The Farpool_Exodus

by Philip Bosshardt

  Yeah, like I never heard that before, Angie told herself. She knew better than to argue. They’d already argued that afternoon anyway, mostly over little things. Angie told him she wanted to go full time with Dr. Wright’s clinic when she graduated from Apalachee. Chase just shrugged. I want to make something of myself, she told him. What she didn’t say, because she didn’t have to was: you should too. But that was a lost cause.

  Chase steered them further out to sea, through heavier chop, and Angie got more and more nervous.

  “Chase, I’m sorry I said what I did…if you want to work at the shop—“

  But his eyes were on something else. “Hey...what the hell is that?”

  A pair of silvery shapes nosed out of the water just a few meters off their starboard bow. Rounded humps, slightly scaly, even plated like some kind of suit.

  “Dolphins?” she offered. “At least, they’ve got enough sense to leave the area.”

  “Those aren’t dolphins…too big. Maybe some kind of whale—there they are again—“He stood up, letting the tiller go for a moment and pointed. Waves nearly knocked him overboard and he fell heavily right into Angie’s lap. They both rolled and scrambled to get back up.

  Two glistening humps were less than ten meters away, riding along the surface. They were easily twelve to fifteen meters long, multiple dorsal fins, but the skin was all wrong. It wasn’t like anything Chase or Angie had ever seen. The skin wasn’t smooth, but textured, almost plated, as if the creatures were encased in some kind of armor. Spouts of air blasted into the sky as they glided along. Maybe someone from Keenomsh’pont….

  “What’s that…some kind of cage--?” Angie spotted something following the creatures. She realized it was attached; they were towing some kind of enclosure.

  Chase saw it too. “I don’t know…but that’s a dolphin…look inside the cage.” He steered the boat alongside the convoy, holding off about five meters. Thrashing about inside an open-grill enclosure was a bottle-nose dolphin, maybe a calf, perhaps two meters in length. It banged and crashed inside, trying to get out. The other creatures in the armored suits were towing it, toward some kind of seething vortex that was churning up the surface of the Gulf, less than fifty meters away.

  “Chase, maybe we ought to—“But before Angie could complete her sentence, the convoy stopped dead in the water. One creature circled back, managing the cage with its beak and forepaddles. The other creature nosed further up out of the water, showing its entire forebody. It had forepaddles like a dolphin but the paddles had fingers, and grasped in the fingers was some kind of barbell-shaped device. The creature slapped back down in the water and began circling their small boat, now rising and crashing down on waves spiraling off the vortex nearby.

  “Chase…Chase, what’s happening—“

  Chase Meyer stood up and struck out at the creature with the end of his paddle. He missed and nearly went overboard. The paddle slipped out of his hand and went into the sea. “I don’t know…maybe they’re some kind of shark—I never saw anything like—“ Maybe some Ponkti….

  That’s when the circling creature reared up again and aimed the barbell at their boat. There was a bright flash. Angie fell backward into the boat, landing on the picnic hamper, which crumpled.

  Chase staggered, then was blinded again by another bright flash. Everything went dark. He pitched forward, clipping his chin on a bench and fell awkwardly into the bow. A dark tunnel opened up and he quickly lost consciousness. In his final seconds of lucidity, he realized that the canoe was heaving and pitching on the outer edge of the waterspout’s vortex, balanced between forces for a split second. But the ‘spout was too strong and they were being pulled inexorably in.

  A loud buzz kept blaring and bleating and Chase fought his way back to something like a dull stupor. His chin hurt, and there was dried blood—he could taste it and feel it as he wiped his face. He sat up, wobbling around as the waves bounced the little boat back and forth. They were back in the Cove again, the boat slapping up against a cypress knee. That was the banging noise he had heard.

  And they weren’t alone.

  One of the creatures they had seen beyond the cove was there as well, gliding around the boat just below the surface of the water. Chase sat up abruptly, causing Angie to stir. He wasn’t sure how they had wound up back in the Cove…they had been a quarter mile out to sea when they’d first seen the creatures. They sure looked Seomish. When Angie saw the rounded silvery hump cruise by, its dorsal fin glistening in the moonlight, she started violently and almost fell out of the boat.

  “What is that?” she hissed. She curled into a ball in the stern of the boat, nearly upending the little craft. “Is it…is it like a shark?”

  Chase watched the creature circle them, wondering. He had the strangest impression that he knew this creature. Maybe in this time stream, Seome hadn’t been destroyed. Maybe Kloosee and Pakma and Longsee and the rest were still alive, six thousand light-years away, but still alive. It was all very confusing. Apparently in this time stream, he and Angie hadn’t been swept into the Farpool and catapulted halfway across the Galaxy to the ocean world of Seome…not yet, anyway. This time stream was like that one, only with a few differences.

  He knew he’d have to be careful.

  “I don’t think it means us any harm,” he said. “It’s just curious, nosing about, studying us.”

  “I don’t like it, Chase…get us out of here. Maybe it’s a crocodile or something.”

  “It’s not a croc…or a gator. But if you insist—” He was about to take the paddle and shove them away from the cypress knee, into deeper water, so he could start the Merc, but just then, the creature butted the bow end of the canoe with its beak and nosed it back closer to shore.

  Chase was so startled he didn’t react at first, but when the creature rose up out of the water and tossed an object into the canoe, he blinked in disbelief. Angie screamed.

  The creature wore a suit. That much was evident and Chase muttered under his breath…a mobilitor. It’s wearing a mobilitor. Who was it? What did they want?

  “Is it…a b-b-bomb…or something?” Angie cried.

  Chase recognized the echopod and scooped it up. “No…nothing like that. I believe he wants to talk with us…it’s a translating device. An echopod…don’t you remember those?”

  But she didn’t seem to remember and he knew then that in this time stream, Angie didn’t know, in fact, couldn’t know about anything Seomish. She hadn’t been there yet.

  “A what…what the hell are you jabbering about? Just get us out of here.”

  At that moment, with the creature hovering just off the port bow of the canoe, in effect pinning them against the cypress knee, there came a screeching set of clicks and squeaks from below the water. Waves bumped against the canoe. Simultaneously, the echopod, sitting on the deck, started whirring and vibrating and moments later, a barely intelligible stream of words came blasting out.

  “Zzzhhssqq…eekoti Chase…I…Kloosee…you come…zzzhhh…Pakma and I lost…can’t work zzhhh…Farpool….”

  Angie froze at the sound of a few recognizable words. “Oh my God…it’s talking—it’s a …how can it do that—” she squirmed and twisted away and fell thrashing and splashing right into the cove. Instantly, she bobbed to the surface and was startled when the creature named Kloosee bumped her again and again and shoved her hard toward the banks, where she grabbed a low-hanging branch and managed to pull herself out of the water. She shivered and jammed her fists into her mouth, strangling another scream.

  Chase had started to dive in after her but when the creature had pushed Angie ashore, he stayed in the boat. The creature circled back, still squeaking and clicking, and the echopod chirped again, with another stream of barely understandable words….

  “Shhkkreeah…come me, eekoti Chase…help Farpool…we know not a way…”

  Over the whimpers of Angie, Chase made out a semblance of understanding. Kloosee and Pakma were here and they were tr
apped. Something was wrong with the Farpool, in this time stream, and they were stuck here. They knew Chase could navigate the gateway and they needed help.

  But there was still a problem and she was sitting on her haunches sniveling and sniffing only a few meters away. Chase didn’t understand all that was going on…the time streams confused him and trying to figure it all out gave him a headache.

  He picked up the echopod and began to speak, slowly, deliberately.

  “Kloosee, listen to me…I can help you…but first there’s something I have to do. Somewhere I have to be.”

  The creature circled restlessly around the Cove but it seemed to understand. “Zzzhhqqkk…come this place…sun-over water…help Farpool—”

  Chase promised he would. “It’s a deal. Sunrise. Right here—”

  With that, the creature turned about and glided out of the cove and was gone, heading for deeper water. Chase poled the canoe closer to the shore and helped Angie get back in, still in shock, still shivering. He hugged her.

  “Hey, girl, how about some eggs and bacon…my treat?”

  That’s when she broke down and sobbed uncontrollably on his shoulder for a long time. And even when he turned them about and paddled out to deeper water to start the motor, she never let go.

  Everybody was at the Magnolia Diner on Highway 19 and the place was jammed, rocking and shaking with loud music, louder voices, screams and laughs and Chase was glad it was so, for Angie seemed to finally regain her composure, not to mention her color and even her jeans and cute little cut-off flannel shirt had mostly dried when they slipped into a booth and ordered the Works…scrambled eggs, bacon, blueberry pancakes, hash browns, fruit cup and piles of buttered toast, OJ and milk on the side.

  Someone pulled out a flask and passed it around. Angie smiled, then chuckled and before too many minutes had passed, was laughing and joshing with the rest of them.

  The encounter in the Cove seemed a long time ago…probably a bad dream, something she’d swallowed at the Dance, probably. Really, talking fish and waterspouts?

  She took the flask, thought about it for a moment, then smiled weakly and passed it on.

  “I’d better lay off for awhile…get my head back together,” she said apologetically. “I’ve been seeing the weirdest things since we left the dance.”

  They kidded her for awhile and Chase watched Angie, wondering.

  We must have been pulled into that ‘spout when we left the Cove, he told himself. This is somehow a new time stream. Somehow, we’ve been through the Farpool…in this time, me and Angie haven’t yet been to Seome. There wouldn’t be a Farpool in the last time stream; Seome had been destroyed. But in this one….

  Then he realized there could be another answer: the Coethi. Perhaps even more had come through the Farpool before it was destroyed than they realized. Something like a Farpool had already been constructed in the South China Sea and the Chinese and the Ponkti were even now trying to figure out how to use it. If there were more Coethi, if there was another gateway….

  “Hey, Chase—” it was Gordy Jensen, a senior and one-time basketball jock for the Eagles. “—try some of this.” He passed along another small flask and Chase unscrewed the cap and sniffed it.

  “Jeez, man…what the hell is this…kerosene? My turbo could use this.” He declined and passed the flask back.

  Someone’s wristpad chirped. It was Angie’s. She studied the screen for a moment, then said softly, “My God…look at this.” She showed the pad to those around her and others began tuning into that particular newsfeed. It was a report from Solnet.

  For a few moments, every eye was riveted to wristpad screens. Vid reports from the South China Sea showed a strange, inexplicable outburst of waterspouts, dozens of them, erupting one after another, roiling across that sea by the dozens.

  Jensen nodded wisely. “Weather phenomena of some type. Temperature inversions, the Coriolis effect…it makes sense.”

  Someone said, “Jensen, you can’t even shoot a basketball. Now you’re a meteorologist? Give me a break.”

  The banter and the kidding went on for awhile. In time, Chase became vaguely aware that distant eyes were studying him, from a booth in the far corner, by the restrooms. As nonchalantly as he could, he managed to twist around far enough to see who it was.

  The last booth was occupied by a trucker, from the looks of it, a female trucker. That was unusual. The Diner had fed a lot of truckers from Highway 19 over the years. Not many of them were female.

  From the corner of his eye, Chase could make out that she seemed middle-aged, heavy makeup pancaked on her face, barely covering what almost looked like scales or some kind of faint scars and green and blue tattoos up and down her neck. She wore a bulky jacket with insignia, even in the muggy heat of late October. A ball cap and sunglasses completed her attire.

  He snagged the waitress when she came by with refills. Chase knew the waitress by name; her daughter went to Apalachee.

  “Molly, who’s that broad in the back, in last booth? She keeps giving us the eye.”

  Molly shrugged, balancing a tray of plates and glasses. “Don’t really know her that well. Name’s Jo, I heard. Trucker, I think, from the looks of her. She’s been in here every morning for the last week or so. Why?”

  “Oh, no reason…must be my imagination. She looks like someone I know, someone I once knew. Probably another time and place.”

  Molly went on to other tables.

  The trucker looked up and caught Chase studying her. She smiled faintly, nodded ever so slightly and went back to her newspad.

  Chase started to turn back around but when he realized Jo was keeping a very close eye on him from the booth, he felt a cold chill run down his spine. With a certainty he couldn’t really put into words, he knew they were being stalked.

  It can’t be, he told himself. There’s no way.

  He checked his watch and then saw that the darkness outside was just beginning to fade. It would be sunrise in half an hour.

  He knew he still had an appointment to keep, somewhere out there in the Gulf, somewhere beyond Half Moon Cove.

  END