The Farpool

by Philip Bosshardt

  ***

  The excuse was the sleepover already planned at Gwen Sandiford’s house on Saturday night. Maggie, Angie’s mom, admonished her daughter. “Now don’t ya’ll give Mrs. Sandiford any problems…behave yourselves.” She said that with a faint look of bemusement, fully aware that they would do no such thing. Teen-aged girls, Maggie just shook her head.

  And it was near midnight, after an evening of chick flicks and popcorn and a few pillow fights, that Angie finally slipped out of the house. “It’s just Chase…” she told the girls. Gwen nodded with a knowing smile. Chase was cute for a guy. They would have a good time tonight, she was sure.

  Chase was waiting on his turbobike down the street. They sped off for the aquarium. Angie figured it would have been easier to go necking behind the Piggly Wiggly.

  Chase told her he had studied the sentry bot situation and all of Gulfside’s security practices. “That old docent, Mr. Weems, you know how much he likes to talk, show off and things. He spilled everything, the old dork. He just likes to show off.”

  Angie wondered why she had ever agreed to go along.

  They got to the aquarium and Chase parked the bike in some bushes along the service drive.

  The two of them entered through the loading bay in the back, as before. The door was still partially loose, enough for both of them to squeeze under. Then came the drainage channel along the utility corridor. Here, Chase checked underneath, listening carefully for the whir of the bots. He smiled back.

  “I got ‘em timed now…I spent a lot of time here the last few days, checking things out.”

  Angie sniffed. “Instead of doing your actual job at the shop.”

  “Hey, this is science. This is exploring, like Nat Geo.”

  “Right. This is a crime and we both know it…just get on with it. I’m cold, standing out here—“

  They slipped under the drainage channel and headed for the recovery pool room. As before the door was unlocked.

  Ralph and Alice were still in the pool, now dimly lit, circling endlessly.

  Must be pretty boring, Angie decided. Chase was his usual bull-in-a-china-shop self, coming right up to the edge of the pool and squatting down.

  Ralph had noticed them and swam up to the edge. His beak came up and he chittered and clicked and whistled, with what looked like some kind of greeting. Behind him Alice, rose up too, slapping the water with her flippers.

  Ralph handed the pod to Chase, who put it to his ears.

  …My voice…your voice….understand?....this is (screeeh!)(kloook!)…derstand? I speak…you hear….?

  Chase felt his throat go dry. Angie listened in too, pinching herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.

  “I kind of understand…you’re breaking up…lots of strange sounds—you understand me?”

  Ralph slapped the water hard with his beak and shook his forepaddles. Chase didn’t know what all that meant but it looked happy.

  …I understand you…can…you…help? We want…to…depart…leave…this water….

  Chase understood that and Angie nodded at him; she had heard Ralph’s translated words. “That makes sense, doesn’t it?” she said. “Look at this place…it’s a like a jail…a watery jail.”

  Chase had about a million questions. “This thing—“he held out the pod, “—what do you call this? Some kind of translator?”

  Ralph clicked and grunted and words spilled out of the device.

  ...called…echopod…your voice is my voice….my voice is your voice…this you understand…?

  An echopod. Chase ran the words over his tongue. It sort of made sense. He looked at Angie, who seemed distracted, listening for something.

  Bots? she mouthed.

  Chase listened too. He nodded.

  “Ralph, we have to hide for a few minutes…security bots are coming…we’ll be right over there, behind the tool cabinets…don’t say anything, okay?”

  Ralph seemed to understand. He resumed circling and Alice followed behind, sweeping around and around the small pool in near perfect synchrony. Moments later, the double doors swung open and a bot with a red light on its dome came trundling in. By that time, Chase and Angie were well hidden.

  The bot scanned all directions, rolled forward, scanned some more, then did a complete sweep of the pool, completely ignoring Ralph and Alice. They might as well been part of the furnishings as far as the thing was concerned. It was programmed to seek and apprehend humans and it looked only for humans, or their thermal, acoustic or olfactory signatures. The bot rolled back to the doors, sniffed and sensed some more, then, seemingly satisfied, rolled out of the room and the doors swung shut.

  Chase took a deep breath. “Good catch, Ang…that was close. One of us should listen up at all times.” They went back to the poolside.

  “I thought you had this figured out?”

  “I do…I was just---I don’t know…pre-occupied…I mean, this is so cool…talking with dolphins.”

  “Or whatever they are.”

  The conversation went on. Chase put the pod up to his ear.

  “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  Ralph and Alice both rose up out of the water and balanced themselves on their tail flukes, holding the position for a few minutes. Chase and Ralph just eyed each other carefully.

  …called…Seome…(shcreeehhh!)…we say litorkel ge…calmwaters for you…we look…or help…help from your world….

  “Help…what kind of help? Are you saying you came from another world?”

  Ralph acknowledged that. He described the mission that he and Alice had come to complete.

  …perhaps echopod… will not translate… but…a great noise, sound, vibration, we say azh’tu…or is Pul’ke…a great bad thing…an evil…destruction….

  And Ralph proceeded to describe things, things that when Chase thought about it later, seemed like a dream, a really bad dream. Angie held her hands to her mouth, listening, scarcely believing the scratchy words that came out of the echopod.

  They had come to Earth from an ocean planet, a place called Seome. They had come through something they called Farpool…”…that must have been the spout we saw,” Angie decided. “Remember how it looked…how long it lasted--?”

  Chase nodded, holding up a hand for quiet, to let Ralph’s words continue pouring out. Alice joined in too. The pod translated her screeches and whistles with a slightly higher pitch.

  They needed help. The best Chase could make out, Ralph and Alice had made several trips through the Farpool, each time capturing creatures from Earth’s oceans, dolphins, whales, other cetaceans, believing that these were the most intelligent beings on Earth. But their captured dolphins could not survive well in the waters of Seome, nor could they do anything about this terrible noise, sound or vibration, that was slowly destroying their world.

  Now Ralph and Alice had come back with a new mission, to contact what the pod translated as Tailless People of the Notwater…the creatures that lived on land, breathed air.

  “That’s us,” Angie realized. “They came to contact us—“

  Chase bent forward and barely touched Ralph’s forepaddles. “We call you Ralph and Alice…some old TV show, I heard. You have real names?”

  Ralph ducked under the water for a moment, then came up quickly, splashing Chase in the face. He didn’t seem to mind. The echopod spit out more words and sounds.

  …I am…Kloosee…other is…” More splashing. …is Pakma…

  Chase formally introduced him and Angie, motioning his girlfriend to come closer. Angie squatted down, let Chase guide her hand to Ralph…Kloosee’s…forelimb. They touched. Alice…Pakma…joined in.

  For a brief moment, all four of them had touched.

  …litorkel ge…this means calmwaters for you…we pulse that…you are not shoo’kel…many nerves….

  “I am kind of scared,” Angie admitted. “I mean, it’s like really
creepy…sitting here talking with dol--, or with you, I mean.”

  Chase listened for the approach of the bots, hand motioned Angie to go check the corridor. She balked at first, then gave in. She peeked through the double doors, saw nothing and came back. “I didn’t see anything…but for all I know, they could be right outside the door. Maybe you should—“

  But Chase was too intent on his newest friends.

  “What kind of help do you need, Ralph…I mean, Kloosee?”

  What came out of the echopod was a story that Chase and Angie could scarcely believe. Interrupted only by occasional visits from security bots, the teenagers listened spellbound to every halting, scratchy word they could make out.

  Kloosee and Pakma had come from a world that the echopod translated as Seome. It was an ocean world. Their entire civilization was underwater; the world had only a few islands that poked above the surface. But for many years—as the Seomish reckoned time…it came out as sounding like mah—a devastating sound had been slowly destroying their civilization. The acoustics and the vibrations came from a machine. Kloosee called it a wavemaker. It was sited at the ocean surface, near an island he called Kinlok. The machine was a weapon being used by another race of airbreathers. Tailless People of the Notwater, the Seomish called them. The Tailless were fighting a war with an unseen enemy and their weapon created destructive waves, vibrations, deafening sounds that made life unbearable for the Seomish.

  …we have talks…we talk with…Tailless…to stop sound but they listen no…they fight war but we are casualties…

  Angie thought the story was sad and depressing. “Can’t you just attack these airbreathers…destroy the wavemaker? I mean, after all, it is your home, isn’t it?”

  Pakma’s voice came through the echopod, higher pitched. Angie could see the female was becoming agitated, her forelimbs fluttering, her beak slapping the water. Both of them spent most of the time beneath the pool surface. They were not airbreathers, she realized. Below the water, they chirped and whistled and clicked and grunted in a steady stream.

  …we have attacked…Tailless have suppressor weapon…we paralyze and must retreat...talks have no end…they say war must go on…enemy they call Coethi….

  Chase was curious. “You said you came here through something called the Farpool…is that the waterspout we saw a month ago? I didn’t see any spouts the last few days.”

  This time, it was Kloosee who tried to explain. The male circled the recovery pool once, then poked his beak up, showing them what looked like an enigmatic smile, crinkly, almost mirthful eyes that made him look like he was about to tell a great joke.

  …(shkreeeeh)…Farpool is a tunnel…we say opuh’te…we enter pool and travel…great distance….great time…the wavemaker makes Farpool….

  Chase didn’t quite understand. “You’re saying the wavemaker, this weapon that’s creating such a terrible noise, also makes this Farpool. Is it like a whirlpool…a vortex?”

  Back and forth the words flew, haltingly out of the echopod along with untranslatable screeches and chirps, until at last Chase and Angie understood. The wavemaker created dozens of whirlpools as a side effect of its operation. One of the vortexes was especially long lasting and had turned out to be, in effect, a wormhole in time and space. The Seomish had discovered this by accident and they had lost many brave citizens trying to tame the Farpool and explore its possibilities. The Tailless were aware of the Farpool but they didn’t care. Their weapon and their war was all that interested them. It came out, from Pakma, that the Tailless regarded the Seomish as little more than intelligent pets.

  By accident, a team of explorers had used the Farpool once and wound up on Earth, some years ago, as best Chase and Angie could figure out Seomish timekeeping. In Earth’s oceans, they had encountered dolphins, whales and other intelligent cetaceans. Thinking that dolphins were the dominant intelligent life on Earth, they had ‘imported’ some of the creatures, only to find the dolphins didn’t fare well in Seomish waters and had no way to help them in their conflict with the Tailless. The possibility of intelligent life in the realm of the Notwater had not been seriously considered…until now.

  That’s when Kloosee admitted he and Pakma were on a mission to bring back specimens of these strange creatures that lived in the Notwater, creatures that had technology and inexplicable devices and seemed intelligent enough to help the Seomish.

  …we must succeed…time is small…opuh’te grows stronger and some kels abandon their ancestral homes…many die…

  Angie was sympathetic. Chase wasn’t sure.

  “This is all…what’s the word…so incredible. Hard to believe, Kloosee.—what can we do?”

  “I believe them,” Angie blurted out. For several years now, she’d had worked at Dr. Wright’s clinic. She had a sense about these things. Even when she’d been a Red Cross volunteer at Creekside Medical, she could tell about patients. That’s where she’d met Chase, after his Dad had been wounded in the holdup at the surf shop. You could tell when a patient was making stuff up…and when they weren’t. You could see in their eyes, how they wouldn’t look right at you, and their lips…how they got licked a lot. Angie studied Kloosee’s face. Sure, he looked a lot like a dolphin, but the eyes didn’t lie. They were desperate and you could even hear it in their tone of their words, not the words themselves, but the sounds behind them…what was the word: plaintive, sorrowful, mournful, even a little melancholy. Some patients wanted to live so badly you could taste it. Some wanted to die. Some were fighters. Some were quitters.

  Kloosee, and Pakma too, were fighters. She was sure of that.

  …we pulse you not shoo’kel…there is dis…belief…in what is said…you wish help…yet…

  It was true. Chase had to admit it. The whole thing seemed like a dream. “I don’t know what we can do. I think I believe what you’re telling me. And what the hell is this…shoo’kel, thing anyway…that keeps coming out of the pod. What does it mean?”

  …(shkreeeh) to explain…shoo’kel means…balance…inner calm…I will release Kelk’too here…

  Kloosee dipped below the water and did something with his own pod. Instantly, the pod in Chase’s hands changed color, flashing from a warm soothing orange to a bright blue-white. Chase was so startled he almost dropped the thing. But now there were words coming out…calm, monotone words, and he realized it was explaining something, like a dictionary….he put the pod back to his ear tentatively, listening cautiously.

  …The desirable state of keeping one’s inner fluids in balance so that any pulse of you is clean and regular. Any other state is vulgar or obscene. A form of personal honor and dignity. Control of excessive emotion is necessary to efficient and accurate pulsing. Also used in a general or universal sense to mean tranquility, peace, the natural order of things, stability, etc.

  Chase looked at Angie. “What did he do…now it’s coming out super clear and understandable. “

  “It’s like Google,” she agreed.

  “You believe what they’re saying?”

  Angie sat back on her butt, even though the pool deck was wet, and drew her knees up. She watched Kloosee and Pakma watching them. “I can’t put it into words, Chase, but I’ve got this feeling. I think they’re telling us the truth.”

  Chase shrugged. “I’m leaning that way too. But I don’t know what we can do about it.”

  Just then, Kloosee joined in the conversation. It was clear he had heard and mostly understood what they were saying. They’d have to be more careful.

  …travel with us…come through Farpool…to Seome…I will prove truth…you will see yourself…

  Angie’s eyes widened. Go through the Farpool? Go into one of those water spouts? No way. She saw the look on Chase’s face.

  “You can’t be serious, Chase--” The way that scar above his right eye—the one he’d gotten in the fishing accident—started reddening…that meant he was think
ing. Angie thought of it as a light bulb going off…do not interrupt…serious thought underway here….”—I mean, it’s nuts. It’s insane. He’s asking us to go into one of those spouts…we’d never survive—“

  All the same, she could tell Chase was giving the idea some thought. “One thing: we don’t breathe water. Angie and me…we’re not fish, like—well, anyway, we breathe air. We couldn’t survive on your world.”

  But Kloosee had answers for all their questions. …I have seen breathing gear…you have equipment….

  Chase thought. “You mean scuba gear…yeah, there is that. My Dad’s PADI-certified. I’m not old enough yet…but mostly I know everything…even been down to a hundred feet—“ he said proudly.

  “I’m not certified,” Angie said. “And I don’t want to be—“

  Then Pakma told them something that made their blood run cold. …there is a (shkreeeh) procedure…the em’took…you breathe as we do…and as Tailless…

  Chase was intrigued. “You mean amphibians…I think….”

  …a to modify…your body and lungs and mind…like us…but also like Tailless….

  Angie screwed up her face. “Eeewww! Amphibians…we’d be like frogs.”

  “I don’t know, Ang…it’d be a great adventure…better than cave diving, even.”

  “You can have your cave diving. And besides, we both have jobs. I’ve got school.”

  Then, Kloosee became even more agitated, splashing them both. …help us leave…this place…escape…go away to Farpool…

  Chase said, “We could at least do that. Dr. Holland… I don’t think she has any idea of what’s she’s got here.”

  “Chase, we can’t…I mean the aquarium….”

  But the discussion soon took on a momentum of its own and Angie found herself giving in and agreeing, even as every cell in her mind said no.

  The big question now was how would they survive such a trip? How could they live in an underwater world?

  “Chase, I’m not going—“but before she could finish, the doors to the recovery pool burst open. This time, the sentry bots were accompanied by a human being…a Scotland Beach police officer. He shined a flashlight directly at them.

  For the next week, both Chase and Angie were grounded. Chase’s Dad, Mack Meyer, increased his son’s hours at the shop. Now, he was working from 9 am to 9pm, closing up the shop with the assistant manager Jorge.

  “Seems like the only way to keep you out of trouble, son.” Mack said. He inspected the shelf cleaning and stacking work Chase had been doing and re-doing for the last few hours, a bleak sort of penance. When Chase started to argue, Mack held up a hand. “I don’t even want to hear it. There’s no excuse you can lay on me that I haven’t heard. You and that girl were in Gulfside after hours, harassing the animals, helping yourselves to God knows what---just keep sweeping. I’ll tell you when you can stop.” Mack stalked off.

  It went on like that for five days.

  Late at night, the two of them texted each other:

  What’s your punishment, A?

  Stay in the house and do homework, except for when I’m in the clinic.

  I’m going to find a way to get back inside the aquarium.

  Just drop it, okay? The cops said no charges…for now. That doesn’t mean forever.

  Kloosee and Pakma need help.

  Yeah…so do we. What can we do?

  We can let them go, free them from the aquarium.

  I’m not breaking in again. I’ve already got a record.

  You’re thinking of college.

  I’m thinking of staying out of jail.

  A, soon as you can, go to Gulfside. Normal hours. See what you can find out about the locks and gates…I’ll find a way to slip out. I think there’s a channel that comes from the ocean right up to the aquarium.

  You’re going to set them free?

  It’s the right thing to do.

  I don’t like going there. Mom has me on a short leash.

  Try.

  Ok…I’ll swing by on my way home from school tomorrow.

  I can walk down Sandy Beach on my lunch break. I’ll check out the canal.

  So plans were made and Chase went to sleep that night with visions of a great adventure bubbling in his head. He believed what Kloosee and Pakma had told them. He was pretty sure Angie believed most of it too. This was way better than working twelve hours every day in the Turtle Key Surf and Board Shop. Chase lay in bed with his arms behind his head. He had taken off his wristpad, but programmed the thing to project scenes from movies and TV shows he liked. One of them was an old Disney film: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, a great adventure, lots of action, sea beasts, a submarine, fabulous scenery. Chase watched the film for about the millionth time, but now it had a resonant power he’d never felt before.

  Kloosee had called their world Seome. An ocean world. A whole civilization beneath the waves. And, more importantly, a serious problem threatening them. He envied Captain Nemo, cruising around underwater in the Nautilus, living free of laws and restrictions and homework and shop hours and sweeping off the front steps and straightening up the shelves and, worst of all, taking inventory on Sunday afternoons. Jeez, that really sucked.

  Chase knew he had already made up his mind that he would take up Kloosee on his offer. He would go with them through the Farpool. He wouldn’t stay long; after all, the Seomish apparently came and went at will. His Dad needed help at the shop and Chase felt a faint glimmer of guilt at leaving him behind, but it would only be for a short jaunt. Just to see Seome. Maybe he could help out. Some kind of terrible sound….

  But first, there were some practicalities. Kloosee and Pakma had to be set free, which meant that he and Angie had to understand how to get them out of the aquarium. They would have to check out things over the next few days, when they could grab a few minutes here and there. Fortunately, the shop was only a ten minute walk down the beach to the aquarium.

  Then there was the matter Kloosee had raised. How they could survive in a world where everybody lived underwater? Chase knew there was only one answer to that: his Dad’s scuba gear. Mack Meyer was PADI-certified as a dive leader and instructor. Turtle Key regularly organized and conducted dives every month of the year, often to some underwater shipwrecks about five miles southwest of shore. Chase had made dozens of dives and assisted his Dad on many of them. He didn’t have full open water certification but he knew the gear and he knew what he was doing.

  The problem would be Angie. She’d done some diving but she was a novice and not all that keen on it. Chase didn’t know if he could convince her to take a longer trip, through some kind of whirlpool, with a pair of talking, obviously intelligent fish. It was crazy, when you said it that way.

  But he intended to try.

  By the beginning of the following week, restrictions on both of them had been eased. Angie agreed to meet Chase after school. He sped up to the parking lot on his turbo and found her chatting with Doreen and a few other friends on the front steps of the gym building.

  Doreen was a short, busty brunette, with a perpetual smirk. “Hi Chase…held up any banks lately? You gonna take Angie back to the Cove this week?” She stifled a wicked chuckle and the other girls snickered.

  “Doreen—“

  Chase pointed to his back seat. “Hop on. We need to talk.”

  She did, placing her bag in the rack on the back of the seat. She pulled on a headset and now they could talk even over the road noise.

  Chase gave the other girls his best jackpot –winning smile and scratched off out of the parking lot, making sure to fling some gravel at the girls as he did so.

  They motored over to Willie Pete’s at Citrus Grove and took an outside table under striped awnings. Both ordered loaded dogs and fries, with a pitcher of beer.

  Chase poured them both frosty mugs full, loudly slurping the head off his drink. “What have you found out?
”

  Angie sighed. She really did love Chase. It was hard to say why exactly. Maybe because he was so…oh, what was the word?—little boy. He really did look like a surfer dude, with his faint blond beard and moustache, the lock of hair that was forever dropping down in his face, sea-blue eyes, that scar above his right eye that drove other girls wild, and the chin dimple. He had a way of smiling that reminded Angie of a five-year old kid with his hands in the cookie jar…not quite a smirk, but a knowing kind of faint grin that meant he knew he was caught and he didn’t really mind it.

  Chase was wiry strong but he had an artistic, musical side. He could slam jam with the best of them and those long fingers could pluck tunes on the go-tone enough to just melt your heart. Angie had to admit she didn’t mind hanging with the Croc Boys on some of their gigs. It made her feel special and gave her more ammunition in the never-ending games with Doreen and the girls.

  She told him all the details she had learned. She had even made a list and drawn up some sketches.

  “There’s a utility room, just outside the pool where we were…the rehab pool. All the controls are in there.”

  “I bet Mr. Weems told you this.”

  “Who else? The man does like to talk. Anyway, there’s a gate at one end of that pool. It opens onto what Mr. Weems called a connector channel, a narrow waterway…Mr. Weems even showed it to me.”

  “What did you do, pull out a boob or two? I’ll bet he was drooling like a—“

  “Chase-- seriously….what are you: five years old?”

  “Sorry…um, you said a connector channel….”

  She showed him on the sketch, running her fingers along the route in and out of the recovery pool suite. “Then there’s more gates and locks. But the controls are in that same closet, he told me. These outer gates open into what he called the aquarium channel—“

  Chase snapped his fingers. “I saw that…just the other day. It’s a little canal, maybe ten meters wide…can’t be that deep, maybe waist deep. Runs all the way down to the sea, right by the Sandy Beach Pier…you know that gazebo with the roof half off?”

  “Yeah, I know it. So there’s a direct path from the recovery pool to the sea.”

  “Exactly.” Now Chase rubbed his blond stubble. The scar was turning red. Angie knew he was thinking.

  “What’s going on in that little overheated brain of yours?”

  “Just this: now we have a way out for Kloosee and Pakma. We just have to find a time.” Chase took Angie’s fingers in his, rubbed them gently. “And get you some diving gear.”

  “Chase, I don’t know…I’ve been thinking. This really isn’t such a good idea. I mean, would you give it a little thought, already? This isn’t Disney World we’re talking about.”

  “What the hell do you think I’ve been doing, practically night and day. Look, I got it all figured: I can dive and use scuba gear fine and I got my own set at home. My birthday present last year. We got lots of sets at the shop, but I need you to try on some gear, get fitted, then we need to practice a little…probably the public pool over near The Landings—“

  “Yuck…that place’s all slimy and covered with—“

  “Don’t sweat it…it’s just a little practice…you need to know more about regulators, buoyancy devices, how to buddy breathe, get in and out of your gear, clearing your mask…a hundred little details. Angie—“ he saw the skeptical look on her face; when she pushed her curls back like that around her ears, Chase knew she was having serious doubts. “—Angie, you can do this. You’ve already done it before.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think I want to do this. There’s school and—“

  Chase squeezed her fingers. “Think about it. Just think about it, will you? We’ve always talked about going away from this sleazebag town…really getting away, maybe going up north, or out west…Texas, Colorado…this’ll be even better. Just a short trip. I promise: we’ll come right back. And we’ll both see cool stuff, places nobody’s ever been before….”

  “It sounds dangerous and that Farpool thing—“

  “It’s dangerous around here…look what happened to my Dad…held up, shot in the leg, right in his own shop.”

  Angie didn’t have an answer for that. “Give me a day to think.”

  “One day,” Chase decided. “Kloosee and Pakma need help. They need out. We have to do the right thing.”

  Angie half chuckled at that. “Yeah, if only I knew what the right thing was.”

  After they finished their beers, he took her home on his turbo, kissed her as meaningfully as he could and went back to the shop.

  Dad’ll have another hissy fit if I’m late again. He ran several red lights on the way back.

  Chase made the final decision on timing. Three days. They would have to communicate that to Kloosee and Pakma, which meant another break-in at the aquarium. In the meantime, Chase arranged to meet Angie after school—she had wrangled a day off from the Clinic, much to her Mom’s displeasure. They met in the parking lot. Chase’s turbo had bags full of scuba gear.

  They headed for the public pool at The Landings, entering the development off U.S. 19 at the Fanning Springs turnoff. The pool was a 50-meter, Olympic size facility, but poorly maintained by the complex. A dozen kids and several adults were cavorting in the shallow end when they pulled up.

  Angie wasn’t new to scuba gear or diving and got her fins, mask, tank and regulator on in good order. The two of them went straight to the bottom of the pool.

  For the next hour, Chase had Angie demonstrate basic scuba diving procedures. She swapped tanks with Chase, did a little buddy breathing, demonstrated that she knew all the gear: mask, fins, regulator, buoyancy control device, weight belt, dive watch and knife, using all her gauges. She demonstrated controlled ascent and descent, some basic water skills and rescue techniques. When Chase was satisfied, they surfaced.

  Angie pulled her mask up, snorted some water. “How’d I do?”

  “Good. You know what you need to know. Now, let’s get changed. I want to head over to the aquarium.”

  “Don’t you have to be at the shop…you know— your job?”

  Chase shook his head. “Dad went to Orlando today, picking up some T-shirts or something. Jorge’s taking care of the store this afternoon. I’m supposed to be back by eight, to help close up, do the books, clean up and so on.”

  They changed in the pool locker rooms at the clubhouse, stuffed their gear in bags and took off on Chase’s turbo for Gulfside, a ten-minute drive.

  Chase paid their admissions and right away, they learned some good news.

  Kloosee and Pakma, aka Ralph and Alice, had been moved. No longer in the rehab pool, the two Seomish ‘dolphins’ were now a star attraction at Gulfside, cruising around the larger pool of the Dolphin Gallery. Some of the original residents had been moved out—Chase presumed to the rehab pool- so that their friends mostly had Tank B—the Dolphin Gallery—to themselves. Two Atlantic bottle-nose animals stayed behind, sniffing and swimming curiously behind their Seomish visitors.

  Then came the bad news. Mr. Weems came over with his broom and pan when he saw Chase and Angie standing in the small crowd around the windows.

  “Got ‘em moved just last night,” Weems offered. “They’ll be stars for a few days, then it’s bye-bye for them.”

  Chase looked up abruptly. “Bye-bye…what do you mean bye-bye?”

  Weems shrugged. “They’re taking a trip. London. Piccadilly Circus and all that. Dr. Meier worked out an exchange with the World Aquarium there. Ralph and Alice will be gone for six months, then they come back here.”

  Chase looked at Angie. “When do they leave, Mr. Weems?”

  “Day after tomorrow.” Weems picked up his broom and pail and went on about his business.

  Chase felt a chill. “We have to talk with them.” Even as he was thinking what to say, he noticed Kloosee—Ralph—pull up next a
t the surface of the pool by the railing and poke his beak out. Pakma came up alongside. In a smooth, barely noticeable gesture, partly hidden by Pakma’s tail flukes, Kloosee placed an echopod on the side of the pool. Chase looked around. Nobody else had seen what happened. He reached down and scooped the device up. He turned and motioned for Angie to stand closer, so he could hide what he was doing. There were a few kids at the Dolphin Gallery, but it was getting on toward dinner time and crowds were thinning out. The aquarium would be closing in two hours.

  Chase placed the pod next to his ear. A blue-white glow emanated from inside.

  …you help us…(shkreeeh)…help leave this place…return to Farpool…

  Apparently, they didn’t know of the planned exchange. Chase told Kloosee what he knew and what they had learned. He whispered into the pod, ducking behind Angie, whenever kids or other patrons came near. To all intents and purposes, he seemed to be talking on a small phone.

  “It’s happening day after tomorrow. But don’t worry…we did a little snooping…Angie did. We know how to spring the gates. There’s a water channel all the way down to the Gulf.”

  Kloosee tossed some water and plunged back into the pool, clearly agitated. He swam several circles with Pakma , clicking and chattering, before coming back to the railing.

  …we have tchee’lum…a pod for transfer…with kip’t…you and friend ride pod…

  Chase knew Angie couldn’t hear the words. He leaned over and whispered in her ear. “He’s saying they have some kind of pod we can travel in…but we still need our scuba gear.”

  Angie stared straight ahead. “Swell. Chase, we really should talk about—“

  …make time now…make time now…Pakma and I ready….

  Chase could sense their impatience even without the echopod’s rough translation. “He wants us to set a time…but how do we tell them the time?” Chase snapped his fingers. An idea. “Midnight. We know how to get inside…just the bots we have to watch out for.”

  “Chase, I’m not breaking into this place again…ever. I don’t want to go to jail…you heard what the cops said.”

  But Chase was thinking. How to tell Kloosee the time? “Wait…don’t they change the lighting in here over night?”

  “How should I know?”

  Chase gave Angie the echopod--she stashed it in her cutoff jeans for a few minutes, while Chase hunted down Mr. Weems. He had made his way to the other side of the Admissions Pavilion and was spearing and sweeping trash and dusting along the railings of the Seal Stage.

  Chase asked him what happened to the lights when the place was closed.

  Weems didn’t think the question odd at all and was happy to oblige. He described the lighting cycle. “Then, just before the sun comes up, I dunno…maybe two hours before we open—see those orange lights up there? They come on. Sodium vapor, those are. Lot of lights, all around the edge. They help to—“

  “Thanks, Mr. Weems…thanks a lot—“ Chase hustled off before Weems could even finish his sentence.

  Chase took back the echopod, waited until a small family had browsed their way past, and told Kloosee what to look for.

  “Right when those orange lights come on…should be about seven in the morning…one of us will be at the gate controls. There’s a utility closet back in Recovery. We’ll open all the gates, if we can, and out you go. Just follow the water channels…all the way down to the ocean.”

  Kloosee seemed to understand. …you have equip…for Notwater…breathe in the tchee-lum…

  Chase was getting better at picking out words from all the scratches, chirps and whistles. “We have breathing gear, if that’s what you’re asking. Once you’re out of the aquarium, wait for us. One of us will be down on the beach. The other will have to get out of the aquarium, without getting caught.”

  Kloosee nodded his beak vigorously up and down, spraying them with water. Some kids nearby saw the gesture and started laughing, coming over.

  …you keep echobulb…(shkreeeh)…two light…cycle…we are…we ready….

  With that, Kloosee clicked and sprayed the approaching kids. Pakma came over and let them touch her dorsal fins, then joined Kloosee in cruising the large pool that was Tank B. The kids laughed and clapped with enjoyment. Kloosee and Pakma had watched the dolphins in the tank perform stunts for the Tailless People…backflips, leaping out of the water, tail-balancing and fluke flips. They tried a few of them and the kids went wild with glee.

  Chase said,” Come on. Let’s get out here.”

  Angie reluctantly let her fingers fold into his. “Mister, you and I have one hell of a lot to talk about. You’re nuts if you think I’m breaking into this place again.”

  They gathered outside at Chase’s turbo and had it out, sitting down together on the curb at the far end of the parking lot. Angie hooked her arm in his.

  “Chase, I know you want more out of life than working in a surf shop forever. I know you want get away, see the world, be an explorer…but this isn’t the way to do it.”

  Chase stared down at the asphalt. “Angie, do you believe what Kloosee and Pakma—Ralph and Alice—are saying? Do you believe any of this?”

  Angie unhooked her arm. “I don’t know what to believe anymore. It’s crazy. We saw a spout a month ago. We saw some…I don’t know—fish, dolphins, whatever, something we’d never seen before. They fired something at us. We blacked out. Woke up with the Coast Guard. They all said we dreamed it up. Maybe we did. Maybe this is all a dream. Now, we’re breaking into the aquarium, we’ve both got a police record and we’re talking about letting these creatures out of the aquarium…and following them out to sea. Doesn’t that sound slightly nuts to you?”

  Chase nodded. “When you put it that way, it does. But, Angie…this is real. It’s as real as you and me sitting here.”

  “So what are you going to do? What are we going to do?”

  Chase shrugged. “I guess I don’t think about things too much, do I? Just sort of react, do things. Mom said once I was like Baxter, like the dog we had for so many years. Bark and chase and poop and eat…that’s what he did. But Angie—“he turned, took her hands in his, “—this is real. I can’t explain it. I just feel it. Remember when we first met…my Dad in the hospital, all shot in the legs and stomach, he was dying, you know. The doctors wouldn’t say it in so many words, but I knew…you could see it in their faces. And you were there—“

  Angie said, “I remember. You looked like a scared little puppy…I felt so sorry for you. I just wanted to comfort you, make it all better—“

  “I wanted to go back, move the clock back, so the holdup hadn’t happened. But I couldn’t…I felt so helpless. Without you—“ Chase picked up a loose piece of pavement, chucked it into the bushes, scattering a few squirrels. “—without you, I might have done something…no, I would have done something. Probably something stupid.”

  “Chase, I don’t want you…or me…to do something stupid. I don’t think letting those creatures out and following them to wherever—out to sea somewhere—is a good idea. It might even be stupid. Chase—“ she squeezed his hands back, “we’ve got something good now, don’t we? We love each other…we’ve got each other. If we do this, all that may be gone.”

  Chase stood up abruptly, tinkered with some gear and straps on the back of the turbo. “Dad wants to me to come in and be a partner in the shop, learn the business.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  Chase shook his head. “My head says yes. My heart says no. I don’t know which to follow. But I do know one thing: Kloosee and Pakma are real. That echopod in your bag is real—“ He watched as Angie pulled the device out of her bag and turned it over and over in her hand. “We’re not dreaming that. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow…you never know. We’ve got our whole lives…yeah, we don’t want to make mistakes and ruin our lives, but you know what Dad told me: he said don�
��t be afraid of tomorrow. Life is full of mistakes. The biggest mistake is not making mistakes…that means you’re not living. He said he thought a lot about that in the hospital…maybe I should give up the shop, join a shrimper crew, go back to construction and carpentry…but he wanted to own his own business and you had to take risks to make dreams come true. I think about that a lot.”

  Angie could see where this was going. “It’s a big risk, we’re taking here. I’m not sure I can do this. I’m scared…I don’t want to leave all this behind…the good and the bad. There’s Mom and the track team—“

  “And homework and Mr. Winans’ Algebra class—“

  “—and Dr. Wright…God, he’s given me so much at the clinic…all the opportunities-- “

  “Then there’s getting home at nine dead tired, and more homework—“

  Angie pulled him back down to sit beside her and put fingers to his lips. “Shut up, already, will you? I do the thinking around here, remember? What about sweeping out the shop and straightening up the shelves and balancing the books at midnight every night? Is that you’re future? Chase, you can be so much more. I can too, but I have to be here to do that…I want to be a doctor…or at least a nurse assistant. But I have to go to school and that means money and good grades…and a lot of work. If I’m off with you on some hare-brained adventure like a Nat Geo film, I can’t do that.”

  “So you’re not coming tomorrow?”

  “I didn’t say that…oh, Chase—“ She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I want us to work. But I want to have a life too.” She pointed out beyond the bushes and parked cars to the faint white line of the incoming surf. “And it’s not out there.”

  She could see by the streetlamp that the scar above his eye wasn’t red at all. Whatever thinking had been going on was over. His lips told the truth. A decision had been made.

  “Angie, I’m going. It’s something I have to do. If I don’t, I’ll be in that shop forever…I know me. I need something like this kickstarter here on my turbo…a kick in the seat.”

  In that moment, Angie knew she would give in and go too. For better or worse, they were a pair. His life and her life were all tangled up like spaghetti. If you tried to unravel spaghetti, what did you have: long strips of nothing. Mush it all up and pour sauce on it, and then you had something you could eat.

  She knew they were about to try one hell of a sauce tomorrow.

  “Okay.” That’s all she said. That’s all that would come out.

  Chase got on the bike. With only a slight hesitation, Angie plopped her butt in the rear seat and got comfortable, fastening her arms around his waist. She always liked to tickle him a little when she did that and she did that now.

  He reached back and pinched her on her thigh.

  “I’ll be at your place at five a.m. sharp. With all the gear.”

  “Should I pack anything…I mean, it’s sort of like a camping trip, isn’t it? I always hated camping.”

  Chase kickstarted the bike and let the engine rumble for a moment. They both put on their headsets.

  “Pack whatever you think you need. But be ready at five. I’ll be up the street, by that van that’s always on the street…by the corner.”

  She nodded, said nothing.

  Chase gripped the handles and they scratched off down the parking lot, skidding slightly on loose gravel, as he turned out onto Duncan Street, heading across town to take her back home.

  Angie was glad she had a helmet on while she was riding with Chase. The faceplate covered the tears that had started streaming down her cheeks.