids wouldn’t flutter like they did…em’took gave you a second eyelid to see better underwater but…he really did want to check out those great legs once again.
“Chase, I want you to give this procedure a try, if you think it’s safe, if you think the fish doctor can pull it off. I don’t want to lose you, to some untried medical thing or to some older woman using you for her own reasons. That’s the honest truth.”
“Okay, I can live with that. I think I really do want to go through with this…actually, I’m ready now. The Seomish…they can make their own way. And I could still help ‘em in a way.”
“Just promise me this: when the time comes, I want to be there with you, during this procedure, whatever it is.”
“What about school and the hospital?”
Angie poked him. “I’ll think of something. Just promise me you won’t try to do this by yourself.”
Chase blew a kiss at her and they sort of embraced, as well as scaly, armored reptilian skin would let them embrace. “It’s a deal. I guess I’d better go now…before the sun comes up. People will be looking out their windows wondering why you’re chatting away with a gator.”
He got up and ambled down to the creek, looking back. “I’ll contact you when it’s time. Keep your signaler around, Cookie.”
She smiled. “Hey...just stop trying to annoy me, Flipper. But let me know.”
They waved good-bye and Chase waded into the creek, eventually submerging and gliding just below the surface. He did look just like a gator, his big snout creating a V-shaped wake as he rounded the turn and was gone.
Angie watched for a few more moments as the ripples of his forward motion died off and the creek was finally still.
Honestly, she told herself as she went back to the breezeway and the stairs, I must be dreaming. None of this is actually happening. Sheila’s given me something and I’m hallucinating.
Back inside 3-B, she closed and locked the door, and went to the bathroom to get ready for a shower. On the kitchen counter, she spied the letter the agents had left with her a few days before. That was no hallucination and it was better that Chase know nothing about it.
For the simple truth was that Angie Gilliam was not working any swing shift at University Hospital today and not for quite a few days to come. She knew she had to hustle that morning. The flight from Tampa to Hamilton, Bermuda was due to leave in less than three hours. She didn’t want to go. She wanted to work her shift as a Red Cross volunteer on the 3rd floor at the hospital and joke around with Sheila and the other nurses, maybe ogle a few of the cuter interns and come home. But none of that was going to happen, not now, and it really was all because of Chase, because of the fact that she knew Chase, had a relationship with him and somehow that had become a national security issue.
The Agency people had convinced her that she had to do this because if she didn’t, she could be charged as an accomplice to espionage, or some ridiculous thing like that. She wanted to tell her mother about the whole thing, maybe get a lawyer, but they didn’t have that kind of money and the robo-lawyers they could afford weren’t all that swift, she had heard. So she stayed quiet and as she turned on the shower and let it run to get some hot water, Angie Gilliam tried to imagine just how it was that a temporary Red Cross intern at University Hospital, a rising senior at Scotland Beach’s Apalachee High, a notable track star and she did have some medals and damn near unbeatable times in the 440 and 880 events, just how it was that such a promising young talent could wind up coerced and finagled into becoming a spy for Uncle Sam.
That didn’t make any sense, did it?
She craned her face up into the stinging hot needles of the shower and let the mission particulars run through her mind again: you will travel at Agency expense to Hamilton, Bermuda, where you will sign up as a new crew member with Bermuda Marine Salvage. You will be taken on a dive two days later. You will ‘wander off’ and disappear from the dive team and feign some kind of distress. The dive team will not be able to locate you. They will report you are presumed to be lost at sea, a diving accident. Agency divers will be nearby to deal with any real contingencies. In your ‘distress,’ the mission presumes that Sea People thought to be in proximity will rescue you and take you to their camp. You will record and later provide all available intelligence on their activities, their force deployments, their defenses, and any unique technologies that seem pertinent to the mission…you will then—
Angie let the steaming hot water dribble over her face for a long time. Yeah, right. The hell of it was she was no longer so anxious about becoming a spy. She was way more apprehensive about that damned fish doctor and her supposed procedure…a procedure she was sure had only one end result in mind.
Angie decided right then and there that there was no way she would ever let anyone else get their fish hooks into Chase Meyer.
Dr. Josey Holland Lifelogger Post:
As soon as I got back to the Lab at Woods Hole, I started looking into every reference I could find about marine endosymbiosis and genetic techniques, CRISPR methods, all that stuff. I contacted Dr. Ryne Falkland at the Autonomous Systems Lab down at Northgate University and asked him to send as much as he could about medical nanobotic interventions, configurations, controls, intervention strategies, everything.
It’s really pretty excitin
g to think that there might be a way to reverse this procedure Chase Meyer has talked about, this thing he calls em’took. I even have one of the Sea Peoples’ echopods where there’s some kind of description of the process but I’m having a hard time deciphering it. Seomish science is so different from ours, with its emphasis on chemistry and biological methods and scent and sound techniques. Theirs is an aquatic culture and so everything they do and make is done through chemical or micro-biological means. They may be hundreds of years ahead of us in these areas…and, of course, their whole science is keyed to their home world.
I’d love to go to Seome but Chase insists it doesn’t exist anymore.
Okay, I’ll admit it…I’m fascinated by the Sea People…the Seomish. This is just such an incredible research opportunity. Right after I came back to Woods Hole, I stopped by the aquarium to say hello to Bennie and some of the other cetaceans. Bennie’s my favorite and I can’t help now looking at him with new eyes, wondering just what kind of society and culture does he really come from? Evolution works in such strange ways, but maybe the same evolutionary pressures that made Bennie also work on other worlds too. We know that killer whales have group-specific dialects. We know that sperm whales babysit one another’s young. We know bottlenose dolphins—Tursiops-- cooperate with other species. This is all well correlated with brain sizes…we know that much, but how much of that correlation can be extended to group hunting, complex vocalizations, dietary richness and geographical range? Somewhere out there in deep space, Evolution has worked to create this fantastically capable marine species of Sea People who can travel through space, who come rescue their comrades when we grab one for a specimen, who clearly have very advanced technology…are these people in any way related to our own cetacean species? Is there any evidence of similar evolutionary results on Earth? That’s what I want to find out.
I guess if I were truthful, there’s more than just scientific interest here on my part. Chase is a very interesting young man, however he wound becoming modified. I really only have his word and this echopod to provide any evidence that he’s telling me the truth. Maybe Chase is just some kind of hybrid species, half-mammalian, half-cetacean, caught in the middle. Evolution continues to amaze us with its diversity, its robustness, its will to survive and thrive…if I had any questions about Evolution’s capabilities before, I don’t know…just look at Stephen and his lawyer-leeches. Now there’s a group of misfits if ever there were any.
How much of my feelings for Chase is really for Chase and how much is really sympathy, even a sort of love, for the Sea People and what they’ve been through, what they’re going through right now? I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t even want to ask the question. Yeah, I have a growing attachment to the Seomish, no doubt. I’m sure Dr. Wriston and Steve and Tamika would all say I’ve just got a soft heart, along with a soft head, for endangered species. I’ll own up to that.
There was a time last night, lying in bed thinking, staring up at the ceiling tiles in my apartment, when I imagined what it would be like to actually be Seomish, to go through the same procedure Chase apparently did and it was a pleasant sort of reverie…with all that’s going on today, conflicts with the Sea People, conflicts with Stephen and the courts over custody, fear of what might happen with Timmy and Hannah, I can’t help but admit to a growing disgust with everything human these days. We haven’t really covered ourselves with glory in our dealings with the Sea People, even here at the Institute and as for the judges and the court system, well—
Now, I’ve got to develop a plan of attack on reversing this em’took procedure, test out some theories on the right approach, what should be genetic, what part nanobotic, can bacteria or certain viral vectors be used instead—the echopods talk about something that sounds like bacteria--. Endosymbiosis is a very complex process here on Earth…the literature on this is so vast, it’s cosmic in scope. There are all kinds of examples: rhizobia, actinomycete bacteria, single-cell algae that live inside corals, certain nitrogen-fixing bacteria, it’s a long list. Are we talking mutualism, commensalism, parasitism, or what? In fact, the evolution of all Eukaryotes may well have come from symbiotic relationships among competing bacteria billions of years ago. Ach…so much to learn.
I even have a name for my proposed new technique: conicthyosis. Do you like that? Reversing ‘fish’ symbiosis.
Who knows if any of this is even possible or maybe it’s just a wet dream of a frustrated marine biologist.
Chapter 13
Keenomsh’pont, near Bermuda and
Reed Banks, the South China Sea
September 21, 2115
The Ponkti and the Chinese were now faced with a basic and stark conundrum: both peoples wanted the Coethi time manipulator to be completed and to work, but for very different reasons. Neither wanted to deal with the Coethi themselves, whatever they were, in fact, by mutual consent, destroying the alien swarms or at least isolating and containing the damn thing was considered to be the best course of action.
President Li Lingshan stood alongside the dock inside the Longpo Naval Base’s underground submarine bunker and watched the Sea Peoples’ small submersible surface and maneuver toward the pier. Li was flanked by most of the State Council from Beijing and fully aware that the predators and vultures among them were watching him closely for any signs of weakness. It was common knowledge at the highest levels of the Chinese government that the Sea People had made some kind of extraordinary discovery in the South China Sea…”our sea,” Li had told the Party Congress just last week and the only question was how best could China exploit this discovery, and could the Sea Peoples be really trusted? Opinion was divided on this matter but Li had come down firmly on the side of working out some kind of alliance with the aliens and jointly exploring the nature of the discovery.
For if even half of what Li had been told about the time manipulator was true, the People’s Republic would soon be in possession of a most marvelous prize, one that would move the Middle Kingdom into the front ranks of all nations on the planet…maybe even beyond.
The kip’t scraped softly against the wharf piling and moments later, the top hatch opened. Li had never encountered the Sea People before…Dr. Fei Liang from the National Academy insisted that these visitors were known as Ponkti…a faction or tribe of the greater family that had somehow emigrated to Earth through the Farpool gateway. Two individuals emerged, clad in their armored mobilitor suits and they clambered awkwardly up the platform ladder to the dock.
Their voices came through the translator as scratchy, high-pitched, nasal and whiny. One called himself Loptoheen tu kel: Ponk’et.
Li soon realized that the other alien was female—one Lektereenah kim kel: Ponk’et—and she was called Metah. A sort of President of this particular tribe.
Li bowed faintly and ushered the two Ponkti into a small meeting room that had been created from a nearby machine shop. The Ponkti scuffled and shuffled in their heavy suits. As Lektereenah passed by, Li caught a brief glimpse of her face inside the helmet. It sent a chill down his back.
They really were fish-like in appearance, with beaks and fins and tail flukes. Only the mobilitors allowed them to survive out of water.
Li thought briefly of his now-deceased father, who had long been a commercial fisherman out of Tianjin…what would his esteemed father have thought of all this? Negotiating important treaties with talking fish? No doubt the elder Li would have had his nets and hooks at the ready.
The negotiations were slow and somewhat arduous. Translation was slow and the Ponkti were uninterested in the documentation that had been set before them.
“Shkreeah…we pulse and read in this way,” Loptoheen had said. “Kah, your sounds…your scents…this tells us what we must know.”
Dr. Fei explained to Li and the State Council that the Sea People had never developed writing as this was normally understood. “It’s all acoustic, sir…communication by sounds. We’ve determined they have an echo-locating and ranging s
ystem. We think they can send sound signals, sort of like sonar, and read the echoes. Even out of water, we think they can do this.”
Fei’s explanation gave Li pause. The thought that these armored fish might be able to see the poached eggs and noodles he had eaten for breakfast that morning was a bit unnerving. Li pushed his papers aside.
“Very well…I’ll summarize our position this way. China wants an alliance of equals. We’re interested…very interested…in this device my scientists have been calling Shijian caoxong qi—some sort of time device, I understand. We want to explore its possibilities and potentials, as I am told you do. If this device works as we think it does, we can send teams of explorers back to the great days of Imperial China and change time streams to prevent the centuries of humiliation we have suffered at the hands of the West from ever happening. Perhaps even accelerate the travels of the great Admiral Zheng He.”
Now Lektereenah spoke. Her voice was softer than Loptoheen, mediated as it was through the echopod translator, but Li detected an undercurrent of steel there.
“It is so with Ponkti….kkzzhhh…on Seome, even on this world Urku, Ponkti…zzhhzzhh…treated we are as poorly. Ponkti wish only to control their own fate….”
The discussions went on for a time. Dr. Fei described what was already happening two hundred kilometers south of the base, at the Reed Banks.
“For many years, we have been working on developing our own controllable nanoscale robotic swarms, our xiao zhanshi or tiny warriors. These are molecular assembler/disassembler devices. The Americans have similar devices; they call them ANADs. The creatures that apparently came with you through the gateway are of a similar nature…swarms of tiny warriors of unknown design, unknown capabilities. Even as we speak, our xiao zhanshi are engaging these creatures...I believe you call them…m’jeete?”
The Farpool_Exodus Page 32
