The Farpool (2 page)

“Did you mess up my boat, son? I told you to
take care of that boat, didn’t I?”

Chase swallowed. “The boat did fine, Dad.
Nothing’s wrong with the boat, okay?”

Cynthia Meyer brushed Chase’s hair back from
his eyes. That one lock would never stay back. “Are you hurt? Are
you okay…you did check them out--?” Her eyes went from Betters to
Dennison and back. “They’re not hurt--?”

“No, ma’am. The ship’s corpsmen did the
exams. They seemed to be fine.”

Mack studied his son.
“
Mm-hmmm
…mind telling me what
happened, son?”

Chase described what they had seen: the
strange whirlpool and churning in the ocean, the waterspout, the
armored fish and their captured dolphin, the device-thingy that had
flashed at them. “I blacked out after that,” he told them. He
looked over an Angie, whose fingers groped for his and entwined
their hands. “Her too—I don’t know what it was—“

“Oh, Chase, you can’t—“

Mack wasn’t buying it. “You were drinking,
weren’t you? Or doing scope or something---that’s what it was.” To
Lieutenant Betters: “You find any drugs or beer on board my boat?
And where is it anyway…I rent that thing out three times a
week…this is going to cost me a bundle, isn’t it?”

“Dad, listen, will you? We saw some kind of…I
don’t know…fish, creatures—“

“They weren’t dolphins,” Angie added. “But
they had captured a dolphin…it was in that cage…did you see the
cage?”

Betters shook his head, picked up a paper
from the table. “Report says nothing about a cage. Your boat was
towed in, Mr. Meyer. You can get it back, after we do an
inspection, the usual paperwork. It’ll be down by the dock.”

Mack Meyer scowled at Betters, then shook his
head as he studied his youngest son. “I thought I taught you better
than that, Chase. You don’t go fooling around at sea, especially
when the weather’s so dicey.”

“But
Dad
, we saw creatures…they had a gun or
something. They fired at us…you should be checking that
out….”

“Maybe they were drug dealers?” Maggie
Gilliam said. “Maybe they blundered into some kind of drug
deal…that happens, doesn’t it?”

Betters chuckled. “It does, ma’am. But we
checked the boards. There hasn’t been any activity like that around
here for weeks. No, most likely they saw the waterspout that
stirred up around Half-Moon Cove earlier this evening…had lots of
reports about that…it was pretty impressive.”

Chase looked from Mack and Cynthia to Maggie
Gilliam to Betters and back. “You don’t believe anything we’re
saying.”

“Okay, son…” his Dad challenged him, “what
did you see? Or think you saw-“

“I told you…two fish…they looked like
dolphins but they were bigger. I don’t think they were whales or
orcas or anything. Their skin was different…it was like they were
wearing armor or a suit or something.”

“And that gun—“ Angie added.

“Yeah, it was…it looked like a barbell, two
globes, one on each end of a bar. They aimed it at us…I don’t
remember anything after that.”

Mack Meyer’s eyes met Lieutenant Betters.
“Your men see anything out there?”

Betters shook his head. “Just the boat,
floating around. There were some strong rip currents about two
kilometers off shore of the Cove…that’s normal when a spout comes
through.”

“But we
saw
it!’ Chase pleaded.

“You’re going to see the inside of your
bedroom…that’s all you’re going to see,” Meyer warned him. “You’re
grounded, for a month.”

“But, Dad—“

“You too, Angie,” decided Maggie Gilliam. She
liked the Meyers. Chase was a good kid, if a bit impulsive. It
didn’t take much imagination to figure what they had been
doing.

Angie’s face was a mask of pain. “Mom,
we didn’t
do
anything
wrong.”

“There’s something out there that needs
investigating,” Chase told them. “That’s what you should be
doing…not persecuting us for just telling the truth.”

Cynthia cut in. “Chase, nobody’s persecuting
anybody. It’s just that—“

“Eight hours a day in the shop,” Mack
decided. “Every day and I mean Sundays too. That’s what this little
affair comes down to. First order of business tomorrow: clean up
that boat and get her shipshape to rent out…that’s money, son.
That’s food on the table and you’re an employee. Start acting like
one.”

Betters signed off their releases and shook
hands with the Meyers and Maggie Gilliam.

Mack Meyer said, “Sorry to have bothered you,
Lieutenant. My son knows better. Or he will know better after
this.”

Betters said, “I’m just glad they’re safe.
This is what we’re here for.”

The kids were hauled out of the Security
shack and off into waiting cars. As Chase climbed into the back
seat of his Dad’s Jeep, he said, “Dad, will you listen to me?
Something’s out there…something weird.”

“Yeah…well, it won’t be you…not for the
next month. This ain’t
Jaws
,
kid and I’m not buying it. You work for Turtle Key Surf and Board,
you conduct yourself like an adult. Maybe after some hard work and
long hours, you won’t be seeing any more armored fish with ray
guns. Just tourists and their dollars, that’s all that matters
now.”

Chase sank back in the seat, glum and
dejected. He watched Angie and Maggie Gilliam speed off in her
convertible. Their house was a bungalow-cottage kind of place, up
by the Gainesville Highway, on Fairwinds Trail. The Meyers occupied
a ranch style prefab on Rainbow Court, maybe a fifteen minute walk
from the shop.

Chase Meyer closed his eyes as they drove
home. Mostly it was to avoid having to look at his mother, who just
stared at him over the back of the front seat, like he was an
exhibit or something.

Waiting to see if I’ll grow
horns or something
, he decided. Physically, he knew he
and Angie were okay. They were just fine. But what
had
they seen? Had he imagined it
after all…maybe all the waves and the winds and the excitement over
the spout? Maybe it was a small pod of orcas, after all. That had
to be it.

But even as he said that to himself, he knew
it wasn’t true. First chance he got, he was going to grab a boat,
maybe even some scuba gear from the shop, and check out that area
outside Half Moon Cove for himself.

He wanted to have a closer look at that
barbell weapon too…sport fishermen would just die for a gadget like
that.

Chapter 2

Seome

Omsh’pont, kel: Omt’or

Time: 764.2, Epoch of Tekpotu

The lifeship jetted out of the Farpool in a
blinding light, a roaring rush of deceleration, throwing Kloosee
and Pakma hard against the cockpit windows. Caught in the
whirlpool, Kloosee rammed the ship’s rudder hard over, while firing
her jets to counteract the centrifugal force of the spin. For a few
moments, they were both pinned sideways against the cockpit, until
the force of the jets shoved them through the core of the whirlpool
and out into calmer waters.

Pakma breathed hard, wiping her beak with her
hands. She checked the instruments.

“Sounding
meetor’kel
water, Kloosee….rough water but
visibility improving. I can pulse ahead…looks like we’re
home.”

Kloosee fought the lifeship controls to bring
them into a stable attitude. “Thank Shooki we came through that
one…a rough ride, rougher than most. How’s our cargo doing back
there?”

Pakma checked behind. A cargo pod was in tow,
connected by line to the aft end of the ship. The captive dolphin
from the Terran seas was inside, thrashing about, frightened,
perhaps even injured.

“Pod’s still there…I don’t know how he’s
doing…maybe we should stop and check.”

Kloosee shook his head, gently
massaging the controls with the tips of his forepaddles. “No
time…we’re behind schedule as it is…now if I can just find that
blasted
kip’t
station….”

The lifeship slowed down poking through
the murky waters of the upper Ponkel Sea, riding faint currents for
a few moments. Kloosee hunted methodically for the station where
they had docked the
kip’t
;
the sled was the only way they would get back to Omsh’pont. The
lifeship was just for transit through Farpool. It would never
survive the rough currents of the trans-Serpentine
route.

Finally, the beep-beep-beep of a
contact sounded through their headsets. “
There
…that’s our ride home…sounds better than a
tillet baying.” He dove toward the signal, which emanated from a
narrow ledge carved into the side of a seamount. They would park
the lifeship there, secure the vessel and transfer everything to
the
kip’t
, including their
cargo pod. After that, several hours of cautious maneuvering to get
beyond the whirlpool fields and the two travelers would be headed
home at last.

Pakma exited the ship, once Kloosee had
brought them to a complete stop at the dock. She immediately went
back to the cargo pod and unhooked its line, murmuring soothing
nonsense at the bottle-nose dolphin as it snorted and banged
against the cage.

“Come on, little one…come on…just a
little while longer…I know the water’s different here…this place is
colder, saltier, rougher than your homewaters…but we won’t be
long….” She secured the tow line to the cleats on the aft end of
the sled, while Kloosee powered up the vehicle and grabbed an ompod
shell out of a sack for a quick bite to eat. “Got some
gisu
here…you want one?” He pulled
out the fruit, jammed a hole in it with his beak and began sucking
and slurping the pulp loudly. “Mmm—I’m starving—“

“Leave me one inside…I’ll just be a
minute…our little traveler’s spooked…I’m trying to calm him down
now.”

“Use the drug…the
kelt
…that’s what it’s for.”

Pakma tried calming the creature, running her
own forepaddles against its flanks, murmuring an old tune she
learned as a midling. “There…there…it’s okay…I think he’ll be all
right, just a little shaken from the ride.”

“Aren’t we all?” Kloosee powered up
the
kip’t
and tested its
control surfaces and jets. “Come on…we’ve got two thousand beats to
cover and we’re late as it is.”

“All right, all right…let me secure
this thing.” Moments later, Pakma drifted up into the cockpit,
pulled the hatch down and secured herself. “Okay…now where’s
that
gisu--?”

They lifted off and Kloosee put them
into quarter-speed drive as he sounded ahead for the line of
opuh’te
that enclosed the seamount.
He knew the Time Twister was above them, slamming the water with
its displacement nodes like a great fist, and the whirlpools
infesting the waters around Kinlok Island were just a side effect
of the Twister, minor details the Umans who operated the weapon
paid no attention to, but the sound and the vibration were steadily
rendering much of Seome’s ocean uninhabitable. The Umans found time
to negotiate with the Seomish when it suited them, which wasn’t
often and the damage the Twister was doing to their world was of
little concern to them.

It made Kloosee angry but there wasn’t
anything he could do about it now and he forced himself to
concentrate on navigating their way through the vortex fields
ahead. The only good thing about the Twister was that one of the
vortexes had mutated long ago into a wormhole in space, a tunnel to
other times and places, a conduit even to the homeworld of the
Umans themselves, they had learned. That one they called the
Farpool.

It was a rough, shuddering, jolting
ride through the vortex field but Kloosee had done it before and
brought the
kip’t
out into
the colder, calmer waters of the Ponkel Sea in good order. Pakma
finished off her
gisu
, sucked
on another one, and promptly dozed off to sleep. Kloosee pulsed her
briefly and could sense her belly full and satisfied. He wished he
could say the same for himself.

It was going to be a long ride back to
Omsh’pont and the project labs.

The Pomt’or was the northern arm of the
great Pom’tel Current and it was the only current that directly led
to the gap in the Serpentines they would have to negotiate, the gap
that led to the Omt’or Current and the long slog across the abyssal
plain of Omme’tee to Omsh’pont…and homewaters. To get there from
the Farpool and the Time Twister meant a long tedious trip through
the northwest Ponkel Sea. The waters were cold, dense and sluggish
away from the Current, stagnant far to the south at the equator and
brimming with foul-tasting and dangerous
mah’jeet
fields, so thick in patches no
kip’t
could get through without
clogging its jets. But there was no quicker way to the Serpentines
and the gap.

Kloosee’s plan was to cross the Ponkel
until they had reached the junction of the Pomt’or and Tchor
Currents, then turn south through unsounded waters, paralleling the
northernmost arc of the Serpentines, hunt for the gap until they
felt the first faint tugs of the Tchor Current, then scoot through
the gap and ride that underwater river across the abyssal plain.
Then he would home on the seamounts surrounding Omsh’pont City,
listening for repeater signals and the murmuring voices of
the
oot’stek
, until the echo
layer brought them safely into local waters. That was if all went
well….