The Farpool

by Philip Bosshardt

  Chapter 7

  Seome

  Omsh’pont, kel: Omt’or

  Time: 765.5, Epoch of Tekpotu

  Nine months before he was catapulted into the Farpool, Chase Meyer had been riding his turbobike along the Gainesville Highway, coming back from a visit with his recovering Dad at Creekside Hospital, when the bike hit a pothole in the highway. Chase lost control and somersaulted over the handlebars. When he thought about this later, he realized just how much time had slowed down in those few airborne seconds. Like his Dad always said: “It’s not the fall that hurts, it’s the sudden stop at the end.”

  So he had been airborne and basically weightless for a few seconds—not uncomfortably so—then his tumbling body had slammed into the ground inside a culvert adjoining the highway.

  Days later, when he and Angie talked about the experience, Chase mentioned that going through the Farpool was like that: moments of peaceful weightlessness, almost a dreamlike quality, except for the bright strobing lights outside the porthole and then the sudden stop.

  It was like having a horse kick the crap out of you. Or maybe driving your bike headfirst into a brick wall at eighty miles an hour.

  The lifeship shuddered and hurtled out of the Farpool in a flash of light, a roaring rush of deceleration, knocking Kloosee and Pakma hard against the cockpit windows. Still trapped in the vortex, Kloosee rammed the ship’s rudder hard over, while firing her jets to counteract the residual force of the spin. For a moment, they were both pinned sideways against the cockpit, until the force of the jets shot them through the core of the whirlpool and out into calmer waters.

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

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

  Immediately, they could both hear and feel the throbbing beat of the wavemaker. Kinlok Island and the huge machine were less than ten beats away, to the west.

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

  Pakma checked behind. The tchee’lum, the transfer pod with Chase and Angie inside, was still in tow, connected by line to the aft end of the ship. The pod gyrated slightly as Kloosee settled the connected vessels into a smoother ride.

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

  Kloosee said, “And the Notwater. We should surface, let them re-charge the flasks. Plus you should give them the echopod.”

  Pakma agreed and Kloosee steered the lifeship upward toward the surface. He breached within sight of the humped mountains of Kinlok.

  Pakma left the cabin and went back to the tchee’lum, cycling open the hatch. The two vessels rolled and wallowed in heavy surf and Kloosee had to battle the currents to keep them at the surface. Pakma held her breath, poked her head above and popped the hatch. Moments later, she spied a head…it was the male named Chase. He thrust himself up, squinting in the spray and seemed startled at the nearby metallic flanks of the wavemaker, less than two beats away, rounded humps with the conical caps of its time displacement nodes looking like small reefs in the water. Waves crashed against the wavemaker’s arms and the lifeship rolled and bobbed unsteadily.

  Pakma cruised just below the surface, took a breath and popped her head up. Chase jumped at the sight, then realized who it was. Pakma reached out with her hands and gave Chase an echopod. Grateful, he snagged it from her and disappeared below the hatch.

  Pakma ducked down into the water to get a breath---it hurt her gills to heave in too much of the Notwater—and started to explain.

  Chase heard the whistling and chirps and finally managed to activate the echopod. Its warm orange glow seemed comforting. Inside the pod cabin, Angie managed to contort herself enough to partially sit up. She squeezed through the hatch, sticking her own head out, took a deep breath of the stinging air and promptly took a wave of seawater in her face. Coughing and gagging, she slipped back inside.

  Chase said, “There…I think it’s working…can anyone hear me? Chase Meyer calling anyone…this is Chase Meyer on--“

  The echopod screeched and blasted them with noise until Chase figured out how to set the volume to the right level.

  (shkreeee…)understand me…I am Pakma…do you hear my voice—

  The words were shrill, whistling, barely audible over the background rush of sound, but both teenagers heard them. It was the most welcome sound they had ever heard and they laughed out loud.

  “Yes…yes, I hear you! I understand you…who is this--?”

  …am Pakma…I am alongside the tchee’lum…below water. Surfaced to give you Notwater…re-charge flasks….

  Chase looked puzzled at Angie. “What do you--“

  Then Angie snapped her fingers. “They put us on the surface to give us air…she must mean put more air in those bottles—“ she indicated the ring of containers at the base of the cabin.

  “Yeah….hmmm, how do I do that? On Earth…we use compressed air to fill our tanks. But I don’t see a compressor—“

  Angie pried one of the containers loose and worked it up through the hatch. Chase took it and almost immediately dropped it. The thing started moving, its outer surface morphing until something that looked like a mouth with lips had formed on one side. Holding the container away from his face, Chase saw the lips form a puckered sort of shape and realized in that moment that the thing was literally sucking in air, like you’d suck in air yourself.

  “Oh my God,--“ Angie shook her head. “It’s like a little creature…it’s taking in air—“

  One by one, with brief instructions and encouraging chirps from Pakma, Chase and Angie manage to work every container—there were several dozen—off of their mounts, hoist each one through the hatch, let the container draw in air on its own and re-attach it to the cabin walls.

  When they were done, Pakma said …you have Notwater for the trip…enough to last…

  “Where are we going?” Chase asked, through the echopod. He was beginning to get a feel for how to tune and adjust the translator. “And what the hell is that…that machine thing on the horizon…it’s just pounding away out there—“

  Pakma surfaced for a moment, sticking her beak and forepaddles out of the water. Like dolphins, the Seomish had a face that always seemed amused, with a broad crescent of a smile. Pakma thrashed her beak up and down. The echopod chirped again and both Chase and Angie drew near.

  …we travel…three (days)…go Omsh’pont…our home. We must find kip’t, re-connect tchee’lum to kip’t…the wavemaker you see…makes great Sound…destroys all…we need your help….

  After some discussion, Pakma agreed to allow Chase and Angie to don their own scuba gear, and exit the pod. Pakma shut the hatch and led the teenagers below the surface, hauling themselves along the tow line to the lifeship. Kloosee was at the controls. Chase and Angie squeezed inside, with Chase trying to form words into the echopod. He found that by pressing the echopod to his throat—an old diver’s trick he’d learned from his Dad—he could form the words well enough and get the signal through the echopod. The Seomish seemed to understand.

  Pakma climbed inside the pod and Kloosee steered the lifeship below the surface, probing and sounding for the kip’t station nearby. They would need the sled for the trip home.

  Chase found the throbbing sound painful, even deafening this close to the wavemaker. The water among the vortex fields was turbid and choppy and Kloosee had all he could do to keep the lifeship on course, homing for the kip’t station.

  He dove toward the signal, which emanated from a narrow ledge carved into the side of a seamount. They would park the lifeship there, secure the vessel and transfer everything to the kip’t, including their cargo pod. After that, several hours of cautious maneuve
ring to get beyond the whirlpool fields and the four travelers would be headed toward Omsh’pont at last.

  Chase winced at the booming of the wavemaker. How do they stand this, he wondered? He pressed the echopod to his throat, tried to form a question.

  “How do you put up with this noise? It’s deafening.”

  Kloosee’s reply was scratchy….the Sound….also vibration…destroys our homes and cities…we call this mee’torkel’te…rough water…hurts ears…many problems…need your help….

  Angie indicated by hand motions that she wanted the echopod. She imitated Chase, pressing the pod to her throat.

  “How long has this sound been going on?”

  Kloosee guided the lifeship steadily deeper, pinging for the kip’t station. Finally, he got the signal he was seeking and steered them toward the side of a huge underwater cliff. A niche came into view through the murky water. Tucked into the niche was a small sled with an enclosed cockpit. Kloosee brought them to all-stop abeam of the niche.

  …the Sound and the wavemaker…many mah…we tried shielding in past…shield failed…the Umans do not listen…

  Angie wondered. What the hell’s a mah? She would have to ask about that later.

  Kloosee indicated they should exit the lifeship. He sprung the hatch and Chase and Angie emerged cautiously into the water.

  Jeez this is cold, Chase thought. Dirty as hell too. The water was dense; he had no idea how deep they were but the pressure on his ears was building. He tried the old Valsalva technique—pinching and blowing and it helped. Then he made sure his feet were straight down and his head straight up. How the hell do they see anything? Then he answered his own question: they don’t see. They don’t have to. They can range and ping with their own sound. No wonder this blasted machine causes such problems, he realized. He glanced at Angie as she came out. She seemed to understand, shaking her head, trying to clear her own ears.

  Under Kloosee’s guidance—Pakma had also emerged from the transfer pod—several bags and satchels were moved from the lifeship into the kip’t. The tow line was unhooked and re-attached to the sled. Kloosee slithered inside the kip’t and powered up the vessel, then gently maneuvered it out of its niche and into open water, hovering just beyond sight, while Pakma drove the lifeship into the cradle and parked it.

  When all the cargo transfer and maneuvering was done, the kip’t was attached by tow line to the tchee’lum and the lifeship secured in its parking bay.

  Kloosee started chirping and chattering and Chase put the echopod back to his ears.

  …Pakma tek rides in tchee’lum…you ride with me…

  Chase and Angie squeezed themselves into the sled cockpit, as best they could. Behind them, Pakma disappeared back inside the pod.

  Chase pressed the echopod against his throat, forming a question. “Can we see this machine, this thing that’s causing such a ruckus?”

  For a moment, Kloosee didn’t respond. He was concentrating on steering the kip’t away from the cliff. Chase wondered if his word ‘ruckus’ didn’t translate.

  Then…will try to approach wavemaker…surface water is rough…secure yourselves…

  And with that, Kloosee pressed forward, accelerating the kip’t with its propulsors. The sled angled nose up and Chase could see the surface above them, light streaming down in translucent shafts. Something like kelp or seaweed draped itself over the cockpit as they rose and Kloosee waggled the sled a few times to throw it off. The sea was filled with the stringy mass drifting in huge clouds just below the surface.

  Suddenly they breached in an explosion of foam, into a world of gray and gloom, with rising swells and rough choppy surf, bobbing like a paper cup in a hurricane. Above the surface, the ocean was roiling in heavy surf and gale-force winds slammed them up one wave and down another. Kloosee did the best he could to keep them at the surface.

  …pulse that direction…he pointed with an armfin off to the right…(shkreeeah) wavemaker creates mee’torkelte…many, many opuh’te…many vortex…

  Chase and Angie strained to see. An island was on the horizon, its cliffs partially obscured in heavy mist. The cliffs seemed to rise out of the water at a vertiginous slope, a rugged shoulder of gray-brown rock, slick with moss.

  But it was what lay off to the left of the island cliffs that caught Chase’s attention. He grabbed Angie’s shoulder and pointed.

  What he had first mistaken for a whale or another island was in fact no such thing. A dark hump emerged from the surface, poking above the waves and arching out of the water at a shallow angle, rising to a low apex some distance away, veiled by the ever-present mist that never seemed to lift. The part of the machine above the surface was a vast, squat cone, patterned with blister-like bumps from the water’s edge to the apex and completely around its circumference. Directly above each bump, the mist swirled in sparkling convolutions, forming spiral rainbows that seemed to expand as they curved overhead and disappeared into the gray of what Kloosee always called the Notwater.

  Angie burbled into the echopod. “What is it?”

  Kloosee answered…it is a weapon…the Umans fight their war with this…it affects time…creates opuh’te…you say vortex…many vortex…one vortex is the Farpool….

  Angie thought she had misheard. “Did I hear you say ‘humans’?”

  Kloosee fought the kip’t controls for a moment, then decided it was best to submerge. The sled was made for underwater travel and the ride was decidedly smoother below the waves.

  …we say Tailless People of the Notwater…they call themselves Uman…theory may be descendants of your race…many thousand mah in your future…

  Angie looked at Chase. He hadn’t heard the echopod and had no idea what Kloosee was saying. She would have to explain later.

  Umans? Humans? Descendants? They had come through the Farpool and traveled a long way in time from Scotland Beach…Angie was beginning to have a sickening feeling. Suddenly, she wanted to go home. Be with her Mom. Work afternoons at Dr. Wright’s clinic and chug down Loopy Juice at Citrus Grove with Gwen and her other friends.

  Girl…this is nothing like Scotland Beach. She handed the echopod back to Chase.

  “Kloosee, where are we going? How long?”

  Kloosee had already steered them into deeper waters, almost black waters from the lack of light at this depth. The pulpy strings of the weed had dissipated and a faint pinging sound, interspersed with clicks and pulses, could be heard. Chase realized Kloosee was steering them by sound alone, kind of like sonar.

  That made sense.

  …we ride P’omtor…two hundred beats…then turn toward Serpentines…Likte gap…rough water…six emtemah…you say…two days…

  Two days, Chase sank back in his little niche, looked at Angie. I hope our air holds out. He now knew they were completely at the mercy of Kloosee and Pakma.

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

  After a few hours aboard the kip’t, Chase found himself dozing off and half-dreaming of some cave diving he and Stokey Shivers used to do.

  Around the beginning of ‘14, Stokey and Chase had been exploring caves out along a ridge off Coral Road. Underground were some partially submerged limestone caverns. Chase had been warned against this by Mack, his father. They had scuba gear, but found they didn’t need it. They dared each other to veer off the main cave branch into an unknown and unexplored branch, known locally as Crocodile Corner, or colloquially
as ‘The Croc.” They promptly got lost.

  Stokey became very frightened. But Chase viewed it as a simple matter of figuring things out. He remembered he had been tinkering with Bailey, his old pet flying drone, after his Dad had given it to him. He had added some voice recognition routines and some olfactory sensors. Now, lost deep inside The Croc’s Corner, he yelled at the top of his voice, even with the echoes, in the hopes that Bailey the Flying Dude would detect his voice, and his scent, and come to rescue them. And, after a few hours of listening to Stokey’s sniffling and whining, Bailey did come and found them and led them out of the Coral Road caves and Croc’s Corner.

  Thank God for Bailey.

  Mack and Cynthia were elated to finally have Chase home safe and sound. They had smothered him with hugs and kisses. Then they paddled him good and sent him to his room. He was grounded for three months. After that, he began drifting apart from Stokey, though a complete break took several years.

  I could use old Bailey about now, he figured. He put the echopod to his throat.

  “Kloosee, excuse me…about these Umans. You said they’re fighting a war. That the sound machine is a weapon. But who are they fighting? Why is the machine here?”

  Kloosee had been concentrating on his controls, probing, sounding ahead, hunting for the faintest tickle of the Tchor current.

  …Umans fight enemy we cannot see…beyond Notwater…

  “Somebody offworld,” Chase decided. “Why do they fight? What’s this big weapon do for them?”

  Kloosee seemed intense, distracted, even a little upset by the question. His armfins shook as he manipulated the kip’t through cross-currents. Outside the bubble cockpit, Chase couldn’t see a thing.

  …Umans fight to fight…we do not know the enemy…wavemaker affects time…Umans use it to sweep enemy from this area…control this area…time is changed…distorted…

  Chase gave that some thought, checked his air gauge. Less than three hours. He would have to talk with Kloosee about that.

  “So they can manipulate time somehow…is that how this Farpool works?”

  Kloosee slowed the kip’t, changed their heading slightly. Chase noticed the controls had no lights, gauges or anything he could recognize. Small circular membranes vibrated at different frequencies, filling the water inside the cockpit with a symphony of beeps, clicks, whirs, whistles and chirps.

  Control completely by sound, Chase realized. Cool.

  …Farpool is opuh’te…a whirlpool…you say vortex…there are many…it is a passage to your world…from Seome…ah…(shkreeee)…there they are…

  “There…what--?”

  But Kloosee was busily maneuvering the sled. Chase soon saw why. They had located and fallen in behind a herd of large, bulbous fish, dozens of them, gliding majestically through the murk. Chase could only make out a few in dim outline. Each one was several times their size, like a giant sunfish on Earth, but with distended bellies and longer tail flukes.

  “What are those, Kloosee?”

  …tillet…this is a regular run…pack animals…carry goods from kel to kel…tilletshook’let is ahead of us…the lead animal…I will activate your pod…

  Chase motioned Angie to come closer, hoping she could hear as well. The echopod was not only a translator but an encyclopedia as well. It spoke in neutral tones….

  …the tillet is a pack animal used mainly for transporting cargo. It is about one-tenth beat in length, black on top and white on the bottom, with a belly pouch for storing goods and products. The tillet is a fairly docile beast, engineered to herd and home on oot’stek repeater signals and travel many thousands of beats completely untended. There is a worldwide ban on hunting the tillet, as they are extremely valuable in commerce among the kels….

  Angie looked at Chase. She had managed to hear enough to get the idea and nodded back.

  Kloosee explained further…we follow tillet through the Gap…they know the way, know the currents…they will guide us…

  Chase found the beasts fascinating, especially the fact that they travelled long distances completely untended.

  They settled into a steady droning cruise a few hundred feet behind the last of the animals, vibrating slightly in their wake as they cruised the Pomt’or Current across the northern waters. Occasionally, the control panel made higher pitched pinging sounds. Kloosee explained that the sled was detecting loose pack ice to their north. The polar ice cap wasn’t far away.

  Chase was about to inform Kloosee that he and Angie didn’t have much air left, when Kloosee suddenly stiffened and started playing his fingers over the sound membranes on the control panel. Ahead of them, the kip’t sounded treacherous currents. Two tillet were directly ahead of the sled, their pouches bulging with cargo, yet they had shown no signs of fatigue. But now they were starting to lag behind the rest of the herd. Even Chase could hear their nervous clicks. Their tails, normally supple and whipping back and forth, had become stiff and rigid.

  …they are afraid of something…perhaps the cross currents around the T’kel…the mountains bend up ahead…but that should not affect them…something else…

  That was Pakma…from the transfer pod they were towing behind. She had been communicating with Kloosee from the beginning.

  Kloosee slowed the kip’t even more. The tillet off to port seemed ready to bolt. It was a massive creature, a quarter beat or more in length and fat through the middle, with its genetically engineered cargo pouches protruding just aft of its pectorals. The pouches quivered with a peculiar rocking gait that indicated anxiety, as the tillet undulated alongside and ahead of them. Like the rest of the herd, it was trained to follow the scent of the pack leader and never strayed more than a fraction of a beat from the pack. Now, however, something was frightening them.

  A sharply sloped ridge came into view and Chase and Angie were both awed at the near-vertical slopes of the mountain chain. T’kel, Kloosee called it. He nosed the sled upward to clear the tops of the summits. As he did so, the sled’s sounders got as better angle on some movement just beyond the nearer peaks, in a ravine. A burst of clicks exploded inside the cockpit—the sounders couldn’t cope with all of them. Kloosee cut the jets completely, just in time to see both tillet break and scatter, lumbering away from the kip’t as fast as they could. They left a trail of terrified squeaks behind.

  “Kloosee!” Pakma’s voice came through the echopod loud and clear. “Kloosee, look! Ahead of us--!”

  Pakma’s cry filled the cockpit with horror. Rising from the ravine was a dark swarm of mah’jeet.

  They billowed out of the mountains, staining the sea a deep crimson, swelling like a wave across the crests of the hills. It was as if the oceans had shuddered, and shaken trillions of dirt clods loose. The swarm spanned the whole of T’kel’s outthrust slopes, for as far as they could pulse in either direction.

  “It’s a full bloom of them!” Kloosee cried. He re-fired the jets, to back them out before they drifted into the middle of it, but he had waited too long. The tillet had distracted him and now the jets were getting clogged. They sputtered and died off noisily.

  Their own momentum was carrying them into the very heart of the bloom. Already, streaks of crimson had splattered the bubble of the cockpit. Frantically, Kloosee flushed the intakes with water from inside, then shut them tight. That helped to expel any of the creatures that might have drifted into the circulator. But they were closed off from a fresh source of water now; the supply in the cockpit was litor’kel and useable, but it wouldn’t take long for it to foul, with the circulator off. Three people would deplete it in less than a day, even if two of them were breathing Notwater.

  He had no propulsion. They were at the mercy of whatever stray current might come along and it seemed they could not avoid drifting deeper into the bloom. There was an agonized silence—and the scent of helplessness—as the kip’t went deeper and deeper. Soon, the veil had been drawn. Mah’jeet cru
shed against them, crinkling, scraping, grinding, the weight of trillions upon trillions of them squeezing the cockpit, bleeding their deadly purple toxin in rivulets over the bubble.

  They were trapped in a sea of death. The slightest leak would be fatal and Kloosee and Pakma both soon imagined scores of them. Every thump and hiss and click and whistle of the kip’t was magnified, the sound reflected off the mah’jeet veil back into the little craft.

  Kloosee listened, dreading what he knew had to come, avoiding the frightened stares of their human passengers. How big the bloom was he couldn’t say. It might reach for hundreds of beats, maybe thousands of beats, along the spine of the T’kel. It might be only a local upwelling, a result of the seething volcanoes to the south. He forced himself to remain calm, to hear none of the sounds that played around them. It was critical that he recall what he knew about the creatures. If he could distract Chase and Angie from their worrying too, they would all have a much better chance to survive.

  …unicellular microscopic organisms…he told Chase, sounding to his own ears like an encyclopedia…the mah’jeet cluster in vast fields in equatorial waters, often near active ve’skort, where they can feed on rising columns of mineral-rich water…

  Angie spoke into the echopod, folding her hands around Chase’s as they both clutched the device. “Are they dangerous?”

  Kloosee was watching the spreading purple stain slowly envelop the cockpit bubble…mah’jeet are mildly irritating to most Seomish in small numbers…but they tend to swarm…in large numbers, they are deadly…

  He told them through the echopod that the toxin worked on the nervous system. It could cause convulsions, breathing difficulties, heart attacks and finally death. In these concentrations, the slightest exposure to the toxin that oozed outside the cockpit would kill them in minutes, if not sooner.

  Kloosee hoped the explanations would help but he pulsed the humans and he saw they were verging on panic. He knew that mah’jeet patches could be enormous, and last for many mah in some places. They were known to horde along the southern rim of the Ork’nt and in the Pulkel waters. But T’kel was thought to be free of them, at least of the larger patches. That was why tillet pack trains often used these waters. The Pomt’or current should have swept them away from these ridges. But it hadn’t.

  He had no way of really knowing where they were, or where they were going. The kip’t sounders worked, barely, but the constant low clicking was deceptive. If they had drifted deep into the patch, it was likely the mah’jeet themselves were so thick they would affect the echoes. And even if he had known precisely where they were, he could have done nothing.

  The kip’t jets were effectively dead.

  Pakma’s voice came through the cockpit, emanating from the transfer pod they were towing. She seemed on the verge of panic herself, which surprised Kloosee.

  “What can we do, Kloos? Is there anything…are we going to—“

  “Pakma, be quiet. You pulse like a lost pal’penk…you’ll frighten the humans.” Kloosee studied the useless instruments before him. Idly, he tried the throttle; it burbled, sputtered, gagged, then quit. Nothing he did could make it work again. “The jets are completely clogged.”

  “We’re trapped, aren’t we?” Pakma said it with a strained calm in her voice.

  Kloosee hesitated before replying. He glanced back at the humans. Chase and Angie were clearly worried…he could pulse that in their guts, with all the churning and bubbling, though he didn’t know if humans reacted the same way as Seomish.

  “For the moment,” he finally replied.

  Pakma was inside the transfer pod at the end of the tow line but the two of them could still talk. She seemed satisfied by Kloosee’s answer. “Shooki has turned the currents against us.”

  Kloosee wanted to argue but decided against it. Pakma was like that. Arguing with her would change nothing and he couldn’t change her mind anyway. He was glad the humans couldn’t eavesdrop on their conversation.

  “Is there nothing we can do?” she went on.

  “Pakma, the way I pulse it, we have several choices. There is a possibility that we haven’t drifted very far into the mah’jeet patch. We might still be on the fringe of it. I don’t know that for sure. But it’s possible.”

  “You think we could roam through this…you’re crazy, Kloos. You can’t mean that. Look at the poison.” Inside the cramped confines of the pod, Pakma rubbed the porthole gingerly with an armfin, as if she were afraid it would burst on contact. “Death flows all around us.”

  The echopod chirped. It was Chase. “Anything we can do to help? Are we stuck here?”

  Kloosee turned to regard the taller male human. …we have encountered mah’jeet…very deadly…must stay inside…work on getting us out…

  Chase could see how the purple stain had now completely covered the kip’t cockpit bubble.

  “Kloosee, I don’t want to bother you but Angie and I are down to about two hours of air…what you call Notwater. Is there another supply onboard somewhere?”

  …Notwater in containers in pod…(shkreeeah)…we cannot leave kip’t while inside mah’jeet patch…working on getting us out….

  In other words, leave me alone and let me think, Chase said to himself. He caught the look on Angie’s face. She was scared and her face mask and mouthpiece couldn’t hide it. He tried to put up a brave front but Angie wasn’t fooled. She held his hands tightly.

  Kloosee turned back to their predicament and contacted Pakma. “I have something in mind. It involves a grave risk…it might not work.”

  “What is it?”

  “Remember how I flushed the circulator when he first entered the patch? To keep any ‘jeet from seeping in here? I had to use this water to do it. We lost a good bit doing that but it gave us some time.”

  “How much do we have left…the pod is separate from your supply anyway.”

  Kloosee did some quick checking. He sniffed the water for pressure, then said, “Since I had to turn the circulator off to seal the bubble, we have no intake of fresh water now. I’ll consume all the oxygen in the water in about a day, maybe less. The pod isn’t even being re-circulated at all.”

  “A day,” said Pakma. “A day to dream. If we had tekn’een, we could remember everything, re-live it, in a day….”

  “I want to do more than re-live it. I could try flushing the circulator again, with this water. If we aren’t too deep in the patch, the force of the water being expelled might push us out of it. Of course, it might push us in deeper as well. And we’d have less water than before. That’s the risk.”

  Pakma contorted herself in the cramped confines of the pod, pressing up against the porthole to see out. She wondered what the humans thought about all this. “The bloom’s too thick. Even if you used all the water in the kip’t, the mah’jeet are too dense. We wouldn’t move a quarter beat, if that much.”

  “Well, there is another way. An alternative.”

  “Yes…?”

  Kloosee ran his fingers over the circulator handle, feeling it give slightly. He was keenly aware how closely the humans were following everything he did. “I could flush the cockpit more slowly….”

  Pakma thought she had misread the sounds. The bloom did distort echoes. “You mean….”

  “It wouldn’t take that long. But we have to both agree.”

  Pakma was stunned at the very idea. “After all we’ve worked for…all you’ve worked for, how could—“She couldn’t even complete that thought.

  There was a heavy silence between them. Trillions of mah’jeet suckled against the cockpit bubble, mashing themselves into a viscous fluid that was patiently crushing the bubble out of shape, deforming its structural pattern, dissolving chemical bonds. An opaque screen of purple had cut off virtually all light, leaving the kip’t and its attached pod in darkness. Inside both, the water was warm and suffocating, rich in the scents of fear.
/>   “What about our guests? This isn’t fair to them, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t. But we all knew there was a risk in doing this.”

  The low, delicate chittering of the kip’t sounder stopped, then thumped.

  “It doesn’t seem fair, Kloos…maybe it was wrong to take them…they don’t know—“

  Again, a thump, something massive. Thump-thump.

  “—Pakma, you’ve known me long enough to know that—“

  A louder thump-rattle. A series of them. Whump-thump.

  Pakma was deathly hoarse. “What…is that—“

  THUMP-thump. THUMP-thump. Kreeee…kkkthump….

  “Pakma, be still…be quiet…I think—“

  They both listened for a few moments to the sounder. The thumping continued, interspersed by muffled screeches and whistles. A burst of bubbles erupted in Kloosee’s belly. He smiled at the feeling.

  “It’s the tillet. It has to be.”

  “The tillet?”

  “We were following them, remember? They sensed the mah’jeet before we did and bolted. Now they’ve come back. They must have taken a liking to the scent of this kip’t…it’s familiar to them.”

  Pakma could neither see nor pulse anything out of the pod’s porthole. She hoped Kloosee was right. “How can they survive inside the mah’jeet bloom?”

  “They can’t. We must be near the edge, like I hoped. Otherwise, the sounder would be useless too.”

  “Then, there’s no way they can help us, is there?”

  Kloosee thought for a moment. “Maybe there is. I don’t know if it will work though.”

  Pakma’s voice seemed firmer, like she had made a decision. “Kloos, we don’t have the luxury of selecting our risks, do we?”

  “No.”

  That seemed to strengthen him.

  “Pakma, we shouldn’t delay about this. The humans are running low on Notwater. We need to surface, help them recharge their supply.”

  Pakma could pulse the kip’t interior even from the pod, though the echoes were jumbled, mixed human and Seomish. Still, she knew Kloosee well enough; his returns always stood out.

  “You’re thinking of a thought-bond, aren’t you?”

  Kloosee admitted that he was. “But these tillet are Orketish. They bond differently from ours. Everything is different: the pulse-width, their way of thinking, their codes of cognition. We’re not Orketish. The tillet might not respond. Even if one of us could make a bond, it would be fragile and uncomfortable, maybe even frightening to them.”

  “So what do you have in mind?”

  “I don’t know if any of the tillet would give up its life for someone not of their kel. But if we could somehow entice one or several of them to penetrate the mah’jeet swarm, with enough speed, they might bump us hard enough to knock us out of the swarm before they died.” He stopped, realizing what he was saying. Tillet were valuable animals; it was likely that someone had spent a long time binding these animals, perhaps to the very point of making a life-bond with them—that was not so unusual. Losing them, even a few, would be a bitter and painful loss. Their deaths might even be transmitted across the sea, though that seemed impossible.

  Pakma pulsed her concern and Kloosee couldn’t ignore it. “We don’t have a choice, Kloos. I’m sure the bondmaster, whoever he us, would understand.”

  Kloosee listened to the thumps again. Pakma was right. Each time the tillet crossed the sounder beam, it pealed its outline to them, beckoning them. If they escaped the mah’jeet, Kloosee promised himself that he would seek out the bondmaster for these tillet and beg his understanding. Yes, even being shame-bound would be proper, he decided.

  I’m half-Orketish myself…I know how these animals think. “Okay, here goes….”

  Think as the Orketish would think. Yes. Now, comes the scent, the slightly salty water of the Orkn’tel. Very pungent, you could sniff it even on the Omtorish side of the Serpentines. The boundary seas were always shifting, weren’t they?

  But first you have to reach. You have to find the current. Great Ork’lat runs in our veins, swift and pure. The world is only a tributary.

  Think as the Orketish would think.

  Patience. The Ork’lat is eternal, after all. Place a finished potu pearl in the Current of all Currents. Let it drift and think no more of it. When the time is right, when Ork’lat wills it, the potu will come home. Pulse alertly! It comes from the other direction. The same pearl, untarnished by outkel odors, untouched and undiverted, the same pearl has ridden all the rivers of the world. Ork’lat protects it. Ork’lat brings it home.

  Think as the Orketish think.

  Tell me, Pakma: do you ever tire of roaming in the boundary seas? Repeaters are so restless. They need so much t’shoo, but that’s wrong. No! Smother that. It’s not as we think. Love is our tradition. Ke’shoo for all, kelke or not. Can you pulse the smoothest echoes, and let all the rest be stilled? That is Ke’shoo. Pulsing for the tender, for the delicate, for the sublime. Pulsing for the heart.

  Think as the Orketish would think.

  Have you ever sniffed raw potu? No current ever brought a more elegant, more glorious scent. That is the scent of this kel. Reeking of potu, that is Ork’et. The measure of things. The prize, the treasure, the vortex of azhpuh’te. The center around which all revolves. Shooki carved us from potu, cleaved a living being from the gemstone itself and named her Ork’et, the Daughter. And even today, in the dim light of glowfish, Orketish skin flashes with the alabaster luster of the pearl.

  Think as—

  Who’s there?

  Patience. Self is a piece of Noobit keeoh. Self pulse his pulses, hear his echoes, scent his smells.

  --drifting with no feeling; it’s a ticklish touch you have—

  Is this Noobit? My bondmaster? Koo’shet fails this one.

  I am bondmaster. Listen to me…I am…am bondmaster…you hurt me. What is that? You ache for scent? Is that it? I feel lost. Sore.

  Kip’tscent is gone, where is kip’tscent? Self gulps need for bondmaster. This one sniffs no kip’tscent.

  Kip’tscent is here. Listen to me. I am bondmaster. Kip’tscent is trapped. Mah’jeet bloom has kip’tscent. You can sniff. You can help.

  Self gulps no bondmaster. Koo’shet weak. Hurtsting. Hurtsting. No bondmaster.

  Listen to me. You must help. Kip’tscent is in danger.

  Noobit binds self to kip’tscent.

  Self can help free kip’tscent. Self must enter mah’jeet and find kip’tscent. Kip’tscent will fade, disperse. You must stop it. Bring us out—

  Hurtsting.

  No, don’t fade. Stay. I am bondmaster. Don’t leave us, kah, don’t leave us now.

  Self gulps bad koo’shet. Mah’jeet hurtsting.

  Listen to me. Self? Kip’tscent will end. Kip’tscent will die. Help us. Bondmaster will die.

  No.

  Yes. Noobit knows. Ask Noobit. If kip’tscent dies, self will die. Kip’tscent is trapped in mah’jeet. Self must recover it, quickly. Before it ends….

  Self will die.

  --I have no words for this feeling—

  Self bound to kip’tscent.

  --it is like being hollow, all my blood rushing out—

  Self?

  --like the lash of a thousand prods, ripping at me—

  Self? Self!

  --like the ertleg’s claw raking me from inside, like the scalding—

  Something heavy slammed into the kip’t, jolting them hard. Kloosee shouted. The bubble had cracked. A trickle of purple squeezed in. But the kip’t was moving, there was no doubt of it. They were bumped and bumped and bumped again. Outside, even the thick mah’jeet couldn’t muffle the agonizing shriek of death.

  More purple dribbled in, coagulating into spheres, drifting about in the bubble. The bumping had stopped. Kloosee dared not breathe—had he imagined it? He shook h
imself out of the bondtrance and felt his tail flukes go numb. A sphere of the toxin had brushed him. Frantically, he thrashed it off before it could dissolve into his skin. Already, the dizziness….

  But it was true. The mah’jeet were thinning out, sliding off the bubble like sheets of tissue. A veil was lifted and he could see the craggy cliffs of the T’kel. The sight made him smile, laugh and Pakma soon joined in from the pod aft of the cockpit. Even the humans seemed amused, though they couldn’t know why. All that barren rock, that brown and gray mud, was more beautiful than all the fields of eng he had ever seen.

  Still, they weren’t completely free of the mah’jeet. Faint webs still clung to the bubble, holding them in the swarm. Knots of purple filaments drifted nearby. They had stopped moving and if they didn’t act now, the natural motions of the swarm would suck them back in deeper.

  Kloosee shivered; some of the poison had already entered his bloodstream. He tried the kip’t jets. Nothing. They were so close, yet still within the grasp of the mah’jeet. Something…there had to be something he could do.

  They had one chance. He was shuddering, growing more numb every second. So far, the humans hadn’t been affected, but Kloosee could see they were both confused and scared. He reached out and felt the circulator handle in his hand. It would take the last of their breathable water and if it didn’t work….

  He twisted the handle, to open the water intakes. He could taste the oily excretions of the mah’jeet inside the bubble now. One of the humans, the female, started to panic, thrashing about. The male held her tightly, trying to comfort her. Kloosee’s pulses were erratic. His vision blurred. But he couldn’t worry about the humans now. Still, he felt for the handle.

  He pushed it in.

  The first second was the longest. Kloosee was sure it had not moved. It had been jammed shut by the weight of the mah’jeet and wouldn’t budge.

  The next second brought him the truth.

  The force of the kip’t’s water being expelled kicked them hard. The craft spun slowly, tangling in the tow line to the transfer pod, and seemed to fly apart all at the same time. Kloosee succumbed to the drowsiness but not before he tasted the welcome saltiness of T’kel water rushing over his beak.

  They were drifting freely now, away from the mah’jeet. Something massive darted by in front of them but Kloosee didn’t have the strength to focus on it. Instead, he pulsed that they were sinking. T’kel will catch us. T’kel will—

  The kip’t finally came to rest on a narrow ledge.

  It was a tillet, nosing at his beak, that had awakened him. Kloosee spent a few minutes testing different parts of his body. Mah’jeet poison in that concentration should have been fatal. But everything seemed all right. He wriggled out of the kip’t and shook himself vigorously.

  That’s when the human male showed up right in front of him.

  Chase had the echopod. He pressed it against his throat.

  “Are you all right…we thought you were dead—“

  Kloosee reached out and pressed his armfins on the human’s shoulders. He pulsed worry inside the creature; you could see it in his gut, with all the bubbles churning.

  …almost was…pulse worry…you are concerned….

  “Uh…well, yeah…Angie’s down to about ten minutes’ air. Me…about five minutes. Kloosee…we need to go up. Surface. We need air.”

  Kloosee understood. The Tailless breathed Notwater, strange though that sounded. He sounded around, saw Pakma climbing out of the pod’s hatch.

  “Pakma, we have to leave…if I can get the kip’t working. The Tailless are out of Notwater…we have to surface. Get back inside and I’ll try to get us off this ledge.”

  “Kloos, are you all right? I saw you still for a long time—“

  “Stung by mah’jeet, I was. I’m fuzzy-headed but I am okay. Come on—“

  Kloosee herded the two humans back inside the kip’t cockpit, while Pakma returned to the pod. She dogged its hatch shut.

  When we surface, I’m switching places with the humans. They should be riding in this thing.

  Kloosee fired up the kip’t jets, which sputtered into life, lifted them away from the ledge and carefully skirted the outer shoals of the mah’jeet bloom. The rounded humps of two dead tillet could be pulsed just inside, floating aimlessly, slowly being decomposed by the creatures.

  They saved our lives and gave their own, he told himself.

  The kip’t angled upward and headed for the surface.

  Topside, the surface was in heavy rolling surf. It was nighttime on Seome and fierce winds and sheets of salt spray their only welcome. Kloosee put the kip’t and its pod on the surface and stayed submerged while the humans popped the hatch and stood up in the cockpit. Even through the distortions of faint light in the water, Kloosee could see them heaving in great gulps. On his own Circling many mah before, he’d felt Notwater in his gills. It burned like hell. But the humans needed it to live.

  By using the echopod and frequent gestures, Kloosee got Chase and Angie out of the kip’t and aft to the pod, switching places with Pakma, who came forward. By this time, Chase had an idea how to manipulate the air flasks that looked like faces. You had to squeeze them in the right place and the “lips” sucked air in and stored it in some kind of vesicle. Chase tried to cram as much of Seomish salty air in as he could.

  “We’re going to need it,” he told Angie. When Kloosee told him the flasks were at capacity, he nodded and laid a hand on Kloosee’s head.

  The Seomish male made something resembling a bemused smile.

  …now you have Notwater…enough to reach Omsh’pont…

  “How far is it?”

  Kloosee’s face wrinkled in thought. “Half mah…a day or more, to you… shkreeah…stay in sshhh…pod—“

  So they stayed in the pod.

  Kloosee made sure the hatch was shut. He went back to the kip’t, closed himself in with Pakma and fired up the sled’s jets. They angled down and soon were in darkwaters.

  Inside the pod, Angie started to cry softly.

  They were both wedged in so tightly they could hardly move. “Ang…what is it? Have you got enough air…anything hurting?”

  He could feel her body shaking with sobs. “Noooo….I…it’s just….oh, Chase, what have we done? Where are we? I think I want to go home.”

  Chase tried to take a deep breath. Seomish air had a burned smell to it, like ozone, like after a thunderstorm at Scotland Beach. He twisted enough so they could face each other.

  “That’s probably not happening today…I’m not sure where we are…but it sure as hell isn’t Half Moon Cove.”

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea, huh?”

  Chase said nothing. He twisted around more, so he could peer out of the porthole. It was black as night. Occasionally, a streak of light erupted out of the darkness, smearing itself against the porthole.

  “I can’t see a thing.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Chase shrugged. “I don’t know. Kloosee called it Omsh’pont…something like that. It must be a city. But we have a problem.”

  “A problem…what do you mean?” Angie sniffed, wiped her eyes. They were red and puffy.

  “Well, we have air, for the moment. But Kloosee and Pakma are marine creatures…people…whatever. They don’t breathe air like we do. So I’m guessing this city’s underwater. But we still need air.” Chase rubbed stubble on his chin. He should have shaved this morning. “I guess Kloosee’s got something in mind…he and I need to talk. I love scuba diving but I don’t want to live my life that way….”

  Angie said no more and they both soon drifted off to a fitful doze, rocking gently as the kip’t towed the pod deeper and deeper into Omt’orkel Sea.

  Unseen by Chase and Angie, Kloosee was fully alert at the kip’t controls, hunting for faint currents that crisscrossed the upper Serpentines and fed through the Gap
. Once they had transited the Gap, they could make a speed run across the Om’metee abyss to the seamounts that surrounded Omsh’pont. Then they would be home.

  And some decisions would have to be made about the humans.

  Kloosee was glad that Ponkel sounded calm today, litor’kel was how you said it, he remembered. The bottom pulsed fifty or so beats below them, thick with mud and hidden, from time to time, by a tricky layer of warmer water. The thermals of the northern seas sometimes played havoc with kip’t navigation and even the locals sometimes got lost in the churning sediment and confusing echoes of the area. Kloosee was confident he could make it; he’d come this way for the first time in his Circling many mah ago, so the complex echoes didn’t bother him.

  The kip’t slid easily through the trackless waste and outside the vast swirl of the Pomt’or Current, the sea was as barren as any sea in the world. The water was a clear blue-green, almost sterile of life but for the ever-present gruel of the ertesh, thin and oily in this area. Few creatures found it appetizing enough to school here.

  Far to the north, off their starboard quarter, Kloosee could read the faint echoes of the polar ice pack itself. The Pillars of Shooki were up there. He frowned, thinking about that. Someday, perhaps—

  They traveled alone for hours, droning on and on, through the Ponkel, while Kloosee occupied himself with savoring comforting smells from a favorite scentbulb he had opened up, scents that spoke of faraway places and great adventures: the Klatko Trench and the seamother feeding grounds, the tchin’ting forest south of Likte Island, the caves of the Ponkti…Kloosee had always loved these scents. They were like warm water, soothing, comforting, old friends. Like old kel-mates.

  Pakma’s voice startled him. “I hope Longsee has some ideas on how we can sustain the humans.”

  “You mean Notwater…just before we left, I heard some talk about modifying a lifesuit, so Tailless could use it…maybe Longsee’s ordered that to be done. They need something like that.”

  Pakma smiled. “You want to use these Tailless to go into the Notwater yourself, don’t you? I pulse it in you…Kloos, you can’t even hide it.”

  “Why should I hide it? That’s why I formed my own em’kel. Putektu has one goal: open up the Notwater for everybody. We could be like the seamothers, Pakma…just think about that. Able to live and work and play in our own world and above it.”

  “You’re obsessed with seamothers.”

  “I guess you’re right. But they know things we don’t…we can learn from them. And it’ll help us with the Umans.”

  Pakma made a face. “Kah, I’ll never understand Umans. Ugly beasts, all of them. And you think these Tailless are related? Maybe ancestors.”

  Kloosee concentrated on driving the kip’t. “That’s my theory. We’ll see what Longsee says.”

  Pakma shivered. “I wish we hadn’t brought them with us…they’re more trouble than they’re worth. How much further? I’m bored.”

  Kloosee knew how to fix that. Even without trying, he could pulse Pakma’s insides. Something was bothering her. “Half a mah, at most. Ke’shoo and Ke’lee, as they say. Come here….” He twisted about and slid up close to Pakma and after a few moments, they coupled, while the kip’t bore itself on through the trackless wastes of the abyssal plain, surging ahead on auto.

  They both grew more and more excited as the echoes of their homewaters became stronger and clearer. Presently, the towering seamounts of Omsh’pont sounded strong and sure and when the murk cleared, the great city finally lay before them. Kloosee slowed the kip’t down to approach speed and homed on the signals from the Kelktoo lab, occupying several domes and pavilions along the southwest ramparts of the central mesa of the city.

  “Homewaters—“ breathed Pakma, taking in a big gulp. She savored the scents and odors and whiffs and aromas of everything she had grown up with…the accumulated wisdom and noisy clamor and clashing pulses of the only place she had ever called home.

  Omsh’pont…heart and soul, the shoo’kel of life itself. Calm and clear waters everywhere you pulsed.

  “Litorkel ge,” she breathed.

  Kloosee had to agree. It was a hoary old saying but it was comfortable too. “Litorkel ge—“

  They drifted toward the landing pads of the Kelktoo labs.

  The kip’t slowed down as it maneuvered into the center of Omsh’pont and homed on the project labs at Kelktoo. The twists and turns soon brought Chase and Angie to fully awake.

  Angie yawned. “Where are we? Feels like we slowed down. Can you see anything out there?”

  “Friggin’ porthole’s too small,” Chase muttered. “I see lights, long beads of lights. And some shapes: a few spheres, tubes, pods. Looks like these lights are some kind of bioluminescence. I wonder if they have electricity.”

  Angie saw one of the air flasks make a face at her. Its lips pursed into an “O” and it expelled a heavy sigh. Then the lips fluttered and the face seemed to disappear. Involuntarily, she shuddered at the sight.

  “How’s our air, Chase?”

  Chase looked around at the circumference of flasks. “As long as their cheeks, or whatever the hell they are, are puffed out like that, we have air. I see a few that have gone flat.”

  “Like that one just did.” She pointed at the flask that had sputtered its last breath.

  Just then, the echopod chirped and squeaked. Chase pressed it to his ear.

  It was Kloosee.

  …this is Omsh’pont…we travel to Kelktoo…not long…there is Notwater pod for you…

  “What’s that?” Chase asked.

  …you will pulse this in the near….

  Chase told Angie, “He says they’re taking us to a Notwater pod…something new, I gather. Just for us.”

  Angie’s stomach gurgled. “I’m hungry. Maybe they have tacos.”

  The kip’t slowed almost to a halt. Chase looked out and saw that Kloosee was maneuvering to settle their pod onto some kind of landing pad.

  “It looks like a big mushroom, split open at the top. Or a giant hand, with fingers sticking up. Cool…..”

  The pod was deftly placed in the center of the “palm” and tow line released. Chase saw the sled jet off into the murk and, as it did so, the fingers of the hand slowly began to close.

  “Angie, look—“ he shifted aside so she could see. “The fingers are retracting, like a big fist closing.”

  Angie watched as their little pod was completely enveloped in the bigger pod. The view became dark outside the porthole and the little pod rocked slightly.

  “Is it eating us?”

  “I don’ know—“ then the echopod erupted. Chase and Angie both listened.

  …open pod hatch…you are in Notwater pod…

  Cautiously, Chase did as Kloosee had taught him, cycling the hatch grip. He pushed up and water flooded in. But there was air…breathable air…stale, with the burned smell he had come to associate with this world, but nonetheless air….

  Grateful, he squeezed up and out. Then he helped Angie out of the pod and they stood shivering and drenched together in the palm of the great hand, standing on some kind of soft, tissue-like floor inside the Notwater pod.

  That’s when Chase realized the fingers that had closed around them were translucent. He could barely make out lights outside. And eyes. Armfins and flukes, dozens, scores of them.

  They had an audience, staring in at them.

  “It’s like a zoo cage,” Chase muttered. Or an aquarium.

  Angie sat down and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “At least, we can breathe. But I want something to eat. Maybe one of them—“ she indicated their audience—“…with some tartar sauce.”

  There was some kind of commotion along the side. The echopod chirped. It was Kloosee…with Pakma. They were at the edge of the enclosure, waving.

  Chase dragged Angie over to the translucent flap. “We’re both hungry, Kloose
e. Is there something we could eat?”

  Kloosee drifted down and produced something in a small sac. He pressed it against the translucent finger. Chase and Angie both watched in amazement as the finger contorted and twisted around its axis, revolving and carrying the sac inside their enclosure. Almost no water squeezed through.

  The sac was dropped at their feet.

  …is called tong’pod…crack legs…eat tissue….

  “Sort of like a crab,” Chase decided. He sat down next to Angie and they set to work. The meat inside the tong’pod legs turned out to be sweet tasting…and slightly narcotic. Soon enough, Angie pitched over and fell asleep, curled up like a baby.

  Chase fought sleep for as long as he could, but he could hold out no longer. He lay back and passed into a deep, dreamless slumber.

  Chase startled awake and jumped half a foot at the sight of the grotesque creature lying next to him, staring at him. It had scaly, armored skin, with a blade-shaped head and two forelimbs, at the end of which were some kind of manipulators, in fact a whole kit of them. The legs were flukes, with open ports…what on earth….

  The echopod squeaked nearby. It was Kloosee. In fact, Chase could see Kloosee waving at him through the translucent fingers of the pod walls.

  …lifesuit…we call kee’too…you live in water…climb into suit and close….

  Chase looked up skeptically. Huh? Climb into that? How the--?

  That’s when Angie woke up. “EEEyyyeeeww--!” Fast as she could move, she started backing away on all fours, scrambling as quickly as she could. “Chase….Chase…what is it--?”

  By now, Chase had become more intrigued than frightened. Looking closer, he could see it was a machine, a device, though it looked just like a living creature, something like a mix of the Creature from the Black Lagoon and a turboscooter.

  “Ang…hold up…don’t lose your breakfast…it’s just a suit…they must have stuck it inside when we were out.”

  “A sss…suit—“ Angie didn’t stop backpedaling until she was a good twenty feet away. She bumped her head against the finger-walls of the pod and sucked in her breath. “It looks so….”

  “I know…” Chase crawled toward the thing. “Kloosee called it a lifesuit…crap, you know what this thing is? It’s the suit we saw them wearing off Half Moon Cove, when we saw that spout. Remember all the armor plating?”

  Angie nodded weakly. “Yeah, but it looks alive—“

  “It’s made that way…here, let me try something…. “ Chase touched the skin of the suit experimentally. It felt rough and scaly to the touch. Tough stuff, he told himself. “Must be designed to hold an atmosphere, or something breathable.”

  Slowly, bit by bit, guided by cryptic instructions over the echopod by Kloosee and Pakma, Chase managed to find a seam along the spine of the suit, which split apart as if slashed with a sword. He stuck his head up through a neck dam, found the fit tight but workable, then climbed completely in. Kloosee explained how to close and seal the kee’too.

  …press along opening…find small pads…press pads…kee’too will contract and seal….

  Chase did that and was startled, momentarily panicked, when the suit did exactly as Kloosee had described. Pressing against a series of small finger pads, contractile fibers along the spine stitched the suit shut. He worked his head up into the blade-shaped helmet.

  “Now what…how do I control this thing--?”

  …kee’too controlled by sound…make sound like this…(shkreeah)…clickclickclickclick…krrrrr…this activates kee’too….

  Chase listened carefully. “Kloosee, you’ve got to be kidding…oh, well, here goes—“ He tried making some of the same sounds Kloosee had given him. At first, there was nothing. Then his legs involuntarily straightened out and the attached flukes started oscillating, dolphin-kick style, as if he were swimming.

  “…don’t think I want that…” he grunted.

  Kloosee did something…he heard it over the echopod…wait, there was no echopod. He’d left it outside. But Kloosee’s voice came through some kind of headset inside the helmet. Kloosee managed to stop the dolphin-kick and the suit was quiet.

  “Thanks…I don’t think I could have taken much more of that—“

  He looked out through the slit-eyes of the blade-helmet and saw Angie gingerly approaching. On impulse, he swung his huge armfins around and growled at her, leaning forward menacingly.

  “Grrrrrr!”

  Angie jumped five feet. “Stop that! Are you okay in there? Can you breathe?”

  “I can breathe okay…don’t ask me how. But I can’t control anything…it’s like the thing has a mind of its own.”

  For the next hour, Kloosee and Pakma worked with Chase, and later with Angie, to explain how the kee’too worked.

  The lifesuit was controlled with sounds and scents. Chase eventually found a small control panel inside the helmet, just below his chin. More controls were on the armfins. He learned that the echopod translated Kloosee’s description of the legs as mobilitors…multi-purpose propulsors, suitable both for water and Notwater…that is, land. With some experimenting and practice, Chase found he could waddle around inside the pod like a drunken penguin. Kloosee assured him the mobilitors would work equally well in water.

  For Angie, learning took longer, but she was determined she could do anything Chase could do. She wasn’t going to let a guy beat her at anything. So, she sucked up her breath and stuck her head inside. It smelled like mothballs and Angie had a brief memory of trying on her Mom’s dresses and gowns one rainy afternoon in Scotland Beach in a closet that smelled just like this.

  Chase had said the suits could also be controlled by scent. She wondered, started to pecking at her chin controls with her chin and wound up pirouetting into the pod walls like a klutzy ballerina, which she had once been as a child.

  Well, this sucks…maybe I shouldn’t touch anything in here….

  Kloosee worked with both of them, with great patience and, not a little humor, to make sure the humans could manage their new gear.

  It was Pakma who observed: “At least, they’re not afraid to try. You can pulse the change…especially the female. I sense shook’lee now…not so much fear…more a curiosity.”

  “They want to be with us…tet’ee’ot, I pulse that too. Cooperation, fellowship…this is good…very good…they’re learning. ”

  Longsee lok had come to the edge of the pod. He pulsed through the walls, was thoughtful. “They seem intelligent. Already, I pulse tet’ee’ot as well. We need their help. When we pulse shoo’kel, that’s when they’ll be ready.”

  Kloosee knew it was bad form to disagree with the Kelktoo master but he couldn’t help it. “Maybe we shouldn’t expect so much of them. They’ve got a lot to learn. They’re Uman or at least related. But we shouldn’t think of them as anything more than that.”

  Longsee always hated coming outside into the thudding of the great Sound. Even as they watched the Tailless gain some kind of mastery over their lifesuits, he could also sense the thin streams of rock rolling down the distant seamount peaks, loosened by the ever-present vibrations of the Uman weapon up north.

  “We don’t have the luxury of being so particular. Time is short. Other kels are abandoning their homes and cities, hiding out in caves. There are those around the Metah who want that here. We’ve got to make the Umans understand…bring these creatures to the labs at once….as soon as it’s safe.” With that, Longsee darted off, snapping his tail flukes to get back under cover.

  The water around the Notwater pod was growing murkier and siltier every day. One by one, the crowd that had gathered to stare at the Tailless began to drift away

  Kloosee told Chase and Angie to button up their lifesuits. …you have Notwater inside…do not worry…be of litor’ke…calm and serene…we open pod…Pakma and I will guide you…

  “Wait…what? Hold up, will you---? But Chase co
uld only stare in disbelief as water began rushing through the gaps in the pod fingers, quickly filling their small pocket of air, roaring, foaming and hissing until they floated with it right up to the top, where the fingertips began parting….

  “Chase…Chase…I can’t—“ Angie panicked but moments later, her voice was drowned out.

  Incredibly, the lifesuits seemed to know what to do. Even as the water thundered into the pod and enveloped them, the suits sealed themselves shut. Chase found he could breathe the burned air just fine…take a small breath, then another, there, see? You’ve got air.

  “Angie…Angie, just breathe normally—“ He didn’t even know if she could hear him. But a quick look through the narrow slit in his helmet showed she was fine, her eyes wide and her arms thrashing about, but otherwise fine. Finally, she got herself under control and let the suit take her where it wanted.

  Both of them found themselves propelled forward, with gentle undulations of their flukes and some judicious waterjet props providing the kick.

  Two figures swam into view. It was Kloosee and Pakma. Kloosee made gestures and Chase understood he was to use his chin controls. In time, he found the echopod switch.

  …we go to Kelktoo…to lab…meet project master…I will guide…

  Kloosee reached for something on Chase’s right arm and depressed switches Chase hadn’t even seen. A staccato series of clicks and screeches sounded inside the helmet. Then his tail flukes started up again, dolphin-kicking like he’d never been able to do in swim meets. They moved off together, Angie and Pakma alongside, out of the pod, whose fingers had now peeled back like flower petals, and off into the murky waters.

  Chase couldn’t see much through the helmet eye slits but he heard a steady pinging, along with a symphony of clicks, squeaks, grunts and chirps. Fully sound-controlled, he realized. Cool. And something liked sonar. The lifesuit was like a little ship, like a midget submarine. With legs.

  Though he couldn’t see much, he felt the presence of life all around him. Cubes and spheres, pods and strange glowing filaments flashed by. He wondered if Angie could hear him and tried just speaking in a normal tone of voice.

  “Angie…Angie, can you hear me? This is so cool…look at this place. They’re all around us…look at those light filaments…what are they?”

  “I can hear you—“ Angie was in the other lifesuit, jetting along just behind him. “Wow…this is like a submarine…it does what it wants. I can see some things. Look at all the fish—“

  Indeed they were enveloped in vast throngs of Omtorish residents, roaming in knots and groups across the mesa that served as the center of the city, a flat tableland between towering seamounts, dense with canopied pavilions, strange coral shapes, lighted tubes and a dizzying variety of platforms, spheres, globes, pyramids, every kind of shape imaginable, some secured by lines to the seabed, some attached to the sides of the seamount, so many that the mountains seemed to heave and throb with life, as if they were alive themselves.

  Ahead of them, other creatures swam, including Kloosee and Pakma. Chase had trouble distinguishing one from another. And even as they headed for some place called Kelktoo, Chase had seen how other swimmers joined their little group for a few moments, then peeled off to disappear, only to be replaced by still more swimmers.

  A gregarious place, Chase decided. Everybody’s out for a stroll, just like Shelley Beach and Turtle Key on a Saturday afternoon back home.

  “Angie, how’s your suit? Can you breathe okay?”

  Her voice sounded like it was coming out of a barrel. “The air smells and tastes funny, but I seem to be breathing okay. Chase, I have no idea how to control this thing, what anything does. I don’t even see any controls….”

  “It’s all controlled with sounds, Kloosee told us. We’ll have to learn how to make the same sounds they do.”

  “Swell. Like learning a new language. I’m still hungry, by the way. And I have to pee—“

  They followed Kloosee and Pakma across the breadth of Omsh’pont until they came to the base of one of the huge seamounts. Uncommanded, Chase’s suit began a shallow dive. He peered out the narrow eye slits. They were heading for what looked like a coral reef, but lit up with bioluminescent light, strings of light.

  Approaching the reef, Chase could see it was a structure of some kind, open to the sea, filled with throngs of swimming, cavorting, Seomish residents. Maybe they work here, he surmised. There were dozens of platforms at every level, each one an organic-looking thing lined with rough, scaly walls, but every shape you could imagine: pillows, hats, sponges, beds, brains, a kaleidoscope of structures all hanging off the side of the seamount.

  The echopod in his suit clicked. It was Kloosee. …Kelktoo here…we go lab…meet kelmaster and engineers….

  They entered the Kelktoo along one side, swam through a maze of corridors and tubes and floatways until they came at last to an inner vault-like chamber, a chamber lined with undulating tubes on the floor and walls, and a small group attending some kind of equipment on mushroom-shaped tables in the center. One entire wall appeared to be an enclosure almost like the Gulfside Aquarium galleries. Indeed, when Chase looked closer, inside the gallery were two animals that looked suspiciously like bottlenose dolphins.

  Maybe from an earlier trip, Chase thought.

  The Kelktoo was the largest and most influential of all the em’kels…the traditional house of learning with its academies and labs and observatories and institutes and societies and foundations and studios. The project leader was none other than Longsee lok kel: Om’t, a name that evoked respect in every sea around the world.

  Longsee came over to greet them. He was smaller than Kloosee and Pakma, wrinkled in the face, with some mottling and stippling around his beak and fins.

  This guy’s a lot older. A supervisor, perhaps, Chase said to himself.

  Longsee circled Chase and Angie with great curiosity, pulsing what he could, examining them from head to toe. He had directed that modified lifesuits be made available for the humans. Now, he scrutinized the work of the lab techs.

  “Most curious, these creatures. From what I can pulse and see, they could well be ancestors to the Umans here.”

  Kloosee always found it expedient to agree with the kelmaster. “That’s was our thinking, too. Pure land-dwellers, pure creatures of the Notwater.”

  “Mmm…” Longsee said. “That would be of interest to you, wouldn’t it, Kloosee. Thinking of making off with these specimens to your own em’kel, I imagine. Well, not just yet. There’s a lot of study to be done here first. They can speak, I presume. Equipped with echopods?”

  Chase had been listening to the guttural words of the kelmaster, coming through his own suit echopod.

  “Yes, sir…we understand you, sort of.” The kelmaster’s voice sounded like a distant rustling wind. “We can speak. I’m Chase. This is Angie.”

  Longsee stopped abruptly. “Strong vocals from this one. And I pulse anxiety, nerves, some confusion—“ he confronted Kloosee. “You have instructed them in shoo’kel? I won’t have such turmoil messing up my lab. That would be a disgrace. To Chase: “You understand why you were brought here?”

  Chase struggled to answer. “We came with them---Kloosee and Pakma. We wanted to see your world. Kloosee said you needed help—“

  Longsee considered that. “This is the truth. You’ve heard the great Sound…felt the vibrations?”

  Chase indicated they had. “We saw the wavemaker when we got here. It’s making a hell of a racket—“

  Longsee started circling again, restless. “We understand you don’t know our words…perhaps the translation…but if I pulse correctly, you feel what we feel. The agitation, the trauma, the pain we cannot endure…already, many have left. Omsh’pont is dying. Many kels are dying.” Longsee stopped directly in front of Chase, peered into the eye slits of the lifesuit, as if trying to find something there. “We
brought you here because you are Uman, perhaps ancestors to the Umans at Kinlok.” Longsee didn’t know whether to address the thing’s head, or pulse its gut. How do you talk with these Umans, these Tailless beasts?

  He tried to explain the project to them.

  “We want the Umans to shut down their wavemaker. The Sound is destroying our way of life, destroying everything. Our cities, our kels, our ancient caves, our economy, everything. No doubt you’ve seen this—“

  Chase said they had. “I felt it myself. How do you stand it?”

  Longsee said, “We’ve endured, for some mah now. But no more. We need relief. You were brought here because you are Uman, you can talk as Uman, with the Umans. The Sound devastates us. We try to talk with the Umans but they won’t listen. They think of us as pets, as curiosities. They make sport of trying to catch our people, take them up into Notwater….this must stop. We have designs for a soundshield, even designs for the wavemaker that reduces the sound, but the Umans pay no attention. They tell us: “We’re fighting a war here…we don’t have time for experiments…this weapon has to work or your world is lost….”

  Chase wasn’t sure what to say. Kloosee had alluded to needing some help. Now it was staring them in the face. “I’m not sure what we can do…or what you want us to do. These Umans…who are they, exactly? What are they?”

  “We have a theory,” Longsee said. “The Farpool is a passageway from our world to your world. But it’s also a passageway in time. Our time is not the same as your time. Our theory is that you and your people are ancestors of the Umans at Kinlok. We don’t know how great the time difference is, but that’s why you were brought here…to negotiate with your own people. We want you to go to Kinlok…you came through the Farpool near there…and plead with the Umans…shutdown the wavemaker. Can you help us?”

  Chase looked at Angie. In her lifesuit, she looked like some kind of amphibious monster. “Sure…we’d love to help. I don’t know what we can do, but if there’s anything—“

  Kloosee spoke now. “First you must undergo some modifications.”

  Chase was wary, not sure he understood what had come through the echopod. “What kind of modifications?”

  Kloosee explained. “To be able to survive and communicate better in our world.”

  Longsee added, “It’s a surgical procedure…we call it the em’took. You will be able to breathe and eat and live as we do. Your lungs will be modified, your arms will grow fins as we have—“

  Angie’s eyes grew wide. “Uh…I’m not so sure about this…Chase?”

  Chase let her grasp his hand with hers. She tried to intertwine their fingers, but it was awkward. “This procedure…how long does it take? What’s involved?”

  Kloosee darted forward and did something to some nearly invisible buttons on Chase’s forearm. Inside his helmet, the echopod erupted in a stream of words, some incomprehensible, but some he could understand. Chase realized Kloosee had put his echopod into something like encyclopedia mode….it spat out a description of the Em’took….

  “The Em’took begins by placing the subject in a sort of cocoon, a variant of the lifesuits.

  “The procedure lasts about 2 days and is largely automated.

  The subject is not conscious during the procedure.

  “Seomish science has perfected this technique to enable Umans to visit Seomish in their natural habitat, but very few have done this.

  “Most Seomish who must visit Not-Water prefer to remain unmodified and use their lifesuits to survive out of the water.

  “The modification procedure entails some risk. It is considered more or less permanent. Reversing the procedure entails heightened risk.

  “Seomish science uses a combination of surgical (bacterial) and pharmaceutical steps to do the modification.

  “The name of the modification cocoon or lifepod is em’took, a variant of the Seomish word for a berth or living space, also connoting a place of new birth. Also the name of the entire procedure.

  “The procedure uses bacterial or microbial technology to accomplish most modifications.

  “The em’took procedure has multiple (7) stages:

  a.Internal organs (intestines, pyloric caeca, stomach, kidneys, spleen, liver, heart, swim bladder) Known as the Intook.

  b.Skeletal and vertebrae modifications. Known as the Vertook.

  c.Reproductive organs. Known as Potook.

  d.Immune system. Known as Sitook.

  e.External organs (gills, skin, scales, fins) Skor’took.

  f.Sensory organs and tissues (eyes, olfactory, lateral line, etc) Boltook.

  g.Head, brain, neural systems (central nervous system, cerebellum) Metook.

  “Seomish medical technology is largely based on use of genetically modified and programmed bacteria and microbial organisms.

  “The em’took begins with a genetic sequencing and a neural scan. After the sequencing and scans, the bacteria and microbes are selected and ‘tuned’ to match the recipient. The sequencing and scanning process is known as vish’tu.”

  Both Chase and Angie heard the description over their echopods. Chase looked at Angie. Her face seemed pale white.

  “This…uh, procedure…the voice said it was not reversible. That means, like, permanent?”

  Longsee indicated that was so. “We recommend the em’took. You will live as we live. You will be one of us. This is, of course, your choice. If you choose the em’took, you won’t be able to live in the Notwater unassisted anymore. You must use these lifesuits to survive. The procedure may or may not be reversible…it’s never been tried. If you wish to return to your own world—“

  “We do,” Angie blurted out. “This is all fascinating. But we’re human beings…what is it you call us—“

  “Tailless People of the Notwater,” Pakma suggested She could pulse Angie getting quite agitated and had to turn away. To churn and burn like that was bad form, it was an insult. They had so much to learn—

  “I don’t know,” Chase said. He looked from Longsee to Kloosee to Pakma and back. It was getting a little easier to tell them apart, especially Longsee. He was visibly older. “This is a big step…it’s a lot to ask. We want to help. Couldn’t we just stay as we are? Talk with these Umans as we are? It’d be hard to talk with them if we’re modified.”

  Longsee said, “The em’took could be done after you meet with the Umans. However, you would have to live in the lifesuits for this time. The em’took, if it’s successful, will make life better for you.”

  Chase tightened his squeeze on Angie’s hand. “I think we need to talk about this…between us. It’s an awfully big step.”

  Longsee pointed to a small pod-shaped enclosure on the other side of the pavilion. “You can stay there. Inside that em’kel, you won’t need the suits.”

  “Like the Notwater pod we were in before…jeez, there’s so much to learn. Just give us a little time,” Chase begged. “We’re both tired and a little hungry.”

  “And overwhelmed,” Angie added.

  “Of course,” Longsee said. “Eat and rest. Then roam with Kloosee and Pakma…it’s our custom and our joy. The water is silted…and there is the Sound. Perhaps beyond the Tor’shpont, the sound will be less. But Omtorish water is famous for being vish’m’tel…a fast current, a smooth flow.”

  With that, Kloosee and Pakma led Chase and Angie into the Notwater pod that would be their home. Like the larger pod they had inhabited earlier, it resembled the open palm of a hand, with fingers folding in to seal the enclosure and the same face-shaped air sacs spotted around the perimeter to give them breathable air.

  Once inside, pressurized with air, Chase managed to wriggle himself out of the lifesuit. He helped Angie with hers. It was like backing out of a small closet in the dark.

  They sat together on the warm, slightly vibrating floor pads and held hands in silence for a long time.

  Finall
y, Angie looked over at Chase. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, don’t we?”

  Chase nodded, deep in thought. “It’s a big decision, for sure,” he agreed. He spied a rack of tong’pods along one wall. “I say we eat first and talk later.”