The Farpool

by Philip Bosshardt

  Chapter 22

  Seome

  Likte Trench and Omsh’pont, kel: Om’tor

  Time: 768.9, Epoch of Tekpotu

  Likte Island was a towering seamount, a wart on the floor of a vast range of mountains, valleys, ravines, depressions and underwater canyons. Longsee had originally proposed the island and its nearby trench system as a new location for the Time Twister because of its canyons.

  “The sound and vibration will be lost in all that chaotic terrain,” he explained. “The ridges and canyons will break up the sound and dampen the effects of the Uman machine.” Now, Longsee would never see the results of his decision. The Coethi starball and its effects on the star-sun Sigma Albeth B had made the oceans of Seome rougher, colder, and saltier than ever and hundreds of kelke had died as a result. The effects fell most severely on the very young, the ill and infirm…and the elderly. Longsee had been over sixty mah in age.

  The Seomish didn’t know it but their sun was dying, slowly but surely being forced off her normal sequence by the effects of multiple starball impacts, the fusium bombs banking her fusion furnaces, dampening her helium-deuterium reactions, drenching her nuclear fires with waste products that couldn’t be blown off. In time, and even the Umans didn’t know how long, Sigma-Albeth B would succumb to the gravity of her own mass and implode. And because she was many times the mass of Earth’s own sun, the collapse would surely lead to a catastrophic supernova explosion, obliterating everything in her family of planets and moons. All that would remain would be a gaseous bubble, and shrapnel from her death throes, flung into interstellar space at nearly light speed.

  But the Seomish knew none of this. They were more concerned with re-assembling the Uman Time Twister, not because they cared for the weapon or its effectiveness, but because they knew it was the only way the Farpool could be regained, and the Farpool was the only way the final collapse, the great ak’loosh, could be avoided.

  The Farpool was increasingly seen as the only way out, the only way to escape total annihilation.

  The convoy of kip’ts bore down on Likte Island and her deep trench with all possible speed. Chase had managed to squeeze into one of the larger sleds with Kloosee and Pakma. Like the other kip’ts, they had taken in tow several pods of material from the Time Twister, in their case, several nets full of the chronotron pods, the active mechanism of the Twister that, when powered by its singularity engine, would reach out from Likte and grab local spacetime by the throat and twist it into infinite curvature, like a fist squeezing a gisu bulb. Once the chronotron pods were in place and powered up, and the Twister foundation and components re-assembled, the Uman machine could operate as before. And the Farpool would once again open up a passageway to a new world.

  Such was the thinking of Omt’or’s sled drivers as they reached Likte Trench.

  Many kip’ts towed sections of the Twister’s outer casing, the vast dish-shaped structure that rode along the surface like a breaching seamother, partially exposed to the Notwater, and partially submerged. It was upon this huge dish that the chronotron pods would be mounted. And before that could happen, the dish would have to be made fast to her foundation, itself buried in the muck and ooze at the bottom of the trench.

  Much work remained to be done.

  It was Pakma who voiced their greatest concern. “From what I learned, it’s this device the Tailless called the singularity engine that we have to worry about. Do we have it with us? Was it recovered from the storm?”

  Kloosee was concentrating on positioning their nets full of chronotron pods into a holding spot off Likte’s southwest shore. The convoy had decided to use a shallow valley just beyond the surf line of the island as a staging place for pods, foundation and main structure elements, and all the mooring, tensioning and cabling that held the entire assembly together.

  “Manklu and Lepkos said they found a heavily shielded device on the bottom, near one of the original foundation mounts…it matched the description Chase gave us from one of the Umans…eekoti Golich, I believe.”

  Chase remembered when Golich had given him a device to explain how the Twister worked…”Yeah, that’s right. I recorded some of it on this bulb…” He rummaged around the cockpit and found the device, then turned it on. A voice, Chase’s voice, came out in scratchy bursts…’ The Time Twister contains a naked singularity at the core of its field. Umans have learned how to use existing stars and their extreme gravitational fields to compress matter enough to create such a singularity. The distorted space-time field around this singularity core of the Twister is known as a twist field. It’s like the warp field in Star Trek.

  ‘Uman engineers have developed a way of creating, maneuvering and regulating the effects of the twist field. This is done through a screening field and a series of buffers, known as twist buffers, or just T-buffers.

  ‘Like a nuclear power plant with its core always on, but regulated by control rods, the Twister is also always on. The singularity engine at the core, once created and activated, can’t be turned off. But it can be regulated through a series of T-buffers. These moderate the twist field…’

  “So that’s my question,” Pakma asked again. “Do we have this singularity engine with us?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Kloosee decided. “Unhitch our load here and go find Manklu.”

  They did just that.

  The kip’t driven by Manklu and Lepkos had stopped several beats short of the Likte Trench. Only continued pulsing and calling enabled Kloosee to find them. They had parked the sled on a small rise overlooking the first of a series of increasingly steep ravines, east of the island. The rise was peppered with odd black columns of smoke corkscrewing into the upper waters from hot vents on the seabed. Local kelke had long called the entire region the ‘Land of the Black Smokers.” In fact, each ridge top was covered with the same smoke columns.

  Manklu explained. “We were cruising along just fine, half a beat, maybe more, from the Trench when the water all around us started to vibrate. It was that blasted crate down there—“ he pointed an armfin at the bottom of the ravine. Something glowed dull red in the gloom down there, a pulsating red like a beacon. “…she was eating right through the net fibers, coming loose.”

  Lepkos added, “Eating through all the towlines…we were going to lose our whole load, right into that crater down there—“

  Manklu went on. “We had to cut the damn thing loose, let it drop. It was steaming, and frothing the water, vibrating like a seamother’s tail, it was coming apart---we didn’t have a choice.”

  Kloosee and Chase drifted over the top of the ravine, a steep V-shaped cleft in the seabed. “What is it? What’s inside?”

  Lepkos honked. “Shooki’s wrath…mother ak’loosh…head of a seamother…who knows? We cut her loose and got away from it—“

  Kloosee and Chase looked at each other. Each had the same thought. “We’d better go down there, see what it is.”

  “It may be the singularity engine,” Pakma said. “You shouldn’t try—“

  But they had already nosed over the side of the rise and were headed down into the dark.

  Kloosee and Chase descended into the ravine and straight away felt a strong turbulent current thrashing them as they went down. The red light became more diffuse, more of a glow, though it brightened as they approached. But it was the strong currents that made the descent more difficult.

  It was like being trapped in a spiral, corkscrewing wave, not unlike the Farpool in miniature.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t get too close,” Kloosee suggested.

  But Chase was undeterred. “We have to be sure…if we’re going to re-build the Time Twister, we have to know—“

  A few moments later, they ran into the outer boundary of a twist field. Suddenly, the water became denser, the current stronger, they were slammed by waves left and right, battered and caught in a strong grip, now being sucked downward, ever downward, an
undertow had grabbed them and lights were strobing and—

  For what seemed like hours, maybe ages, Chase felt himself spinning, caught in a narrow cylinder, with an endless looping vid of images flashing past, too fast for him to focus on. There were explosions and giant waves and stars detonating and crashing surf and dead silence and a kaleidoscope of crazy dreams, hallucinations, illusions and dreamlike things flitting by. It was like falling through a movie, or running through a funhouse at the circus, everything was distorted and misshapen and none of it made sense…all you could do was watch, and keep watching and hope the spinning stopped….

  Then a strong force propelled him out of the cylinder and Chase found himself pinned against the rubbly slope of the ravine while all around rock and mud and silt rained down, sometimes in slow motion, sometimes sped up.

  With effort, he crawled and kicked his way upward and there nearly collided with Kloosee. They scrambled and strained to make the top of the rise and then, with a final kick and push, they both squirted free and drifted stunned and dizzy through the water.

  Pakma was right there. “Are you two all right? What happened? You went down and came right back up.”

  It took a few minutes for the two of them to regain their senses. Carefully, Pakma shepherded them back toward the small fleet of kip’ts. Other kelke were busy unloading their cargo nets, depositing Twister parts and mooring cable and pods full of equipment into a shallow valley.

  “I think we found the singularity engine,” Kloosee finally said. He sucked at a gisu pod, trying to get some feeling back in his tail and armfins.

  Chase agreed. “Whatever that was, don’t get too close. The Umans said you couldn’t turn the thing off. We’ll have to devise a way of hoisting it up into the Twister when it’s assembled.”

  Now Pakma was joined by one of the repeaters from Omsh’pont, a husky loudmouth named Arktet. “He’s got a message from the Metah,” she told them.

  Arktet was nothing if not persistent. He rubbed up against Pakma’s flanks, blinking at her hopefully. She tried to ignore his entreaties. “I just came from Omsh’pont…really bad that place is. Dark and full of dirt…I think the T’orshpont might actually collapse…there’s talk of it.”

  “What’s the message?’ Kloosee asked. He nudged Arktet away from Pakma with a shove from his own beak. “I thought the ootkeeor was disrupted…I thought no songs could get through.”

  Arktet now slapped his tail and circled them. He couldn’t stay still; repeaters were like that. “Oh, it is…it is. All scrambled…can’t get a beat or a word through. No, I’m a courier today…I came straight from the Metah. Six hundred beats…and I’m famished. Got anything to eat around here?”

  Pakma gave him gisu, just to keep him quiet and still for a few minutes. Arktet sucked and slurped loudly on a bulb. “What’s the message, Arktet?”

  The repeater glared at all of them. “You don’t have to be so rude…it’s a long way…anyway, Iltereedah has asked for all the kels to send a representative, send even their own Metahs to Omsh’pont. A big gathering, like the vish’tu. A conclave. A roam. She wants to discuss the…situation. What’s happening to the world…what can be done. And she wants these two…Kloosee and the eekoti to be there…to explain how they’ll put the Twister back to together…the wavemaker.”

  “When is this vish’tu?” Kloosee asked.

  “In three days. It’s to be a great gathering….”

  Kloosee said, “Three days? It will take at least that long to get there.”

  Arktet let gisu juice dribble out of his mouth. He didn’t bother wiping his face, but slurped loudly until he had sucked the bulb dry. “Then you don’t have a moment to waste.”

  Kloosee commandeered one of the larger kip’ts and he, Pakma and Chase piled in. They sped away from the Likte valley, negotiated the vast Omt’chor Current, made the Serpentine Gap and headed out across the abyssal plain of Omt’or to the huge city. Kloosee sped up the sled to as high a speed as he dared.

  They made Omsh’pont in slightly less than two days.

  Chase was frankly appalled at what had happened to the city. By sight, Omsh’pont could barely be seen in the silt and murk of the central sea of Omt’orkel, but even a cursory pulse would betray the outlines of the great city.

  Now, the unending drone of the Uman machine and more recently, the Coethi attacks on the star-sun Sigma Albeth B had created wave conditions that leveled much of the upper reaches of the seamounts, with a ceaseless rain of debris, rubble and silt having settled like a heavy fog over the valley.

  Kloosee stopped several times to inquire about the great roam that was even now forming just beyond the seamounts. One pedestrian along a smashed floatway indicated the vish’tu would start some ten beats to the south of the Metash’pont, along the outer borderlands of the Sk’ork Current, which curved south and southwest.

  “Too much noise…too much rubble and mud…too many tremors,” the pedestrian admitted. “It’s not safe…and we have visitors from all the kels.”

  Kloosee drove the kip’t to the landing pads of the Kelktoo em’kel, located halfway up the T’or seamount and parked it there.

  “Come on,” he told Chase. “Most of the other Metahs are already here…the roam is starting soon.”

  “Don’t we have time to eat and rest?” Chase asked. His stomach had been growling all the way from Likte.

  “The servlings will bring us food during the roam. I’m already hearing things on the local repeater net…you’re wanted right away. The Metah expects you to be at the head of the formation, with her and the court. It’s a great privilege.”

  They sped off, Chase completely blind because of all the silt raining down. He had to rely on Kloosee and Pakma, who pulsed their way unerringly to the flanks of a great gathering of kelke outside the valley of Omsh’pont. There was nothing to see but people, hundreds, maybe thousands, maybe the entire kel, gathered in a single curving line, some five to ten abreast, all jostling, shoving, honking and clicking, to secure their positions.

  Kind of like a Croc Boys concert, Chase thought to himself. On a good night.

  Slowly, as if they had been swallowed whole and were being pushed along by peristalsis, Kloosee, Pakma and Chase made their way through the gathering to the head of the roam. Approaching the circle of Metahs, they were firmly intercepted by prodsmen.

  One of them gruffly blocked their way, using his prod as a shield. “This is a protected position. You must be tekmetah to come here.”

  Kloosee explained who they were. The prodsman looked doubtful but the news was passed forward and in moments, they found themselves escorted by more prodsmen through grumbling court hangers-on and privy council members, the Kel’em, to near the front of the vish’tu. There, they encountered Iltereedah herself, along with Lektereenah, the Metah or Ponk’et and Okeemah, Metah of Sk’ort. The kel of Sk’ort occupied much of the southern seas, south of Omt’or.

  Lektereenah recognized Chase immediately. “This is the eekoti visitor who came to Ponk’t and stirred up my kelke, talking with the Tailless, having ke’shoo with our women, fighting our tuk artists…why should I roam with this foreign scum?”

  This made Iltereedah mad. “Because the eekoti knows how to rebuild the Uman machine. He knows how to re-create the Farpool. Treat him with respect. Ke’shoo and Ke’lee doesn’t only happen in Ponk’t.”

  Chase was about to say something but Kloosee nudged him. Save it for later. Answer her questions. Don’t speak unless spoken too.

  Jeez, she doesn’t look like the Queen of England, Chase thought, but he kept silent. Just keeping up with the roam was going to be hard enough.

  They set out and in an hour were cruising over a rubbly plain black with silt and mud, surrounded by thousands of kelke from many kels singing the songs in unison.

  Iltereedah made her appearance with her full court in tow. The vishtu formed swiftly as she paddled toward t
he head of the roam. A hush rolled through the crowd like a strong current and there was furious commotion behind them as the kelke pulled themselves together. Kloosee stole a pulse at the magnificent sight: the flanks curved out of range around the end of the valley and spread out into the Omt’orkel itself, in evenly stepped divisions. He imagined it as a massive seamother, poised to strike. A prodsman tapped him on the dorsal and told him to face the Metah with all pulses. From now on, he was expected to remain in flank with Chase and Pakma.

  They set off at a slow pace and Shookengkloo Trench dwindled behind them; ahead, the southern limb of the Serpentines could barely be pulsed.

  Before he knew what was happening, Chase found himself roughly conveyed by a phalanx of burly prodsmen forward, up to the very head of the roam. There he found himself in the midst of all the Metahs, Iltereedah, Lektereenah, Okeemah, Oolandrah, all of them fronting the great vish’tu as it wound its way south by southwest.

  Iltereedah spoke, her voice strong and powerful. Behind her, the Songs had fallen off to a rhythmic chant.

  “Eekoti Chase, you came as a guest to Omt’or. Now we depend on you. Now we need you. You’ve become kelke with us. What can you tell us of this great machine we’ve acquired?”

  Now Chase looked over at Kloosee, who was vigorously stroking alongside.

  Thank God for this cow, he told himself. I’d never be able to keep up. He patted the back of the tillet, which twisted and turned to keep up with the roam. It seemed to know what to do even if he didn’t.

  “Your Majesty—“ How did one address the Metah? “—the Time Twister has been brought to Likte…we have all the parts, all the components. Now we just have to put them together.”

  It was Lektereenah, Metah of Ponk’et, who spoke now. “You can do this, eekoti? You have the knowledge to re-assemble this infernal device?”

  Chase wondered how he had come to this point. Jeez, what am I…chief engineer? I sell T-shirts….”Your Majesty, the Umans…the Tailless…gave me a small memory tab awhile ago…it explains how the machine works. With this, I think we can put the Twister back together and make it work.”

  Which, of course, was absurd. He had no idea how to put the Twister back together. The engineers and craftsmen and technicians and herders and spinners and other experts from Omt’or, indeed from all the kels, would have to do the work. But what else could he say? He was on a big stage, surrounded by people…kelke…he couldn’t very well say no, could he? He hadn’t felt like this since the Croc Boys’ first gig, that high-school dance at Apalachee, so long ago. The birds were jumping up and down in his stomach.

  Lektereenah considered this. She was one of the younger, smaller Metahs. Maybe middle-aged, supple, muscular, even athletic. Kind of like Angie, with fins and a tail…yeah, he’d always liked Angie’s tail—

  “Our Ponkti technicians—“ the echobulb translated Lektereenah’s words as technician—“ will help you.”

  “Yes,” said Okeemah, the Sk’ortish Metah. “Yes, we all want the Farpool working again. Time is running out.”

  Now Iltereedah was clearly worried. “Eekoti Chase, it’s vital the Farpool work as before. Your world…this place known as Urth…it is a world of water, as is ours?”

  Finally, something he could answer. “Yes, yes it is, Your Majesty. Our world is mostly water…maybe seventy percent. There are continents…big islands…that’s where my people live.”

  “And there are kelke in these waters, no?”

  Chase gave that some thought. “There are fish, many species, living creatures adapted to the water. But no intelligent---“ No, he didn’t want to say that, exactly. Dolphins, whales, even octopus, they were pretty smart, weren’t they? “There’s room for many kelke,” he finally blurted out. Now I sound like a diplomat. He flashed on the Statue of Liberty: give me your tired, your poor, your wretched masses….

  What was he getting himself into here? Could be even speak for the rest of the planet?

  Iltereedah went on. “We all agree…all the Metahs have come to agreement on this. The Uman machine must work as before, at least enough to make the Farpool work. Eekoti Chase, you must tell us what you need. People, supplies, perhaps the proper scents, all of our echobulbs…I’ll command the Kelktoo to make these available…all our knowledge.”

  “And ours too,” said Lektereenah and Okeemah, almost simultaneously. The other Metah’s chimed in as well.

  “But first, it has been decided,” Iltereedah said. She pulsed Chase deeply, finding anxiety, nerves, confusion…perhaps that was the way of Umans—“you must become tekmetah…an arm of the Metah.”

  Chase had heard the phrase before. “Uh…what actually does that mean?”

  He would find out when the great vish’tu completed its circuit of the equatorial seas and returned to Omsh’pont, nearly a day later.

  “What does this thing called tekmetah involve?” Chase asked Kloosee, when they were back in Omsh’pont. The two of them had retired to a small cave-like chamber at the base of the T’or seamount, where Putek’tu, Kloosee’s em’kel, had quarters. “What do I have to do?”

  Kloosee was preparing a meal for all of them, crab, ertleg stalks, bulbs of stew. “Your echobulb should explain. Turn it on.”

  So Chase activated his bulb’s dictionary function and listened…

  “Tekmetah - The act of spiritually binding any member of the kel to the will of the Metah for a specified period of time. Basically a contractual relationship entered into for the purpose of doing something the Metah would rather not be associated with. Free-bonds can be used for anything but have come to be employed in espionage and intelligence work in modern times, thus a certain social stigma results from the public knowing a person is bound this way. Failure to carry out the stipulations requires the bound one to take his own life in shame. The bond is cemented by consuming a vial, called a pot’l, of the Metah’s blood. The incentives are many: loyalty, patriotism, special favors from the Metah….”

  “Take his own life…you’ve got to be kidding?” Chase switched off the bulb, helped himself to ertleg claws and sucked loudly. Others gathered around and there was a jostle of smacking and sucking and chomping around the platform.

  “It’s a formality,” Kloosee said. “Being tekmetah means you become an agent of the Metah. You have duties, certainly, but as tekmetah, all kelke are bound by law to help you and give assistance, anyway they can. It’s a great honor, eekoti Chase.”

  Chase was dubious. “if you say so. When does this happen?”

  “First thing tomorrow.”

  The ceremony was held at the Metah’s pavilion, on a small hill in the center of the city, a hill nearly obscured by rain and silt, dark and slowly being buried in mud. Strong cross-currents had knocked down some of the baffles that had once encircled the pavilion and the small and select audience had trouble staying in position.

  Iltereedah was there, as were most of her court and the em’kel leaders from around the city, known as the Kel’em. Chase was conducted to a small position alongside Iltereedah. One difference in this ceremony was the presence of other Metahs…there were five of them lined up behind Iltereedah. Kloosee had said this was unusual, even special, signifying the importance of the occasion.

  Chase swallowed hard. The birds started flapping around his stomach again.

  For some time, Iltereedah made a speech. It sounded like a cross between a song and a chant. Chase let his echobulb translate but even the translation didn’t make any sense. It sounded like Iltereedah was giving them all a history lesson, reciting a long list of every important moment in Omtorish history—

  “…the Eepkos plot…the Pillars of Shooki…a great potu shortage…in the spirit of the Peace of Tekpotu…mah’jeet blooms…the Boskeldic wingcraft….”

  Chase decided that politicians were ever the same, whether on Seome or on Earth.

  Finally, the time came for him to swallow the p
ot’l, a vial of the Metah’s blood. Iltereedah handed him the tube and showed him how to unseal it. Chase looked around. They were all looking right at him, expectant faces, half-smiles, frowns, anticipation, disgust, concern, hope…it was hard to tell from the faces. Seomish faces always looked the same.

  He swallowed the blood and gulped it down, then gave the vial back.

  Mostly, it seemed to have little immediate effect. It was warm, recently drawn, a bit salty, thick and brassy in taste. Not too bad…but it wasn’t exactly a shrimp taco.

  Then he felt momentarily faint and had to be helped to a small pedestal nearby. He was briefly nauseated, and not sure how regurgitation worked in his new body, but it passed. The faces swam and blurred and for a time, he was back on stage at Apalachee High again, this time it was the prom and he was plucking at his go-tone, the rhythm coming easily, he was nailing each note and he was concentrating on the faces up front, there was Angie, only he didn’t really know her well, but she was cute and he winked at her and through some kind of signal neither of them understood, it was arranged that she would turn up backstage after the set and that was the beginning of that—

  Then the next thing Chase knew, he was back at Kloosee’s em’kel chamber and being fed strong gisu to suck on.

  “Wow…what the hell happened…did I pass out or something? Did I make a mess?”

  Kloosee and another em’kelmate fed him more gisu. “You took the Metah’s blood…now you’re tekmetah. How do you feel?”

  Chase felt like he’d swam across the entire Gulf of Mexico. “Well, it’s sort of like a hangover….you sure I didn’t gulp down a whole bottle of tequila?”

  A few hours later, Chase had recovered enough to take a short roam outside with Kloosee. They cruised gently along the slopes of the T’orshpont seamount, visiting, chatting with neighbors, nosing into and out of small caves and niches.

  Kloosee seemed troubled. Chase noticed it. “What is it, Kloos? Did I do something wrong?”

  “No, but in order to lead the expedition back to Likte and oversee the rebuilding of the Uman machine, you have to be inducted into an em’kel. The Metah wants you to be part of Kelk’too, the academic em’kel, the house of learning.”

  “You said ‘lead’ the expedition. When did I become the leader?”

  Now Kloosee chose his words carefully. “The Ponkti don’t trust us. Even the Eep’kostic don’t trust us. With the waves and the tremors and the seas changing, everything is in turmoil. Eekoti Chase, you’re Uman. The Metah thinks a Uman must lead this project. She believes you think as they do, that you’ll know how to proceed.”

  Chase pulled up short and Kloosee circled back. They drifted for a moment, face to face, or more correctly, snout to beak.

  “Kloos, I don’t know anything about how to put this machine back together. I’m no engineer. Doesn’t your Metah understand that?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s kel politics. You’re eekoti, an outsider. From the Notwater. None of the other kels trust each other. There’s no shoo’kel anymore. No good feelings. The akloosh is upon us and every kel is fighting for every advantage, trying to grab whatever they can. You have to lead this.”

  Chase thought about his Dad. Nobody ever believed Chase Meyer would ever be anything other than a beach bum. Even Mack Meyer put him to work at the Turtle Shop to keep him from winding up in the gutter…he’d said that enough times. Now, the Omtorish wanted him to lead a project to rebuild some time machine and bring back the Farpool. Maybe selling T-shirts wasn’t so bad after all.

  “So what do I have to do?”

  Here Kloosee indicated they should continue the roam. He brought the two of them to a small ledge higher up on the seamount, not far from the summit. Canopies and tents and domiciles dotted the slopes. Kloosee pointed out over the city with a sweep of his armfin. Chase couldn’t see much, just shapes and hints of shapes identifying the tubes and floatways, domes and pavilions and platforms, some shattered in mudslides, many covered in silt.

  Kloosee explained. “Every midling, at age twenty mah, must do ketuvish’tek. It means the Circling. It’s a coming of age ceremony. Only after this, can a young kelke join an em’kel…or start one of his own.”

  “A circling…sounds difficult. You’re saying I have to do this. Kloos, I can’t see two feet in front of me. How could I go anywhere?”

  “The normal ketuvish’tek requires a midling to circum-navigate all the seas, the entire world. No kip’t either. He collects specimens to prove where he’s been. He encounters predators and must fight them off. It’s a journey, eekoti Chase. A journey of stamina and dedication. When the midling returns, if he returns, he’s ready for adult life.”

  “Well, Kloos, if I attempted to circle your world without a kip’t, even with a kip’t, I’d get lost in ten minutes.”

  Now Kloosee nudged Chase playfully around the chest, pulsing the growing anxiety fluttering inside. “You don’t have to circle the world. Just Omsh’pont. Circle the city, outside the seamounts, and return. Then you can become Kelk’too. Then, as tekmetah, you’ll be a natural leader for the expedition to Likte…the other kels will respect you. They will follow your directions. Chase, it’s the only way. It’s the Omtorish way. You must do this.”

  “Like I said, I can’t see two feet in front of me. I’ll wind up at the bottom of that big trench. Or eaten by some creature.”

  Kloosee said, “You have an echobulb. I’ve taught you how to pulse. Use the bulb.”

  “I can’t read the echoes. I can’t even hear them. Kloos, you and I are good friends. I’d do anything for you. But this—“ Chase squinted through the murk. He still couldn’t see anything.

  “Then I will teach you.”

  “I assume you’ve done this Circling. What happened with you?”

  Kloosee seemed embarrassed. “I used my ketuvish’tek to approach the Notwater. And I did it…I breached. I was out of the water. It was…incredible…like nothing I’d ever experienced before…I can’t describe it.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I almost died. Then I was arrested by a Ponkti prod squad…but that story is for another time. Now, we must teach you to become fully Seomish…like us. To do that, you must pulse and live by sound.”

  And over the next few days, Kloosee took Chase on short roams around the city, into and out of the city and off into waters unknown to Chase, all to get him used to navigating by sound, pulsing with his bulb and listening to the echoes and learning how to interpret them.

  On the third day, Chase said, “I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Kloos, I’d only do this for you.”

  “You are doing this for all of us. Chase, you are the bridge. You are the best hope we have.”

  “How’s that?”

  Kloosee replied, “Our world is dying. You can surely see that. The Metah, my em’kelmates, all of us, we talk of emigrating. Of the Farpool. Of Urth and what it’s like. I’ve been there, me and Pakma, so they listen to what I say. But it’s sad. It depresses me…I struggle to maintain shoo’kel in this…balance, tranquility. The days of shoo’kel are gone. Now we must roam to a more distant sea…your sea, eekoti Chase. And the Metah believes you are the only one who can do this.”

  “Jeez, Kloos, what am I…Moses? I don’t think I can lead anybody.”

  “In this you are wrong. Other kelke listen to you. When you are Kelk’too and you pulse like the rest of us…even the Metahs will follow you.”

  Now the full import of what Kloosee was saying hit home. Chase swallowed hard. Just a little trip around the city. A stroll, a roam, a jaunt. And then he’d win his merit badge and join the scouts…no, that wasn’t quite it.

  This was for real. He tried not to think about. But the thought that the other kels, the other kelke, all his Omtorish friends, the Ponkti prodsmen, the cool and aloof Sk’ortish, all of them, would follow his orders, do what he said d
o, go where he said go…Chase didn’t have words for the feeling. In English or in Seomish.

  Ketuvish’tek. The Circling. The whole point of the Circling was to come back to where you started a changed person, a man of new stature and bearing.

  Chase knew his Dad, Mack Meyer, would never believe any of this.

  The day of the Ketuvish’tek came and Chase was nervous and didn’t try to hide it from Kloosee.

  “I don’t take anything…no kip’t, no tools, no weapons?”

  “Nothing,” Kloosee said. Other kelke from Putek’tu surrounded him, nosing at him, nipping at him, pulsing, jostling. It was all part of life in an em’kel. They tussled like brothers and sisters on a family trip. “The starting point is on the other side of Metash’pont…the other seamount. We go there now.”

  The starting point proved to be a small cliff high up on the slopes of the mountain. Chase was stunned to see a large crowd gathered about the area. It was like the start of a great race.

  “They’re not all here for me?”

  “They are, eekoti Chase. They’re even betting on the outcome.”

  Chase found that amusing, and in a way, strangely motivating. “Well, some of them are going to be disappointed. Wish me luck.”

  “Remember what I taught you. Read the echoes. Listen to how the echoes fade and grow stronger as you move. Form a picture in your mind. Then follow that picture.”

  Chase almost laughed. The only picture in my mind is the day Dad took me scuba diving and we made the hundred- foot level. And in a way, the whole affair was like that.

  Chase kicked off.

  He grunted and worked his echobulb as Kloosee had shown him. Echoes came back and he struggled to form an image of what they were telling him….

  Okay, slope over there…more slope…now it’s going down…still more slope…whoops, no echo…okay, that’s open space, a gap maybe…wow, these currents are strong…uh oh, what the hell’s that? It’s moving…coming toward me, better slip sideways…hope it’s a tillet…they’re like cows…now it’s past…what’s that…more distant echoes, broken echoes…maybe that’s the city…jeez, this is kind of tiring….

  By keeping a running commentary on what the pulse echoes were telling him—he hoped—Chase found he could keep his focus on the task at hand. He figured his path probably looked like a drunken circus clown wobbling around an arena but he didn’t care. Kloosee had said he had to keep the distant, jumbled echoes—those were the city buildings on the plateau—to his left, always to his left. If he did that, he would be moving in a circle and in the right direction. So he concentrated on that.

  The whole trip seemed like it took days. He saw in his mind, and heard in his ear, a kaleidoscope of echoes…things he had no idea what they were…screeches, honks and bellows, whistles, grunts, chirps, lots of those, then more screeches.

  Finally, he came to a place where there was a strong echo off to his left, it seemed like a slope, and a veritable symphony of honks and shouts and then, before he knew it, hands and fins and other things were grabbing him and pulling him. He resisted for a moment, then opened his eyes.

  Somehow, he had managed to circle Omsh’pont, in a circuitous, laughable, sloppy, fumbling way and make it back to the starting point on the slopes of T’orshpont.

  And there was Kloosee, grinning in spite of himself, honking with the others, butting and slapping Chase sideways.

  He’d never made a trip before that ended in such a joyous, riotous uproar.

  “You did Ketuvish’tek!” Kloosee nudged Chase repeatedly, horsing around with him. “Just like a midling…”

  “—he made the Circling…I don’t believe it,” said another kelke, a muscular fellow with gray slashes around his dorsal. He honked with delight.

  “Amazing,” said others.

  “Impossible for a Tailless kelke.”

  They roughed with Chase for a few minutes.

  “Did anyone lose money on a bet?” Chase asked. He was grinning as broadly as his armored face would let him. “Did anyone clean up…beat the house?”

  Kloosee said, “It doesn’t matter. You did it…that’s all that matters.”

  They all sucked on gisu and made bad jokes. Most of them Chase couldn’t figure out.

  “What’s next?” he asked.

  Kloosee turned more serious. “Now, we go to Kelk’too. You are inducted into the house of learning, the most prestigious em’kel in Omt’or. Longsee would be proud.”

  “Yeah” said Chase. “I miss old Longsee. Nobody can fill his shoes…er, fins…er, whatever.”

  Kloosee and Chase left the area and made their way through heavy, jostling crowds and silt so thick they couldn’t pulse or see, through tricky currents and tremors on the seamounts, to the academy.

  Inside, Kloosee gathered around many of the kelke. An older member, Tamarek lu, came up, with a small amulet on a fiber loop. He handed it to Kloosee.

  “I remember Kloosee had one of these,” the old technician said. “We gave it to him for finishing his own Ketuvish’tek. He was so proud—do you remember?—I thought his mouth would split.”

  Chase took the amulet and felt it. It was rough, not polished, with dozens of edges and facets. “Like a medal of some kind?”

  Kloosee explained, taking the loop and draping it around Chase’s neck. “I have one. So does Tamarek. It creates a unique echo when you pulse it. The amulet identifies the wearer as Kelk’too. Every em’kel has their own…see?” Kloosee felt at his own forward dorsal. Sure enough, a similar stone amulet was tightly looped at the base of the fin. In fact, there were several.

  “What is that other amulet for?”

  Kloosee said, “It’s Putektu. The em’kel I founded. Chase, I want you to join, after you become Kelk’too.”

  “So what do you do?”

  Now Kloosee warmed to his explanation. “Putektu wants to learn the secrets of the seamothers. We study them, follow them, measure them. Try to understand why they rise to the Notwater so often…what they do there, where they go. We want to know why. Eekoti Chase, you’re a creature of the Notwater too. You belong in Putektu.”

  Chase smiled in spite of himself. “Kloos, you sound like a car salesman. Or a Boy Scouts leader. I’ll stick with Kelk’too for now.”

  Tamarek rattled off a rapid-fire stream of clicks that Chase’s echobulb couldn’t translate. He seemed agitated.

  Kloosee honked back at him and they argued for a few moments.

  Chase was curious, a little apprehensive. The Omtorish all seemed fidgety, anxious lately. Quick to snap at each other. He’d seen the same thing all about the city.

  “What was that all about, Kloos?”

  Now, Kloosee turned serious. “He was reminding me that we have to be at the Metah’s chambers very soon. All the Metahs will be there.”

  Chase was always nervous around higher authority. “What’s it about?”

  Kloosee said, “The Metahs want to know your plans for rebuilding the Uman machine. Re-starting the Farpool.”

  That’s when Chase fingered the amulet now wrapped around his neck. The stone ring gave him a gravitas he didn’t feel. Plans? What plans? How did I become the main man here?

  From selling T-shirts on Shelley Beach to saving a world of intelligent fish from a sun about to go blammo…Chase’ head spun.

  Angie, I don’t know where you are now, but I need help.

  They left for the briefing. Kloosee had to practically drag Chase along with them.