The Farpool (46 page)

“I had no idea, Pakma. But your secret is
safe with me. I just want to be home.”

Pakma asked about Angie’s family, about her
em’kel.

“If I understand the idea of em’kels right,
we don’t really have an equivalent back home. We have
families…mother, father—mine ran off with another woman, the
jerk—brothers…I have one brother. We’re related, blood lines and
all that. I guess the closest thing we have to your em’kels is like
a club…or a team, like the track team at school. Gwen and I are
200-meter girls on the track team.”

Pakma didn’t really understand but she could
pulse that discussing her ‘family-em’kel’ made Angie calmer,
quieter, more controlled. It was a good subject for discussion.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Angie went on. “I’ll
miss you and Kloosee…and Longsee and even Amanh here. I’ve got lots
of friends here…I’ll always remember you. It’s just that—well—“
Angie shrugged. “Home is home. And I’m sure Chase will come home
too…when he’s ready. That boy thinks he’s a great explorer…this has
been the adventure of a lifetime…for both of us. I’ve never
dreamed—“ She struggled for the right words—“well, I mean, I never
had any dreams like this. It’s been like a dream to me.”

The remainder of the trip across the
Ponk’el Sea was spent like this, Angie struggling with conflicting
feelings,
should I really do this, I need
to do this, I should stay and help Chase, they need us, but what
can I really do and I miss Mom and Gwen so
much—
everything ran together and she just couldn’t
sort it all out and Angie found herself glad when Amanh announced
that the first faint outlines of Kinlok Island and the whirlpools
was now dead ahead, maybe a hundred beats.

“Time to get you into the
tchee’lum
,” Pakma announced. The
bulbous, fish-shaped lifeship had been their companion since
leaving Omsh’pont, towed behind like an unwilling pet. Amanh
sounded ahead—they could all hear and feel the steady drone-beat of
the wavemaker filling the waters—and soon located a small range of
rubbly hills along the seabed, where they could shelter for a few
moments and Angie could make the transfer with little
risk.

Amanh put them down on the seafloor.
The water was a deep green, streaked with shafts of light from
above, and thick with broken ice.
Mah’jeet
fields were nearby but moving away.
Pakma unsealed the bubble and Angie immediately felt the numbing
cold of the polar waters.

She made the switch in quick order, not
wanting to stay exposed to the icy waters any longer than
necessary. Once she had wedged herself inside the tiny craft and
strapped in, Pakma went over the controls one more time.

“You must make the right clicks and
whistles to control
tchee’lum
…you’ve done this before,
eekoti
Angie. You have controls for
the propulsors, the planes and rudder, the stabilators and the
interior. You can vent the cockpit here—“ she brushed several
controls with her armfins—“and re-fill here. You have
communications, some navigation…it won’t work on your world. And
you don’t have to navigate to the Farpool itself…Amanh will steer
us as near as he can and when
tchee’lum
is caught in the vortex, he’ll cut the
towline and you’ll be pulled in. Just stay centered as best as you
can and hold on…you’ve been through this before.”

Angie swallowed hard.
Am I really doing this?
“I
remember…it’s like riding about a hundred Space Mountains—“ When
Pakma looked puzzled, Angie went on,” A kind of sport on my
world…we do it for fun.”

“We will miss you,
eekoti
Angie.” Pakma had an unmistakable look of
sadness on her face. Her normally faint smile was now clearly a
frown. Even Angie could tell that. And in her own fumbling way, she
could ‘pulse’ the upset echoes inside her. She reached out and
stroked Pakma along her beak.

“Me too, Pakma. Maybe we’ll see each other
again.” She had no idea how or when such a thing might happen, but
it seemed like a good thing to say.

Pakma understood and brushed an armfin
against Angie’s rough, scaly, lizard face. “I hope that
em’took
can be reversed. Perhaps
your own healers can do this—“ With that, she closed the bubble and
Angie heard the swoosh of the self-seal as the bubble settled into
its grooves.

She was all alone now, in more ways than she
cared to realize. But before she could feel sorry for herself, the
lifeship jerked upward. Amanh had started up the kip’t and the
towline strained with the weight. Soon enough, Angie’s tiny craft
was in motion too, wallowing like a drunken whale in the wake of
the kip’t.

They headed north, into the whirlpools,
toward the Farpool.

The buffeting became noticeably
stronger and Angie tried to see out but the little lifeship had
only a tiny forward porthole and she couldn’t see much. On her
instrument panel, Pakma had powered up all the dials and
gauges…most of them completely foreign to Angie. Screens chirped
and clicked, lines and waves danced across displays and vertical
indicators bobbed up and down…none of it meant anything to her. She
had forgotten everything Pakma had just gone over and now hovered
helpless and frozen inside the
tchee’lum
, afraid to touch anything.

I’ll just have to trust
Pakma and Amanh,
she muttered to herself.
And God too.

There was a strong jerk at the front of
the lifeship and a feeling of being cut loose. She stained to see
ahead and thought she saw the tail end of the towline whipping by
the porthole.
Probably Amanh’s cut me
loose. I’m on my own now. Here goes
—

The lifeship started shaking like a wet dog,
buffeting, rocking, careening, bouncing back and forth. She had a
strong feeling of being accelerated forward, like something
powerful was pulling the ship in, like she was being swallowed,
going down some giant’s mouth.

Then the spinning started, faster and
faster, until Angie began to see only a narrow tunnel
ahead—
gray-out
is what
fighter pilots called it—pulling too many g’s—and her mind was
filled with scraps of thoughts…the last homework assignment Miss
Poynter had given them in Algebra II..that time she had tripped
over the final hurdle in the regional finals of the 200-meter
event…catapulting her into the air, she felt like she was spinning
until her face and chin slammed into the track and she woke up from
the impact in the school infirmary with a mild concussion…there was
that time she and Chase had been canoeing off-shore, near Turtle
Key, and there was a hurricane out in the gulf—they had disobeyed
all the red flags and headed out and gotten into surf they couldn’t
handle and that big-ass wave had turned them bow for stern, right
in the air….

All these things hurtled through what was
left of Angie’s consciousness. With her last glimmer of thought,
she remembered that night when Mom had come home from working at
the Venetian Feast restaurant, all tears streaking down her face to
say that Dad had left…no note, but she knew where he was and he
wasn’t coming back…she wanted to kill the guy right then and there
for tearing up Mom like that—

And then the Farpool grabbed her completely
and pulled her in and she had no more thoughts for a very long
time.

Chapter 15

North Pacific Ocean

220 miles west of Port McNeill, British
Columbia

October 20, 2122

5:45 am

When she came to, Angie’s first impression
was like when she’d been riding back of Chase on his turboscooter
and they’d run though a giant pool of rainwater covering Winter
Valley Road, near that wide turn coming out of Croc’s Corner. It
was much deeper than either of them realized and the scooter
started hydroplaning and sliding across the top of the water,
slamming them forward with sudden deceleration so hard she thought
they were both going to be thrown off into the culverts.

Coming out of the Farpool was like that, only
about a million times worse. The blinding roar of deceleration
slammed Angie against the ship’s forward bulkhead

“Ouch! That hurts like hell!” she told
herself. The little craft spun and gyrated for a few moments as it
slowed down, then began drifting, gently settling downward bow
first.

Had she made it? Was this Earth? The Gulf,
maybe?

She craned her neck trying to see out of the
tiny porthole but there was only dark.

When all the ship’s motions had dampened out,
Angie repeated Pakma’s instructions on cycling the hatch. With
effort, she managed to spring it open. Cold water flooded in and
she sucked in her breath.

She tried to squeeze out and wound up
stuck. Panic set in. She kicked and thrashed, felt her heart
pounding like a jackhammer.
Jesus--!
Then she kicked some more, hammered
with her fists…
what if I can’t get out…how
will I eat?…
just the thought of it made her hungry.
She’d developed a taste for Seomish gisu and tongpod…surely none of
that would be around.

Finally, with a great straining heave,
she managed to kick loose and tumbled out of the lifeship cockpit.
The little craft was scorched and streaked with
something…
is that what I just came
through?

She kicked and pulled and talked to
herself.
Steady girl…you know how to
swim…you know how to do this…don’t panic…just do what Chase always
says…think happy thoughts…only his happy thoughts…oh, never mind
that—

She pulled upward, instinctively
seeking the surface.
This doesn’t really
look like the Gulf.
The Gulf was always clear,
aquamarine or turquoise, sandy sea bed. She couldn’t even see the
seabed and the water was dark, cold and heavy.

As she approached the surface, she heard
something thrashing and honking in the water nearby. She wasn’t
alone. She stopped for a moment. Then she realized it was a
whale…she could sense its massive bulk close aboard. Angie kicked
away from the noise and soon realized she was ascending through a
gathering of whales. The water was turbulent, frothy, thick with
bubble columns. Somehow, she had blundered right into the middle of
them.

She breached the surface and found herself in
heavy surf, with whitecaps spuming off the roaring wave tops. Winds
whipped at her, but she thrashed around, mesmerized at the sight of
all her whale neighbors spouting, breaching, slamming tails and
flukes against the water, lifting geysers of spray into the
air.

Maybe I’d better get out of
here, before I get crushed
. She dove back down,
sensing that the pod was slowly moving off. Still hungry, she soon
fell back to the rear of their formation, barely able to make out
their undulating tails. She kicked and pulled hard and decided to
try to follow them.

Clearly, this was not the Gulf of Mexico.

Captain Will McKinley stood against a
door on the forward weather deck of the
Kitticut
and tried for the fifth time to light
his cigarette. Fortunately, his first mate, Gallagher, was nearby
and came to the rescue, cupping his hands around McKinley’s stiff
fingers.

Both men were still shaken from what they had
just witnessed.

“Never seen a spout like that, Gil…quite a
sight that was.”

Gallagher, first name Gil, agreed. He lit his
own cigarette. “Never this far north, eh? Like something out of the
tropics. Sky split open, crack of lightning. It’s a wonder that pod
didn’t scatter to the winds. They got up a good frenzy but they
seem to be settling down. Shall I order the boats out?”

“Yeah, give the order. It’s a small pod but
we might have some good ones in there. Tell the shooters to brace
themselves, though. This is some fierce chop.”

It was just then that first mate Gil
Gallagher, of the whaler
Kitticut
, out of Port McNeill, British Columbia,
lead ship of the Robson Line and always loaded to her gunwales with
good meat after a run, saw the ghost, the apparition, for that’s
what he would insist on calling it in all the reports and
debriefings that would follow.

“Cap’n…excuse me, sir…but what the hell
is
that
?” Gallagher pointed
to a form just breaching the heavy waves off their starboard
bow…not a whale, not a porpoise, but something else altogether,
something the two officers had no words for.

McKinley, who didn’t really mind being called
“Mount—“ behind his back by the crew, peered hard at the body, the
form, riding low in the surf. It was human-like in size and scale,
but amphibious in appearance. Dark gray, mottled on its back, fins
and flukes, but also legs and arms. And the head—

“Crikey…it looks like a bad movie…what is
that? Mermaid? Monster? If I didn’t know better—“

But Gallagher was already on the bridge
talker. “Shooters,
all
shooters
, to the starboard bow! Man your stations!
Shooters, all hands forward now! Target… two hundred meters abeam
of the ship—“

A flurry of activity around
Kitticut’s
foredeck produced half a
dozen men with high-powered rifles, now assembling among the
capstans and bracing of the ship’s foredeck.

“Jesus!”