Chapter 10
Seome
Kinlok Island, T’kel District
Time: 766.2, Epoch of Tekpotu
The Pillars of Shooki lay at the very top of the world. Surrounded by vast sheets of floating ice, far to the north of the Ponk’el Sea, the shrine sat at the very edge of the polar ice cap itself. A swift but narrow current, the Pomt’or, rushed by some two hundred beats to the south, curving across the bleak Northern Hemisphere until it split apart near the island of Likte.
The Pomt’or was the northern arm of the Pom’tel and it was the only current that directly approached the Pillars. Moreover, according to Kloosee, it was the fastest and safest way to reach Kinlok Island. To get there would still require a tedious trip through the eastern Orkn’tel. The waters there were dense and sluggish, stagnant at the equator, and brimming with foul-tasting and dangerous mah’jeet fields, so thick in patches that no kip’t could get safely through without clogging its jets.
“I don’t want to go through mah’jeet again,” Pakma decided. Nobody did.
But there was no quicker way to the Pillars…and to Kinlok.
The seas east of the T’kel ridge were unknown to Kloosee. Even Pakma could help him little here; Omtorish kelke seldom crossed the ridge and had never sounded these waters completely. There were rumors surfacing out of the kel Ponk’et of renegade kels that inhabited these waters, kels that had split off from one of the great families thousands of mah before, but there was no proof of them. There were even rumors that these outcast kelke were descendants of the seamother herself, though Kloosee tended to discount that.
Kloosee’s plan was to cross the Orkn’tel until they had reached the junction of the Orkn’t and the T’kel, then turn north into these unsounded waters, paralleling the ridge until they felt the first faint tugs of the Pomt’or. That current would take them to the very edge of the ice cap. The Pillars of Shooki, and beyond them Kinlok Island, could be reached from there.
Kloosee was glad that Orkn’tel sounded calm, litor’kel, today. The bottom pulsed fifty or so beats below them, thick with mud and hidden from time to time, by a tricky layer of warmer water. The two kip’ts slid easily through the trackless wastes. Inside the vast swirl of the Great Ork’lat Current, the Orkn’tel was as barren as any sea in the world. The water was a clear blue-green, almost sterile of life but for the ever-present gruel of ertesh, thin and oily in this sea. Few creatures found it appetizing enough to school here.
From time to time, they would pulse a school of eelot below them. They were fearsome-looking beasts, with huge, billowing heads and maws so wide that could have swallowed a kip’t whole if they had had the stomachs to digest it. The eelot’s body was more whip than flesh and covered with nearly invisible prickle hair. It could emit a paralyzing substance from these hairs and Kloosee was careful to give the school a wide berth. From their distance, the eelots looked like rubbery globes but that was deceiving. Fortunately, they preferred the bottom waters.
They traveled for the better part of another day with Kloosee and Chase taking turns in their kip’t at the controls. It was clear to Kloosee that the eekoti male called Chase was becoming more and more used to his new form and appearance; no more raspy breathing, sucking or coughing. Kloosee, and later Pakma over the comm circuit, regaled the humans with stories from Omtorish mythology, stories they had learned from their earliest days as midlings.
Kloosee told them about Kreedake and Pomel, the First Mortals, and how they had come to life in the midst of a terrible storm, azhpuh’te it was called, spun out of the very substance of the water itself, and how they chased each other the world, before settling on the edge of the Om’metee plain near Likte Trench. Kreedake and Pomel made love for six metamah, burying their offspring in caves carved out of the sides of Likte. Thus was born the Omtorish race.
Then the two kip’ts were silent for a while. It was Kloosee who interrupted Chase’s thoughts as the human drove the kip’t along the heading Kloosee had given him.
“Chase, I haven’t given thanks for how you helped us on our last visit to your world. Without you…and your eekoti healer, we would have died.”
Chase shrugged. At least, he thought it was a shrug. You couldn’t tell after em’took. “You mean after you were shot by that cop on the beach? Yeah, I guess Dr. Holland did pretty much save your life. Both of you.”
Kloosee considered that. “On my world, when someone is greatly indebted, the holder of the debt usually offers shame-bonding to repair the relationship. But you’re eekoti…we cannot expect that of you. It would be wrong to expect that.”
“No, no…it’s okay. I want to learn. I’m on your world…I want to follow your ways. What is this shame-bonding?”
Kloosee tried to explain. “This is the act of binding oneself to the will of someone you have hurt, in order to make amends for denying them Ke’shoo and Ke’lee. Kind of an apology…a way of allowing the one in debt some honor.”
Chase concentrated on keeping the kip’t centered in the current. Some tricky cross-currents were trying to push them off-course; Kloosee had warned him that might happen.
“Ke’shoo and Ke’lee…I’ve heard that before. It means love and life.”
“More or less. Fertility and friendship. You are learning—“
“So what would I have to do if we did this shame- bond?”
Kloosee said, “Anything I asked.”
“Wow…that could mean a lot, couldn’t it? Yeah, no question that cop shouldn’t have blasted you like that…but I can kind of see his point, you know? He didn’t know what you were. He was just trying to protect his people…eekoti, I guess you call us, on the beach. I’d say it was an accident. Still, I want to do the right thing. How do we do this shame-bond? What do I do?”
Kloosee spent a few minutes helping Chase adjust his course. He was still unsure of the controls; they weren’t meant for eekoti hands.
“I would like you to consider staying on Seome…forever. Make your life here. Putektu needs you. There’s so much we could do together. You know things I don’t. Here, I know things you don’t.”
Chase was honored. Still, he decided it was best to be cautious. Already, he and Angie had witnessed instances of kel politics. He didn’t want to get sucked into something he really didn’t understand. “This Putektu…this is your em’kel, isn’t it? Like your family?”
“It is, exactly that. You learn well, eekoti Chase.”
“It’s a great honor…what you’re asking me. I mean, to be accepted into your world, with Angie and me both outsiders. Off worlders, I guess. I want to help with your problems…the Sound, these Umans. But that is asking a lot. Me, I’d probably be okay with it…maybe not forever, but I like to see new places, do new things. Angie…” Chase tried a shrug again, then gave up, realizing the gesture would mean nothing to Kloosee…”—Angie, I’m not so sure. She came along, mainly because of me, I think. We’re pretty much in love…someday, I expect we’ll get married, have kids and all that.”
“Excuse me…what is this marriage, you speak of? I search my pods and find nothing—“
Chase laughed. “I’m not sure you have anything like that here. From what I’ve seen and heard, you don’t have husbands and wives.”
“Our lives are in the kel…and the em’kel.”
“And ya’ll sleep around a lot too, I’ve noticed. Not that this is a bad thing—I mean…there is Ke’shoo and Ke’lee, right?”
“We are not attached to one individual for long times, if that’s what you mean. Pakma and I are good friends, we couple as all Seomish do. We enjoy each other’s company. But she’s not of Putektu.”
“Pakma’s not in the same family…em’kel. Is she in a different em’kel?”
Kloosee’s voice became softer, almost tired. “I try to interest her in Putektu…but she doesn’t view exploring the Notwater, discovering the secrets of the Puk’lek, the seamother
, the way we of Putektu do. Pakma has her own em’kel…it’s called Ot’lum Tek’ek. They are devoted to the arts…scentbulbs.”
“Pakma’s an artist? I had no idea.”
“It’s true. Pakma loves creating and enjoying scents. She has an artist’s temperament and she likes to experiment. That’s why, as a midling herself, she once went into the seamother waters to gather their scents in ways nobody had ever done before. She was slightly injured but she used this time of injury to gather scents related not only to the local caves and T’kel but her own scent response to this time of injury. Her bulbs would later become very inspirational and popular as other Seomish fans used them to help them through times of stress. Pakma called these bulbs “Opuh’tee Kek’ot,” which means literally “my whirlpool mind.”
Chase figured he needed to learn a little more about Pakma…there was just so much he needed to learn.
He was about to ask more, but an insistent beeping distracted them. The kip’t sounders were indicating something.
Chase threw up his hands. “Now it’s beeping at me…what do I do? I didn’t touch anything, I swear—“
Kloosee checked some instruments. “Kinlok Island is near. I recognize the echo…let me take over.”
The two of them swapped positions, awkwardly and Kloosee spoke briefly, in a tongue that Chase couldn’t decipher, about something.
“We will slow and ascend near the surface. I told Pakma I would activate the signaler in a few moments.”
“The signaler…is this like a radio or something?”
Kloosee indicated it was a communication device that had been devised to enable crude exchanges with the humans. “Like you, the Umans respond to sound. But they live in the Notwater. Their understanding of sounds, the sounds they use to communicate, we cannot make. Nor can they make sounds we understand. The signaler is a type of echopod, like you have used, for us to signal the Umans and talk with them. It has a great range. We talk from below the water. The Umans talk from the Notwater.”
“Long-range, like. I get it.”
With that Kloosee brought their kip’t to a dead stop. Pakma did likewise. The water had lightened considerably, though it was still turbid and silty. But even through the murk, Chase could just make out the faint outlines of a craggy slope in the distance.
That was Kinlok Island, Kloosee told him.
And the Sound of the wavemaker was deafening here. The pulses of the Time Twister had been growing louder by the day and more uncomfortable. Now, it had reached a point of being particularly uncomfortable, like when the Croc Boys had their woofers and tweeters tuned wrong in a jam session. Chase now understood in a visceral way why the Seomish were so desperate to stop the Twister.
If I can help them, I’ve got to try, he told himself. Angie may not like that. But it’s the right thing to do. For the moment, this place is our home too.
But he wanted to learn more about these Umans.
Kloosee drove their kip’t upward, toward the surface. The waters became rough and turbulent in the coastal zone of the island. Pakma followed behind.
A few beats from the Notwater, with the Sound hammering the water like a fist, Kloosee stopped. He extracted the signaler from a small pouch. It looked just like an echopod, with several horn shaped protrusions on one end. Kloosee pressed the signaler against the sled’s cockpit bubble and activated it.
At first, Chase heard nothing. Kloosee explained that the signaler worked on sound. It emitted pulses of a certain frequency that the Umans had recommended.
“I’m telling the Umans that we wish to meet. I’m telling them we wish to discuss matters of great importance…that we have new kelke to introduce…that the new kelke offer ideas on how to alter their machine so it doesn’t have destructive effects. We’ll see what they say.”
Chase heard nothing. All he could hear, all he could concentrate on, was the wavemaker, the Uman Time Twister, slamming the cold waters with thundering pulse after pulse, rattling his teeth, jarring his whole skeleton.
Jeez, how do they put up with this crap?
The answer wasn’t long in coming. Chase saw the signaler buzz as if it were a trapped bird. Kloosee interpreted the buzzing, with a frown.
“They say they will meet with us. For a short time only. The usual place. It seems there are developments with their enemy. A new threat approaches so the meeting must be short.”
Chase wondered just what threats were gathering. “What’s the usual place?”
Kloosee said, “The boundary…water and Notwater…we have no word for this—“
“Ah, yeah…you mean the beach?”
“That must be it. I’ll add that to our dictionaries.”
So Kloosee drove them to the surface. A gale was blowing topside. Towering waves crashed over them and the kip’t wallowed like a sick whale, rolling in all the froth and foam. Winds screamed. It was daylight…barely, but to Chase it seemed more like twilight. Or maybe dawn. It was hard to tell.
Moments after they had breached, Pakma and Angie did likewise. Kloosee and Pakma had already exchanged ideas on how to go about the meeting.
Kloosee steeled himself for the low pressure of Notwater. He grunted out: “When I open the cockpit, climb out. I’ll close it after you and submerge. Pakma is doing the same. Meet Angie on this ‘beach,’ as you call it.”
Chase was just glad to help. He understood, now in a more personal way than ever, why this was so important.
The bubble hissed and yawned open. Quick as he could, Chase scrambled over the side and nearly drowned in the waves, before finally regaining stability. He pawed and clawed his way through heavy surf and soon found himself barreling face first into a pile of rock and gravel.
It was the beach. He dragged himself up onto the rocks and saw a shape in the mist to his left, doing the same thing. That’s got to be Angie. He went to her, still momentarily shocked at her lizard-like appearance. They both looked like mutant frogs from a sci-fi flick, grown large and menacing. But that didn’t matter know.
Standing up a bit unsteadily in the gale, Chase spied shapes moving on a nearby ridge. He assumed this was the Uman party. There were three.
He trudged off, Angie in tow, and stopped at the base of the ridge. All three Umans had weapons trained on them. Suppressors, Kloosee had told him. Paralyzing weapons. He stopped and held out his hand, not sure exactly what to say, or how it would sound.
“Hey…uh, we’re humans! We need to talk! Can you hear me? Can you understand me?”
Nobody had informed the Umans that the Seomish representatives would be humans that had undergone the em’took. One Uman, the one in the middle, took a few steps forward. The others trained their weapons.
A guttural voice rang out, barely audible over the roar of the wind.
“Stay where you are! Come no closer!”
Chase heard the words, muffled but distinguishable and nearly cried out. God Almighty… that’s English! Accented, with some odd phrases, but it was English! He started forward but in that moment, a Uman opened fire with his suppressor.
The jolt knocked Chase flat on his back. For what seemed like hours—time had congealed to a crawl—he couldn’t feel or hear anything. He couldn’t hear anything. Nothing would move. He could breathe, more or less. But his legs and arms…nothing.
Then a face appeared, followed by another.
The first was Angie. A frog’s face, but somehow, he knew it was her.
“Chase! Chase, are you all right…are you hurt?” She squatted down on her haunches and bent to nuzzle him, clucking over him. Hovering behind her shoulders, the Uman in the middle peered down.
His face was formed of hard cheek planes, with a bit of a double chin. Even some dimples, looking almost comical in a frame of gray-white buzzcut hair with sandy gray sideburns.
“I told him not to come up---here, wave this under his nose.” The Uman handed Angie
a small perforated ball. She did as instructed, waving the ball back and forth under Chase’s nose and face.
Presently, feeling returned. Slowly, then more feeling, like a spreading stain, until after what seemed like days, Chase found he could sit up. His whole body tingled. His hand and feet shook uncontrollably.
Unsteadily, leaning on Angie, and now with help from the other Umans, Chase got to his feet. They led him to small cut in the ridge, more or less protected from the winds, and there he sat down on gravelly ground again, trying to clear his head. He noticed just how cold the wind was, ice-flecked and biting, and was glad for the tough hide the em’took had given him.
The Umans all gathered around Angie and Chase.
“The message said you were Uman,” said the one who had first come down from the hill. “You don’t look like anything I ever saw in Uman space. What are you…something from Hapsh’m? Majoris, maybe? Acth:On’e…you ever see anything like these two?”
The tallest Uman had a blade-shaped head. Two eyes, but they were further apart than the first Uman.
“I haven’t, Ultrarch-Major. Not in many terr…maybe they’re Coethi spies…I could believe that.”
Chase held up a hand. His own webbed hand startled him for a second. “No, no…we’re humans, just like you. Earth. We came here with friends, Kloosee and Pakma. The Farpool brought us.”
The Ultrarch-Major cocked his hand. “You mean that vortex these buggers keep talking about…that’s just somebody’s wet dream. A fairy tale.”
“No, no, it’s true. We came from Earth. Our Earth. Scotland Beach, Florida…it’s just a little north of Tampa…Clearwater…got great beaches, believe me.”
The Ultrarch-Major rubbed his chin, looked at his compatriots. “Earth? Urth? The motherworld…that’s not possible. It’s quarantined. Too dangerous now…all those timestreams converging….the Corps had to isolate them. The Coethi stick their grubby little snouts in one of these main timestreams, we’re finished. No more Urth. Corps had to cut them off, completely. Believe me, it wasn’t easy. Controversial, too. But it was the right thing to do…somehow, the brass blundered into a decent tactical decision for once. What do you want to talk about…I haven’t got all day.”
Chase decided he would stand up, no matter how hard it was. Angie helped him. The suppressor had weakened everything in his body and he felt like jelly. He leaned against her and felt nauseated and dizzy, but he was determined. He stuck out a webbed hand, assuming a handshake would be understood.
“I’m Chase…Chase Meyer. This is Angie Gilliam.”
The Ultrarch-Major recoiled for a moment, then reached out just enough to rub fingers with Chase’s webbed, oily hand. He flinched, but he seemed to understand the gesture as a friendly one.
At least, that hadn’t changed.
“Ultrarch-Major Monthan Dringoth, First Time Displacement Battery. These are my officers: Captain Acth:On’e and Lieutenant Golich. Come on…we’ve got Coethi crashers and cruisers nearby, closing fast on this base… let’s hurry this up.”
“Right. Well, see, my friends…Kloosee and Pakma, they and all the Seomish are being hurt by this sound your weapon, your machine makes. It’s destroying their world. It’s wrecking everything down there—“he pointed to the ocean. “Everything in the oceans, all their cities, their economies, their families. I came...we came…to ask, beg you to shut it down. Turn it off.”
Dringoth looked puzzled. “First you tell me you came from Urth through one of those blasted vortexes…that’s crazy in itself. Then you tell me there are cities and families and whatever down there underwater. That’s crap. The creatures here are just like my pet wing-walker…smart, yes, but just animals. Pets. Beasts. There aren’t any cities down there…what are you, cracked? Fall into one of those whirlpools, did you?”
Acth:On’e laughed out loud, spitting and slobbering as he did so. When he breathed, you could hear a faint hiss. “It’s a trick, Ultrarch-Major. They’ve taught these buggers tricks, like you teach your pets to speak, fetch things, lie down. Just a trick.”
“We’re not pets!” Chase insisted. “Hey, man, I’m as human as you. I look like a frog ‘cause we went through a procedure…the Seomish wanted us to be able to survive here as they do. We breathe Notw…I mean, air. Just like you.”
“They are breathing air,” said the Lieutenant Golich. “I’ll give him that.”
Dringoth glared at Chase. “What did you call these creatures?”
“Uh…Seomish? This world is Seome.”
Dringoth snorted. “We call this hellhole Storm. In fact, one of your ‘friends’ damaged our Time Twister several terr ago and we had to abandon the place. But Timejump Command said we had to come back and patch the thing up.” Dringoth peered skyward for a moment, shielding his face from the stinging sleet. “Don’t know how long this sun’ll hold up, though. She’s already taken more than a few starballs. We came back because we were ordered too…took a minor miracle to get the Twister up and running again. Now, a Coethi fleet is bearing down on us as we speak, popping in and out of different timestreams…we can barely track the bastards. No way are we shutting the Twister down now. That’s suicide, even for your friends.”
Chase tried to follow Dringoth’s argument but it was hopeless. “What is this Twister…is it a weapon?”
Dringoth had trouble hearing them. The wind screamed across the beach, flinging sleet and salt spray in their faces. It was Golich who suggested they retreat to the hut on the ridge. The hut turned out to be filled with equipment, tracking gear for the Time Twister.
“Sure it’s a weapon,” the Ultrarch-Major replied. He fixed himself a mug of something steaming hot to sip. “The Twister is what we use to keep Coethi from entering this sector of the Halo…Halo-Alpha. Keeps ‘em from bollixing up timestreams from here to Sturdivant and back. That’s our mission. You say you’re both Uman?” Dringoth squinted, twiddled with a tuft of moustache, looked Chase up and down. “You don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen.”
“Maybe something from Gibbons’ Grotto,” Golich suggested. “The Hollows and all that.”
Chase assured the Major that he and Angie were quite human. “We look like this because we went through a procedure-I can’t pronounce it—to help us adapt to living here, in the sea. I’m from Florida. Earth.”
“Me too,” Angie chimed in. She wondered if they had somehow fallen into a sci-fi flick. “Greetings from Earth.”
“Urth.” Dringoth pronounced it slightly different. He had a faraway look on his face, pulled himself up a chair from underneath a small control station, turned it around and sat in it backward. “Hmmm. Never been there. Like I said, it was quarantined. Timejump had to shut down all timestreams to keep Coethi from infecting the Heartland.”
“So what does this Time Twister do?” Chase asked. He examined some of the instruments and controls, until Acth:On’e intervened and politely shoved him away.
Dringoth shrugged. “Got a singularity engine at the core. It reaches out several parsecs from here and flings anything it finds out of local space-time. Sends it off to who knows where…other side of the galaxy. Maybe other side of the Universe. We don’t understand it ourselves. Timejump just gave us the basics. First Time Displacement Battery just operates and maintains the thing.” He patted a rack of gear. “This baby keeps Halo space clean, free of Coethi and other nasties.” His face darkened. “As long as you people stop trying to damage it, that is. We’re having to fight off the Coethi and the local life too. It’s getting old.”
“I’ve made skimmer trips out to Big Mama myself, plenty of times,” Golich jumped in. “I’ve seen all those whirlpools. Twister does that. Leakage effects. We used to enjoy herding fish and whatnot into the vortexes and watch ‘em being accelerated out of space time…lots of fun but it got old. Anything to pass the time on this hellhole. Never seen this Farpool you sp
eak of, though.”
Acth:On’e was openly skeptical. “It’s pretty hard to believe one of these whirlpools could become a wormhole…I guess it’s possible. But then I’m no scientist.”
“Your weapon is destroying this world,” Angie said. “The sound, the whirlpools—“
“—the vibrations and waves,” Chase added. “The Seomish brought us here to talk to you. You’ve got to turn off the Time Twister…they actually call it the wavemaker. It’s making rubble out of their cities—people are dying….”
Dringoth scoffed. “I don’t believe any of it. Even if there were actual cities and whole civilizations under the sea here, it wouldn’t matter. We have a mission and we have our orders. A Coethi fleet’s been sighted in Halo space the last few days and is probably bearing down on us right now. They know we’re here. They may have even more effective starballs. If the whiz kids at T2—Timejump Intelligence—are even close to being right, the sun up there—Sigma Albeth B-- is doomed. So is this world, unless we can keep yanking Coethi ships into forever with the Twister.” Dringoth’s hard blue eyes bore in on Chase and Angie. “So you see: if I really do what you want, you’re dead. We’re all dead. And Coethi occupies Halo Alpha and Uman settlements start going poof. We’re planning on a better outcome.”
Angie had an idea. “Maybe you could work with the Seomish…re-design your Twister. Re-locate it somewhere else. Aren’t there other worlds around this sun?”
Golich gave an exhausted sigh, like he was explaining this for the millionth time. “Strategy says the Twister stays here on Storm. It’s preposterous. You want reasons, I’ll give you reasons. How about strategic location in the Halo? Storm’s right there. How about the stability and cooling properties of the oceans here? Perfect for the Twister. How about concealment possibilities…when we rebuilt the Twister, we made it look more like some of the islands around here.”
“Except the Coethi already know we’re back here on Storm,” Acth:On’e complained. “They’re not that stupid…they keep losing crashers and time ships in this sector…they’ll put two and two together. “
Dringoth waved them all quiet. “It’s all academic anyway. The Twister’s all that stands between Uman bases in this sector and Coethi overrunning everything. Military necessity dictates the Twister remain operational and located where it is. I don’t like it any more than you do. Believe me, nothing would please me more than to abandon this sewer of a planet and get out of here. We did that once. But Timejump sent us back…pretty much for the reasons Mr. Golich just outlined. I’m sorry…we can’t do what you want.”
Nothing Chase or Angie could say would change Dringoth’s mind. For Chase, this was almost as bad as being stuck in a cave with Stokey Shivers. He wanted to learn more about the Twister but the Umans were cautious about details. Even then, an idea was forming in the back of his mind. Sabotage. He figured Kloosee and Pakma’s people had tried that. But it was like a dog trying to figure out how to get a box of treats down from the top shelf of the pantry. In other words, don’t count on it.
Dejected, Chase told Angie they should return to the kip’ts. “We should talk with our friends,” he said.
Dringoth stood up. “We’re not staying here a second longer than we have to. The signaler said these fish-people wanted to meet me. Now, we’ve met. I’m taking my staff back to the compound.”
Golich opened the door and the winds rocked Chase as he stepped out into the gale. Sleet stung his face and Angie hunched over, using him as a shield. They waddled down the slope of the ridge to the beach, picked their way among the rocks and salt pools and dove headfirst into the water. It was cold, thick was ice, but at least it was calmer.
Kloosee sounded their approach and swam over, lightly bumping into Chase’s shoulder. He led Angie back to Pakma’s kip’t and then accompanied Chase to theirs.
With the cockpit down and sealed, Chase explained what had happened.
“We failed completely, Kloos. They wouldn’t even listen. I wanted to show them something of what the Twister’s doing, but they weren’t even interested. They’re just soldiers. They’ve got a mission and they’ve got orders and that’s that.” Chase sucked on an overripe gisu Kloosee had given him, swirling the tart juice in his mouth. It tasted bitter and he put it down. “I guess we failed. What do we do now?”
Kloosee thought. “For now, eat and rest. I’ll get us away from Kinlok, put us on the other side of the island, so we can get away from the Sound. That pounding makes my head hurt.”
“Then what? Do you have any ideas?”
Kloosee was grim. “Not at the moment. We’ll have to return to Omsh’pont. Meet with Longsee, maybe others. They may have ideas.”
“We can’t just give up,” Chase said. He wasn’t even aware of the fact he had said we. But Kloosee smiled faintly at the word. Chase Meyer, eekoti, was becoming more and more Seomish every day.
He wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.
Kloosee started up the jets, communicated briefly with Pakma on a proposed course away from Kinlok, and turned them toward deeper seas, heading south away from the wavemaker, away from the Farpool. Away from their best chance to stop the wavemaker from destroying everything.
It was going to be a long ride back. Everyone was depressed and gloomy, even fatalistic about what the future would now bring.
The Farpool Page 11
