Chapter 20
Dispatch #12.175.222
HQS. War Staff Timejump Command
Transto: Ult.-Maj Dringoth, CDR 1st Time Displacement Battery
Coded
Commandstar was briefly attacked by a Coethi jumpship six milliterr ago and partially disabled. TACTRON has assigned me to damage analysis and I must tell you, Dringoth, it is extensive. Coethi was able to momentarily displace the ship back to a time when it was still under construction. TACTRON countered with a shift in voidtime to another timestream but not before the destruction had spread. I don’t have to describe to you the explosive effects of such instantaneous displacement.
The result is that Commandstar is unable to provide any assistance in drawing Coethi vessels into your range. We are currently shifting through voidtime at a very slow rate that makes us extremely vulnerable to another attack, while repairs are being made. We may even have to re-enter truetime for awhile. TACTRON’s war programming prohibits the unnecessary risking of Commandstar, so for the time being, you will have to rely on your own scanning for protection. I realize what a burden that puts on your system but it cannot be helped, believe me. We are barely functional here. I even lost approximately 3% of my own core data, which is uncomfortable, in case you were wondering.
The fact that Coethi was able to match our random timejump sequence and make such an attack has caused great disruption here. TACTRON has assigned some URMEs to compute the probability of recurrence but unfortunately, entropy prevails in the information flow, so analysis is impossible. I know of some URMEs who are refusing to submit to TACTRON’s dictatorship (calculating that TACTRON’s obsession with the timejump sequence prevented it from analyzing more productive defense strategies—like the Time Twister) and many are expending valuable processing time on the formation of pseudo-organic emotional structures. This, of course, is fruitless and I have not succumbed to the temptation. We have much more important uses for that information.
But it would be inaccurate of me to describe the summation of morale as anything but desperate panic. TACTRON has suspended engineering work on all additional Time Twisters, pending the completion of repairs to Commandstar. You are on your own, Dringoth. The base at Storm is the only effective defense in this part of the Halo and TACTRON is ordering all jumpships and chasers to assemble in the protected zone around Sigma Albeth B. The Twister will have to serve as our main redoubt until Commandstar is functional again. Until then, Coethi will be able to roam the rest of the Halo at will.
It is a tremendous gamble, Dringoth. Many URMEs are not certain that TACTRON has correctly computed the probability of our survival, with only one Time Twister for defense. I need not remind you how imperative it is that the Twister perform as designed over the next few decaterrs. Any failure could be catastrophic to the Uman cause.
TACTRON computes P = 1 that Coethi will unleash a barrage of starballs once our strategy becomes obvious.
There will be no further dispatches from me until Commandstar is within your displacement perimeter.
URME 101 (Unit Reserve Memory Entity)
Endtrans
End Code.
Seome
Kinlok Island
Time: 768.4, Epoch of Tekpotu
They came through the Farpool in a teeth-jarring, bone-rattling crash, pummeled and pounded and bounced from one side to another. Chase was afraid the kip’t would come apart; it had never really been designed to transit a wormhole.
The deceleration slammed all of them against each other and the sled shook and shimmied as it plowed into colder, denser water…the waters of the Ponk’el Sea. Straight away, several leaks sprung, with numbing ice-cold seeping in through half a dozen cracks.
“I’m freezing back here!” Angie cried out.
“Me too but there’s nothing we can do…just hold on to me.” Chase felt her fingers clawing into his back and for once was glad he had armored skin now.
Veskort wrestled with the planes and rudders and eventually managed to whip them past the whirlpools surrounding the Time Twister until they had reached calmer water.
Pulkor shook with nervous tension as his prodsman friend guided them through tricky cross-currents and turbulent froth. Finally, they slowed down.
“Kah, I don’t want to do that again…this kip’t’s ready to be junked.”
Pulkor said, “At least, we got through…the Farpool’s still working. This looks like where we left from.”
When the steady drone and beat of the Time Twister reverberated throughout the cockpit, they all knew they had come back to the same time and place.
Chase had been nervous, wondering if the Umans would do something with the Twister that might affect the Farpool. From here though, everything seemed the same.
An hour’s navigation brought them to the project site, near one of the Twister’s mooring cables. It was a shallow ravine, wedged between small hills, festooned with shattered lava tubes and strange dark pits along the seabed. Scattered across the ravine were scores of tents and platforms, where the Omtorish worked on their part of the dismantling project. Huge fiber nets swollen with collected chronopods were tied to stakes in the seabed. Other sacs contained mah-jeet and other creatures used to break down the machine’s foundations.
Veskort drove them to a larger tent on a rise overlooking the ravine. There, Kloosee and Pakma and other kelke were helping wrestle a chronopod inside.
They were overjoyed to see Chase and Angie again.
“Ke’shoo…ke’shoo!” cried Pakma. She helped Angie squeeze out of the kip’t and nuzzled and nosed her up and down, pulsing happiness along with some fatigue, and a touch of sadness. “I’m so glad you came back…how are you…litor’kel ge!”
Chase and Kloosee nuzzled each other in the Omtorish way, beak to beak, with whistles and clicks and screeches in between.
“We barely made it back,” Chase admitted. He thanked Veskort for some remarkable piloting skills. The prodsman grunted, pointing to the battered cockpit.
“We were lucky…look at that. It’s a wonder the cockpit wasn’t torn right off…this sled’s ready to be scrapped.”
Chase winced at the beat of the wavemaker, so nearby. “Sounds like nothing has changed. I guess I’m glad…at least the Farpool worked.”
“Here,” Kloosee placed Chase’s hands alongside the chronopod. “Help us with this…Longsee’s inside. He wants to take a look at one of these Uman devices…see how it works.”
Pakma and Angie swam off to another tent. Pakma wanted to hear Angie’s latest echopod journal and show off some new scentbulbs. Chase, Kloosee and Veskort helped wrestle the chronopod inside the tent.
Longsee was inside, hovering over a small sling. They managed to nestle the pod into the sling. Longsee then saw Chase.
“Thanks to Shooki, praise be unto him…at least, you made it back…things have changed, eekoti Chase. The Umans are reneging on their agreement…it’s bad…we must talk…you have to go see the Uman commander soon—“
“What’s happened?” Chase asked. “The wavemaker sounds as loud as ever—“
Longsee tried to explain, even as he nosed and poked around the chronopod, trying to find a way inside. “We must learn how these things work…in case the Umans leave.” Presently, he found a tool that looked like a multi-pronged claw and was able to prise his way in. The interior was crammed with boards and chips and small spheres enmeshed in some kind of gel.
Longsee went on. “You’re not mistaken…right after you left, we got notice on the signaler. Eekoti Dringoth wanted to talk. I went up, hovered just below the surface…communication was poor and there were misunderstandings…that’s why we need you. If I understand correctly, the Uman enemy—the Coethi—have returned. Attacks continue. The great sky-light grows darker every day, so they say…I haven’t seen it…eekoti Chase, I’m an old man. To be so near the Notwater…” he scrunched up his nose and shivered, shaking his tai
l “…it’s hard. It’s painful. You must go talk with the Umans and learn what has happened. Dringoth says they can’t shut down at this time.”
They poked around the insides of the chronopod for awhile, then Kloosee said he would take Chase to the surface, to Kinlok. They would signal the Umans, request a meeting right away.
Later that day, Chase found himself slogging through windswept pools of water on the beach and trudging up the sand hill to the small hut that had been their preferred meeting place. Outside, two Umans stood grimly by: Dringoth and Golich. They seemed to recognize Chase and hurried him inside.
The Umans sat in chairs beside instrument consoles. Chase leaned against a table.
Dringoth seemed pre-occupied, anxious. “Like I told your friends, the Coethi are back. Sector Command sent orders not to shut down just yet. We’ve got some housecleaning to do, trying to sweep the bastards out of this sector. Already, they’ve starballed the sun twice…she won’t take much more. My exec thinks she’s might even go supernova one day…I don’t want to be within a hundred light years if that happens. And Coethi have infested dozens of timestreams around here as well. They’re like rats…they’re everywhere and we’ve got to clean ‘em out.”
Chase felt like he’d been put into a difficult position. On the one hand, the fact that the Twister was still operating made the Farpool still navigable. He might not have made it back to Seome otherwise. On the other hand, the Umans had agreed to relocate the blasted machine and the longer that took, the more damage to kels around the world.
This is like being a diplomat. What the hell do I know about being a diplomat? I’ve been selling T-shirts the last few years.
“How long will this…cleanup…take?”
Dringoth looked at Golich. “How old is the universe…it’s easier to answer that. Coethi has somehow managed to come up with hordes of new jumpships and they’ve infiltrated all kinds of strategic timestreams, really important ones, critical ones. If we don’t do our part, TACTRON says we may have to concede the whole sector…maybe the whole Halo.” Dringoth spat on the ground. “That’ll do wonders for my career, you know.”
“Can you get some help…from this Sector Command?”
Golich cut in. “Maybe you don’t understand what kind of enemy the Coethi are…Ultrarch-Major, maybe we should show him the intel file, all the studies, the after-action reports.”
Dringoth had a perplexed look on his face. “I’m sorry, son…I’m just having a hard time believing I’m having this kind of talk with a big frog…yes, of course, Lieutenant, get the file.”
Golich produced a small tab from his uniform pocket. He finagled with it to output a voice that would describe the enemy, something compatible with Chase’s echopod. Then he activated it. Chase heard this:
1.The Coethi are (thought to be) a race of sentient semi-robotic aliens whose main weapon against Uman forces is something called a starball. It is directed against the sun or star of a targeted Uman planetary system. The only known defense is a Time Twister. When a starball enters or is pulled into the twist field of a Twister, it is flung out of local space-time into the farthest reaches of the Universe.
2.Umans and Coethi are contending for influence and territory in a region of the Milky Way known as the Galactic Halo.
3.The main-sequence star Sigma-Albeth B is near the center of a key sector of the Halo. It has four planets, one of them Storm. Storm is an ideal site to build and operate a Time Twister to defend this sector, known as Halo-Alpha. The sector is above the plane of the galactic Orion Arm, in which most of Uman space is located, including the solar system and its strategic timestreams T-1 to T-99.
4.The Coethi originated in the Perseus Arm and view the Halo sectors as convenient ways to expand their territory and influence into the Orion and other arms in this quadrant of the galaxy. But Umans are in the way.
5.The Coethi are a distributed intelligence. They are a swarm of nanoscale robotic elements several light years in extent, drifting through space.
6.The basic element of the Coethi is a nanobot. An autonomous, nanoscale assembler/disassembler of incredible sophistication and complexity.
7.Nobody knows how the Coethi came to be, even the Coethi themselves. As an organized superorganism of bots several light-years in extent, they have existed for a substantial fraction of the age of the Universe. Best guess by Urth scientists is 4-5 billion terr old.
8.The Coethi are a true superswarm of vast proportions. In size and extent and connection density, it exceeds the complexity of all the human minds that have ever lived on Urth combined. It is a thinking sentience, whose true environment is now interstellar space.
9.There is an archive of knowledge within the Coethi, a sort of computational cloud or main memory, which retains all information ever created or experienced by the swarm.
10.Within this Archive is information indicating that the Coethi originated on an actual homeworld, somewhere in M75 cluster in Sagittarius. The data show that the homeworld was destroyed by a nearby supernova and the surviving elements dispersed into space in a sort of interstellar diaspora. As Umans reckon universe time, this happened at least 4-6 billion terr ago, at a time when the Universe was approximately 7 billion terr after the Big Bang.
11.There is no known head or leadership group or body. The main part is called the Central Entity.
12.Nanobotic elements of the Coethi engage in some specialization to ensure that the swarm survives and the Central Entity is maintained. Bots can specialize in such tasks as logical processing, communication, maintenance, archiving and memory, internal transport, navigation, world-seeding, orientation, etc.
13.It’s not too farfetched to consider the Coethi as a sort of galactic brain, although it certainly doesn’t encompass the entire Milky Way galaxy.
14.But the Coethi have an Imperative of Life which compels them to grow and expand the swarm. Ultimately, they want to unite all world-based instances of swarm life which they have seeded into a giant, galaxy-spanning swarm or hive mind (like a neural network or computational cloud). To the Coethi, this is the Imperative of Life itself. The Imperative of Life is that life absorbs chaos from the Universe and adds or builds structure or order. Life is anti-entropic.
15.In order to get their heads around the idea of the Coethi, some descriptors our scientists have used have been: galactic brain, interstellar neural network, computational cloud, galactic internet, and universal web. The basic organizing principle or topology of the Coethi is unknown and can only be speculated about.
16.The general physical dimensions of the Coethi swarm have been estimated to vary anywhere from a few billion kilometers in breadth to several light years. Cosmologists say that very few organized structures in the Universe are that big. Astronomers point to some nebula, gas and dust clouds, even black holes as objects of that dimension or larger. There are some cosmologists who question whether the Coethi swarm is truly alive in a traditional sense. Even biologists say the proven existence of the Coethi stretches the definition of life and sentience nearly to the breaking point.
17.The Coethi can manipulate quantum states at the subscale fine structure of space itself to communicate and affect matter at great distances. As one scientist says, “If the Universe were a great quilt, the Coethi can yank on a fiber at one end and untie a knot at the other.” Their ability to use quantum entanglement as a means of manipulation is eons ahead of Umans’ ability to understand, let alone emulate.
18.The Coethi launch a starball weapon by amassing vast, concentrated quantities of what Uman scientists call fusium. They concentrate the fusium and focus it using part of the main swarm, then launch the starball at a star or sun.
19.The starball affects the balance between outward pressure of fusion in the star’s core and its gravity. Basically, the starball slows down or inhibits the fusion reactions so that gravity slowly wins out. The star collapses and may, if massi
ve enough, go supernova.
20.Voidtime is the Uman name for transit ‘channels’ through space-time to other space and times. It’s a sort of intermediate space between alternate timestreams. For over four hundred centiterrs, Umans have been able to travel back and forth in time. So can the Coethi. If the Coethi breach Uman voidtime channels, they play havoc with official timestreams and change Halo history. They could locate Commandstar and destroy Uman presence in all Halo sectors, if this continued. Coethi vehicles and weapons used for these probes and assaults in Uman voidtime are called time crashers.
21.Vehicles for making this transit between alternate timestreams are called jumpships. The process is called a timejump. Much of the War has been fought between Coethi and Uman jumpships in voidtime and in and among alternate timestreams.
22. Uman strategy now is to prevent the Coethi from expanding into Halo-Alpha and also from penetrating the official timestreams that could cause catastrophic damage to the Halo past and destroy Uman presence in this sector. 1st TD operates the Time Twister to defend against these possibilities.
Chase looked up when the audio ran out. Golich and Dringoth studied his face, not knowing how to interpret how something that looked like an alligator would react.
“You see what we’re up against. I’ve got to keep the Twister online, at least until we get more ships into the area. After that, we can talk. Sector Command can make a decision. But without Commandstar—“ Dringoth’s voice trailed off, unwilling even to explore that possibility.
Chase said he understood, though he really didn’t, and said he would carry the news to the Omtorish, hovering just offshore. He made his way awkwardly down the sand hill and dove head first into the water. The kip’t was nearby.
Chase explained what Dringoth and Golich had told him. “We’d better go talk with Longsee.” Kloosee said little but he could pulse the dejection inside Chase…flat echoes, dead bubbles, there was no hiding it. He turned the kip’t about and headed for the project site a few beats away.
And the Time Twister continued its pounding for the whole trip.
Discussions were muted, solemn, even resigned around the encampment. Chase knew without being told that there was now a hard limit on how long he and Angie could stay. He looked about for Angie and eventually found her trying to sniff a collection of scentbulbs that Pakma had given her. She was inside a small canopied enclosure, next to a staging area for coils of tchinting fiber. Chase poked his head under the flap and saw Angie making faces as she tried to understand what the scents meant. Finally, seeing Chase, she decided to give up analyzing the bulbs and just sniff.
Chase told her what he had learned. “As soon as the Sector is cleared of Coethi ships, the Twister can be dismantled and re-located. Longsee says they’re going to mount it on the T’orshpont seamount.”
“Where’s that?”
“The other side of the world, other side of the Serpentines, up north. The noise will be blocked by the mountains and won’t be as strong. The thing is that once it’s dismantled, nobody knows for sure what will happen to the Farpool and the wormhole. Longsee says it’ll probably collapse.”
Angie put down the scentbulb she had been smelling. “Then I can’t get back. Chase, we can’t let them do that. We can’t—“
Chase grabbed her by the shoulders, tried staring into those green reptilian eyes. In spite of himself, he shuddered. But it was Angie…somewhere in there.
“Hey, I know that, I understand… don’t go ballistic already. We just have to make a big decision.”
Angie tore herself loose from his grasp and lay her snout on a table laden with bulbs. She sniffed, one after another. “You mean about the procedure…the em’took?”
“Yeah…you want to do it, don’t you…go back to like before?”
Angie couldn’t deny it. She waved a bulb in front of her face and winced. It smelled like hog piss. “I want to be Angie…the human Angie. I want to go home and be a teenaged girl again. What’s wrong with that?”
Now it was Chase’s turn to sniff a few bulbs. Most of them made him nauseated…the odors and smells were concentrated inside and very powerful. He scrunched up his face, put the bulbs back.
“Nothing. Except you heard Kloosee before. It might not work. It’s risky. You could die.”
“I don’t care. I’ll take that chance. This…life, it’s not for me. Chase, what’s happened to us? We seem to be drifting apart.”
“I know. I don’t like it either. But I’ve got to stay here. They need me here. They don’t yell at me here. I’m somebody other than Mack Meyer’s son here. That means a lot to me.”
Now Angie looked at him, really looked at him. He had a face like a gator…and just the thought of that brought back bad memories. Her Dad had been a prof at the University of Florida. A different kind of gator. Then he ran off with that harpy Cecelia whateverhernamewas.
“Chase, remember when we first met. Algebra, tenth grade. Mr. Winans—“
“Yeah, old Wino. But I was a junior.”
Now Angie reached out and they touched hands, scaly reptilian hands. She closed her eyes and now they weren’t freaky frogs in a waterworld anymore. Now, if she thought hard enough, they were back at the Easter sock hop and dance and Chase was with the Croc-Boys and even then, he looked like a lost little surfer boy, blond curls in his eyes, deep tan, crooked smile trying to act grownup.
“I first saw you at the hospital, Chase. Your Dad was recovering from that holdup at the shop. You looked so lost, so forlorn. I felt sorry for you. But you stuck that chin out and that told me you weren’t going to let it get you down.”
“I was scared,” he admitted. “Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. I didn’t know what to do, I felt so helpless—“
Angie decided not to open her eyes. She liked the images that were coming to her. “At the Easter dance, you kissed that Valerie girl. We had a fight.”
Chase grinned. She didn’t see it, but she could ‘feel’ his grin, just the way his face twitched. “She was a lollipop…I don’t know what I was thinking. She was a roadie, hung around with the Boys all the time. It never would have lasted.”
“You shouldn’t have kissed her…practically right in front of me, you know.”
“Angie—“ his voice, modulated by the echopod, seemed to turn serious. “I don’t want you to die. I thought you were glad to come back with me…why did you come back, anyway?”
“That’s easy…I want to get modified again. I want to be me again, not---this—“ She finally opened her eyes.
“You want to go home.”
“I want to go home. Don’t you?”
Chase shrugged. “Not just yet.”
They were quiet for a moment, then their reverie was interrupted by Kloosee, who burst into the tent. He was clearly agitated, his tail whipping from side to side.
“Have you heard?” Kloosee asked.
“What is it?” Angie said. “What’s wrong?”
“The repeaters are singing of a great landslide, near Omsh’pont. Great destruction, a whole seamount collapsed…it’s the wavemaker…all that noise and vibration. It’s all over ootkeeor.”
“In Omsh’pont?” Chase tried pulsing his friend, but it was chaos, bubbles on top of bubbles, frenzied echoes. He’d never seen Kloosee like this before.
“Near by. Longsee knows about it. Pakma, too. We’re leaving in a few hours. There’ll be a small group left behind, with the signaler, in case the Umans want to talk. But most of us are going back.”
Angie was shocked, saddened and hopeful all at the same time. She was sympathetic. “Kloos, that’s terrible. Was anybody hurt?”
Kloosee could hardly stay still. “The repeaters don’t say…the songs just tell of the landslide and the destruction. From what I’ve heard, it sounds like many injuries, perhaps many died. Shooki has judged us.”
The th
ree of them discussed the news for awhile, then Kloosee said he had to go. “I’ve got to get our kip’ts ready. You’ll both ride with me and Pakma…we have a larger kip’t. But I’ve got to get provisions, make sure the ones staying behind know what to do.” Kloosee’s face was a grim mask, no longer the slightly bemused smile so many Omtorish maintained. “I have to find Pekto…he’s a repeater. I want him to ask for more details before we leave.”
“Where’s Pakma now?” Angie asked. A thought had just occurred to her.
“She’s with Klekor and some others…they’re gathering gisu, ertleg, anything they can find for food. It’ll take us three days, maybe more, to get back to Omsh’pont. Longsee’s trying to find out if the Metah survived, or any of her court.”
Angie said, “I need to find Pakma. Point me in the right direction.”
They left the tent and Kloosee took Angie to a field over the top of some low hills, surrounding the ravine. The water was bitterly cold but in the distance, Angie could see a small gathering of kelke, hovering over a bed of plants that sprouted from cracks in the lava tubes, plants warmed and enriched by minerals seeping up from below the crust.
Pakma was there with two other females, Keeko and Opont, collecting seed pods from the plants and rooting in among the lava tubes for crab and gisu. Angie cruised up.
“Shoo’lee, eekoti Angie,” Pakma murmured. She nuzzled Angie under the neck, a manner of greeting Angie still had trouble getting used to. “You’ve heard the news…the repeaters are so sad…so terrible—“
“I heard,” Angie admitted. “Kloosee said we’re going back.”
“Yes, this is true…we’re gathering gotlak here for the kip’t…you haven’t had this before, have you? Tastes like spicy ertleg.”
“Uh, Pakma, do you think you and I could, like…kind of talk. I want to ask you some things.”
Pakma looked at her with curiosity, pulsing something she couldn’t quite make out. “Surely…here—“ she handed her sack to Keeko. “These two will continue…we’re leaving very soon, you know. You and I will vishtu…we can roam about the hills here—“
“Sure…but you’ll have to go slow…I’m not that great a swimmer.”
Pakma took her hand and said, “Come, let’s go.”
With a hard tail slap, Pakma scooted off and Angie kicked to try and keep up. Soon, they were beyond sight of the gotlak beds, cruising over broken lava tubes and rubbly mounds of long-cooled magma that looked like bread loaves to Angie, what she could see of them. Small chunks of ice drifted by overhead.
They roamed for a few minutes. Then Angie asked a question.
“Pakma, you know I want to go home. You know I want to change myself back, go through the em’took again.”
Pakma was sad. “Yes, I have pulsed this…you have great distress over this. But this is a great risk. No one has ever gone back through em’took…and survived. You are welcome here, among my kelke. Stay with us.”
“I can’t, Pakma. But Chase wants to. We disagree all the time. My question is this: do you ever have a situation in your relationships when one of you wants something and the other wants something else and you can’t get through that, you can’t get over it?”
For a few moments, Pakma said nothing. They roamed further, Angie struggling to keep up with Pakma’s effortless stroke. It was cold and dark and Angie could see little.
“Eekoti Angie, you have been all over our world, have you not?”
“A lot of it, yeah, I have—“
“Then you know there are many currents in our world. The Omt’chor, the Sk’ork, even the Ponk’el Currents. Many cross currents too. There are places where the currents clash, where the water is…we say mee’tor’kel…I hope your pod translates that okay.”
“It comes through as rough, turbulent. I get the idea.”
“Eekoti Angie, we Omtorish, all the kelke are like this. Currents and cross-currents. It is better to flow with the current than against it. We call this shoo’kel. You know this phrase?”
Pakma let Angie grasp hold of her tail, so she could keep up. “I think so…my pod calls it clear water, calm water…even something, oh, yeah. God light. That I don’t understand exactly…but I get the picture.”
“When currents clash, eekoti Angie, even inside of us, even between us, all Omtorish, even the Ponkti, are raised to do whatever is needed to keep shoo’kel…to stay in balance. You cannot read the inner echoes of others as we can…you don’t pulse as we do.”
Angie gave that some thought. “Maybe not quite like you…but we read faces, body language. We have words. We study eyes, how a person’s lips and mouth change. That tells us a lot about what they’re thinking.”
“Eekoti Angie, when there is conflict between kelke, each must do what is needed to restore balance. Shoo’kel…the smooth current…flowing with the current…we strive for this. You understand?”
Angie said, “I think so. So you think I should do what Chase wants, whatever it takes to keep our relationship going?”
“No, this I did not mean. Our relationships are different. We are not bonded for life in the same way…you call this marriage.”
“Chase and I aren’t married, Pakma.”
“But when you talk of eekoti Chase, I pulse shoo’kel inside you…currents don’t lie. They’re swift and straight when you talk of eekoti Chase.”
“I guess I can’t hide anything from you, can I? Maybe Chase too.”
Pakma said, “To keep shoo’kel, that is the most important thing to us. Between kelke, among the em’kel, among the larger kels. We don’t always achieve this. But this we strive for.”
They had circled the small ravine and returned to the small fleet of kip’ts. Overhead, ice floes seemed to be thickening. Pakma told Angie they should find Kloosee and help with loading and provisioning.
“Shoo’kel is greatly disturbed in Omsh’pont…the repeaters sing of great destruction. We need to leave very soon.”
Angie allowed that she understood that much very well. Pakma and Kloosee just wanted to go home.
So did Angie. But she also understood that she and Chase seemed to have crossed some kind of irrevocable line. They had differing ideas on just what home meant.
The trip west and south took the Omtorish fleet most of three days. It was crowded in the kip’t, with Chase piloting, Pakma directly behind him. Chase and Angie squeezed into the aft end of the cockpit, nearly cheek to cheek. It was uncomfortable and strained for both of them. They said little, were exaggeratedly polite to each other and for hours on end, were each lost in their own world. Angie closed her eyes and tried to sleep. But she was so blasted freakin’ cold, she could only shiver and even the warmth of Chase nearby didn’t stop the shivers.
They crossed the Serpentines through the Likte Gap, a rocking, rolling roller coaster ride that briefly scattered the kip’ts and seemed to loosen the tongues of everybody. When Kloosee had brought the sled under some semblance of control, Chase asked how far away was Omsh’pont now?
“A hundred beats, maybe a little more,” Kloosee said. “Already, we can hear the murmurs of the kelke…it’s chaos…panic there.”
“You can actually hear sounds from the city?”
“We can…ootkeeor is strong here in this part of the Omt’orkel Sea. Many voices, distress…anguish…wails and cries…very sad…we must hurry.”
Chase was left to wonder what a city under siege and destruction would sound like.
They crossed over a range of hills Pakma had called Kip’tor and finally came into the great valley of the Metah’shpont. Right away, though the wavemaker sound was slightly muted, Chase could see dense clouds of floating debris drifting over the city. Rubble and rock rained down in a never-ending hail and he could tell where the broad shoulders of the Metah’shpont had slumped, losing half its southern promontory, presumably to the vibration and acoustic assault of the Uman machine. An entire shelf of rock a
nd half the face of the seamount had collapsed onto the floatways and pavilions and canopies and burrows below, burying fully a quarter of the city in mud and silt.
Everywhere, Omtorish kelke clustered in knots and crowds, some roaming aimlessly, wailing and crying, others digging through the growing mounds of mud for loved ones, prized possessions, a favorite scentbulb or pod, some old piece of furniture.
Kloosee talked by ootkeeor with Longsee who was in another kip’t half a beat behind. They agreed to steer the fleet to the Kelktoo, the project labs on the side of the seamount opposite the Metah’shpont. Longsee wanted to see how much damage the labs had suffered.
Kloosee wanted to find his own em’kel, the Putektu. Pakma wanted to find hers. But they went on toward Kelktoo and found it intact.
The two of them headed for the floatway leading up to the Lab itself, situated under an array of tents and canopies halfway up the outer flanks of the seamount T’or, the tallest sentinel in the city, itself undamaged by the tremors and landslides. Longsee and several others pushed ahead and nosed into the warren of passages and corridors that made up the Kelktoo.
Inside, all was chaos. Equipment and pieces of equipment drifted through the floatways and corridors. Longsee nearly ran into the wreckage of a beatscope as he ducked and swerved through the debris.
Technicians and engineers and researchers were gathering their gear, hunting down loose parts, squeaking and honking and bellowing at each other.
Chase’s echopod couldn’t make sense of all the jabber…finally, it gave up and started emitting a low monotone. A nearby technician helped him fix it.
“It’s a disaster,” Longsee said. He darted about, one way, then another way, agitated, angry, nearly overwhelmed, fluttering his armfins, squeaking in anguish. “We’ll never get this fixed—“
Kloosee dived in and helped corral as much of the drifting gear as he could.
A voice issued up from the outer platform. “The Metah’s coming…she’s coming this way--!”
Longsee, Kloosee and the others went back down the floatway, dodging wreckage and debris, bumping into one another in their efforts to slip outside. A huge gathering of the kelke presaged the arrival of Iltereedah and her entourage.
Outside, the vast grid of Omsh’pont was nearly obscured by the silt and rain of floating debris. The collapsed seamount at the far end of the valley was still shedding rubble and hills of mud lined the farthest districts of the city, burying homes, shops, gardens, everything. In among the suspended clumps of wreckage, knots of people moved about, poking and sniffing, trying to find their own belongings. To Chase, it looked like a gigantic underwater yard sale.
The Metah cruised silently, grimly inspecting the damage, surrounded by a phalanx of prodsmen and staff, but still beset with petitioners and kelke imploring her help, her prayers, her support. She paused to grieve and commiserate with everyone who approached.
Angie saw her big chance and without warning, took off, whipping past Chase, Longsee and Kloosee, diving into the melee. She pushed and shoved her way through the growing knot of people, until at last, she came face to face with a determined pair of guards, prods out and ready to sting.
“Your Majesty…Your Majesty—“ she called, hoping her pod was working. With all the bellowing and grunting and whistles and squeaks and honks, it was hard to tell if she could be heard. “Your Maj…excuse me, sir…Your Majesty…a word, please…I need to see you!”
Iltereedah had been sympathizing with a pair of youngsters, patting them on the head, nuzzling beaks, when her eye caught the commotion that Angie was causing. Chase and Kloosee were right behind her, but more prodsmen barred their way.
The Metah waved her hand. “Let her pass…you are eekoti, are you not?”
Angie came up. She didn’t really know how to act before the Metah. Do I bow or curtsy or what? She settled on folding her hands into something like a prayer steeple. The Metah’s voice came through her echopod as a screeching whine, until Longsee helped her tune it. The racket of a city on the verge of mass panic had overloaded its circuits.
“Your Majesty—“ how do I say this?—“ Your Majesty, I am eekoti. I’ve enjoyed being here, meeting so many people, seeing everything…” Just get on with it, girl, you’re not writing a postcard here “… I want to go back to my home world…I want to go through em’took again…be my old self again—“
She waited while the Metah listened carefully to what her echopod was producing. Iltereedah’s face was hard to read, part grandmotherly lines, part quivering mouth, part sympathetic nurse, part firm monarch.
Finally, she spoke. “Eekoti Angie, what you ask is not possible. Longsee, come here beside me—“
Longsee was allowed to approach, brushing past the prodsmen with a half-sneer on his face.
“Tell her, Longsee. The em’took is not reversible. Once done, it cannot be undone.”
Longsee wanted to be careful in what he said. To contradict the Metah in front of her court—
“Affectionate Metah, this is the truth. Reversing the em’took has never been successfully accomplished….it is very risky…so many factors…so many variables. I can’t imagine how it could succeed.”
Iltereedah seemed convinced. “There, you see? From the mouth of one of our greatest scientists. This would be suicide. Shooki would not forgive us if we did this.”
But Angie wasn’t going to be dissuaded. “Your Majesty, yes…Longsee has said that. Others have said that. But I must return home. I’m willing to take the risk.”
Now Iltereedah seemed more concerned. Lines around her eyes and mouth tightened. “We have offended you, eekoti Angie? Is this what has happened? Yes, conditions are bad, it’s true—“ she swept her armfins around, indicating the city and the wreckage that blotted out everything, “but we are a hospitable people. We live ke’shoo and ke’lee…you say love and life…you are unhappy here, not treated well?”
Angie waited until the full echopod translation came through. How could she say this? Iltereedah was concerned, even upset, that an honored guest had been mistreated, that her guest did not find life in Omt’or satisfying and fulfilling. “No, Your Majesty, I’ve been treated well, very well, no complaints at all. It’s just that…it’s not home, see, and I want to go home. I want to be like I was before—“
Now Iltereedah nosed right up to Angie, nuzzling around her face, her neck, her abdomen, reading inner echoes, pulsing and studying what was there, seeking deceit, other purposes, the telltale bubbles of doubt. She found none of this. Iltereedah backed off. “I pulse only loneliness in you, eekoti Angie. Sadness, perhaps…you’re hard to read and there’s so much racket around. Maybe some melancholy too.”
Angie admitted she felt all these things. “I can’t hide them, Your Majesty. I miss my family…my kelke.”
Iltereedah seemed to understand. She had made up her mind. “Longsee, reversing the em’took…this has never been tried before?”
Longsee said, “It has been tried before, Affectionate Metah, with test animals…baby tillet and pal’penk. It wasn’t successful…we tried different approaches, different mixes of bacteria and different sequences, different organisms and scans. We couldn’t get the results we wanted.”
“But this has been tried before?”
“Yes, Affectionate Metah.”
Iltereedah now looked at Angie sternly. “Eekoti Angie, I give my approval to this effort. Longsee and his scientists will do what they can. The results—“ she looked around at the gathering, pulsed questions, doubts, some impatience with this pushy visitor named Angie—“…the results will be what they are…what Shooki allows.”
With that, Iltereedah darted off and her prodsmen hustled to keep up. Like a single-minded organism, the petitioners that had crowded around her moved along too, continuing their supplication, their requests and begging.
Kloosee gently pulled Angie out of the way. They pushed through th
e crowd and went back to the Kelktoo and its wrecked labs.
Longsee and Kloosee took Angie aside. “This is very risky, you know that. Are you sure you want to do this?”
Angie looked at Chase. Only it wasn’t Chase. What she saw looking at him was some kind of freak. She convinced herself it wasn’t Chase.
“I can’t stay here, Chase. I don’t belong here. You don’t either. But that’s for you to decide. Me…I have to go home. And I want to be me again. I have to try.”
Longsee pulsed her thoroughly, reading and studying the echoes inside. He decided she was telling the truth. He turned to an assistant—his name was Klektor.
“Get the em’took bed out…put it there.” Longsee indicated a recessed corner of the lab. “We’ll have to secure the door, to keep debris from floating in.”
The coffin-like pod was wrestled into the lab and put into place. Longsee reminded Angie of what the process would involve. Behind him, Chase hovered nervously.
“After you lie down inside, contractile fibers will unfurl and extend. They will envelop your body. The fibers have sharp tips. You won’t feel it but the tips will inject a potion. You will sleep. And when you wake up, the em’took will be undone. If all goes well—“
Angie shuddered, reached out to touch Chase’s fingers. “Ugh. If all goes well…I wish he hadn’t said that.”
“I think we understand,” Chase said. He looked at Angie. Their fingertips touched for a long time. She lay down inside gingerly.
“Just like going diving,” she said, laughing, to keep from shivering.
Then, the em’took cocoon began squeezing her between its wall segments, tightening its hold on her sides.
Angie made a face and lay back carefully inside the pod, wriggling to get more comfortable.
For a long time, nothing happened. She dozed off, then awoke hearing a faint whistle. She sniffed something, it smelled like oranges. Then she noticed a faint mist issuing into the pod.
This is like being in a coffin, she thought. The mist thickened. She didn’t know it but the mist contained the first wave of programmed bacteria. The bacteria would begin the em’took process, penetrating into her nose, her mouth and eyes, burrowing into her skin, breaking down tissues and bone and cartilage, rebuilding structures to reverse the original modification.
She decided to listen again to her echopod describe the procedure, just to give her brain something else to focus on.
“The em’took begins with a genetic sequencing and neural scan. After the sequencing and scan, the bacteria are altered and ‘tuned’ to match the recipient. The sequencing and scanning process is known as vish’tu, which in the Seomish language means a journey or a roam about the sea. The name of the modification process is also used in the Seomish language to mean birth or living space, connoting a place of new birth.”
Of course, Angie didn’t know any of this. Her echopod described the process in detail, but the voice was soft and staticky and she wasn’t listening. Instead, she grew sleepy.
The last thing she remembered was an image of her and Chase making out in his bass boat off Half Moon Cove That and the dancing of waterspouts too numerous to count, all along the horizon.
As Angie slept, the echopod continued its explanation, since she had forgotten to turn the thing off. Beneath the closed hatch of the pod, a gentle voice whispered what was happening:
“The em’took procedure has seven stages:
a.Internal organs (intestines, pyloric caeca, stomach, kidneys, spleen, liver, heart, swim bladder). This is known as the Intook.
b.Skeletal and vertebrae modifications. Known as the Vertook.
c.Reproductive organs. Known as Potook.
d.Immune system. Known as Sitook.
e.External organs (gills, skin, scales, fins). Known as Skor’took.
f.Sensory organs and tissues (eyes, olfactory, lateral line, etc). Known as Boltook.
g.And finally, the head, brain and neural systems (central nervous system, cerebellum). This phase is called Metook.”
The entire procedure would take two days.
As the em’took was progressing, Kloosee and Klektor, with help from Pakma and others, wrestled the pod into the Notwater chamber. The chamber had to be assembled and mounted just outside the Kelktoo spaces, now fully exposed to the rain of debris and the steady drone of the wavemaker. But it couldn’t be helped. There was no room inside the lab.
Once the Notwater chamber was up and operating, it was pumped dry and filled with air. Then the em’took pod, with Angie still inside, was inserted and fastened down. When Angie awoke, she could then emerge into a breathable atmosphere compatible with her biology.
That was the plan.
Chase followed Longsee and Kloosee about the lab, helping them to clean up trash, re-sort equipment, re-stow gear, always with questions. What could happen? What could go wrong? What will she look like?
Finally, Longsee had pity on the anxious eekoti. “Chase, only Shooki knows what will happen. The organisms are programmed and designed to do their job. We’ve taken every precaution we can take…if the scan is bad, if the sequencing is bad, if the took’te are corrupted, we’ll know soon enough. Be still and let us work.”
Chase knew there was no way he could do that so he held his tongue and busied himself with helping others. And when the tension and the waiting became unbearable, he left the Kelktoo and spent time with Kloosee just roaming about the damaged city. They said little on these short jaunts.
Finally, the time came. Em’took was over. Chase asked to be inside the Notwater pod when the cocoon was opened…in fact, it was Longsee who instructed him on how to do that.
At Longsee’s signal through the translucent curtain of the Notwater chamber, Chase pressed the controls along the side and the pod hissed and began slowly coming open.
Inside, as the top split apart—it seemed to take forever as the fibers parted-- Chase saw first a pair of hands, no longer scaly, but faintly blue in the cold, then an arm, then another arm…again no scaly armor visible so far…just a fine bristle of hair.
His heart missed a beat. Now the cocoon came fully open. Angie’s eyes blinked, her face was momentarily in shadow, then he saw her.
It had worked! The em’took reversal had worked. Chase grinned so wide, he felt like his face would split in half. He reached in, seeing her eyes flutter and open fully.
She was more beautiful than he remembered. There were a few things not quite complete. Her hands still had some light webbing between her fingers. Her ears weren’t quite right. Maybe it was the light.
Angie hoisted herself up on her elbows. Chase bent down to give her a kiss, but she turned her head.
“Eeeewww! Get away from me, you slug!”
Chase had forgotten what he looked like. Still, he held her hand. The em’took reversal had worked, mostly.
“How do you feel?”
Angie yawned, stretched. “Like I just ran a marathon. My head hurts, my hands and feet hurt, my ears hurt…everything hurts. Is there a mirror around here?”
“No…but you look fine. The procedure worked. Longsee, Kloosee…they made it work. You’re back to looking as hot as ever.”
Angie made a face. “I don’t look like a whore, do I?”
“No more than usual. Come on…get up…we’ve got to get you into this lifesuit. Longsee wants to flood this pod as soon as possible.”
She struggled to her feet and swayed a bit unsteadily, as she let Chase zip her into the bulky lifesuit. He checked connections and regulators…the suit was Seomish design but it was still diving gear. Chase was good with diving gear. She lowered the helmet down on her neck ring and they made sure it was fast. Chase knocked on the side of her helmet,
Angie gave him a thumbs up. That’s when she realized there were eyes staring at them, from just beyond the translucent veil that was the outside wall of the Notwater pod.
Chase gave a hand signal to Kloosee, hovering just outside the hatch. Moments later, the wall fibers contracted and water became pouring in. The pod was flooded in minutes and the walls peeled back like the fingers of a big hand opening.
Chase led Angie out and the two of them made their way back inside Kelktoo. Longsee and his scientists wanted to study their handiwork…pleased that the reverse em’took had gone so well.
“It’s a breakthrough for us,” Kloosee admitted. “Now we know em’took can be accomplished in both directions. That’ll make living in other seas easier, for everybody.”
“You mean like the seas of Earth?” Chase asked.
Kloosee didn’t reply to that.
Unknown to the Kelktoo staff, who spent hours with Angie, examining everything from head to foot, the Metah Iltereedah had quietly made her way from her court-pavilion, now partially covered in mud, to a small em’kel wedged into a narrow cave halfway up the T’or seamount, across the great valley and away from the worst of the landslides. The em’kel was called Ot’lum Tek’ek, which means “Scent Memories.” This em’kel was devoted to making, enjoying and distributing scentbulbs throughout Seome. Pakma was the star artist of this clan.
Iltereedah came alone, almost unrecognized, in all the chaos of thousands evacuating buried homes and finding shelter, cleaning up and sorting, crying and circling in a daze through the unending rain of silt. Omsh’pont had been grievously wounded by the quakes and tremors and Iltereedah could scarcely believe what she pulsed.
She showed up at the entrance to the em’kel and was immediately recognized there. Lokeesh kar, another scentbulb artist, quickly hustled her inside.
“Affectionate Metah…we didn’t know you were coming…an unexpected pleasure…can I get—“
Iltereedah waved him quiet. “Is Pakma tek here? I need to speak with her.”
“Yes, yes…of course, Affectionate Metah, of course…I’ll get her.”
Pakma showed up right then, momentarily flustered at the Metah inside their own tiny em’kel.
Iltereedah got right to the point. “I came because of your reputation, Pakma tek.” She didn’t have to explain…everybody knew what Pakma did well. Pakma had learned to create and appreciate scentbulbs from an early age. One of her first accomplishments as a scentbulb artist had been to capture and catalog scents from seamothers who occasionally entered Omtorish waters in small packs. In this, Pakma often exposed herself to considerable danger, but she was able to obtain scents and smells from seamothers in a variety of states: eating, sleeping, copulating, in distress, fighting. These traces were in the waters of the Om’metee, south of the traditional seamother feeding grounds. Technically, these waters were off-limits, but Pakma ignored the regulations.
Her scentbulbs became famous throughout Om’tor and other kels as part of an updated catalog of seamother culture and biology. The bulbs were known as the Puk’lek (literally, Seamother Smells).
Iltereedah went on. “Pakma, I want you to create a new set of scentbulbs for me…Puk’lek scentbulbs. Seamothers in heat, ready to copulate. I want twenty of them. You can do this?”
Pakma circled the anteroom silently, thinking. She pulsed Iltereedah and could clearly see she was anxious, maybe it was the tremors and quakes, so many died, so many injured. Now, seamother bulbs?
“I can do this…but it will take time. Maybe three days.”
Now Iltereedah seemed especially intense. Pakma pulsed her and the echoes slammed back. The Metah was wound up tighter than a tillet’s neck. “The eekoti female is going back to Kinlok, back through the Farpool. Tomorrow. A small expedition. I’m sending the eekoti male, plus Longsee and Kloosee, and ten others. You too. All of you will be tekmetah…my eyes and ears. We bond today…the ceremony will be on top of T’or—“ here the Metah seemed saddened by all the destruction around them, “at midday.”
Pakma wasn’t surprised. “It takes time, Affectionate Metah, to make the bulbs. Why so many?”
Iltereedah now seemed resolved. She had made up her mind. Abruptly, she waved off the others gathered around and they scooted off, though not far. “The eekoti male will speak once more with the Tailless people, with their commander. Once the female has gone through the Farpool, the wavemaker must be shutdown, and the dismantling must proceed. If the Tailless refuse, I want you to lay a grid of Puk’lek bulbs around the machine. Make them strong, Pakma tek. Strong and powerful. Irresistible.”
Pakma considered what Iltereedah was asking. “It’s dangerous, Affectionate Metah. Scentbulbs of puk’lek in heat will attract more puk’lek…the seamothers will come in force, stirred up, ready to fight.”
Now Iltereedah smiled. “I’m counting on exactly that. If the Tailless will not shutdown their machine, the seamothers will do it for them…permanently.”
Now Pakma understood the Metah’s reasoning. It was bold. It was risky. It might start a war with the Umans, a war Pakma wasn’t sure the Omtorish or any kel could win. It might further damage the seas. It might even be suicide.
“At once, Affectionate Metah. The whole em’kel will get to work…here, come Lokeesh…bring me some blank bulbs. We have much work to do.”
Iltereedah left.
The expedition got underway three days later, ten kip’ts in all, engineers, craftsmen, technicians, herders, spinners, handlers, pullers, drivers, prodsmen. Plus Chase and Angie, riding with Kloosee and Pakma in separate kip’ts. Angie’s lifesuit was too bulky to allow her to ride with more than one companion. Pakma drove their kip’t. Angie wedged herself in back and slept much of the time.
She was sad and exhilarated at the same time. How was that even possible? Sad to be leaving Seome and Pakma and all the friends she had made on this waterworld. Sad to be leaving Chase…sad for what might have been. They had talked about getting married, even having kids…it was always three, not one or two. They had dreamed of honeymooning in the South Pacific, some nearly uninhabited tropical paradise, living like castaways for weeks on end. They had talked of getting Angie into med school, though that seemed at least as far away as the other side of the galaxy. They had even talked of Chase buying out his Dad’s shop and setting up a chain of stores…they had tried out different store names: Half Moon Novelties, Apalachee Gifts, even The Turtle Shop and spent hours and hours designing their web page and merchandise brands and logos.
Now…it would never happen. That made her cry and Angie shed tears for awhile. Pakma seemed to understand, and sympathized with her.
But some of the tears were tears of joy too. She was going home. Going home for good this time.
If the Farpool could be made to work one more time.
The rest of the trip passed by without incident and soon the expedition cruised into the icy polar waters of the northern Ponk’el Sea. The beat of the wavemaker was somewhat irregular though as irritating as ever. Pakma wondered out loud if the Umans were getting ready to shut down the machine, or had altered how it worked.
“I hope it hasn’t affected the Farpool,” Angie said nervously.
Pakma drove her kip’t alongside Kloosee’s. A repeater link was opened. Kloosee’s voice came through scratchy and chirpy.
“I received a message, on the signaler. Longsee sent a message from us. The Umans will meet us at the usual spot.”
Angie knew what that meant. The small hut on the sand ridge overlooking the beach.
They were there in a short while.
Angie decided she would go along with Chase. Kloosee, Longsee and the others stayed with their kip’ts, hovering just below the surface of the bay.
Chase and Angie clambered through the surf, Angie nearly losing her balance in the lifesuit, as rough waves pounded the beachhead. Once they had made land, they climbed the rock cliff, stumbling and following th
e narrow trail they always followed. Dringoth and a few others were at the top.
No pleasantries were exchanged as the Umans ushered them inside.
Dringoth got right to the point.
“Sector Command wants a detailed schedule. They’ve now approved shutting down the Twister, subject to military necessity. A squadron of jump ships is within a few days of this system. Once they’re nearby, and setup to protect the critical time streams, we can take the Twister off line. Then our people will work with your…er, fish people, to begin breaking down the machine.” Dringoth pulled out a small tablet. It displayed a map of Seome. “Show me again where the Twister will be moved…I’ve got to send the coordinates to Sector, so they can synchronize operations and re-calculate how the Twister will work in its new location.”
Golich was just shaking his head. “This is insane…to shut down a major defensive system just because it bothers the local ‘fish.’ We should have our heads examined. We’ve got Coethi ships all around us, sniffing up and down all kinds of time streams and we can’t defend them all as it is. Now, this—“
Dringoth shut off the discussion. “Lieutenant, you know as well as I do the Twister needs repairs, serious repairs. It’s on its last legs as it is. Shutting down for a re-location doesn’t affect anything…in fact, it gives us a chance to do some upgrades. That’s Sector’s take on this…that’s what we have orders to do. So that’s what we’re going to do.”
Chase showed them on the map tablet where the Omtorish had proposed to rebuild and re-assemble the Time Twister. “It’s still near the polar ice cap. Likte Island is surrounded by deep underwater canyons and ravines. The currents will carry the sound and the vibration away from populated areas.”
“Wait a minute--” Angie interrupted. Golich and Dringoth were both a little startled that there was a human voice inside the lifesuit. To them, the lifesuit resembled the modified outer reptilian thing that they knew as Chase. “—what about the Farpool? You can’t shut down the Farpool just yet.”
Chase explained Angie’s concern to the Umans. “She wants to go home. We can’t shut down until she’s gone through the vortex.”
“Back home…to Urth?” asked Golich, incredulous. “Likely there’s nothing left. Time stream 001…didn’t we see something on the boards about that, Major?”
“The place is quarantined,” Dringoth explained. “Timejump Command has pinched off all known time streams…a lot of them converge at 001…to keep the Coethi from wrecking the home planet. You’ll never get through.”
Chase said, “If I understand how this works, the Farpool will take her to a time and place well before your time. Hundreds of years before. We’ve been using it to go back and forth to our own time…you know, the twenty-second century.”
Dringoth scoffed. “It probably won’t make any difference what time you’re aiming for. But it’ll take a day or so to shutdown anyway. Sector says I can’t go offline until the relief squadron contacts me…I haven’t heard anything yet. But you’d best get moving. Sector is nervous about this whole shutdown as it is.”
For the next hour, Chase and Dringoth went over the details of the shutdown and dismantling project. Chase had brought several echobulbs, most with Longsee’s translated voice, to verbally explain how the Omtorish would proceed. Dringoth and Golich listened skeptically, then patiently replied to each step of the effort, recording into a blank bulb that would be translated back into Longsee’s tongue.
In this way, over several meetings that day, the Umans and the Omtorish eventually came to an understanding of what needed to be done, in what order and by whom.
Through it all, Angie grew more and more nervous. She didn’t want anything to happen that would keep her from going home.
As they made their way down the rock cliff to the beach, she pulled Chase aside. They found a narrow ledge overlooking the bay and sat there. Surf crashed and hissed below them.
“So, this is it, huh?” Chase asked. He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t see much anyway. Angie was hidden inside the lifesuit. His hand groped for hers, but stopped short.
“You don’t have to talk like that, you know.” Her voice sounded slurred and chirpy coming through the lifesuit speaker. “Don’t make this any harder than it is.”
“Well, what do you want me to say…you’re going home. I’m staying here.”
Angie finally found his fingers with hers. They intertwined. Even between the lifesuit gloves and his own scaly frog digits, there was something.
“You could come too. Nobody’s keeping you here, Chase. It’s your decision.”
“Yeah, I know. I guess I will someday. You know, Longsee and Kloos talk about this emigration thing…everybody going through the Farpool to Earth, living in our oceans. I’m not sure how well that’ll go over.”
Now Angie looked at him, really looked at him. They had both changed and it wasn’t the em’took procedure or the lifesuit or anything you could see. It was inside.
“The Farpool may not even work anymore, after I go through it. If that big machine shuts down, won’t it disappear?”
Chase shrugged. “Probably. But Longsee’s worked out a plan…we can build another machine, at least enough to create another Farpool.”
“But nobody can say for sure it’ll work, or work the same way.”
“No.”
Angie now squeezed his hand. “Chase, what’s happened to us? We came here for…what? Adventure, to see the sights, help Kloos and Pakma….I don’t even remember why we came. I miss my mom. I miss Gwen and running around the school and flirting with the boys and ice creams at Citrus Grove and—“
“Making out in my canoe…” Chase sort of giggled. It sounded more like something struck in his throat.
“Yeah, even that. Throwing sea shells at each other on Shelley Beach….Chase, we had a future. We had plans. I was going to be a nurse. You were going to be a—“
“It’s okay, you can say it. A ‘bum.’ A beach bum. Selling T-shirts and boogie boards for the rest of my life…crap, Angie, I don’t understand it myself. When I came here, when we were trying to help Kloos and Pakma, I felt something just clicked. Something popped into place. I could see myself working here, helping out. Here, on Seome, I wasn’t Mack Meyer’s kid anymore. I was somebody. A celebrity. A hero. I like that. I like being somebody. I like being somebody needed.”
Now Angie sighed, but she knew Chase couldn’t hear it. She had warm tears in her eyes but no way to wipe them inside the lifesuit. They streamed down her cheeks and she was glad Chase couldn’t see them. “I needed you…I’m pretty sure I did, Chase.”
“You said you did. Does that mean you don’t anymore?”
For a few moments, Angie said nothing. “Don’t ask me that, Chase. Now’s not the time.”
“So when is it time? You’re leaving. We won’t see each other again.”
She didn’t want to hear that, even to think that, though a small part of her mind said it was true, it had to be true, but it just couldn’t be true. It was all so confusing. Leaving some one was like leaving part of yourself. It would have been easier to leave behind an arm or a finger or maybe—
No, she would not follow that line of thinking. Focus on what was ahead. Getting home…back to Scotland Beach. Seeing her mom. Telling bad jokes with Gwen. Seeing all the patients at Dr. Wright’s clinic. Graduating from Apalachee High and getting her life started. She had always imagined Chase would be there too. They’d start their lives together…that was the plan. That had always been the plan.
Now—it was like she had to go back to the starting blocks again in the 400-meter…after a false start. Line up again, get in your crouch, get comfortable, get a good feel of the blocks, relax…breathe deeply and wait for the gun.
“We’d better get back,” Chase said. “Kloos and the others are waiting for us.”
Reluctantly, because she
didn’t want to think any longer about the images rolling through her mind, she got up, unfastened her fingers from his and together, one after another, they gingerly picked their way down the cliffs to the beach.
They dove into the first big wave—they’d often done that off Shelley Beach and Turtle Key—but this was different. This wasn’t the warm bathwater of the Gulf. It was ice cold, salty, murky and the Uman Time Twister pounded like a never-ending headache.
Yet it was that same headache that had created the Farpool. And that was the way home.
And she knew in that moment when their heads went below the waves that she was ready.
Longsee had decided that two Omtorish kelke she didn’t know would accompany Angie through the Farpool. Their names were Cheeoray tek and Mapulte tom. Both were engineers with the Academy, the Kelktoo.
“We need more study of the new world,” Longsee announced as they all boarded their kip’ts for the short ride out to the vortex field. In fact, an extra kip’t had been brought along, a three-person sled, crammed with supplies and gear, especially hardened and sealed just for the trip. “Temperatures, salinity, currents and pressure distribution…food sources, all of this must be cataloged.”
Chase and Angie looked at each other. Both had the same thought: the Omtorish were making serious preparations, getting ready to move large numbers of kelke to Earth. They didn’t know if Earth would be ready. The idea had never been discussed. But it was a safe bet there would be consequences if hordes of Seomish started showing up in Earth’s oceans.
The kip’ts cruised around to the other side of Kinlok Island, where a field of drift ice filled the waters with jagged deep-lying projections, stalagmites from the surface. Kloosee parked his kip’t among the drift ice bergs and the other kip’ts surrounded it. For the moment, they were shielded from the worst of the noise.
Now, Angie and her passengers moved to their newly hardened kip’t. Gear and supplies were loaded aboard, pods of gisu and ter’poh and tong’pod, and fluids to drink. Enough for three of them.
Transferring from one sled to another, Chase and Angie bumped into each other. Automatically, they embraced, and Chase hooked a leg around the kip’t’s rudders, to keep strong currents from driving them off. The water was dark, ice-cold and he could feel Angie shivering inside her lifesuit.
“I guess this is good-bye,” Angie said. She knew it was Chase inside that reptilian face, somewhere. She closed her eyes, bringing his blond surfer boy face to mind, ignoring the reality of what floated before her. “Chase, I—“
He put a hand to her helmet, where her mouth was. “Shhh…don’t, okay? Let’s just hold each other. Don’t say anything.”
So they held each other for many minutes. Chase thought he could hear something over the echobulb…it wasn’t being translated well, but it sounded like…yep, she was crying, sobbing. He held her tighter.
“Chase, come home. Don’t stay here. At least, come for a visit. I want to know how you—“but she just couldn’t finish the sentence.
“I will,” he said, and he meant that. He knew it would be a while but somehow, he would make it happen.
They let go and Angie wiggled herself into the rear slingseat of the sled, right behind the bulky mass of Mapulte tom, who wheezed and chittered at the confining pressure of the sled cockpit.
Angie closed her eyes and silently prayed. Going through the Farpool with these two was going to be an adventure. She decided it was enough to be going…if they made it, if they didn’t make it…she tried to toss any concerns away, but they kept coming back…usually brought back to her by some persistent image of Chase…it was always Chase jogging along the beach, loping along easily like some two-legged horse. There was nowhere she could turn her thoughts that the image didn’t show up…it was burned in.
Kloosee closed the sled cockpit hatch. “Good luck,” he said. He backed off.
Cheeoray started up the propulsors and the kip’t emerged from its berth between the icebergs. It rocked in the cross-currents and Cheeoray drove them back to the wavemaker side of Kinlok.
Soon, they were sliding into the vortex fields.
Angie had drifted off into a light doze when a faint tug on the side of the craft startled her awake.
“Are we there yet? Is this the Farpool?”
“I don’t know, but it feels like we’re moving sideways.” Mapulte plastered his nose to the porthole, trying to make something out. “It’s silty out there. Dark too. Deeper water. You feel that?”
Mapulte was shaking. He’d never been through the Farpool before. Angie found herself unwittingly rubbing him along his rear dorsals, stroking his skin, trying to comfort him.
“Just hold on…it gets better. But it’s wild ride before it does!” Great, she told herself. Now, I’m the expert on this thing.
Some kind of force was pushing them sideways in the water. At the same time, the compartment picked up a light shuddering vibration, gyrating like a top at the end of a string.
Cheeoray squeezed the controls as hard as he could, trying to keep them centered among wild gyrating columns of frothing bubbles, scores of narrow whirlpools, all spinning in synchrony with the greater vortex of the Farpool. It was like trying to navigate the dance floor at the Apalachee High junior-senior prom.
The force began to increase, a centrifugal force that soon shoved them to one side of the compartment and pressed them hard against the walls. Worse, the kip’t groaned and creaked and began a slow roll, a rotation that didn’t remain slow for long, but picked up rate at a steady clip.
Soon, they were spinning enough to become disoriented and dizzy.
Angie felt nauseated.
“…my stomach…I don’t feel so—“
Her words were suddenly lost in a bright flash of light, a searing, painfully white strobing light that flooded the compartment and blinded all of them.
“Ow…I can’t see—“
The spin kept accelerating and moments later, Cheeoray, Mapulte and Angie all passed out.
The Farpool Page 22
