Chapter 13
Seome
Ponk’t, kel: Ponk’et
Time: 766.6, Epoch of Tekpotu
The day of departure finally came. The Metah, Lektereenah kim, arose in her well-guarded chambers and immediately pulsed the excitement of the city, which had built steadily to a barely contained frenzy by the time the day had come. The shield had been removed from its pins alongside one seamount and laid out across the seafloor outside the city the day before and Kipto and Longsee had spent the night checking out the kip’ts and the attachments of the netting. By the time Lektereenah arrived with her official entourage, the pilots were already on the scene and a sizeable audience had assembled, including some kelke who had just arrived from the south, from Eep’kostic waters, having learned of the shield and the project from repeaters in their own seas.
Lifting the shield away from the floor was a spectacular sight. Even in the darkened waters outside the cavern city of Ponk’et, it was an awesome spectacle, a vast rippling wing taking flight. Once they were underway, it was clear there would be continuing problems with keeping the thing steady; the Ponkti had woven the tchinting so closely that it caught every stray current, great or small, and billowed out, making Kloosee’s job as a lead pilot one of frustration and reflexes. Anticipating what the shield would do next as it swelled and flapped required an intense concentration on the state of the water and close coordination among the kip’ts.
Kloosee worked the center cable in one kip’t; he was accompanied by another kip’t nearby, a Ponkti sled piloted by Yaktu and Ocynth. Together, the two kip’ts formed the leading element of the expedition.
Somehow they managed to keep the shield under control.
With the Metah’s blessing and an endless parade of speeches and toasts, the expedition finally got underway. Chase and Angie rode with Kloosee in one lead kip’t. Longsee was directly behind, with a Ponkti driver in another.
They had only traveled fifty beats or so, on what would be a three-day journey, when Angie announced to everybody onboard she wanted to go home.
Chase was really put off by her timing. “Angie, now’s not the time. We’ve got this shield to put up. We have to help out…that’s why we came.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “We’re already helped out…isn’t that so, Kloos?”
Kloosee acknowledged. “You have helped, that is true. But the great problem remains…the wavemaker, the sound, what the Umans are doing to our world. We need all the help we can get.”
“But what if the Umans object to this shield…what if it interferes with their big weapon?”
Kloosee had a grim look…at least, Angie thought that’s what it was. With Seomish, they always looked like they had a bemused grin. You have to pulse inside to see what they were really thinking. And Angie didn’t know how to do that….she didn’t even want to do that.
“Then we will have to take matters further…possibly some kind of assault on their base. The Umans have smaller weapons that paralyze our people…we’ll have to defend against that somehow…no, the shield is best.”
Angie wasn’t going to be put off. “Kloos, isn’t the Farpool nearby…near the Uman island?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “Perhaps twenty beats…it’s one of many opuh’te…what you call whirlpools.”
They were all crammed into the kip’t cockpit, Kloosee piloting, Chase in the middle, Angie in the rear.
She had been giving this a lot of thought. She wasn’t going to be dissuaded now. “I want to go back through the Farpool. After your shield is put up, take me to the Farpool. I want to go home.”
For a moment, there was dead silence inside. Only the rush of water could be heard as Kloosee drove them north by northwest, riding the great Pom’tel Current to the edge of the ice pack.
Finally, Chase said, “Angie, we need to talk about this—“
“What’s there to talk about, Chase? We came here to help Kloosee and Pakma. I think we’re done here. We’ve done all we can do. I want to go home.”
Kloosee let the eekoti argue for awhile. They argue like we do, he thought. He could pulse what was inside them. Chase annoyed. Angie…now there was a mass of bubbles, fear, anger, anxiety, nerves, undercurrents of resignation and panic there too.
“Angie, look at us…we look like lizards. The Omtorish will have to un-do all the modifications…that’s not so easy, is it, Kloos?”
Kloosee admitted that was true. “Unless the em’took can be reversed, the Farpool won’t change you back. You’ll be returning to your homeworld as you are…a creature of the seas. Chase is right.”
You didn’t need to pulse to hear the rising tone of panic in Angie’s voice. “But you can do that, can’t you, Kloosee? You can convert me back…to what I was…what we were?”
Kloosee decided to answer that carefully. He felt the vibration of waterflow in the control handles of the kip’t. They were in the very midst of the current, sweeping north toward Kinlok Island. A squadron of kip’ts followed behind and the shield itself was behaving better, carried on specially-made struts between several kip’ts. It flapped and undulated in the current but didn’t tear or come loose. One more day, maybe more….
“What you ask, Angie, has never been done before.”
“Never been—“ Angie spluttered. “What exactly do you mean, Kloos…I thought this em’took was a common procedure, like a gall bladder or something.”
“No, you and Chase are the first…we’ve done experiments. Small animals, like pal’penk calves…that sort of—“
“What! We’re the first…do you mean to say Chase and me are like lab rats? Like experiments?”
Kloosee had to force himself to look away from all her fluttery bubbles and echoes. “The em’took is well understood. We’ve done it many times…just not in reverse. That’s never been done.”
For a moment he thought eekoti Angie was going to explode. Whirlpools and vortexes were calmer.
Then: “I don’t care. I don’t care. I want to go home. When your shield is up, take me to the Farpool. I’ll take my chances there.” She tried to glare at Chase but there wasn’t enough room in the sled to turn around and all she saw was the back of his neck…his scaly, crusty, slimy neck.
“Angie, we really need to talk about this.”
But such a talk would not come now. Chase found that no matter what he said or did, Angie wouldn’t change her mind. He sensed that their relationship had changed, in some important, even fundamental way. Maybe it was Tulcheah and Shoneeohnay. Maybe she was jealous…there were times when Angie could be really bitchy and she even admitted that, in her quieter moments. Chase figured what she was asking was suicide. That made him sad, even depressed. Kloosee and Pakma both had implied that ‘going back,’ going back through the em’took would be difficult. Nothing was impossible but it was risky.
Chase didn’t want to turn around. He didn’t want to look into Angie’s eyes; he could feel them cutting into his back like daggers as it was. He was sorry for what had happened to their relationship…maybe it had been his fault. They had even talked of marriage once… but now—
But Chase wanted to see the shield installation through and he knew Kloosee needed him. The Metah had approved them being part of the expedition.
In some way he couldn’t quite verbalize, Chase felt he belonged here. He belonged on Seome. No, he wasn’t Seomish. He would never be Seomish. He was from Earth…eekoti, Kloosee called them. But he wasn’t quite that either.
He and Angie were hybrids now, almost mutants… caught between worlds. Not Seomish, not human. Something in between. Angie was having a hard time with that. Chase was more focused on the task at hand.
“You always live for the moment, don’t you?” she had once asked of him, one night when they were parking and necking in the lot behind the Citrus Grove Shopping Center, behind the Piggly Wiggly. “No thought for the future…for what you migh
t want to be. What you might want to do ten years from now. Doesn’t that bother you at all, Chase?”
“No,” he had told her. “It doesn’t bother me ‘cause I like to be surprised by each day. Every day, a different adventure, a different mystery, something new and unexpected.”
“Chase, life isn’t just one adventure after another…it can’t be. It’s responsibility. It’s growing up. Getting a job. Raising a family. Going to church.”
But life, on Seome, was an adventure. And then, in that moment, Chase knew for sure that he would not be following Angie back through the Farpool…at least, not right away.
And that brought something like a tear to his eye. Even after the em’took, tears were still possible.
He was glad Angie couldn’t see them.
Kloosee had piloted the convoy of kip’ts for two days when the first direct pulses of the wavemaker and Kinlok Island came back, jumbled, mixed with the current and the scores of whirlpools that the wavemaker always spawned, but there nonetheless, higher pitched than the death beat of the Sound itself, but unmistakable. He planed upward, ascending toward the first faint tendrils of light of the Notwater and tried to sound ahead, sounding to discern their position and their rate of approach.
By the time they had risen some twenty beats, the shifting bottom currents had given way to a steady, brisk flow of warmer water from the surface—the first effects of the wavemaker. Here, the kip’t pilots carrying the shield found that the shield wanted to sag badly and in order to avoid tearing it, Kloosee directed that the kip’ts arrange themselves so as to approach the huge machine edge on. This was harder than he expected for the strong currents made maneuvering tricky—any movements were enormously magnified by it—and only the most cautious adjustments could be made.
After some discussion, they adopted a strategy that had Kloosee and Habloo carrying the high side of the shield, with Ocynth and Yaktu at the rear. Kloosee slacked off a bit and let the center of the shield drop down, to even out the top, then cut back the kip’t jets to let Habloo do most of the lifting. The dangerous oscillations began to dampen out once they had settled into this attitude.
Kipkeeor was live between them and Kloosee listened to some of the comments on the communication channel, translating occasionally for Chase and Angie.
“I hope this kip’t is well sealed. Something’s crinkling behind me.” That was Habloo; an accomplished pilot, he’d never been anywhere near the surface.
Another voice came: “Throttle up a bit, Habloo. You’re dropping behind.”
“Kloosee, I’ve got it on my sounder,” Habloo said. There were a few muttered exclamations, then “Kah, ket’alpe. It’s a huge beast, isn’t it?”
“And all metal,” said Kloosee, recalling his own pulses.
“It’s deafening,” said Ocynth. “A constant explosion.”
“Whirlpools around the edges,” Kloosee explained. He had to find a new comm channel to be heard over the thumping. “Don’t get too close to those.”
“Imagine what the sound would be like in the Ponk’el Sea.”
“You’re right about that,” said the Ponkti pilot Ocynth. “Ponk’el is so cold and dense that it would be magnified many times. How have you stood it for so long?”
“Ponkti aren’t the only ones with courage.”
“Look!” cried Habloo. “Look above!”
The waters had lightened considerably, from a dark brown to a pallid gray-green and the surface was now visible as a hazy film above them. A large school of wing-walkers skittered across their view, thousands of silvery darts slicing first one way, then another. The buffeting of the wavemaker had picked up as well and the turbulence rocked the fleet of kip’ts as they approached.
“Incredible,” someone breathed.
“Beautiful,” whispered Chase. “In its own way. Now I see what you meant, Kloosee. I was too scared to appreciate this when we ran into that seamother herd. Almost like a vision. And the light—“
“Is the Farpool nearby?” asked Angie.
“It is. My first impression, too,” Kloosee replied. Their kip’t shuddered for a moment, as another wave washed through the formation; he steadied the craft with a careful but firm hand. “Notice there aren’t any luminescent creatures around. That was the theory, that the light of day came from swarms of organisms at the surface and when they slept, night came.”
“Haven’t you heard about suns and stars?” Chase asked.
“Some still believe the light comes from creatures in the Notwater,” Kloosee admitted.
The school of wing-walkers shot up out of the water in unison right in front of them and then re-entered in a cloud of bubbles. Several times they did this, each time in perfect formation, and when they splashed back into the water, it was like a giant hand plunging into the sea.
“Majestic,” came Yaktu’s voice. “I thought I had pulsed everything.”
They were within fifty beats of the surface now and moving inexorably toward the wavemaker. The curvature of its vast surface was becoming apparent from the sounder echoes. Swift cross-currents brushed them and the shield reacted by bunching up its slack parts like a pleated hide. Kloosee had them stop the ascent and start cruising in a wide circle toward the machine. They pounded through several fronts of waves.
Conversation fell off as the thumping grew stronger and became a reverberating boom. They entered a realm of bubbles, of cascading froth and lost sight of each other. Kloosee had planned an approach from the side of the Shookengkloo Trench, to avoid being sucked into the whirlpools before they could emplace the shield. He hoped to come upon the wavemaker from the side, almost at the surface, before descending again to get into position. In that way, they would expose themselves to the hazardous whirlpools…and Uman suppressor fire…for the briefest period of time.
For the truth was, no one knew how the Umans, the Tailless People of the Notwater, would react.
Tense moments crawled by, with the thunder broken only by an occasional burst of static from kipkeeor. The sounders had become unreliable as they neared the surface and leveled out—the water was too turbulent for consistent pulses. Kloosee waited for what felt like an eternity, while the noise grew ever more rattling, strengthening, gaining with each passing second, as if it were a living thing, a beast clawing, taking over, filling every space of the world, even taking hold of the mind and the heart and magnifying each tremble across a thousand beats of sea. He was waiting for a feeling, a notion that the wavemaker was just ahead, and when that feeling came, they would drop quickly and dart into the midst of the whirlpools, ready to throttle the machine for good.
“There it is!” someone cried.
And, sure enough, through a curtain of white foam, the bare face of the bowl loomed, its hard gray outlines softened by wave after wave of bubbles. Beyond and below, the whirlpools whirled madly, including the Farpool somewhere out there, black tubes twinkling with faint flashes of red and blue light. “Gateways to chaos,” Kloosee mumbled to himself. Curious, he trained a sounder on the region. No echo at all. Somehow, the whirlpools or whatever they were, absorbed every pulse. Yet they sparkled like the nightmarish beasts of the deepest sea, hypnotic and deadly.
Kloosee heard murmurs of awe from Chase and Angie but tore his attention from the whirlpools long enough to notice that the platform seemed bigger than on their first visit. Riding lower in the water, as if it had gained weight. An appalling thought occurred to him: was it possible the Tailless People had the power to consume all the water of the ocean? Longsee himself had long theorized about the machine, though the Tailless insisted it was a defensive weapon. No, of course not, he told himself. Nothing could consume the ocean. That was the kind of thought you had after eating too much gisu. It was absurd. The world was the world. Shoo’kel could not be flaunted, not even by the Tailless. The currents were unchanging.
It was the sound, it had to be. Now it was affecting his thi
nking. He had noticed it before, the last time they had approached the wavemaker. Odd little specks of thought, transient flashes that made no sense. The whirlpools distorted his ideas of time and space but he could fight that. Otherwise, the wavemaker had changed little; there was the same sense of massive bulk, of brutal forces at work, heedless, devastating and relentless.
“Let’s go down,” Kloosee told the others.
They eased the shield through a bank of turbulence, giving it enough slack to keep it from tearing. As they descended again, Kloosee kept a close watch on the guide cables connecting him to the shield. He didn’t want the kip’t to become entangled.
They found a level about thirty beats below the lowest of the whirlpools, where the kip’ts could hover in control. The shield was stretched to smooth out any folds. Only by running the jets at full power and keeping a good angle on their bow planes could they maintain their position in the powerful suction field.
Kloosee detached his own craft from the guide cable and maneuvered around the edges of the shield, checking the adhesive pads by which he planned to attach the sides to the wavemaker. If all went well, the force of the suction would help keep the netting in place and if the pads held, the machine would be crippled.
Everything seemed in order. Kloosee talked by hand signal with each pilot, making sure they knew what to do. Timing was critical; each pilot had to hold his end of the shield in place long enough for Kloosee to get around and press the pad down. Any slippage and the whole shield might be lost, dragged into one of the whirlpools and them with it. Kloosee had refused to describe the experience to any of them; only Longsee knew the story and he didn’t fully believe all of it. That was just as well. If any of them really knew what the whirlpools could do, Longsee might never have convinced them to risk the attempt.
Kloosee gave the order to rise. He stationed himself beneath the shield, ready to move when first contact came. Even through the tchin’ting mesh, he could feel the suction pulling them upward and he knew that each pilot must be running his jets hard by now, just trying to keep the whole thing stable. Seeing the shield stretched by the suction for the first time, he wondered if the mesh would hold. The Ponkti had been adamant about doing the knitting in secret. He had no way of knowing if their methods, or even their motives, were sufficient.
The strain of the mission was telling on him and Kloosee winced as a sharp pain stabbed in his side. A faint taste of mah’jeet water startled him. There weren’t any of the creatures around that he could pulse; they couldn’t have survived among the whirlpools, so close to the wavemaker, anyway. Still, he intended to check the circulator when they got back to Omsh’pont. There did seem to be an oily taste to the water in the cockpit, though Chase and Angie had said nothing.
From time to time, Kloosee would slip out underneath the shield, checking the accuracy of their approach. Only minor corrections were needed. There wasn’t much chance they would stray from their course anyway—the whirlpools would make sure of that.
Their rate of ascent picked up steadily—they couldn’t be more than ten beats below the first of the whirlpools. This was the trickiest part. Somehow, they had to maneuver the shield past the vortexes, without losing anyone, and put the corners in exactly the right spot, so that the netting would hang suspended beneath the wavemaker, stopping the intake of water and deadening the sound.
It was all incredibly risky, with no end of things that could go wrong, but it had to be done. Kloosee held his breath, his mind throbbing from the annoyingly acid water filling the kip’t, and gripped the controls tightly.
They raced on toward the wavemaker.
With the shield between his own kip’t and the wavemaker, he was able to slow his ascent more successfully than the others, but even so, his maneuvering power was limited. And he could tell they were almost there by the taut bulge of the shield above him. He held his planes down as far as they could go and nudged the rudder. The move shot him out well to the side and nearly into the midst of a spinning whirlpool, just in time to see the impact.
It all happened so fast that it was only later that he could capture the memory of the moment. He had a clear view of one kip’t, Habloo’s as it turned out, when it momentarily disappeared into one of the cavities. He was horrified at the sight.
In a fraction of an eye blink, he saw Habloo’s kip’t disintegrate as it passed through the whirlpool. First the bow and the sounder dishes. Then the bubble of the cockpit and Habloo himself. Finally, the main body of the kip’t—the rudders, jets, everything. Sucked into the void, spun into a burst of phosphorescence…then nothing. A few sparkles followed, revealing in silhouette the faint outlines of what had entered the whirlpool, then those too faded.
The shield on Habloo’s side started to sag and buckle, but before he could even react, Kloosee saw Habloo re-emerge from another whirlpool a few beats beyond. It was the same process, except in reverse. First, nothing. Then, a whorl of light, coalescing into solid matter. The prow of the kip’t. Then the cockpit, the rudders, the jets. Habloo himself. All of it sliding out of the whirlpool as if from behind a veil.
The instant he was free, Kloosee screamed into kipkeeor, “Habloo! What happened? Are you all right?”
His reply was nearly drowned out by the Sound, but Habloo seemed to ask, “What are we doing back here again? We put the shield up yesterday.”
Kloosee had no time to puzzle out the question. Habloo was safe, or seemed to be. Meanwhile the shield was rapidly drifting askew in the suction field. In another minute—
“Habloo!” he yelled, to get the pilot’s attention. When he had, he motioned furiously for him to grab the edge of the shield before it dragged them all into the whirlpool. Confused, Habloo hesitated. He’s stunned from the experience. Kloosee jetted over, skirting the fringes of a whirlpool that lashed out at him, and bumped Habloo’s kip’t with his own. The impact worked. Habloo shook himself and stared out in a daze at Kloosee. After a few seconds of gesturing, Kloosee made him understand the problem.
He watched as Habloo shot over to the falling shield and scooped up one edge with his kip’t’s claws. He rammed his side of the shield up against the wavemaker, pinning it against the metal. Yaktu and Ocynth followed and the shield was soon draped under the bowl, billowing out as it settled.
Kloosee hesitated only a moment, then closed his throttle and went to work.
He had the most trouble with Habloo’s end. Habloo hadn’t caught enough of the netting to get all of his pad onto the metal—half of it had torn away when he had snagged it and the tchinting was unraveling around the pad. Kloosee swore at the Ponkti weavers. Stubborn ‘penks. What did they really know about weaving tchinting anyway? He did what he could and, after the pad was pressed firmly down, he prayed it would hold. He couldn’t spend any more time with this corner; there was no telling how long the others could hold their ends.
In turn, he came to Ocynth and Yaktu, helping each secure the adhesive pads and pressing them firmly against the netting, which seemed to hold.
There was still one more corner to go, but Kloosee had no choice. He signaled his intentions to Yaktu, who acknowledged, and then moved in perilously close to a slender, fluctuating whirlpool spiraling off the wavemaker. This one whipped about like an angry serpent and Kloosee slid gingerly around it.
He got the final corner secured in no time and as he turned the kip’t about, he felt faint and dizzy, but happy. The wavemaker groaned a bit, then the whine died down to a low drone. Tchinting absorbed the sound well. If only the shield would last.
They had done it. They had beaten the sound and overcome the technology of the Tailless. There was a comforting hush in the waters around them, despite the murmur of the machine. And before another minute had passed, the murmur was overwhelmed by a steadily rising chorus of clicks and whistles: the sea’s children coming home again. Kloosee drank deeply of the racket and let the fatigue of the las
t few days wash over him.
“Boy, the silence is deafening,” Chase said at last. “That shield makes quite a difference.”
“It’s a great day for all of us,” Kloosee admitted. He signaled the other kip’ts to rendezvous at a previously agreed upon point, a stubby seamount ten beats south. Longsee wanted to go over final details of the installation and set up an inspection schedule. Kloosee turned the kip’t about and headed for the site.
And Angie wondered just how close they really had been to the Farpool.
After Longsee’s meeting, the expedition crews celebrated. They dined on gisu and tong’pod, ertleg and clams. Stories were told, wild stories and lies, followed by drinks and much laughter, then even bigger lies. Couples paired off and mated in the shadows of the seamount.
And overhead, the small craft of the Tailless People sped back and forth at the surface, no doubt investigating, checking, trying to figure out what had happened to their machine.
Longsee pulsed the skimmers warily. Over a leg of tillet, he said, “It won’t be long before they come down here. They’ll figure out what happened.”
Ocynth, the Ponkti pilot, offered to form a guard force. “I’ve got experience as a prodsman…I can fight the bastards.”
“Sure,” said Habloo, “you can fight their suppressors with your little prods…that would be like me trying to bite a seamother. We need a better plan.”
That’s when it was decided that Kloosee would make a reconnaissance run around the perimeter of the wavemaker.
“See if the attachments are holding,” Longsee advised him. “I don’t want to risk too many of us when the Tailless are buzzing about like that. It’s too dangerous. Take the eekoti with you; they could be useful if you encounter a Uman. See what they are doing. And see if the shield will hold. I don’t want to head back to Omsh’pont—“ he made a slight nod to Ocynth and the other Ponkti, “or to Ponk’et if the shield is damaged or in danger of failing. We have to be sure—“
So Kloosee set out in his kip’t alone, along with Chase and Angie. They covered the ten beats to the edge of the wavemaker in good time, noting just how much reduced the sound was now, and how many of the whirlpools had vanished too.
“Maybe the Umans turned their machine down,” Angie suggested. “I don’t hear that much now…just clicks and whistles.”
“That’s normal life, returning to the area,” Kloosee told them.
They cruised a few beats below the vast bowl of the wavemaker, noting how the shield stayed taut in most places, though a few ripples concerned Kloosee, especially at one corner.
“I should check that,” he decided. He brought the kip’t to a halt, nosing its bow into a small crevice at the peak of a low seamount, just below one edge of the shield. A small thatch of white, worm-like plants undulated in the swift crosscurrents. Above them, the water was light green and turbulent, waves and froth crashing back and forth through the gap between the machine and the seamount.
“Stay inside,” Kloosee told them. “I’ll only be a moment. I want to see why those ripples are growing…we may have an edge or a corner that’s come loose.” He lifted the cockpit and scooted out. He left the bubble open as he disappeared upward.
“Chase, how far away is the Farpool?” Angie’s question didn’t so much surprise him as annoy him.
“I don’t really know. And don’t get any ideas. Kloosee said stay here. We don’t know how the Umans will react. They could start shooting at us any time.”
Angie clucked. “You have an overactive imagination…I’m getting out—“
“Angie…don’t—“
But he couldn’t stop her and before he knew it, Angie Gilliam had slipped out of the kip’t cockpit and kicked off into the distance. Cursing and swearing, Chase lunged out himself and tried to follow her.
He swam and kicked and pulled for a few minutes, tried pulsing to no avail—the wavemaker and the remaining whirlpools made that impossible—but got nothing.
That girl…what on Earth…or Seome…was she thinking? He knew Angie was depressed, a bit upset, homesick and anxious about what they were doing here. We just need to talk, the two of us, heart to heart. Maybe coming through the Farpool with Kloosee and Pakma wasn’t such a great idea after all.
The vast bowl of the wavemaker still dominated the waters. There was plenty of light topside—as much as there ever was on Seome—and Chase knew the surface was only a short distance up. It’d be great to see the surface, he told himself. The waves, the sky, a little land. He did miss it, more than he realized. He could tell looking up that the surface was rough and choppy, though how much of that was the machine, he couldn’t say. The Uman Time Twister was a vast structure, with effects everywhere.
He considered surfacing, just for a moment, but movement ahead caught his eye. He tried pulsing again—just can’t seem to get the hang of that—but his eyes caught movement and he veered off. Something near the shield. Two figures…not Uman, but Seomish.
He stopped short. It was Tulcheah. And one of the Ponkti weavers…Kepmet, he seemed to remember.
Tulcheah and Kepmet each carried small pouches. They were extracting something from their pouches and fixing it to the shield netting, to a series of knots along one fiber weave.
Tulcheah heard him approaching and stopped.
“Eekoti Chase…I recognize the echo…you sound confused, worried, anxious…can I help?”
Chase greeted Kepmet, who backed away and disappeared from view, around a bend in the shield.
“I was looking for Angie…she left the kip’t…we came up here with Kloosee, some kind of inspection he wanted to do. Have you seen her…I mean, pulsed her?”
Tulcheah came right up to Chase, nuzzled his face with her beak. Her armfins stroked his arms.
“She’s nearby…but not too close…that’s good, isn’t it, Chase. You and I…we can be alone…don’t worry about Kepmet…he’ll go about his business, he won’t bother us. There is a small ertleg hollow near here…they won’t bother us, they’re all off mating…we can—“
Chase politely pushed her away, noting the pouch she held contained something alive. It was wiggling and kicking inside. “Tulcheah…don’t, okay? I like you…I mean…well, just don’t. And anyway, what’s in that pouch?”
Tulcheah stopped her nuzzling and with a quick tail snap, circled Chase in a tight orbit and came back to face him. She was disappointed. Even Chase could tell that. “To refuse Ke’shoo and Ke’lee…eekoti Chase, surely you know I’m offended. This pouch—“ she held it out for Chase to look inside, “is full of ter’poh. See how they squirm…just as you squirm.”
Inside, the pouch was filled with small plankton-like creatures, all shapes and sizes, all of them oozing some kind of black jelly-like substance.
“What are they?”
Tulcheah sort of laughed, cinched up the pouch and slung it on a web belt she was wearing. “Kepmet and I are also inspecting…we’re fixing a knot. The ter’poh help solidify and strengthen weak joints and seams.” She studied him with big curious black eyes, pulsing him. “I don ‘t understand you, eekoti Chase. You show me interest—I can pulse the echoes right inside you—yet you pull away. Very confusing.”
Chase turned away. “Tulcheah, can I hide nothing from you? You have an advantage with all your pulsing. I don’t have time for this right now…I’m looking for Angie.”
“Ah…eekoti Angie…you have coupled with her?”
“If you mean have we had sex, the answer is yes…not that it’s any of your business.”
Just then, Tulcheah turned sharply and peered off into the distance. She had heard or sensed something. A form materialized, growing larger. Someone was coming. Tulcheah stiffened, tucked her pouch further out of sight.
It was Angie.
“I saw movement over here-“ she told them. “I thought…Chase—“ Then she realized Chase wasn’t alone. She recogni
zed Tulcheah. “Oh, it’s you….”
“You wandered off so I went looking for you…we need to head back. Kloosee’s loading up the kip’t. After all the inspections, we’re heading out. Heading home.”
Tulcheah pulsed the two of them together, decided it was something like love. “Perhaps we’ll meet again, eekoti Chase. When we can be alone—“
Angie sniffed at that. “Have I interrupted something between you two…I can go away…maybe even find my way back to the kip’t—“
“Angie—“
She scooted off. “Don’t ‘Angie’me, Chase Meyer.” She headed off and Chase decided he’d better follow. It wasn’t hard to get lost beneath the wavemaker. Though the Sound was now muffled and occasionally even vanished, there were still small whirlpools and vortexes, if you weren’t careful.
Chase shrugged. “Sorry—“ He headed off after Angie.
They finally made it back to the kip’t and found Kloosee outside loading some gear.
Kloosee clucked in ways the echobulb couldn’t translate. Chase figured it was some kind of expletive.
“I was just about to come looking for you two.”
Chase said, “Angie kind of wandered off…and I went looking for her.”
“I did not just wander off. I was…like, inspecting the shield.” Even as she said that, Angie knew how lame it sounded. But she decided defiance was her best defense. Fortunately, Chase let it drop. She’d have it out with Chase later.
Kloosee didn’t pursue the matter, though it was easy to pulse that both eekoti were nervous, anxious…something was clearly bothering them. Perhaps, an argument…they had a lot to learn about shoo’kel…he’d have to spend some time teaching to keep their insides under control, like any good Seomish.
“The expedition is preparing to move out,” Kloosee announced. “There are last minute inspections going on…as soon as those are completed, we’ll depart. It’s a long trip back to Omt’or…or in some cases, to Ponk’et.”
So Chase and Angie helped out, gathering equipment and loading it aboard their kip’t. For good measure, he and Kloosee roamed a few beats up and down their side of the shield, which hung in a billowing wave below the vast Uman machine.
“It seems to be holding,” Kloosee explained. He nosed along the woven seams, picking and checking knots and seams every few beats. “I’d never be able to get this close to the wavemaker without the shield. There are many more whirlpools…get too close and you vanish forever. It almost happened to Habloo.”
Chase was intrigued. “You told me this big mother is some kind of weapon for the Umans.”
Kloosee acknowledged that. “They say they are fighting an enemy far beyond the Notwater…another world. I don’t know that much about it.”
Chase wanted badly to surface…just to see the sky and land once. “Can I go up? To the surface…I kind of miss it.”
Kloosee pulsed that the eekoti male was being truthful. “Only for a moment. I’ll continue checking along this weave. When I come back, be here. We have to leave soon.”
“You got a deal.” With that, Chase kicked his way upward, toward the light. Clearly, it was daytime and he was heartened as the light brightened with each stroke. But the surface was further away than he realized.
He breached at last and found himself pounded about in rough surf, rolling waves crashing and frothing over his head as he bobbed about, kicking just enough to stay up. He was exhilarated at the sound and the spray and, for no good, reason, yelled out at the top of his voice. There was a light fog but the sun shone through it…Sigma Albeth B’s warmth apparent even this far north. He could see the curve of the great dome that was the Uman machine, the wavemaker, arcing into the mist above, disappearing like a planet of its own. Beyond the curve of the dome, a brown spit of land was barely visible. Kinlok Island, he figured.
They had been there only a short time ago and he wondered if the Umans were even aware of the big shield that had been secured to their machine. He saw no boats, no aircraft, no hoverships or skimmers, no activity that would indicate awareness. It was like the wavemaker existed for its own purposes.
Chase bobbed and stroked around at the surface for awhile longer. He’d always loved the sea. As a very young child, his father had often taken him surfing and boarding out in the Gulf; it was one of his earliest memories.
But he decided he’d better get back. When he submerged and began stroking and pulling his way toward the kip’t, his ears were suddenly pounded by a loud booming pulse of sound.
The wavemaker…something had happened…the shield—
He was momentarily stunned, losing all sense of where he was. The sound was a painful throb, a blast wave that knocked him sideways, then cartwheeling end for end, like a giant hand slap. It pulsed and boomed and throbbed and droned.
What the hell--?
Gradually, with effort, Chase stabilized himself and recovered enough to claw his way through the water back to the kip’t. There was chaos everywhere, bodies and kip’ts thrashing about, colliding, entangling.
Through it all, he could see that just ahead of them, the shield was slowly unraveling, unspooling from the wavemaker. It was coming apart, splitting along its seams, as if some giant scissors were cutting the fibers.
Kloosee shouted over the din. “Get in the kip’t! Angie’s already inside! We’ve got to get away from here, put some distance between us and the machine!”
Chase did as he was told. The booming pulses were painful, needles driving into his ears. Once, when he was ten years old, Chase had been swimming in the Gulf alongside his father’s boat and decided to investigate some odd and colorful coral banks on the seabed. They were deeper than he realized. When he reached them, his head and ears felt like they were going to explode. He nearly passed out. His father had nearly killed him after that. “You were damned lucky, kid, you didn’t burst an eardrum. You have to prepare before you pull something like that…don’t ever do that again.”
The boom of the wavemaker, now becoming uncovered, was a hundred times worse than that.
Chase squeezed into the kip’t, behind Angie, and Kloosee secured the bubble cover and fired up the jets. Other kip’ts were nearby and as a single formation, they cruised deeper and south from the wavemaker, until twenty or thirty beats had passed by. Kloosee found a small iceberg, just calved off the ice pack, which had drifted south. He nosed around its jagged underwater stalactites of ice and parked the kip’t in a broad crevice opposite the wavemaker, so that the berg partially blocked the throbbing din and crash of the sound.
“The shield is rupturing,” Kloosee said grimly. “It’s separating from the machine…we’ve got to get back there and fix it.” He got on the kipkeeor, the comm circuit, and talked with Longsee, who was in a nearby kip’t.
Longsee’s voice came back strained, almost hoarse. “It’s too dangerous. With the shield coming down, the whirlpools are back, many opuh’te, too many. You could be caught in a vortex. Maybe the Umans have done something.”
The next hour was chaotic and confusing, as Omtorish and Ponkti accused each other of failing in their duties. Several kip’ts bumped and collided and Kloosee wondered if the collisions were really accidents. Most of the expedition had gathered in the lee of the iceberg. Taunts and threats and warnings flew back and forth, across kipkeeor, even in person, as workers tussled and fought each other. Loptoheen, tukmaster of Ponk’et, had to intervene several times.
Longsee was the expedition leader and he struggled for a long time to regain order among the expedition crews, finally separating Omtorish and Ponkti members completely. It seemed the only way.
“Their natural suspicions are coming out,” Kloosee told Chase and Angie. “This is bad. Ponkti and Omtorish don’t need much to start a fight.”
“Why do they fight so much?” Chase asked.
“Enmity goes back a long way,” Kloosee told them. He had anchor
ed their kip’t to the iceberg by wedging the nose into a small crevice. The stern of the sled waggled in the currents. “The kels argue over territory, origins, food and resources, access to currents, everything. It seldom breaks down into actual combat…we’re too much alike for that, but still they argue. I just wonder what happened to the shield…why did it rupture?”
Chase remembered that he and Angie had come across Tulcheah and a Ponkti weaver at the netting a short time ago. He mentioned this to Kloosee, who was instantly intrigued.
“What were they doing?”
Chase said, “I don’t really know…I was just looking for Angie, she—“ but he felt a kick in his rear and changed the story –“anyway, Tulcheah was there with another Ponkti guy—I didn’t know him—and they were putting something, some kind of black jelly-like substance, on several knots of the netting.”
Kloosee questioned Chase closely. “Describe exactly what you saw.”
Chase did. Kloosee considered what Chase had said. “I’d better let Longsee know what you saw. There were inspections going on at several sites around the shield, but this doesn’t sound like an inspection to me.”
So Kloosee used another kipkeeor channel, a different frequency, to discuss the matter with Longsee. Presently, Longsee’s kip’t hove into view, having quietly maneuvered closer to them. It was clear from the sound of his voice that Longsee considered the news very grave.
Longsee left his own kip’t and came over. Kloosee opened the bubble cockpit. “This is a serious matter. I want to inspect the shield the best way we can, while we’re still here. You’ll head one of the teams. Ocynth and Kepmet will head teams of Ponkti weavers. We’ve got to find out what happened, see if it can be repaired. The sound’s worse than ever. If this goes on, everything, all the kels will suffer, even Ponk’et.”
Chase and Angie were firmly ordered to stay in the kip’t. Kloosee left with Longsee. They were gone for what seemed like forever. Chase could tell the passage of time roughly by the shifting shadows on the side of the iceberg. By the time Kloosee returned, the shadows at moved to the opposite side. Must be late in the day, Chase told Angie. They had both napped lightly in the time before Kloosee and Longsee returned. When they did, Chase could tell immediately that both were grim and determined.
Longsee said nothing and left for his own kip’t.
“There will be a meeting,” Kloosee said finally. “We found ter’poh residue on several knots of the shield. It ate through the knots, dissolved them. It had to be put there deliberately. Ter’poh isn’t found in these waters—too cold.”
“So what are you saying?” Chase asked.
“It was sabotage,” Kloosee said. “A deliberate action. Someone wanted the shield to fail. It was inevitable once the ter’poh was in place. They secrete a solvent, very thick, black in color. Ter’poh are often used as solvents in our work.”
“That’s what Tulcheah was putting on the shield netting,” Chase said. “It was black, like a jelly.”
“So it would seem,” Kloosee agreed. “Longsee’s meeting now with the Ponkti leaders, with Ocynth and Loptoheen and the others, to decide what to do.”
“Why would anyone do this?” Angie asked. “Everybody suffers with this sound. It affects everybody. Why would anyone want the shield to fail?”
Kloosee said, “I don’t know. Tulcheah, if she’s involved, is Omtorish by birth. She is of our kel. But she’s also half Ponkti…she’s always been different. Independent. Strong-willed. Her shoo’kel’s different, she pulses not like most Omtorish. She doesn’t go on vishtu—“
“Vishtu…you mean the great roams?”
“Exactly. She used to roam with the kel but she always got pushed to the rear and she didn’t like that. Now—“ Kloosee took a deep breath, a sad breath Angie thought, “now, she won’t go. She stays behind in her berth, sniffing scentbulbs. Tulcheah’s sad, caught halfway between being Omtorish and Ponkti…I feel sorry for her.”
Chase was thinking of his own encounters…all the ways Tulcheah had tried to seduce him, making Angie jealous. “A gold-digger…that’s what we call females like that.”
Angie smacked him. “Chase, really—“
“It’s true,” he argued.
Kloosee seemed sad, but resolute. “Longsee and the Ponkti are setting up a kind of hearing…we call it kel’em. It means representatives of all the em’kels here get together. They’ll look at the evidence, question Tulcheah. I can go, since I’m with the em’kel, Putektu, back in Omsh’pont. But you two can’t. You’ll have to stay here.”
Angie said, “What will happen?”
Kloosee wasn’t sure. “I don’t know. I heard that several people died when the shield ruptured. If Tulcheah did something to cause that…she is Omtorish. She’ll have to face justice in Omt’or. The Ponkti won’t like that. But your own kel determines what will happen to you.”
Kloosee made sure his eekoti guests were relatively comfortable, had food and promised to stay inside the kip’t. “Many opuh’te around…whirlpools. It’s too dangerous for you to leave. You must stay here.”
They promised. But Angie knew that somewhere not far away was the Farpool. She began to imagine ways of locating it. But she said nothing of this to Chase. After Kloosee left, they napped and cuddled.
And the great sound thumped and beat and droned on.
The expedition leaders created a space for a hearing by using several kip’ts to carve a small opening in the underside of the iceberg, a sort of niche into which a small gathering of people could fit and which was relatively protected from the worst effects of the wavemaker.
The light of the Notwater was failing overhead and darkness crept over the waves as the hearing got underway. Tulcheah and Kepmet were both present. Two Ponkti prodsmen and two Omtorish craftsmen secured the hearing from any unwanted visitors. Arktet em was one of the Omtorish guards. He was well regarded by all, having been a key designer of the lifesuits that Kloosee and Pakma had worn when they first came to Earth.
They all eyed each other suspiciously. Longsee led the Omtorish contingent. Loptoheen headed the Ponkti side. The two of them glared at each other.
“We have no Metah here,” Longsee said. “This hearing is not official.”
“And no tekne’en drugs,” Loptoheen complained. “How can we be sure of anyone’s memory without tekne’en?”
“We have Tulcheah…the accused. She can speak,” Loptoheen reminded them.
“But can we believe her?” Longsee replied. “Tulcheah may be half Ponkti but she is kelke of Omt’or. She must face Omtorish justice.”
“What evidence do you have, Longsee? That of an eekoti male…what good is that? This is just a poorly disguised attempt to smear Ponk’et, to keep us from working with the Umans, learning about your precious Farpool. You can’t monopolize the Farpool forever. The day will come when Ponkti explorers will enter the Farpool as well.”
Longsee could well pulse a rising tide of anger around them. “The eekoti male can tell us what he saw. The knots failed because of ter’poh…that much has been established.”
There were snickers and chuckles among the Ponkti over that.
Loptoheen affected a diffidence he didn’t really feel. The Metah Lektereenah’s words still echoed in the back of his mind. “Then bring the eekoti here. It’s not normal, but we have no objection.”
Longsee sent Arktet to retrieve Chase.
They returned a few moments later. Chase looked bewildered, nervous. His insides churned and many turned away in disgust. Eekoti could never keep shoo’kel properly.
Loptoheen came right up to Chase’s face, an intimidation tactic he often used in tuk matches, before the bell rang. “Eekoti, tell us what you saw.”
So Chase described how he had left Kloosee’s kip’t, went looking for Angie and came across Tulcheah and another Ponkti, how they had been applying some substance to the nett
ing, what it looked like.
“I don’t know what it was,” he told them. Chase looked around. He was surrounded by Omtorish and Ponkti people, arrayed in concentric circles, all of them clicking and squeaking and whistling and grunting, sounding so fast his echobulb couldn’t keep up. It was a cacophony that rose and fell, trilled and shrank to a whisper, almost in unison. “But that’s what I saw.”
Loptoheen was abrupt. “Tulcheah didn’t explain what she was doing?”
“She said she was strengthening the knots in that section of the net.”
Here, Loptoheen snapped about in triumph. “You see? This is a normal practice.”
Longsee would have none of it. “Ter’poh aren’t used to strengthen fibers…we know at least that much.”
“And what, really, do you know about Ponkti weaving techniques? For ten thousand metamah, we’ve been working with tchin’ting fiber.”
And so it went, back and forth, argument after argument. Kloosee told Chase, to one side, that no one could beat Longsee in argument. Debate was his specialty. Loptoheen grew frustrated. Tensions rose. The prodsmen circled nervously, trying to keep order.
Finally, to maintain shoo’kel, it was agreed that Tulcheah would accompany Longsee and the rest of the Omtorish party back to Omsh’pont. The matter would be put to the Metah, Iltereedah, and a decision would be made by her.
Kloosee and Chase returned to their kip’t. Angie was inside, dozing off.
“We’re returning to Omsh’pont,” Kloosee announced. “No decision has been made. The shield is still unraveling, pulling away. The sound, as you can hear, grows daily. This whole expedition has failed and Longsee will have to explain why to the Metah.”
Angie could sense the sadness in Kloosee…maybe she could even pulse it. She’d been trying to do that for some time, now the echoes were beginning to make some sense. There were patterns. The recognition that she could detect feelings from pulse echoes sobered her. My God…I’m becoming one of them. That wasn’t what she wanted to happen.
“What will happen now, Kloos?”
Kloosee was securing everything inside the cockpit, powering up the jets. Their kip’t would be in the lead, on the long trek back to the Omtor’kel Sea, and home.
“There’s nothing we can do here. The shield can’t be fixed…and the Ponkti won’t help anyway. There’s too much suspicion, too much bad feeling. Tulcheah is under suspicion as a saboteur…she’ll face the Metah. Chase will also have to stand before the Metah…he witnessed something that bears on the case. I don’t know what will happen after that. With no shield, the sound will destroy everything.” Kloosee backed the kip’t away from its niche in the ice and turned them about. All around them, other kip’ts and craft gathered into convoy formation…shapes flitting by in the frothy green water, barely discernible. They jetted off and the kip’t rocked, then settled down to steady droning cruise speed. They went deeper and the light fell off. Kloosee negotiated ice chunks expertly and soon enough, they felt the first faint tugs of the Pomt’or Current.
Kloosee was thinking out loud. “I suppose the Metah will have several choices. Either assemble a force to attack the Uman base. We’ve tried that before…there were many casualties. Or try to negotiate with them. That hasn’t worked either. Negotiating with Tailless people is like negotiating with a tillet. They treat us like pets, like animals.”
“And we didn’t have any luck either,” Chase remembered.
It was a long glum ride back to Omsh’pont. And Chase was uneasy for the whole trip. Now he would be intimately involved in a major case of Seomish justice. You will stand before the Metah and speak what you have seen, Longsee had told him. Could they imprison him? Could they charge him with something? The more he thought about it, the more anxious he became. Even Angie could see that.
They spent a lot of time during the long ride in each other’s arms. Maybe Angie’s right, he told himself. Maybe they had done all they could do and it was time to go home.
For a day and a half, Chase’s emotions boiled and bubbled so violently, that Kloosee finally had to say something.
“You are kelke, Chase…don’t fret so much. You’re family now. Part of Omt’or. “
Chase didn’t know whether to be thankful for that…or fearful.
The Farpool Page 14
