The Farpool (33 page)

When Chase learned of this, he asked Kloosee
about it.

“The Ponkti are isolated. They like it
that way,” Kloosee explained, as he was loading up his kip’t one
day. “They live like hermits. They’re suspicious of everyone, even
themselves. Use your echopod…it can tell you all the details.
Personally, I’m not sure why we need the Ponkti for this shield. We
can do this ourselves. I think Tulcheah has stolen the Metah’s ears
and convinced her the kels should cooperate. The Ponkti complain
all the time that we Omtorish monopolize the Farpool, that we’re
actually working with the Umans, that we plan to dominate all the
seas and make slaves of the other kels.
Kah
, it’s all nonsense. Let the Ponkti be…that’s
my opinion.”

Chase decided to let his echopod explain
more….

…the great, ice-cold
northeastern sea is called the Ponk’el and it is home to the
kel:Ponk’et. Bounded on the north by the polar ice-pack, to the
east by the ridge T’kel, to the south by the ridge-chain Ork’nt and
to the west by the sinuous Serpentine, the Ponkti are an aloof,
relatively militant and generally untrustworthy
kel…
that made Chase smile…”Jeez, I wonder who wrote
this stuff,” he asked…
the Ponkti usually
keep to themselves, preferring to refine their well-known martial
skills . They are renowned as the originators and masters of the
deadly dance art known as
tuk.
The Ponkti believe that they are doing God’s will by
preserving their isolation and self-sufficiency. The Ponkti believe
that the future will bring a great upheaval, a giant,
globe-circling wave called
ak’loosh
, which will destroy all kels. They are preparing to meet
this apocalypse….

Chase listened a while longer, decided the
echopod was simply spewing some kind of Omtorish propaganda and
went back to helping Kloosee load up and check all the kip’ts. He
was uneasy as he finished securing gear to the aft cargo sling of
their sled…more and more, it seemed like he and Angie were being
sucked into kel politics, becoming pawns or worse in some greater
struggle. The thought that he and Angie might become prizes in some
clash between the kels troubled him. But he decided not to confide
any of this to Angie. She was already morose enough about the
trip.

“So how many Ponkti are there?” Chase
asked Kloosee. He swam alongside his friend as Kloosee roamed the
length of the kip’t convoy, examining fastenings, checking cargo
pouches, playing with nosy
pal’penk
who had drifted over in curiosity, verifying seals and
hatches and jets and circulators.

“Maybe twenty-five million kelke in all,”
Kloosee said. “No one really knows. And the Ponkti certainly won’t
tell anybody. “

“One of the weavers…I think his name was Kobo
tel or something like that—said the Ponkti live in caves.”

Kloosee continued his leisurely roam,
checking every detail, every nuance of the convoy sleds. Chase
struggled to keep up. “I’ve heard that too. I’ve never been there
but the rumor among the kip’t drivers and the pal’penk herders is
that the Ponkti are concentrated along the divide between Ork’te
plateau and the T’kel’tong decline, some kind of interconnected
caves there. There are whirlpools and chaotic currents around there
too, so we’ll have to be careful.”

“Don’t you have maps? GPS? Navigation aids,
things like that?”

“I pulse what I know. The echoes I have up
here—“ he tapped his beak and head. “And the scents also. We’ll
find them. Nobody smells and farts like the Ponkti.” With that,
Kloosee snapped off a sharp tail slap and moved smartly away.

Kloosee deemed distracted, even distant.
Chase figured he’d better leave his friend alone.

I guess he’s got a lot on
his mind right now.
Chase turned about and went back
up the length of the convoy again, looking for Angie.

Kloosee roamed for a few more minutes, then
on a whim, dove back toward a warren of caves halfway up the
Torsh’pont seamount. Here was Putektu, his own em’kel. Family.
Home. Familiar scents. He plunged into the caves and found his way
to his own berth. There, he extracted a pair of scentbulbs from a
shelf and activated one.

The sharp tangy smell of seamothers in heat
filled the berth. Kloosee tried as best he could to relax for a
moment…the scents brought back favorite memories, ascending toward
the surface, caught up in the chaos of a seamother heard seeking
Notwater…it was magnificent, it wondrous, it made him shiver just
to think of it, the harsh light, the low pressure, the pain in his
gut as his insides tried to burst…you had to be insane to love
seamothers and their realm but Kloosee did love it and he would
never apologize for that.

Deep into the olfactory daze that scentbulbs
brought on—it was even a bulb that Pakma had done and given him as
a gift—Kloosee was startled when a familiar face came nosing into
his berth.

That smell was familiar. He knew that pulse
when it echoed back.

Tulcheah kim.

“Pakma give that bulb to you?” she asked,
nuzzling Kloosee’s beak. She invited herself in and straight away
began nosing her way along Kloosee’s flanks, rubbing his pectorals,
his flukes, his belly….

“Tulcheah, stop. Please don’t do that now.
I’ve got a long journey ahead and I need some rest.”

“Not feeling too good about the trip, is that
it?” Tulcheah teased him. “Wondering if you can even find
Ponk’t?”

“I’ll find it…I’ve roamed Ponk’el
before.”

Tulcheah slipped away and circled the small
berth space, intentionally knocking scentbulbs and utensils off the
shelves. Faint currents carried them toward the opening and Kloosee
snapped them up with annoyance.

“You know the Metah asked me to join this
expedition too.”

Kloosee went back to his bulb, waving it in
her face before sniffing the seamother scents himself. Her face
wrinkled in disgust and she shoved it away.

“I heard. You manage to insinuate yourself
into just about anything.”

Tulcheah sniffed, feigning indignation.
“I’m half-Ponkti. Iltereedah knows that. She doesn’t think the
Omtorish can pull off this shield by themselves. They need help
from real
tchin’ting
weavers.
Plus I can find the city…I lived there as a midling.”

“Until they kicked you out.”

Tulcheah approached Kloosee again, that hurt
look on her face. She was an athletic female, though small in
stature. Smooth and supple alabaster skin, delicate armfins, strong
tail flukes, big eyes…Tulcheah was a lot of things. But she was
never boring, never predictable. She delighted in surprising
people.

“I left Ponk’t on my own…I wanted to see
things. Maybe live a little. What’s wrong with that? At least, I
don’t spend all my time roaming around philosophizing, like the
Omtorish.”

“You got tired of living in caves like some
ancient mudworm. The rest of us left caves thousands of metamah
ago.” He bumped her away again and she veered off angrily.

Tulcheah pulled up sharply at the entrance
and glared back at Kloosee. She looked around at all the shelves
and niches filled with scentbulbs. Putektu, Kloosee’s em’kel,
hoarded scents and especially treasured scents of the Notwater,
something Tulcheah professed she would never understand.

“What
is
all this stuff anyway? Pakma’s work, I’ll
bet. You can’t seem to get enough of that fat pal’penk.”

“Not all of it,” Kloosee said. “Other kelke
do bulbs too, you know.”

Tulcheah grinned. She pulsed
Kloosee…already, she could see the telltale stream of bubbles
fizzing inside…she was beginning to have an effect, she could pulse
that now. “You always liked my scent…here, have a whiff—“ She
scooted over, sideswiped him around the beak. “Can’t get enough of
that, Kloos…how about it? One last time, before the trip starts…you
know, for good luck. Before we have to keep
shoo’kel
for everybody.”

“The Metah should never have allowed you on
this expedition. Nothing but trouble, that’s what will happen.”

Tulcheah shifted into advisor mode now.
“The Metah shouldn’t keep the Farpool to herself. There
are
other kels, you know. They have
as much right to know and use the Farpool as you do. I’m chief of
diplomats…I have to deal with this all the time. And the Umans…by
Shooki, she’ll be signing an alliance with them in no time. That’s
what this is all about, Kloos. Can’t you see it? Keeping the Ponkti
away from the Farpool, from the Umans, from your precious
little
eekoti
visitors. Keep
the Ponkti in their caves…they can’t do any harm there. We’ll see
what the Ponkti can do once they build this shield and fix all your
mistakes.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Tulcheah. The
Umans don’t care about the kels or our differences. They care about
their blasted machine…fighting off some enemy beyond the Notwater,
who knows what they care about. Now, we’ve got Chase, we’ve got
Angie. They’re Uman too, or almost Uman. We can speak their
language. Know their culture. Learn from them. Live among
them.”

Tulcheah laughed, started to dart outside,
then stopped and came back, hanging at the entrance like some
malevolent dreamthing. “Kloos, you’ve spent too much time with
those bulbs …it’s made you mad. Listen to yourself…living among
Umans. Living in the Notwater. That’s the sort of stories they tell
midlings…or maybe in Omt’or, they tell them that. Not in Ponk’et.
“

“No? In Ponk’et, you just fight each other
all the time. And everybody else too.”

Tulcheah was more serious now. “The Metah
needs me. This expedition needs me too. You know that as well as I
do.” She looked around at all Kloosee’s scentbulbs. “Why don’t you
get rid of all this stuff, especially Pakma’s crap. We don’t leave
until tomorrow.” Her voice lowered and she bubbled at him
mischievously. “I’ll be back later…we’ll do this right. Pakma will
never be able to treat you the way I do.”

“I’m sure of that,” Kloosee said. “And thank
Shooki for it, too.”

With that, Tulcheah
hummphhed
and sped off into the murk.

The expedition left Omsh’pont the next day,
to great fanfare from the kelke of the city. Kloosee knew a lot of
hopes were riding on the outcome. If they could get the shield
built and placed around the wavemaker, the sound should be greatly
reduced and the vibrations dampened enough to make life livable
throughout all the seas of Seome. If the expedition failed…well,
Kloosee had never put much stock in Longsee’s idea but it was
beginning to echo around the kel anyway, whispered in hushed tones,
clucked over in the em’kels and the cafes, scoffed at and embraced
and discussed in a thousand corners and niches of the great city,
even sung about on lengthy roams about the plains and hills
surrounding Omsh’pont.

Use the Farpool. Emigrate
from Seome. Populate the oceans of the
eekoti
world
…from what Kloosee and Pakma
had brought back, it was doable. It was at least thinkable. A mass
exodus, a few at a time, through the Farpool—as long as that
vortex-wormhole held up and the Umans didn’t do anything stupid.
Abandon Seome…now
that
was
truly unthinkable. Yet, Kloosee had to admit, even the unthinkable
was now beginning to be thought about.

No, he told himself, that could never happen.
By Shooki, the shield had to work. The Umans had to give in. The
two sides, and all the kels, had to get together and make this
work.

There was no other way.

So the expedition cruised off the Torsh’pont
seamount, twelve kip’ts in all, and was soon lost to view. Kloosee,
Longsee, Tulcheah, Tamarek, Chase and Angie and others. Pakma
stayed behind. There was little she could contribute to the effort
and the Metah wanted everyone’s focus on building and installing
the shield.

Tulcheah went along to smooth things over
with the Ponkti. That brought a snorting laugh to Kloosee as he
turned the kip’t to its northeasterly heading and felt along
gingerly for the first faint tugs of the Sk’ork Current. They would
have to negotiate that southward flowing river of water before they
could transit the Serpentine gap and spill out into the broader
Ponk’el Sea.

Relying on Tulcheah to smooth things
over with the Ponkti, with
anybody
really, was like kissing a pal’penk right in the mouth. You
did it when you had to and you held your breath when you
did.

Kloosee settled in for the long first leg,
the ride up to the Serpentines. On the sled cockpit dashboard, he
had placed a small scentbulb from his em’kel…more Notwater
reminders. They were going there and he was both glad and a little
anxious about it. This would help get him in the mood.

Behind him, Chase and Angie said nothing.

But Longsee, the old Kelktoo leader, was not
amused. “You don’t have to rub my nose in it,” he muttered. “Turn
that thing off. I’ve got work to do back here.”

Kloosee chuckled quietly at that. Minutes
later, Longsee was snoring, sound asleep.

They had cruised for several days along the
lip of the Ork’te Divide, searching for some sign of Ponk’t in the
abyssal wastes but without success. Kloosee knew from the
descriptions of the repeaters and from Tulcheah’s insistent
directions, that the Ponkti capital lay just over the edge of the
plateau, where the broad tongue of land called the T’keltong’tee
met the plain in an overthrust cliff. Somewhere in that junction
lay the entrances, probably well hidden by thick beds of sediment
and rock. Beneath the crust lay the vast underground caverns of
Ponk’t itself.