The Farpool_Exodus

by Philip Bosshardt

  Here Angie had to think. Honestly, she didn’t really know. Except that she did. She’d seen the vids of the Woods Hole incident. It was Chase they had come for. She was certain of it, because Chase did that to people.

  “Sir, I don’t know exactly where Chase is. That’s the truth.”

  “Your boyfriend, Miss Gilliam, is mixed up in this case with the sea creatures. We think he’s with them, maybe aiding and abetting them.” Now, it was Scanlon’s turn and his mix-mastered face took on a more ominous, Halloween-like look. “We are talking possible espionage here. National security stuff.”

  Angie laughed to cover the audible gulp she couldn’t quite hide. “Espionage? Chase…no way. This is…you’re not really serious, are you?”

  Levy didn’t smile. “Very serious, Miss Gilliam. You could be an accessory to a class A felony under federal law. Is your boyfriend with the sea creatures? Is he working for them…or maybe the Russians or the Chinese?”

  Scanlon chimed in. “Tell us what you know, from the beginning.”

  Angie sniffed. If I told you, I wouldn’t believe it. She went through the details of how she and Chase had met: the shared classes at Apalachee High, the robbery at Turtle Key Surf and Board, where his Dad was wounded in the holdup, the surgery at the hospital, how Angie, as a Red Cross volunteer, had befriended Chase when he seemed so disconsolate. She tried to give them every excruciating detail she could think of, really overwhelm them so they’d be satisfied with that and not ask her questions she couldn’t answer, like was Chase one of the Seomish and had he really taken her on a six thousand-light year trip through a wormhole to an ocean world.

  She still wasn’t sure that had actually happened but Chase kept insisting that it had…or it would…or it might…or something like that.

  “Chase Meyer is not a foreign agent,” Angie turned their accusations around and threw them right back. “He’s not working for the Russians. He’s working at the board shop, after school. He’s in a lot of my classes. We’re just dating…that’s all. And honestly, I don’t know where he is now.”

  “But you could contact him, couldn’t you?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t have a number to call or text or ping, if that’s what you’re asking. I know where he lives. I know where the shop is. He usually…calls me. Or comes by the apartments. His Dad is out of recovery, back home now. I imagine he spends a lot of time with his Dad…he should be doing that.”

  “You have his address?”

  From memory, Angie rattled it off. “Rainbow Court, Scotland Beach, Florida. It’s just off Winter Valley Road.”

  She was pretty sure Crooked Face and Big Lips already knew that.

  “Okay, Miss Gilliam,” said Scanlon, “here’s the deal.” He pointed to the row of sensors on the ceiling. “While we’ve been questioning you, we’ve been analyzing you. All remotely, of course: skin conductance, cortical and cerebral transients in your brain, speech concordances and waveform deconstruction, even facial micro-twitches. See this slate here—” he turned up the tablet so Angie could see the screen. “Know what it’s telling me…it’s telling me you’re hiding something. You’re not telling us everything. All these squiggly traces and lines tell me there’s more, and your body is working overtime to hide that fact. Shall we start over now, from the beginning?”

  Angie swallowed hard and didn’t try to hide it. Probably the damn sensors could hear that too.

  So, she related to Scanlon and Levy just what Chase had told her…not quite everything and not that she believed all of it anyway. But Scanlon’s sensors confirmed her skepticism and that made Crooked Face relax a bit. Levy sat nearby, hands rubbing his chin, occasionally checking his own slate, quiet and impassive.

  “Chase calls them Seomish. We already met with the Navy, aboard that ship and at Norfolk. There’s not much more I can tell you. I don’t know where Chase is. I don’t know what the Seomish want or even where they came from. Chase is probably with them somewhere.”

  “Modified…by this—“Levy checked some notes, “this em’took or whatever procedure?”

  “I think that’s what it’s called.”

  Now Scanlon leaned forward on his elbows. He tried to put on a sort of grandfatherly face but it didn’t quite work. Still Halloween. “Miss Gilliam, you’re mixed up in this, perhaps through no fault of your own, but you’re involved. That means we have to be involved. To be perfectly blunt, you’re in danger. The Russians and the Chinese know about the Seomish too and not just from the media. As one who is close to Chase Meyer, and we are intensively hunting for Mr. Meyer right now, you’re a potential target for foreign powers. You could be kidnapped, seized, held hostage—I’m not trying to alarm you—but the Russians and the Chinese are every bit as interested in Chase and the Seomish as we are. You could be a way for them to gain access to the Seomish, to their technology, their knowledge, their weapons, and we can’t allow that. I’m afraid…well, the term is protective custody.”

  Angie’s eyes flashed angrily. “Then I am under arrest. You lied to me.”

  “No, protective custody isn’t the same thing. I want you to sign some forms and then I want you to come with us, tonight, to Washington. We’re putting you up in an isolated place—a secure place--where you’ll be safe, while we look for Mr. Meyer. And there will probably be more questions too. I’m sorry, but it has to be this way.”

  Angie’s shoulders slumped. She figured there was no point in objecting or resisting. She wiped a tear from her eye: her whole life was over, there was no use denying it. The track team at school and another chance to make the state finals. The clinic where she hoped to get on as an admin girl, even a nurse assistant. Community college and a nursing career, since they really couldn’t afford college. Angie saw all of it swirling down the drain just like her dark red curls when she went to Lola’s for a new hairdo.

  She shrugged. “Whatever—” She swore silently at Chase. You got me into this, buster and when I get my hands on your neck-- She loved Chase, she really did…sort of, but honestly, sometimes….”Can I just call my Mom? Or Sheila?”

  Scanlon smiled that Freddy Krueger smile again. “Don’t worry, we’ll inform them. You’re not in trouble, Miss Gilliam. This is for your protection, believe me.”

  The three of them left that next morning, before 4 am, from the Gainesville airport. It was some kind of government plane. They landed in DC at National Airport about sunup. It was going to be a hot day in the Nation’s Capital. Angie figured they’d be carting her off to some dungeon or massive stone-walled prison in the middle of nowhere; she was resigned to wearing light blue or orange felony pajamas and trying to find something that fit her track-star lean body, with the cute butt and the great legs.

  She was pleasantly surprised when Scanlon and Levy escorted her into a nice Marriott hotel in Pentagon City, next to a mall and a Metro stop. The room, on the fourth floor, was nothing special but it was spacious and comfortable. And securely locked. When they left her alone, she tried the door. No way she was getting out of this place. It was a prison. Carpeted with matching blinds and fresh linens and plenty of media devices to occupy her, but still a prison.

  Levy had said they would be back in a few hours. It was okay if she ordered a room-service breakfast.

  “On Uncle Sam’s tab,” the ONI agent said cheerily.

  She flopped into bed and stared at the ceiling tiles. She had a brief image of herself knotting some sheets together and rappelling down the side of the hotel to get away, then laughed out loud at the idea.

  Not this girl. Chase, you scumbag beach bum---

  Alone and increasingly uneasy, Angie tried the TV remote. News flickered onto the screen, another Solnet special report….

  SOLNET Special Report

  “Sea Aliens Allied with Russians?”

  Lucy Kwan reports from Hamilton, Bermuda on a breaking story that the Sea People—the Atlanteans, as some are calling them—are now in the process of developing an alliance with the Russians.


  “Good morning. I’m standing on Front Street overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, along the southern shore of Bermuda, looking out toward the underwater settlement that is home to the Sea People. Solnet has learned, through local sources here in Bermuda, that there has been a significant increase in Russian naval and maritime activity, surface and underwater, in and around the settlement and in the waters around Bermuda. These sources claim to have intercepted communications traffic, signals traffic, indicating a growing interest by the Russians in this area, that can only be attributed to the discovery of the New Atlantis settlement. These sources have told this reporter that analysis of the radio traffic virtually proves that the Sea People have hostile intentions toward human beings and that the Russians are working behind the scenes to strike an alliance with them to further their own agenda in their on-going confrontation with the United States and the West.

  “As most of you know by now, and as if to confirm our sources’ analysis, in the last few days, elements of the Sea People have made a coordinated assault on the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. There was one fatality and numerous injuries during this attack…we go now to correspondent Anika Radovich at Woods Hole—

  Police dronecam video footage appended here…Video Post 227.1—

  “…you are watching actual footage of the assault by the Sea People on people and facilities of the Woods Hole Institute. This is Anika Radovich, reporting…we’re standing here with Woods Hole police chief Darrell Gaston. Chief Gaston, can you explain what we’re seeing here--?”

  “Surely…well, the attack came at approximately eight o’clock in the morning, as you can see from the time stamp. Dispatch observed, through normal monitoring of security cameras and drones, that a small force of five or six aliens, Sea People, emerged onshore from Vineyard Sound. There—you can see some of the craft they used to approach the shore…we’ve asked the Navy to provide us with some intelligence on these craft. To date, though, we’ve gotten no response.”

  “What happened after the creatures were detected, Chief Gaston?”

  Gaston rubs his mouth nervously. “Well, um, our campus patrol on duty engaged the creatures, right on the beach. They used some kind of sound stunning field…our patrol was immediately disabled. That’s where Officer DeWitt was killed…she apparently took a direct hit from an electrical weapon of some kind…she was burned over most of her body, right there on the beach.”

  Radovich is sympathetic. “You were unable to stop the assault at that point with what you had on hand?”

  Gaston nods numbly, his face blank. “Correct, ma’am. The creatures used both electrical weapons and this sound stunner to push back all our attempts to engage. My on-scene commander ordered his people to fall back and assume defensive positions along Oyster Pond Road…you see that on the footage. The creatures then moved out from the beach in close-rank squad tactical formation…these were professional soldiers, in my opinion.”

  “Chief Gaston, did you at this time call for backup…or assistance?”

  Gaston nods quickly. “Oh, yes, ma’am…we asked Dispatch to alert our SWAT units, even the Massachusetts State Police and the National Guard. But events on the ground were moving pretty fast.”

  “What happened next?”

  Gaston watches the footage unfold. “Here, you see them moving on the McLean Lab Building. We learned later that Woods Hole had recently captured a live specimen from the Sea Peoples’ settlement out in the ocean and brought it to the Lab…we did not know this at the time. Apparently, the creatures had a mission to rescue this specimen and withdraw with him—it—in their custody. The footage shows them entering the building. A few moments later, they emerge, with this specimen—”

  “One of their comrades, perhaps?”

  Gaston shrugged. “Possibly, who knows? At this time, our backup was beginning to arrive and take up positions along Oyster Pond Road and also around the Carriage House and Bell House buildings. We were, at this time, trying to flank and surround the creatures and prevent them from escaping.”

  “But they managed to break through.”

  Gaston looks glum. “We took more casualties here, from their stunners and electric weapons, so did the State Police. We just didn’t have a good answer for those weapons. We did however, manage to kill one of them, on the beach at the beginning of the attack—”

  …Angie Gilliam had been watching the newscast when the vid footage from the police dronecam zoomed in on the Sea Creatures’ retreat from the Lab. She sat up abruptly.

  “Oh my God—” Angie put a hand to her mouth. It was Chase. It had to be. She’d recognize that big ugly frog on steroids anywhere…the spade head, the webbed feet, the dorsal fin…it was Chase. The Sea People had come for Chase. It was Chase who’d been captured. She barely heard the rest of the newscast, where Anika had finished her interview with Chief Gaston and Lucy Kwan had resumed reporting from Bermuda. Kwan’s words rang hollow, nearly unheard in the hotel room, as Angie pulled a bedsheet up to her face:

  “…sources are also indicating, and this is not yet substantiated, we’re working on this angle now—that there are solid plans within the Defense Department, specifically, the Navy and the Marines, to form a special forces unit. The mission of this special unit would be to penetrate and ‘render harmless’ this underwater base, not more than fifty miles north of where I’m standing now…to keep the Russians and the Chinese from gaining any advantage with the Sea Creatures. Already the National Security Advisor has been observed—”

  But Angie Gilliam barely heard any of the story. A special forces mission? Chase, captured, then rescued? Penetration…the Russians…the Chinese…render harmless….

  Angie paced about the hotel room, still clutching a pillow for comfort. She tried the window. She tried the door.

  They were all locked.

  Chase wasn’t the only one who needed rescuing.

  Special Report Ends

  Chapter 5

  Seomish settlement Keenomsh’pont

  Near Bermuda and the Muir Seamount

  June 30, 2115

  1315 hours

  Kok’tek and the rescue team brought eekoti Chase back to Keenomsh’pont safely and, after a brief examination by healers from the Academy, he was pronounced unhurt and fit. Likteek showed up after the healers were done and shooed them out of the warren of caves that the Academy had appropriated for its own use. The caves were well up the western flanks of the seamount, just below the zone of the m’eetor’kel, the zone of the rough cross-currents. The turbulence outside gave the scientists and researchers some extra privacy for critical experiments and studies.

  Chase was preparing to leave when Likteek showed up. The old scientist hung by an unused beatscope that someone had managed to smuggle through the Farpool at the last minute.

  “You were fortunate, eekoti Chase. The Tailless didn’t do injuries…did they try to examine you?”

  “They probably did,” Chase admitted. “I was out a lot of the time, unconscious. They sedated me. But everything-“ he examined himself critically, his webbed hands and feet, his forepaddles—“everything seems to be here. Everything seems to work. I’m just not sure if they’re really my people…anymore.”

  “You’re needed here…but some kelke thought you might decide to stay with your own people. We didn’t know—”

  Chase interrupted him. “I was trying to communicate with them when I saw that little sub. They didn’t react the way I thought they would.” He drifted about the exam hold and studied the array of instruments along the wall: beatscopes, sound probes, ocular magnifiers. Academy people were forever gathering new things and rigging up odd contraptions, most of which Chase had no idea what they did.

  “Are you trying to leave the hold…I don’t think you’ve been officially released yet.”

  Chase stopped. “I wanted to find Tulcheah…I just wanted to see her…again.”

  “Ah, yes…that makes sense. Tulcheah is half-Ponkti…she ha
s certain—shall we say ‘ways,’ of providing comfort. A healer in her own right—” Likteek laughed at his own little joke.

  “No, it’s not really that but—”

  Likteek held up a forepaddle. “It’s not important…I came to tell you that the Metah has commanded you to appear before her and the Kel’em. Just after midday roams.”

  “The Kel’em…must be important. What’s this about?”

  Now it was Likteek’s turn to drift about the hold and examine instruments. He picked up a sonic probe and examined it. “I’m not supposed to say…”

  “Come on, Lik…it’s me…eekoti Chase. What would the Metah want with a half-breed like me?”

  “I hear talk. Whispers, really…you know repeaters can’t keep quiet, even off duty. The waters around here carry voices well. Mokleeoh has put a proposal to the other Metahs…all of them. She thinks there should be an overall leader, a kind of overseer for all our dealings with the Tailless. Someone who can represent all the kels before the Tailless…so we speak with one voice. Otherwise, the Tailless will learn of our divisions and exploit them.”

  Chase thought it was a good idea. “Seems reasonable. Who did she have in mind…someone wise and learned like yourself?”

  Likteek put the probe back in its wall niche. “Hardly. She proposes you, eekoti Chase. She has put that before the Kel’em and now all the Metahs know of this. Mokleeoh wants you to become kel’metah.”

  Chase figured the echopod in his skin implant had somehow garbled Likteek’s words. Sometimes it happened. “I’m sorry…I thought you said—” but he stopped, for he didn’t need to pulse to see that Likteek was deadly serious. You could tell it with Likteek when his dorsal went rigid and his beak turned dark and his eyes hardened to black balls.

  “Um…Likteek…surely…you must be pulling my…er, fin, or leg…or something. This is a joke, right? Omtorish humor…it’s got to be.”