“Of course, Solnet can’t fully corroborate such reports as yet, but we’re working on finding additional sources and validation that such ideas are current and represent thinking at the highest levels of the Chinese government.
“Let’s take a few moments to look more closely at the Ming dynasty and what happened historically around the time of Admiral Zheng He….”
Chapter 15
Keenomsh’pont, near Bermuda
September 25, 2115
1230 hours
Chase was working with Tulcheah and others from the weavers’ em’kel, stitching together more fiber net from tchin’ting for additional habitats in the Omtorish zone when a repeater’s alarm went off. The shrieking notes were easily heard across the whole of Keenomsh’pont, above the din of hundreds of kelke at work…an alarm heard by everyone.
Dozens of kelke dropped what they were doing and immediately rushed to the edge of the settlement. Beyond the outer perimeter of bubble curtains, a hard-suited diver lay floundering and flailing among some coral banks, its boots seemingly caught in a narrow crevice.
“Look! Tailless...is it hurt?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s caught in that fissure…see how it’s struggling…maybe it’s dying even.”
Chase led the kelke to the diver. Whoever it was, they wore a hard shell atmospheric diving suit. The helmet was fogged, so he couldn’t see inside.
“Maybe it’s their rebreather,” Chase said. He placed a firm hand on the driver’s arms, trying to reassure them…it’s okay, it’s okay, we’re here to help. “Or the mixture…I’ll check the mixture.” But he couldn’t see anything wrong with the gauges or mixture controls…O2 okay, C02 levels about right. It was puzzling. Further examination showed the diver’s side thrusters seemed to be working okay.
Chase and two Omtorish midlings worked to free the diver’s feet, which took some doing. Finally, with a few thrusts of their beaks and a lot of pulling and shoving, the rock overhang was broken off and the diver was free.
The diver popped away and only a firm hand from Chase kept the poor soul from panicking.
“Shouldn’t we take it to the surface?” someone suggested. “There are craft there…Tailless craft…they could help. And one of their drones over there--”
Flippers and fins pointed off into the murky distance. Chase could see a small craft hovering nearby, probably unmanned, autonomous. Somebody had painted shark’s teeth on the bow.
“No time,” Chase decided. “Take him to the Notwater pod in the camp…anybody got a pal’penk we can strap him to?”
“We do…we’re outfitting a train now.” The midling was young, husky male, already scarred from his Circling…one of the first to try the adolescent ritual on Urku. His name was Potok and he was proud of what he had done. Potok issued a stream of low squeaks and whistles and presently, a slow, aging pal’penk lumbered by, her belly already sagging with cargo pods and sacs. Potok and the others wrestled the diver, now resigned to its fate, onto a makeshift sling and secured him to the pal’penk’s hump. With a sharp swat on its tail, the pal’penk mooed and flippered off toward Keenomsh’pont, accompanied by a dozen kelke. They parted the bubble curtains and cruised at a stately pace toward the Notwater pod, stashed out of the way below the Lab caves at the foot of the great seamount.
The Notwater pod was quickly unfurled and erected. It looked like a giant mushroom split open at the top. Or a giant hand, with fingers sticking up. Once the diver had been released from the pal’penk, the pack animal scooted off and the pod’s ‘fingers’ closed around them. Only Chase and the diver remained inside.
Now Chase helped the diver remove his helmet. When it was almost off, Chase was startled to see a female…page-boy hair…little dimple on her chin….
It was Angie Gilliam!
“My God…what are--?
Angie smiled weakly, finishing with her helmet, shoving hoses and tubes away from her face. She coughed and sat back and sighed, her eyes weak and watery.
“Hi, big guy…I guess I owe you an explanation, huh?”
“What the hell…it was you out there…and what is all this?” He indicated her hard suit, with its side thrusters, rebreather pack, all kinds of gadgets and vid cameras and gear hanging off the thing.
Angie took a deep breath. “It was their idea.”
“Whose idea?”
“The government…those agents. Actually, I think they were Navy. They wanted me to suit up and come down here, near the camp. Pretend to be in distress, so you’d rescue me. Take me inside the camp.”
Chase frowned. “You’re a spy?”
Angie shrugged. “I’m supposed to be. But this was such a harebrained idea anyway….”
Now Chase understood. “The government wanted a spy inside Keenomsh’pont, that’s what this is. How did you…what did they do to you--?”
She reached out with her one ungloved hand and touched Chase’s arm. “They said if I didn’t help out, I could be charged. Espionage. Accomplice to something or other, just because I knew you and you were like some kind of enemy alien or something. I don’t understand it.”
Chase was growing irritated with the whole affair. “I do. The government’s concerned because some Seomish, the Ponkti, are working with the Chinese. They think the Seomish are enemies. This is a reconnaissance mission, Ang…they threatened you and made you do their job for them.”
“That’s what I’m trying to say…they gave me this suit, trained me on it, gave me a cover story…just like in the vids. I guess I’m lucky you were nearby, huh?”
“Pretty lucky. Some of the kelke wanted to take you back to the surface. And there was some kind of drone nearby…doing nothing to help out. That made me suspicious right from the start.”
“What are we going to do, Chase? I really don’t want to stay here…but I’m supposed to give them some idea of what goes on inside the camp.”
Chase sat back and thought. “We’re going to give them what they want, in fact more than they want. Then you and I have a little trip to make.”
“A trip…what kind of—” But already he was helping Angie stand up and they stood shivering and drenched together in the palm of the great hand, standing on some kind of soft, tissue-like floor inside the Notwater pod.
That’s when Chase realized the fingers that had closed around them were translucent. He could barely make out lights outside. And eyes. Armfins and flukes, dozens, scores of them.
They had an audience, staring in at them.
“It’s like a zoo cage,” Angie shuddered. Or an aquarium. “You said we were going on a little trip.”
Chase was already putting her helmet back on, trying to align the seal with the ring inside the neck dam. “Yeah…to a place called Woods Hole. Dr. Holland said she wants to run some tests…she may be able to reverse the em’took process…make me like you again.”
Angie stopped the helmet. “You’re really serious, aren’t you? We talked about this before…there’s really a way to put you back…the old Chase?”
Chase nodded. “Yeah. She’s working on a procedure. I don’t understand it all but it involves some nanobotic actions, some bacteria stuff, some genetic stuff. She wants to run some tests first. That’s why I have to go to her lab.”
Now Angie’s face was a mixture of looks. “I…Chase, I’ve never been sure about any of this. I mean, look at you: you look like an alligator with fingers…and some kind of goofy grin—”
“Thanks.”
“I’d be scared out of my mind if I wasn’t sure this was you—” she reached out and faintly touched the scales on his arms, feeling the rigid armfins. “But only Chase Meyer could make me laugh and cry and want to reach out and smack someone, like you. That’s how I know this is really you.”
“I think Dr. Holland looks at me as a big science project.”
Angie frowned slightly. “So do I. Do you really want to do this? I mean I want my old Chase back…don’t get me wrong. Yo
u and me—”
“I would like to take you to the prom this year,” Chase admitted. “I guess I sort of messed that up last time.”
“Yeah,” she admitted, feeling gently among the bony ridges of his chest. “Croc Boys groupies can do that. Chase, if you’re really going to do this…if you’re really going to this Woods Hole, I want to go along.”
“Sure. That’d be great. But what about your…you know, your mission. Your spying.”
Angie sniffed. “Well, I’m supposed to be finding out what the Sea People are up to. You’re sort of like a Sea People. If I follow you and make some kind of report, I guess I’m doing what they want me to do…Chase, I don’t want to get either of us in any trouble.”
“You’re coming with me,” Chase decided. He pushed her helmet down and locked it in place. Then at a signal from Chase, the fingers of the Notwater pod peeled back, allowing seawater to roar into the space. Angie clung to him for a moment, until her breather kicked in and she realized she was safe.
The two of them left the Lab caves and went hunting for a long-distance kip’t. Packing it with provisions and supplies took several hours. Before the sun had gone down topside, Chase lifted the kip’t away from its landing pads just outside Keenomsh’pont, turned them to the right heading and jetted up and away from the camp. Soon they were enveloped in dark, with only the faint lights of the kip’t controls for company.
Chase zigzagged back and forth, searching for the right scent trail, then found it and settled down for the two-day trip across the western Atlantic, bound for Nantucket Sound, Nobska Point and Woods Hole.
By arrangement with the signaler device, Dr. Josey Holland and several of her assistants were waiting on the sandy beach at Eel Pond when the kip’t surfaced. It was a warm late September afternoon and few pedestrians were around on the gravel pathways along School Street and Water Street. Holland waited anxiously for Chase to disembark and wade up onto the beach. A hard-suited diver also climbed out of the little sled, awkwardly and trudged through the water to stand on the tiny beach alongside Chase.
Holland was surprised to see a female face emerge when Chase helped remove the helmet.
“This is Angie Gilliam, Doctor Holland. Uh, she’s my girlfriend.”
Holland nodded correctly at Angie. “I see. Well, I don’t have any accommodations here for her…maybe we can put her up at the Challenger Hotel. It’s not far.”
Angie offered a smile. “I’m just here to give Chase some support. I won’t get in the way…promise.”
No, you won’t, Holland didn’t say to either of them. “Of course. I understand. Let’s get your gear stowed. I’ll show you the lab…it’s right up here.”
The two of them follow Holland up the slope, across a small parking lot, past a barn and into the front entrance to Redfield Lab. Holland’s intern Tracey Rook and her technician Rob followed with their gear.
They ignored the stares of dozens of white-jacketed technicians and researchers all around them as they went in.
The ground floor lab dedicated to Holland was a multi-room affair, with a surgical pool in one room, surrounded by cabinets and tables and an articulating arm that stretched out over the pool, equipped with multiple tool heads, scopes and instruments.
“Part of my examination stuff,” Holland explained, while Chase and Angie stared wide-eyed at all the equipment. “You were here for a while when I brought you to Woods Hole…probably you don’t remember any of that. I had you sedated pretty heavily. Sorry for all that…it was a mistake but we did learn a lot about you while you were here.”
“I have just a vague memory,” Chase admitted. “I guess I was an unwilling patient.” Angie just glared back at Holland.
“Let me show you the special compartment where we’ll do the procedure…after some more tests, unfortunately. I’ve got to do a thorough DNA sampling to get a baseline on you. Then I have to ‘tune’ the bots to make sure they do what they’re supposed to…you can’t be too careful with these critters, you know.”
“Given what’s been happening with the Coethi bots, I’d say that’s a good idea.”
Angie was concerned, not to mention a little jealous and suspicious of the biologist’s motives. “Dr. Holland, are you really going to infest Chase with nanobots? Isn’t that pretty dangerous?”
Holland shrugged. “It can be, unless you know what you’re doing. It’s all in the configuration of the bot swarms, in the safety protocols and containment procedures. But not to worry. We won’t be starting anything we can’t control. We’ve been doing this on other—er, specimens, probably that’s not the right word, for quite some time now.”
“She’s an expert on Tursiops and other cetacean species,” Chase said.
“I’ll bet.”
The surgical compartment was a room down the hall from the surgical pool. Inside, the room was divided in two. Behind massive doors lay the containment vault, where Chase would undergo the multiple interventions that constituted the basics of the procedure.
“I call it conicthyosis,” Holland said. “Sort of a combination of symbiosis and ichthyology, with the ‘con’ thrown in to denote reversing something. My own wording, actually. Tracey and Rob and I are already working on a paper about it.”
“This is all approved?” Angie asked. “Certified, licensed or whatever?”
Holland smiled faintly. “It’s all approved by the Institute. I’ll let you meet Dr. Wriston, our department manager. He approves all research efforts and programs in this section.”
“Then, this is all experimental.”
Holland nodded. “Yes, of course. In fact, just to be safe, I’ll have to have Chase sign some waivers before we start. Departmental…and Institute policy, you understand.”
Holland showed them the interior of the containment vault. It resembled a small apartment and was more extensive than either Chase or Angie realized, with a small bed, toilet, kitchenette with sink and fab and refrigerator, and some bookshelves. A vid screen dominated a small but cozy sitting area. Along one wall, a counter had been placed with ports above the counter for remote manipulator and surgical extension gloves to reach inside the containment zone, for samples, blood tests and short-range examinations. Around the ceiling of the compartment, vid cameras were everywhere.
“Let’s go into my office—it’s just around the corner—and I’ll run through the tests and the basics of the procedure…what to expect over the next few days. Dr. Wriston will be coming by later and there are waivers and consent forms to sign.”
The procedure called conicthyosis was scheduled to begin in two days, after more tests, interviews, waivers and paperwork. Institute lawyers even showed up at one meeting, closely questioning both Chase and Angie: did they understand what was to be done, were they fully in agreement with all the protocols involved, did they freely and of their own volition consent to any and all steps, procedures, measures, practices, techniques and actions required to carry out the procedure?
Chase and Angie rapidly grew weary of all the legalese, though they understood why it was necessary and readily signed off on everything.
Back at the Challenger Hotel, Chase was anxious to get started. Angie, staring out the windows at the Nobska Point lighthouse early one evening, was less sanguine.
“I don’t trust her,” she admitted. “It’s all…I don’t know…it’s too much…too fast. The whole thing’s experimental as hell and nobody really knows what’s going to happen.”
Chase came to her, and lightly wrapped his scaly arms around her shoulders. She didn’t flinch or move away, for which he was both surprised and grateful. Maybe….
“Ang, this is the only way I can get me back. I thought that’s what you wanted to. To be like it was between us…boy-girl, and all that. I can’t take you to the prom like this.”
Angie smiled and chuckled softly. “No, probably not, you dolt. Though there are some real slimy creeps in our class, like Eddie Volchuk, for one. Eeewww!”
“Ah, yes�
�Eddie. A walking acne commercial…the before part. But Ang, I know you…there’s something else. I can see it. You just don’t like Dr. Holland, do you? What is it…the way she dresses? Her hair?”
“No, you idiot.” She swatted his arms away from her shoulders. “It’s not her hair, for God’s sake. It’s—” she shrugged, wrapped her arms around her shoulders “—it’s…her. Chase, I think Holland has the hots for you. I can see it…anybody could see it.”
“She’s a scientist. This is research. I’m the object of that research. If anything, I’m like a lab rat to her.”
“No, you’re not and you know that. It’s more. I see the way she looks at you….it gives me the creeps. That fish doctor has something else in mind besides this conic…conik…whateverthehell it is. I can’t even pronounce it.”
“What…you think she’s in love with me? Ang, come on—“:
“Hey, just go lay down, will you, and watch a vid or play a game or something. Let me think. I need to sort all this out. Plus I have to contact my ‘handlers.’” She went to her purse and pulled out a small object. “—with this gadget thing.”
Chase skulked off and plopped himself in bed, lying there with his hands behind his big bony head. He knew there was no way he was ever going to win this argument.
What’s gotten into that girl? She’s turned into a jealous animal, all of a sudden.
He found it both titillating and exasperating at the same time.
Dr. Josey Holland had spent the last few days massaging config scan data, using multiple interview sessions with Chase and Angie, to fill in gaps in the scan and make a more accurate representation of what Chase—the restored Chase, should look like. The next step was to put the Config Engine to work with this digital model of Chase and see what it could create.
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