Chapter 23
Seome
Above Likte Trench
Time: 769.3, Epoch of Tekpotu
Chase was tekmetah to the Metah of Omt’or, now a free-bound, credentialed subject of Her Majesty Iltereedah, sworn into Kelk’too, and given the mission of re-creating the Farpool, and saving the whole planet. It was a job he didn’t ask for. It was like when his Dad had told him he was going to be doing inventory every Sunday afternoon at the shop. Chase hated doing inventory. Sunday afternoons were for beach-combing. Diving. Swimming. Flirting. Anything but inventory.
They had a big machine to put together. And nobody knew, least of all Chase Meyer, if the damn thing would generate another Farpool or not.
It was kind of like doing a set with the Croc-Boys. You started a number, you finished it. No halfway stuff. The go-tone only made music if you plucked it, if you stayed with it. Even when your fingers were cut and bleeding and your wrists ached from all the practice, you stayed with it.
Chase had to talk himself into his new role as chief engineer, project manager, head kelke and General of the Army. He knew he wasn’t up to any of those roles. But you stayed with it. That’s what the Croc-Boys always did.
The assembly expedition returned to Likte and resumed work. A small contingent of workers had been left on site when Chase and Kloosee had gone back to Omsh’pont. Now, as Chase’s kip’t nosed over the edge of the chasm of Likte Trench, he saw the sections of the Twister laid out like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle on the seabed, slings and nets full of chronotron pods, mooring cables, foundation pads, all the parts that somehow, they had to put back together.
Not to mention raising the singularity engine in its crate from the bottom of the trench, the thing that powered the Twister.
Straight away, the workforce set to work.
For many days, they worked long hours. Chase was everywhere, using the memory tab Lieutenant Golich had given him, to guide the process…put this here, attach that there, plug this into that and I think these fit like this...only when fatigue set in and he could no longer keep his eyes open, did Chase relent and rest. He slept every night, fitfully, in the back of Kloosee’s kip’t. But never more than a few hours and when he could no longer sit still, driven by the knowledge that so many kelke, indeed the Metah herself, and probably the whole planet and all its kels, were depending on him, he left the kip’t and sometimes roamed alone about the worksite, just watching.
Seome had become a gigantic Turtle Shop and he was now the manager. He didn’t know if he liked it or not but he’d discovered more about himself in these days than for his whole life before. Reserves of strength and stamina, reserves of resourcefulness, a well of determination and pure grit that no one, least of all Chase Meyer, ever knew was there.
First came the foundation pads, buried deeply in the seabed and supported by rock and anchors securing them to the hard limestone of the Likte plain. After the foundation pads were in place, anchors for mooring cables were set in place. Then the sections of the Twister’s outer shell and casing were towed by kip’ts and attached to the cables. Fasteners were a puzzle. The Umans had left some but the Seomish didn’t like them or understand them. Instead, a paste mixed of korpuh blood and sand was used to secure the casing sections to the mooring cables.
“Very strong,” insisted one Sk’ortish engineer. “Flexible and tough…we use them for pal’penk trains…the animals can still maneuver but it gives them enough room to move with the currents.”
Chase had little choice to but to let the kelke with the real knowledge do their jobs. Chase’s First Rule of Management: get good people and get out of the way. He figured if he ever got back to Scotland Beach, he’d lay all this management knowledge on his Dad and get that T-shirt shop humming like his old Suzuki bike.
After the casing sections had been towed into place and fastened to their moorings, the sections had to be joined together. More korpuh blood paste. Then came the chronotron pods, rounded up from their holding nets and positioned on top of the Twister, the part that rose above the surface. Here Chase, a creature of the Notwater, did much of the precision work, shoving and heaving the pods into their mounts and securing them with korpuh paste and an odd Orketish joint called seamother’s teeth. Not actually teeth, though Chase wondered, but composite hinged claws and grabbers that clenched opposing sides of a structure just like a mouth filled with teeth clenched its prey.
After many days of exhausting work, it was time for a brave crew to dive into the deepest part of the Likte Trench and retrieve the singularity engine.
Chase decided that he would lead the crew. To help him, he chose Kloosee and two others: a Ponkti weaver named Kuktor and a Sk’ortish technician named Yaktu. And right away, Chase saw that there would be problems. Kuktor and Yaktu couldn’t get along.
It started when the crew was staging a vast sling and float device. The sling was woven of tchinting fiber, Kuktor’s specialty. The Ponkti weaver was very protective, even defensive, of his work. Yaktu struggled with the fiber, trying to bend it far enough to form a knot of sorts, something to cinch up two ends and close a loop so the sling could be fastened to a float. The plan was to attach the sling ends to the singularity engine pallet and float it out of the trench, indeed all the way to the surface. There, Chase and Kloosee, clad in a lifesuit, would climb up onto the Twister deck, drag the pallet to the central core tube of the Twister and deposit the engine in its bay there.
“This blasted fiber’s too tough,” Yaktu complained. “The weave’s too tight…I can’t bend it. If you’d done your job right, this wouldn’t be happening.”
“If you knew anything about tchin’ting,” retorted Kuktor, “you’d know where to make your bend. Nothing wrong with the fiber…it’s the joiner who doesn’t get it!”
The argument had been flaring for hours, until Yaktu couldn’t take it anymore. He dropped his end and went right at Kuktor and a full-fledged brawl ensued. Before Chase heard it and came as fast as he could, more had joined in. A cat fight of tumbling, slashing, stabbing bodies flashed before him. Grabbing several others, Chase waded in to the tussle, got a beak in the face, and was slapped silly by someone’s tail. It took Ponkti prods, strong words, curses and determined referees from Eep’kos and Sk’ort to finally break the fight up.
The battling kelke separated reluctantly and hovered nearby, glaring at each other. Chase stayed in the middle.
“That’s enough! Enough of this…all you guys do is bicker and argue and fight.” He hoped his echopod was conveying his disgust with the whole situation. “You want to come with me to the Notwater and see with your own eyes why we’re here? Your world’s falling apart. That sun up there’s dying. The water’s getting colder, saltier. Stop this bitching and moaning and jabbing at each other…you guys aren’t enemies. The real enemy’s up there—“ he pointed toward the Notwater. “The real enemy’s the assholes who slammed your sun. Don’t you get it…no sun, no Seome. How about a little shoo’kel, for once, huh?” He didn’t even know if he’d used that word right, but at least no one was snickering. “Now, let’s get back to work and get this job done.”
Little escapades like this happened every day.
The singularity engine was gingerly floated out of the trench and rose like a fistful of whirlpools up toward the surface. Chase and Kloosee, along with Yaktu and Kuktor, helped guide the ascent, pulling and manipulating on steering cables, to keep the thing straight. Still fastened to its pallet, the engine couldn’t actually be seen for all the foam and froth its currents generated. Rising steadily, the engine looked like a big mobile water drain, currents and waves and white-hot steam bubbling in a stewpot of turbulence. It seemed to be sucking in all the water around them and Chase ordered all non-essential kelke to back off a good distance.
When the pallet broke the surface, it vented and hissed and crackled like a lightning bolt, churning the seas around it for dozens of mete
rs. Yaktu had designed a hoist arrangement to haul the crate up onto the Twister deck and across its outer shell to the core tube at the apex of the huge dish-shaped structure. The maneuver took several hours but when the singularity engine was unhooked and slid off its pallet into the tube, Chase, Kloosee and Yaktu all cheered, though their cheers were muffled from within lifesuits.
The wormhole generator slid down roughly into its tube, still crackling, venting and hissing and was gone.
Now, to hook it all up, Chase told himself, and flip the ON switch.
While precariously perched on the slope of the Twister deck, some twenty meters above the surface, Chase took a moment to study his surroundings.
It was clear, in comparison to his last trip topside, that the light level had dropped considerably. Seome was always cloudy but this was more like twilight. The winds howled and the surf was rough, throwing ten-meter waves over the edge of the Twister deck. Chase couldn’t see Seome’s sun through the gray scud but, if this was midday—and there was no way to tell, really—then the amount of light trickling through had fallen off. He knew what Golich and the Umans had told him…that the Coethi enemy had done something to the sun and it might not survive long. The Coethi starball weapon knocked stars off their normal sequence, sending them to their deaths, often by supernova if they were big enough.
And the effects of the damaged star-sun Sigma Albeth B on Seome were already well apparent to everyone.
Kloosee struggled to hold on to cleats and other projections on the Twister deck. Chase heard a muffled shout. Kloosee was pointing through heavy surf. Chase looked. It was a seamother, several in fact. Their slick gray-black humps floated like small islands, perhaps a few hundred meters away. And, as Chase watched, they made no movement at all.
Kloosee dragged himself up to Chase’s level, near the apex. “They’re dead, both of them.” It seemed to be true. There was no apparent life in the beasts. “A sad time,” Kloosee’s voice came through the echobulb with emotion. “They are magnificent beasts, even if dangerous.” Chase knew Kloosee’s own em’kel had been created to study the creatures. “Perhaps, once the Farpool is working, we can find a calf and take it through. See how it does in your oceans. Pakma would like that too…she could create more scentbulbs…listen to Puk’lek bellowing in new seas. She’d like that.”
Chase thought the idea unlikely. The two of them clambered down off the Twister deck, submerged and returned to the work crew.
Re-building the Twister took several more emt’emah, maybe a month, by Chase’s reckoning. There were more fights, insults, brawls and there were days when Chase felt like something between a referee and a harried mother. But through it all, the Twister came together, the singularity engine ticked over in its core and, at last, the day came when the first startup test was planned. Everything seemed ready.
A control center of sorts had been constructed inside a small cavern, really a collapsed lava tube, just above Likte Trench. Cabling to the Twister was run and the machine was ready to be powered up. Chase drifted nervously about the control center, with his chosen startup crew, carefully selected to make sure no kel was slighted or insulted. He had become much more nuanced and sensitive to kel politics since leading the Twister project.
Kloosee was there, along with Tamarek, longtime friend of Longsee. From Ponk’t, Loptoheen, the grizzled tukmaster was also present, growling and scowling like usual. The other kels also were represented.
The plan was to perform the powerup procedure that Chase had extracted from Golich’s memory tab and carefully monitor the results. For safety’s sake, the rest of the crew had been ordered back several beats, in case the Twister hiccupped or did something unexpected.
Kloosee gave the word. Power from a bank of eel-like, specially bred k’orpuh was applied. The singularity engine was engaged. Then on the Twister deck several beats above them, on the surface, the chronotron pods began to turn.
For many minutes, as the Twister spun up, the waters above Likte Trench grew turbulent, crashing and foaming and bubbling as great forces were slowly uncaged and released. The first vortex columns appeared shortly afterward and soon became white-hot, steaming caldrons as the pods jerked spacetime into their clutches and the waters flashed with immense, barely contained energies.
Loptoheen was exultant. “Pul’kel…” he whispered. “Our first whirlpools…we’ve done it!”
Just then, a Sk’ortish weaver popped into the control cavern with news of the results. “Lost our first tillet,” he told them. “She wandered into a pul’kel and vanished. It works…it works!”
“The big question is the main vortex,” Chase told Kloosee. “The Farpool. I don’t know where it’ll form…or even if it’ll form.”
“We should send out scouts to look.”
“Good idea.”
A dozen scouts were rounded up and given the hazardous duty. Chase gathered them around the cavern entrance.
“The vortex fields are forming. But I don’t know if the Farpool has formed yet. We have to find it, see what it’s doing.”
“I’ll go,” Pakma offered. “I’d like to study this phenomena, measure the scents they produce, maybe capture some in a bulb.”
Kloosee started to object, but Chase overrode the objection. “It may come in handy,Kloos. We need to learn everything we can about the Farpool…how it forms, how it works, how stable is it, even what it smells like. We may need all that. But Pakma, be careful out there. All those vortexes, they’re treacherous. Give them a wide berth…don’t get too close.”
The scouts were dispatched.
Pakma traveled with two others, both Eep’kostic natives, from the southern seas, both males, Koktee and Rokka. They set out, skirting several smallish whirlpools dancing over the top of the Trench like watery wraiths. Currents were strong and confused; slipping through the tricky tides and waves and surges of the vortex fields took nimble swimming and strong flukes.
“There’s something strong up ahead,” said Koktee. “Feel it…it’s already dragging us in.”
The three of them pulled hard to navigate through the battering of whirling columns of water, all of them spinoffs from the startup of the Twister. Each vortex reached out in turn, clutching at them, knocking themselves sideways, upside down. It was a tight squeeze,
“Watch out for that one!” yelled Rokka. A massive tornado of water appeared out of nowhere. It seemed to split the sea top to bottom, twisting and corkscrewing like a thing alive.
Pakma and Koktee were too late. Each was caught in the whirlpool.
“I’m trapped!” Pakma cried. She whipped one way, then another, stroked as hard as she could but it was no use. The vortex squeezed and pummeled her and pulled her steadily into its spinning maw.
Koktee was no better off, though he was stronger. They were embedded in a forest of whirlpools, new ones forming left and right, appearing and disappearing in seconds, as the Time Twister’s chronotron pods grabbed spacetime and yanked it. The whirlpools were an inevitable side effect of the Twister’s operation.
For a minute, Pakma thought she would be able to pull free. She slammed her tail and armfins as hard as she could. Almost there…almost…but she couldn’t quite break free. She couldn’t relax either; with every breath, the whirlpool column pulled her closer.
Finally, the wormhole won and Pakma disappeared in a flash into the core of the spinning, writhing tube. Seconds later, Koktee vanished also.
Only Rokka survived. Stunned, his heart pounding, he turned about and swam as hard as he could back toward the Trench and the control center in the cavern. He was out of breath and shaking when he arrived.
When Kloosee realized Pakma was gone, “swallowed by opuh’te,” Rokka forced out, between great gulps, he was disconsolate. Chase questioned Rokka about what he had seen, where they had been, was this the Farpool? Rokka shook like a scared dog, Chase thought, and had to be calmed do
wn by others. Chase went to Kloosee, who circled outside the cavern mindlessly, restlessly.
“Maybe she’s just displaced, thrown somewhere nearby. I’ll get a search going,” Chase offered.
Kloosee just kept circling. He was making Chase dizzy, watching him, trying to keep up. “It’s no use. Every one of the opuh’te is a little farpool. You called them wormholes. Openings to other places, other seas, other times. She’s just gone—“ he couldn’t finish the thought.
Chase wished he could talk without the echobulb but it was useless. He reached out to try and soothe his friend, but Kloosee wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t slow down. If anything, he orbited about the front of the cavern even faster, words and fragments of words spilling out.
“She was always shoo’kel, eekoti Chase…full of ke’shoo and ke’lee. She was a great pulse….she was great with the scentbulbs…that was her art. Full of life. Now—“
“Kloos, she was my friend too.”
But Kloosee wanted no part of any of them. He scooted off into the murk, heading somewhere, anywhere. Chase tried to keep up, afraid his friend might wander into a whirlpool, by mistake or on purpose…he didn’t know.
But there was no way he could keep up.
“Leave him alone,” someone said behind Chase. It was Loptoheen, the Ponkti tukmaster. “Omtorish are like that…death upsets shoo’kel…upsets the balance, the serenity. Ponkti don’t react the same way.”
For a long moment, Chase glared at the old tukmaster. “Humans…eekoti…are like that too. Dying is the end. Finality. I guess we’re more like the Omtorish.”
Loptoheen did something that Chase had always regarded as a sort of shrug, the way he hunched his armfins. “To Ponkti, death and life are a great circle, like the Pomt’or Current…one follows the other, one comes from the other. Where you have one, you have the other.”
Chase now felt the growing turbulence and pounding of the Twister’s drone beating against the water. Proof, as if he needed any, that the Uman machine was now working in some way.
“We need to locate the Farpool, and determine if it’s operating as before. I’ll form up a scout detail and lead it myself. It has to be out there among all those whirlpools.”
But before Chase could organize the scouts, a courier appeared outside the cavern. His name was Skota and he had come from Omsh’pont, bearing an official message from the Metah.
Skota was given something to eat and drink, before revealing the message. He had memorized the words, but Iltereedah’s voice had also been recorded on an echobulb, for backup. The deep sound channel was too unreliable for repeaters to use, so the kels had begun using them as physical couriers.
“Her Most Affectionate Majesty, Iltereedah luk’t kel: Om’t, is on her way to the Likte Trench, to the project site. She arrives in two days. Other Metahs travel with her, along with their courts. The Kel’em of Omsh’pont travels too. They come to see what progress has occurred here.”
The Metah? Chase wished Kloosee were around, but his friend hadn’t come back yet…he was off on some kind of grief roam, off by himself. I need Kloosee, Chase thought. What did one do to prepare for a visit by the Metah?
Loptoheen offered some suggestions. “She will want to see the control station. This cavern muffles the sounds outside. Make this space fit for Iltereedah. Assemble food…Iltereedah will want gisu, ertleg, all the pal’penk fin you can find, maybe tong’pod too. And drink.” Here, Loptoheen leveled a stern gaze at Chase. “You and I have had our differences, eekoti. But in this project, we are kelke. I’m telling you straight. We have to work together. Iltereedah, Lektereenah, all the Metahs, they will want to see that we work as a team.”
Chase wanted to believe him. He figured he didn’t have much choice.
A few hours later, the Metah’s convoy had arrived.
Chase deputized Loptoheen and a select group from each kel represented to show the Metahs around the project site…the Twister foundation, the control station in the cavern, even watching the dance of the whirlpools from a distance. After the formal tour, with Chase glancing nervously at Loptoheen for approval and a little guidance, the officials assembled inside the control station cavern to dine.
Iltereedah snacked noisily on ertleg claws, while her Kel’em, the kel council, hovered nearby, also eating, yet doting on her every word and belch.
Chase decided to be bold. His Dad wouldn’t have been surprised. “Affectionate Metah, once we locate the Farpool, we need to test it. Send someone through, some gear too, and make sure it works as before, that they can come back through to Seome.”
Iltereedah let her half-eaten ertleg claws orbit around her head like minor planets around a sun. “I have approved a test mission. But there are conditions. There will be two ships. Each ship must have three onboard, six in all. Every kel will be represented.”
Lektereenah, Metah of Ponk’t, agreed. “It is the only way. No kel can dominate the Farpool. We all have a stake in this.” It was the way she said it that drew Chase’s notice. Lektereenah always wore an enigmatic smile, but behind the smile lurked something more sinister. Indeed, Chase saw how she and Loptoheen made eye contact. Something had passed between them.
Oolandrah, Metah of Sk’ort, agreed. “We all agree on this. If the travelers make it through the Farpool and come back, we’ll know it works as before. The path for emigrating will be open.”
Iltereedah wanted to re-assert herself. The control station was still Omtorish territory. She gave a quick snap of her tail flukes and bounded about the control room. “Already plans have been made, eekoti Chase. Even now, cohorts are being formed in all kels. Emigration cohorts. Materials to accompany each one are being gathered and assembled in Omsh’pont. The first pal’penk trains will be here soon.”
Lektereenah was not to be outdone. “Our Ponkti engineers are building a departure station right next to the Trench. Here, our kelke will come and be made ready for the trip.”
It all made Chase’ head spin. “Affectionate Metahs, we haven’t tested the Farpool yet. Isn’t this too early to—“
But Iltereedah would hear none of it. “Then, you must test right away. You have your assigned crew. What is the delay?”
Chase had no answer for that.
The assigned crew, carefully worked out among the Metahs, was a perfect political balance among the kels. Chase, Kloosee and Loptoheen would travel through the Farpool in one kip’t, specially strengthened for the journey and outfitted with gear for detailed exploration, measurement and reconnaissance of the far seas of Urth. The second kip’t would carry Yaktu, Habloo and Koboh, each kelke from other kels around Seome.
As final preparations were being made and provisions laid in, Lektereenah summoned Loptoheen to a quick roam deep into the abyss of the Trench, away from all the others. The steep walls of the trench somewhat muffled the sound of the Twister above them. In the black of the trench, only a few nightmarish creatures accompanied them, creatures with electric blue spines, gaping maws and stiletto teeth, bulging red eyes.
Loptoheen and Lektereenah roamed in silence for awhile. Then, Lektereenah stopped abruptly.
“You know why I summoned you?”
“Yes, Affectionate Metah. It bubbles inside you…anyone could pulse it.”
Lektereenah seethed. “Don’t be so insolent. The younger tuk players look up to you. You should be an example…of shoo’kel and respect, not insults and rudeness.”
Loptoheen had grown tired of this exchange scores of mah ago. “As you wish, Metah.”
Lektereenah said, “This mission is vital to Ponk’t. The kelke are counting on you. I’m counting on you. Don’t let me down.”
“You haven’t given me any specific instructions on how to carry it out.”
“No,” said Lektereenah. “I assumed you were resourceful enough to find a way. Just make sure that the eekoti, Chase, and Kloosee of Omt’or, don’t come
back. They must not return to our seas. That will make it easier for us later…when the emigration starts.”
Loptoheen moved off at a slow pace, a deliberate snub to the Metah. “Then the decision has been made. We leave our world, everything we’ve ever known, everything we hold dear, behind. Just like that?”
Lektereenah hustled to keep up. “What choice is there? You’ve seen what’s happening…ak’loosh is upon us. The Great Wave is here. Everything will be destroyed. Shooki’s mad. He means to bring this world to an end…so we have to find another one. The eekoti’s world is a world of seas. We can make a life there. But once we are there, Omt’or will no longer rule the seas. The Ponkti will make the rules.”
“Meaning you will make the rules—“
Lektereenah slapped Loptoheen with a sharp spank of her tail, then speared him with her beak, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to get his attention.
“I’ll deal with you when we’re in the new world. Just make sure the eekoti and none of the Omtorish come back.”
With that, Lektereenah darted upward, plowing through a shower of glowbits, which blossomed in a silent explosion of light as she passed through them.
Loptoheen watched her disappear into the black void, leaving a decaying trail of glowbits, then followed her up to the top of the Trench.
If we come back at all, he told himself.
The precise location of the largest whirlpool, thought to be the Farpool, had been established the day after the Metahs had come to Likte. Now, the two specially equipped kip’ts carefully approached the vortex field, with Kloosee piloting, but Chase right behind him.
Loptoheen was their third passenger. Chase thought tukmasters were naturally courageous and fearless, but he could feel the Ponkti shaking uncontrollably behind him. The three of them were crammed into a tight space, beak to tail, with little room to move. Chase could even feel the tukmaster’s heart hammering away inside his chest.
This should be fun, he told himself. Then he swallowed a bit of nervous saliva rising in the back of his own throat.
Kloosee was fighting the kip’t controls. “Tricky currents here, eekoti Chase. It’s hard to steer in these—“
“Just feel for the big pull,” Chase told him. Yeah, like I really know what I’m doing. Still, he had become something of a celebrity on this water world. He figured he’d better act like he knew what he was doing, even if he didn’t. This will either be one small step for the Seomish…or a complete disaster. Chase didn’t know how his friends and family would react to the knowledge that another race was planning on dropping by, living in their oceans for like forever. The potential for conflict and misunderstanding was high, probably incalculable. Yet somehow, the Metah had essentially made Chase an ambassador of sorts.
Half human. Half Seomish. And now, leading the great trek earthward, if all went well. Chase figured he was a kind of pioneer, like with the wagon trains that headed west in America’s frontier days.
Feeling Loptoheen’s heart jackhammering away right in the middle of his back, Chase found himself wondering if there were any Indians waiting for them out there.
“I’ve got it!” Kloosee cried out. “Feel it…we’re being pulled in strongly. I can’t even steer this thing anymore.”
Chase did feel it. The kip’t rolled upside down and slammed all of them hard against the cockpit. Then the spinning and corkscrewing began.
Chase’s last thought, when the white flash exploded all around them, was: Cowabunga! I hope to hell this thing works!
The Farpool Page 25
