The Farpool (23 page)

“Ten million, give or take,” Kloosee
told him. “And that’s just Omsh’pont. All of the kel…perhaps twenty
million souls. Beyond the Torsh’pont, the seamounts, if you drift
with
oot’stek
, that is the
repeater layer, you can hear all of them. During the
em’took
, a modified echopod was
placed in your skull. I can show you how to tune it. First, you
must learn how to activate the echopod. It’s on right
now.”

“So how do I turn it off?”

“Say this:
kkkllliiikkk….”

Chase tried it. Angie was listening too and
also tried. Nothing changed.

“I still hear a racket.”

“Try again…
kkkllliiikkk….”

Once again, Chase clicked out the
sound. “Kkkllliiiccckkk…Kkkllliiigggkkk…
damn it
! It’s not working.”

Kloosee laughed. “Our language is so
different from yours. And now, with
em’took
, your vocal cords are changed. Listen to
me carefully….
kkkllliiikkk
.”

Chase tried again. Then Angie blurted out, “I
think I did it. I don’t hear much…like a cloak over
everything.”

“Say it again…kkkllliiikkk.”

Angie repeated the phrase. “Now all that
racket’s back. What did I just do, Kloosee?”

“You turned your echopod off and back on
again.”

Chase was getting frustrated. “If she can do
it, I can do it. Kkkllliiikkk….” Then, as if a switch had been
thrown, the noise all around died off. “Hey, I did it! Everything’s
muted. I did it!”

“I envy you,” Pakma said. “Being able to shut
off the Sound. We can’t do that. We hear it all the time, even when
we sleep.”

Kloosee offered more explanation. “Your
echopod, which we call
ot’lum
, has other features. It translates. And
it speaks knowledge. All you have to do is ask…ask in the right
way.”

“Cool…like a Net connection. Show me.”

“Turn on the pod,” Kloosee told him.

Chase tried the activation phrase.
“
Kkkllliiikkk
…” The cacophony
came again, undergirded by the pounding drone of the distant
wavemaker. “Okay, it’s on…now what?”

“Ask a question.”

Chase thought for a moment.
“Okay…
em’kel
…what is
an
em’kel?”

The answer came immediately, in a high
whiny nasal sort of voice. “
Shkreeah
…
query:
‘em’kel’…the em’kel is the basic social subdivision of the Seomish
kel. It is a difficult concept to define because it is so broad and
flexible. Simply stated, an em’kel is any subgrouping that
considers itself distinct from the kel at large…ask also of family,
waterclan, tribe…shkreeah….”

Chase could scarcely believe it. “That’s
really cool…like my own personal wikipedia.”

Kloosee had an idea. “Since you asked of the
em’kel, I should take you to Putektu.”

“What’s that?”

“My
em’kel
…it’s on the other side of the city. In
this way, I will introduce you and your companion Angie to a great
Seomish custom…the
vish’tu
…the roam.”

“I’m up for it,” Chase said. He checked out
Angie. “You okay?”

Angie was still experimenting with her own
echopod. “Yeah, I think…now, if I could just shut this damned thing
off again…that drone’s driving me nuts.”

“Come,” Pakma said, “let’s
roam…together.”

The four of them lifted off the pod floor,
now open to the sea, and kicked off. Chase and Angie found they
could easily keep up with Kloosee and Pakma.

Stroking easily, they headed away from the
Kelktoo chambers, away from the side of the towering seamount and
out over the vast city of Omsh’pont.

Though the seas of Seome were generally murky
and dark, Chase could still see beads and strings of lights
defining a vast metropolis like lighted veins and arteries.
Bioluminescence, he reminded himself. Floatways, braces, struts,
all kinds of structures were dimly lit in the murk. Chase realized
for the first time that the Seomish didn’t need sight and vision so
much in their world. Theirs was a world of sound and scent. What
they couldn’t see they could hear or smell.

This was going to take some getting used
to.

“Kloosee,” he asked, “how deep are we here,
in the city?”

“If you mean from the Notwater interface, we
are over two hundred beats below.”

“What’s a beat?”

Kloosee told him, “Look it up.”

They swam on across the city, Chase and Angie
following in the wake of Kloosee and Pakma.

Angie found she could see very little. Beads
of lights, shapes materializing out of the gloom, bodies in motion,
a dizzying profusion of forms and ghostly shadows flitting in and
out of view.

“Pakma…Kloosee…we can’t see much back
here.”

Pakma said, “Your eyes are adapted as ours
are. Use your sounder.”

“My what—what’s a sounder?”

Pakma explained. “All Seomish have a
soundbulb…we project sounds, perceive the echoes. That’s how we
locate things, how we navigate. The
em’took
gives you an artificial
soundbulb.”

“How do I use it?”

“You must make this
sound…
kkklllooossshhkkk….kkklllooossshhkkk
.”

Angie said, “You’ve got to be kidding.” She
made several tries, alternating between something that sounded like
a snort and a laugh. Finally, with Pakma’s help, she got it.

She was overwhelmed by what came back….an
orchestra of sounds, every imaginable note and tune and bleep and
click and whistle and chirp and squeak. Her head spun with it all
and she couldn’t make any sense of it all.

“Wow…” was all she could say. “That’s like
sonar…Chase, we could use this when we go wreck diving.”

Chase agreed. “I’m trying it too…it’s going
to take along time to figure this out.”

Pakma laughed. “For us…millions of mah.”

Kloosee led them across the city, between
floating pavilions and forests of spheres and cubes and pyramids
and things that seemed like overgrown mushrooms and gigantic coral
reefs. Presently, he announced they were approaching their
destination.

“This is Meta’shpont…Putektu has chambers
above the echo layer…just follow me….”

Chase and Angie realized they had crossed
most of the city and were now near the base of another towering
seamount. Their sounders produced a strong monotone echo…whatever
Meta’shpont was, it was big. Gigantic.

They ascended up the slopes of the mountain
until Kloosee found a narrow crevice. He squeezed in, and the
others followed. Though it was dimly lit inside, Chase could see
and sound enough to understand they had entered a confusing and
labyrinthine warren of caves.

There were others inside, working, sleeping,
eating and one couple copulating.

Hmmm
, Chase
thought.
Different sense of privacy here.
I’ll have to remember this for future study.

Angie said nothing.

Kloosee led them deeper, twisting, turning,
rising and descending until they came to a larger chamber. There he
introduced them to Koloh tom.

Kloosee explained that Koloh was a repeater.
When Chase and Angie seemed puzzled, he let Koloh himself explain.
The repeater was a smallish Seomish male, but with powerful
forefins and flukes. It was evident from even a casual probe that
Koloh was an exceptionally strong swimmer.

“I am
oot’stek
…a living repeater,” Koloh told them. “I
roam on certain courses and headings, listening for messages and
news that come from the kels, messages reflecting off the deep
sound channel…we call it the
oot’keeor.
Most of the time, the signals reflect
cleanly, and they can travel for hundreds of beats. But just to be
sure, the
oot’stek
re-broadcast the message in their own voices…we sing the
messages and pass them on.” Koloh snapped his flukes with pride.
“It’s a lonely life…but it gives us time to think and imagine. And
to dream.”

“A living phone system,” Angie marveled.

“Koloh has a magnificent repeater’s voice,”
Pakma said. “His voice is among the best known and loved through
all our seas.”

Chase probed around the chambers and
found work platforms, something that resembled a swaying harness,
tables that seemed like coral reefs, wall niches where other
em’kel
members seemed to be sleeping
or studying or doing other things…truthfully, Chase had no idea
what they were doing.

“How many of these
em’kel
are there, Kloos?” he asked.

“Ah, now you ask a difficult question,”
Kloosee replied. “The number changes…
em’kel
are always forming and dying off,
re-forming and changing.”

Pakma gave it some thought. “I can name some
of the older ones…of course, there is Kelktoo.”

“The House of Knowledge,” Chase remembered.
“Like an academy.”

“Very good,” Pakma said. “All Seomish learn
and study for many mah in their Kelktoo. There is Anuk’te…the young
ones like that.”

“My favorite!” Kloosee announced. “Sex day
and night…but you have to be compatible, thirty to eighty mah
old.”

Pakma ignored him. “Mak’tovede…they enjoy
gourmet cuisine, especially the tong’pod…I believe you’ve had
that.”

Chase said, “I did. Strong, spicy taste.”

“Indeed. Mak’tovede has many ways to prepare
tong’pod. Then, there’s Pelspo’tu…they enjoy driving and racing
their kip’ts…you’ve ridden in the kip’t.”

“Don’t forget Eniklish’ke…the sporting
em’kel, they play tonk’ro and arctoss all day and night.”

“And one of my favorites…Ve’kasto…all
female…they just enjoy roaming together, chatting. There are
hundreds of em’kel…the number is always changing.”

“My em’kel, Putek’tu is a special one…Pakma
is not even a member…she can enter because she’s with me.”

“What’s so special about this one?”

Pakma answered, cutting off Kloosee in
mid-sentence. “They have this strange idea that the seamothers know
things we don’t…they want to live in the Notwater, play with the
seamothers.”

Kloosee was annoyed. “That’s not quite it.
Putektu believes the seamothers are related to us somehow…our goal
is to develop the ability to survive for long periods in the
Notwater, maybe someday to live there…and learn.”

“It’s a foolish dream,” Pakma decided. “Don’t
waste your time here with these romantic fools.”

Chase could see this was a sensitive
subject between them.
Better not touch
that nerve again
. “Sounds like a bunch of clubs…you
don’t have families…mother, father, brother, sister, like
that?”

“We have mothers and fathers,” Kloosee
said. “But at age three mah, every Seomish child moves to the
Kelk’too. From this time on, the mother and father have no
responsibility for their child…upbringing and learning is the
within the Kelk’too. This lasts for about five mah. After
Ke’tuvish’tek
…the Circling…the young
male or female is free to join or create any em’kel he wants
to.”

“Circling…” Chase tried out the Seomish
word.
Ke’tuvish’tek
. “I must
ask my echopod what this is. You’ve both done this.”

“We have,” Kloosee and Pakma said in unison.
Koloh agreed with them.

Then Kloosee interrupted. “Longsee is
arranging an audience with the Metah herself. We will go before her
this day and explain what your mission here is. She must
approve.”

“The Metah…?”

“The eldest female of the kel,” Pakma told
them. “Metashooklet. The One who lives in God. She is our
leader.”

“Cool,” Chase said. “And our mission is to
meet up with these…Umans, you call them…and get them to stop making
all this noise?”

“Longsee believes the Umans will listen to
you…his theory is that your race are direct ancestors of the
Umans.”

“But we don’t look human anymore,” Angie
pointed out. “We look like you…or something other than human.”

Kloosee had thought of that very point
and raised the issue with Longsee before the
em’took
procedure.
Maybe we should introduce them to the Umans as they
are
. But Longsee was adamant. They would be given the
opportunity to be modified so as to make their life on Seome more
bearable.

The truth was no one was sure they
would
ever
be able to get
back to their homeworld through the Farpool.

Kloosee had not discussed this with Chase and
Angie yet. Truth was, he wasn’t sure he knew how to even raise the
subject.

Though neither Chase nor Angie could
distinguish one sound from another, Pakma presently announced that
Longsee had signaled them. The Metah was ready for an audience.

They left Putek’tu and headed away from the
Meta’shpont, down and further down to the very base of the
seamount, then out across the confusing maze of floatways and reefs
of Omsh’pont to some kind of open plaza, a place vaguely pyramidal
in the center of the city.

The Metah’s chambers were near the apex of
the pyramid, a platform open on all sides, draped with beads of
lighted filaments. It was dark inside, but a circle of glowing
coral defined the center of the space.

The Metah drifted serenely over the circle of
coral, flanked by armed prodsman.