Undoing that turned out to be a little more straightforward than I thought and I was gratified my approach worked. Now I’ve even proposed to Chase that it may be possible, with some more tweaking, to take a baseline Seomish individual and modify its genotype to support at least amphibious physiology. Which means the Sea People could actually come ashore and live among us…imagine that.
None of this makes up for what happened the other day in Barnstable County Family Court. The judge ruled in favor of Stephen. His blood-sucking lawyers won. Stephen will now have full custody of Timmy and Hannah…my Timmy and Hannah!—and I will have only minimal visitation rights…a few hours a month. Can you believe it? From what Chase has told me, the Seomish would never do something like this…of course, he’s said the Seomish don’t even really have families. Their kids are actually raised by everyone. Maybe that would be a better system.
I don’t know what to do now. I could appeal but my own attorneys say the appellate judges rarely overturn a Family Court decision, so what’s the point? All I have now is my work to keep me going…maybe Stephen was right after all. The ‘fish doctor’ can’t be a proper mom cause she’s more interested in her fish than her kids. That was the essence of his argument. I’m penalized for doing my job and being good at it…what’s fair about that?
It all hurts in ways I can’t even begin to describe.
Dr. Wriston, Tamika, Ron, Tracey, they’ve all been pretty understanding. Dr. Wriston even offered me a week off to get my head back together. Walter means well but that’s probably the last thing I need now.
I need to bury myself in work, to anesthetize the pain. It’s either long hours at the Lab, tweaking the conicthyosis procedure or long hours with a bottle, preferably that Scotch Tracey put me on to a few months ago.
Maybe I’ll try both.
Just to show you how desperate I am, a really wacky thought came to me after Chase’s procedure was done. If I could modify the basic genotype of Chase, itself already previously modified by Seomish doctors and put him on the path to at least semi-human, amphibious-human hybrid existence, could I do the same with a normal human…like me?
Maybe become a semi-amphibious hybrid like Chase and learn to live among the Seomish people. Think of it: the possibilities are endless. We haven’t had an intelligent competitor on this planet since the Neandertals. If one developed, how would we react?
The research possibilities alone are probably worth a dozen Nobel prizes. I’d have to change my specialty from marine biology to some form of anthropology. I’d be like Margaret Mead, hanging out with the savages of Borneo. Only in this case, I’d be able to live on land and at sea and hang out with creatures from another time and place.
And hang out with Chase too, although I just spent a month making him more human than ever. But he does have that girl Angie Gilliam to consider…I don’t want to be responsible for breaking up another family again. Still….
After Family Court and judges and attorneys and Stephen’s snide remarks in court, I guess I’m willing to try something new…even something radically new.
I don’t want Dr. Wriston to know anything about this…which means I’ll have to keep double sets of notes…notes for public consumption and my real notes, if I move the research in this direction.
I need to give this whole idea of living among the Seomish more serious thought.
Chapter 16
The Reed Banks
South China Sea
October 16, 2115
0530 hours
The decision had been made and was irrevocable…a contingent of Chinese scientists—they were called Shijian luxing zhe…time travelers…would be the first to enter the new Farpool. The decision had been made between Ponkti scientists and Chinese researchers at a series of meetings at the Longpo naval base. Since the loss of the Kunming, study and testing of the new underwater gateway had proceeded slowly, methodically and systematically, on orders from Dr. Li Jiang, of the Beijing Institute, who had been given full control of the investigation by the State Council and the military.
Dr. Li wanted no more repeats of the Kunming incident.
Li regarded the Ponkti visitors clad in their full mobilitor suits with a wary eye. Just who were these creatures, talking fish from another planet as they claimed, or American agents not-so-cleverly disguised for a bold penetration effort inside the PLA Navy’s most secretive projects? When they departed Longpo, he confided his concerns to Admiral Hu Zhejiang, the base commander.
“We keep a close eye on the Sea People,” Hu told him. “The possibility of spies among them is a real concern. We keep them under surveillance while they’re here at Longpo…do not be concerned about this, Doctor. Your job is to make sure China can make use of this new resource, this time machine, for the good of the party and the people.”
“I don’t trust them,” Li grumbled. “I don’t understand them and I don’t think we should be working so closely with them.”
Hu smiled at the biologist from Beijing, the same smile he used on his daughter when she completed a homework assignment. “They know things about this phenomenon that we don’t. If we are to exploit the shiguang jiqi, we must learn all we can. Once we know how the thing operates, how to maintain it, how to adjust it, we can dispense with any need for them. Then China will have a resource that no one else has…imagine it, Doctor: our scientists and engineers could travel backward and forward in time and space at will. We could repair historical wrongs done to us over the centuries. We could expand Admiral Zheng He’s explorations, perhaps outdo even Columbus and ‘discover’ the Americas before the Europeans did. We could re-write history to ensure China becomes a great empire and stays that way. And if our time travelers venture into the future, we could bring back untold wonders in knowledge and technology, wonders that would make China the greatest civilization the world has ever known. But to do these things, we have to work with the fish for awhile. So, Doctor, if you would please just do your job—”
Dr. Li Jiang despised military men almost as much as he despised the Sea Peoples. But there was little he could do about the relationship, for the moment. Beijing was calling the shots.
Dr. Li sat back in his seat in the Baodong’s control room and watched as Commander Xi Guilin ordered the submarine to all stop.
Xi barked an order. “Sonar, range to target?”
Sonar came back with, “Five hundred meters, Commander. We’re just at the outer edge of the vortex fields.”
Li tensed. “Commander, we shouldn’t approach any closer.”
“I don’t intend to,” Xi said. He flipped a switch on an overhead panel. “The main vortex is dead ahead. Yaoyuan de luke crew to their capsule at once!”
The crew of two ‘time travelers’ hustled to their small capsule. The ship was roughly spherical, with a small propulsor module at one end. It was docked to a collar on Baodong’s aft hull and the explorers, clad in light green PLA uniforms, entered through a lockout chamber in the sub’s stern compartment. Once inside, crewmen helped them secure themselves in their form-fitting seats, modified from Tianzhou spacecraft cabins, and then dogged the hatch shut and secured the time ship.
“It’s based on designs given to us by the Sea People,” Dr. Li had explained. “They have some experience, so they say, of traveling through this gateway vortex…a farpool, they have called it, if the translations are correct. I’ve seen the schematics and I must say, there seems to be some clever engineering in these little ships. I don’t know how well it will work.”
Commander Xi sniffed. “That’s why the Yaoquan are all volunteers. This is true exploration, Doctor.”
No, this is insane, Li Jiang thought, but he dared not contradict the commander.
The Baodong was not alone in her station-keeping position, for several of the Sea Peoples’ small craft hovered nearby, also just beyond the vortex fields, watching and waiting for the Chinese ship to lift away from her mother submarine and make her way on propulsor to the whirlpools now churning and thrashing an
d foaming like a forest of corkscrewing water columns a few hundred meters away. The waters along the seabed near the Reed Banks were turbulent and tricky cross-currents made it necessary for the submersibles to continually monitor and adjust their position. Roiling clouds of silt and sediment made visibility near zero but active sonar probes painted a decent picture for all.
The Ponkti kip’t was manned by Loptoheen, with the Metah Lektereenah in the rear of the sled. It hovered a hundred meters away, abreast of Baodong and her own seven-bladed twin propellers. Another kip’t had just taken up station off the port bow of the Chinese submarine. Inside, Chase Meyer and Angie Gilliam rocked in the turbulence while Chase trimmed out as much of the ship’s jitters and vibrations as he could.
A sharp ping sounded from the kip’t’s pulser. “There they go,” Chase said. “The Chinese ship’s just left the mother sub.”
“I can’t see a thing,” Angie complained. “How can you tell?”
“Sonar,” Chase told her. He showed Angie the waterfall display and the acoustic image on another screen. “Just like the Seomish, this ship’s paints a picture with sound. Just watch—here, I’ll adjust for better resolution.”
“Isn’t this kind of dangerous?”
“Very. I tried to get the Ponkti to explain that to the Chinese but something must have been lost in translation. Nobody knows how this farpool really works…or if it works at all. The one on Seome I sort of understood. But this one…the Coethi bugs made this one. Who knows how it really works…there should be more tests. But the Chinese are anxious to use this farpool and there doesn’t seem to be any stopping them.”
The Chinese ship was called Yaoyuan de luke, which Dr. Li had proudly translated as ‘Distant Traveler.’ Li had worked with the crew to outline the general parameters of this first exploratory mission.
“Don’t take needless chances on this flight,” he had warned them. “From what we’ve learned and what the Sea People—the so-called Ponkti—have told us, you can control the distance and time of your ‘flight’ by the way you orient your ship. You’ve been through weeks of training about this.”
“We have, comrade Doctor,” said Yao Ling, the crew commander, a short, black-haired, big-eared former PLA Navy diver with narrow eyes and nervous hands. “I have every confidence in our training…Handan and I know the ship inside and out, every button and switch, every dial and gauge. We will complete the mission successfully…I’m sure of it.”
“I’m not,” Li said, but wished he hadn’t. “There are all kinds of risks. Remember your maneuvering commands. Two days back in time, no more, then return to this time, as close as you can. That’s the whole mission. Now, in with you—”
The little ship soon reached the outer vortex fields. It shuddered and shimmied and creaked and groaned with the stresses, but Yao managed to keep them on course for the main vortex, the heart of the Coethi device. Hull strains were rising rapidly but Distant Traveler plunged on, rocking and bobbing her way until she was finally and inexorably caught in the centrifugal pull of the whirlpool. Yao and Handan reported back on the comm circuit and Dr. Li, holding on to a nearby railing aboard Baodong’s control room, closed his eyes, hearing in the crew’s grunts and huffs the physical strain on the forces now building on the little ship.
“Handan…Handan, look! Feel it? Something’s happening—“
Handan stirred. “What is it?”
“I don’t know, but it feels like we’re moving sideways.” Yao plastered his nose to the porthole, trying to make something out. “It’s silty out there. Dark too. Deeper water. You feel that?”
Some kind of force was pushing them sideways in the water. At the same time, the compartment picked up a light shuddering vibration, gyrating like a top at the end of a string.
“Yao…what’s happening?”
“I don’t know, but I think we’re at the main vortex…the water’s all rushing sideways, dirt, pieces of things…I can’t really make it out.”
“I hope it’s not a spout.”
The force began to increase, a centrifugal force that soon shoved them to one side of the compartment and pressed them hard against the walls. Worse, the compartment began a slow roll, a rotation that didn’t remain slow for long, but picked up rate at a steady clip.
Soon, they were spinning enough to become disoriented and dizzy.
“Captain Yao…my stomach…I don’t feel so—“
Handan’s words were suddenly lost in a bright flash of light, a searing, painfully white strobing light that flooded the compartment and blinded both of them.
“Ow…I can’t see—“
The spin kept accelerating and moments later, Yao and Handan passed out.
Early morning beachgoers on Hainan Island’s southern beaches were treated to an incredible sight offshore, just before dawn. Backlit with the orange glow of sunrise to the east, a thin ropy waterspout formed several kilometers off the sand shoals of Reed Banks. As the spout danced and skipped across the waves, a bright pulse of light emerged from the sea and vaulted heavenward along the length of the spout, followed by a series of light pulses, as if the spout were sucking buckets of light right out of the ocean.
The light pulses disappeared into low-hanging clouds and vanished, leaving only a faint iridescent flicker, like a silent lightning discharge.
Moments later, the waterspout collapsed into the sea and the ocean returned to its restless heaving.
Unknown to the beachgoers of Hainan Island, Yao Ling and Handan Ju had just been catapulted sixty thousand light years across the Galaxy and several thousand years into the future.
They were never heard from again.
After the loss of the Distant Traveler, Dr. Li Jiang had found it easier to persuade Admiral Hu and Commander Xi and the authorities of the State Council that a slower, more deliberate, more systematic process should be tried in exploring what the Coethi farpool could do. In a tense meeting in the wardroom aboard the surface ship Fuzhou, flagship of the Chinese task force anchored off Reed Banks, Li had conceded to Loptoheen and Lektereenah that the Ponkti should make the next steps.
The two Ponkti were uncomfortably clad in poorly-fitting mobilitors and their voices hissed and grated when the echopods finished translating.
“Shhkkrreeah…our ships do this…we have…experience…kah, we come Urku in such ships...tchee’lum ships….”
“It just makes sense,” Dr. Li explained to Hu and Xi, and for the vid record he knew was being made of the meeting. Avatars of some State Council and high Party members drifted about the wardroom like disembodied ghosts. The meeting was attended by many. “Our Sea People friends apparently have experience with similar phenomena. They’ve told us that all Sea Peoples came to this world through just such a gateway…we must let them try their way now.”
Hu was the skeptic now. “China owns this. It’s in our territorial waters. We pushed those mechanized bugs into containment ourselves…we’ve lost ships and men to them, so we should have priority rights to develop and explore the farpool.”
Now Lektereenah spoke up. “…zzzhhhkkkqq…Ponkti wish to live in peace…we leave Keenomsh’pont to make our own way…Ponkti serve no one. We…zzzhhh…wish new homewaters…no more ak’loosh…no more kels…many come.”
Li seemed to understand. “Their people are departing that big settlement in the Atlantic. They’re coming here. They want to go someplace else, sometime else. I say we let them try out this device, this time manipulator, and we can study the results from their work. Then we’ll understand this thing well enough to safely use it, to effectively exploit it.”
One avatar drifted closer. It was the Vice Premier, a high State Council member. Physically located in an apartment near Beijing, Chou Minyang was a burly, balding former wrestler with the national Olympic teams. No one had ever beaten him in the Greco-Roman fights.
“It is decided,” Chou said with finality. “No more arguments. Let the Sea Peoples try to control this time manipulator and send their own
people through. But—” Chou’s face hardened, visible even with the latency of an avatar, “—they must not damage the device. They must not render the thing unusable. The time manipulator is potentially a great resource for China. We must have the chance to use it. Our people have many needs.”
The decision made, Loptoheen and Lektereenah returned to their kip’t, grateful to finally be out of the Notwater and back in the comforting pressures and currents of the sea. Even protected as they were by the suits, both found the land of the Tailless dry, irritating, even.
Loptoheen guided them deeper, away from the vortex fields, away from Baodong and along a narrow rocky defile that opened onto a broad flat sandy plain, not far from shoals called Mischief Reef. There, several hundred Ponkti tu’kelke had arrived, and the seafloor buzzed with circling kip’ts, pal’penk nosing about, tillet baying and Ponkti arguing, roaming, laughing and fighting.
“Kekot brought the tchee’lum,” Lektereenah said as Loptoheen guided them through the chaos of the scene. “That ship is the sturdiest one…it brought me through the Farpool before. It should do.”
“Eekoti Chase may be right, Affectionate Metah. Perhaps more tests are needed. Even the Tailless have become more cautious.”
Lektereenah sniffed. “Loptoheen…I’m surprised at you. Old tukmaster like yourself, you never backed away from a challenge. And who said eekoti Chase is the only expert? Didn’t hundreds of Ponkti come through the Farpool, just as the Omtorish and the Eepkostic and the Sk’ort?”
“It’s not the same farpool,” he said. “We really don’t know how it works…before we try to bring hundreds of us through it, we should fully understand how it works. Otherwise…this could be suicide…the end of all Ponkti.”
“That won’t happen…not while I’m Metah. Now, find Kekot and let’s get the tchee’lum ship ready. You and I will test the farpool ourselves. Then everyone will see there’s nothing to be afraid of.” Lektereenah slapped Loptoheen on the back as he piloted the little sled. “I never thought I would live to see the day when I was bolder than our most celebrated old tukmaster.”
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