The Farpool (47 page)

“God in…it’s a monster…!”

“Some kind of turtle--?”

Gallagher made his way down. “Take your best
shot, gentlemen. Let’s see if we can capture that beasty and bring
her in…no one’ll believe it otherwise.”

Men settled their weapons down. Presently,
shots rang out, dozens, then scores of shots, as the whaleboat
crews unloaded, trying to hit the ‘apparition’, but the ship was
rolling and pitching too heavily for anything like a clean
shot.

Gallagher went up to the bowsprit and
leaned out, trying to get a better look.
God Almighty, the beast looks like a raptor…like something
from the past. All scales, reptilian head, fins and flukes, black
button eyes….it’s a friggin’ nightmare!

“Sir--!” it was Sebastian, the Inuit crew
chief. “Maybe the nets…if we could get close enough--!”

Gallagher figured it was worth a shot.
He hand signaled to McKinley, still up on the bridge deck. The
Captain seemed to understand. While
Kitticut
broke off her whale chase for a few
moments and maneuvered toward the beast, Gallagher and Sebastian
organized a net crew. The men sprang open lockers on the foredeck,
hauled out seine nets and other rigging and loaded the mortars with
shot, fastening the net anchors around the mortars. At the first
mate’s signal, three mortars boomed out and flung netting over the
side of the ship. The range was near perfect on their very first
try and the netting descended over the thrashing beast, just as
McKinley heeled
Kitticut
sideways toward their target. The ship slopped and careened
for a moment, while the net crews worked furiously to secure the
net ends, cinching up the snare by its halyards.

The beast was caught…and a great cheer went
up on deck. Now, winches were started up and bit by bit, the net
was hauled shipward…as the beast thrashed and flailed and struggled
and cried out.

Gallagher lit another cigarette, as he helped
straighten one end, trying to keep the net from tangling. By the
time the winches had brought their prize catch alongside and began
hoisting it on board, crewmen were already backing away from the
still-thrashing beast, as it kicked and squealed and lashed out. A
few kicked back at the thing, one threw a bucket.

Gallagher had the sense to go find a
locker and withdrew a small gun. He loaded the magazine with
several tranquilizer darts—the tray label read
Impact-Actuating Inoculating Hypodermic Syringe—Maropitant
citrate.
He shoved several crewmen aside and
cautiously approached the beast, still writhing and squealing in
its snare on the deck.

It looked like a gigantic frog to Gallagher.
Spade-shaped head like a little dinosaur, long legs with feet and
fins, arms with hands and fingers…it was trying to tear at the
netting with its fingers. It was strong too, several crewmen
ventured too close and were knocked backwards by its kicks and
slashes.

Gallagher crept up, took aim and fired
several times, once into the stomach, several times into the chest
and neck.

The tranquilizer began to take effect a few
moments later. The beast’s kicks and flails began dying off,
becoming more and more intermittent, weaker, slower, until finally,
after what seemed like forever, it lay still and quiet, dripping
salt water puddles onto the deck.

That’s when Captain McKinley finally
showed up, having made his way down from the bridge.
Already,
Kitticut
was heeling
to port, picking up speed—McKinley had ordered flank speed from the
engine room, in an effort to catch up with what was left of the pod
of right whales they had been about to process.

McKinley stooped down as close as he dared
and studied the now-still creature.

“My God, gentlemen, what on earth have we
captured here?”

Two days later,
Kitticut
put in at Dock 4, south terminal of
Port McNeill’s harbor, loaded with whale meat, tons of oil and
baleen and something else that seemed to put men at a loss for
words to describe it, something that had to be seen to be
believed.

Someone had given the beast-thing the
name Nessie, for any Scotsman would have been proud to have
corralled such a catch in the deeps of Loch Ness itself. McKinley
had already informed the Robson Line dock dispatcher that
Kitticut
was bringing in a full
catch and something unusual as well.

Less than an hour after the whaler had tied
up to Dock 4, calls had been placed to the Vancouver Aquarium. The
dispatcher had talked for ten minutes with Dr. Justin Fort, marine
biologist in residence. Fort was on his way to Port McNeill an hour
later.

It was nearly seven o’clock when Justin
Fort pulled his pickup truck into a parking spot outside the Robson
Line terminal above the dockyards. Fort hustled into the offices,
going over in his mind the words he had heard from the dispatcher
five hours before:
monster…prehistoric…looks like a
dinosaur…scaly…reptilian…like nothing we’ve ever seen….

Fort was already writing the introduction to
the paper he knew would come out of this when Captain McKinley and
Robson’s operations manager Vic Casey showed him into the storage
locker, where the….thing, creature, whatever it was…had been placed
for safekeeping.

Fort stood in disbelief alongside a shallow
pool, surrounded by mesh netting and wire barriers. In the water
lay Nessie, for that’s what everyone had come to call the find.

“That ain’t no Pacific cod we brought back,
Doctor,” McKinley remarked. “Looks like a nightmare sea beast to
me.”

“Or something akin to an Ichthyosaurus…some
kind of refugee from the Triassic,” said Fort. He unfastened his
wristpad and started taking photos.

Casey held up a hand. “Whoa, whoa there Dr.
Fort…this is Robson property. I’ll have to ask you to stop with the
photos.”

Fort took a few more and slipped his wristpad
back on. “Right…sorry. Just a reaction…this is really
extraordinary. Tell me again where you caught this—“

“Nessie,” said McKinley. “We’re calling her
Nessie.” McKinley described the details of the catch.

Casey already had a calculator open on his
own wristpad. “I’m guessing the aquarium is interested. We can talk
terms in my office, if you’ll just—“

Fort was mesmerized by the sight of the
thing. “Just look at it…reptilian head, but no real tail
flukes…it’s amphibious, adapted for land and water. And the
hands…it’s got fingers, fins…it’s a hybrid…an evolutionary
throwback. I’ll bet this line went extinct two hundred million
years ago. To think a specimen could have survived this long-“

Casey cleared his throat. “Right…as I was
saying, Dr. Fort, Robson’s more than happy to work with the
aquarium on details. We just need to talk terms here—“

It was only with great effort that Casey was
able to pull Fort away from the storage locker. They spent half an
hour in Casey’s office. Fort sent his photos to the aquarium
director. Calls were made, texts were exchanged, donors and
sponsors contacted. After an hour, Fort was authorized to make an
offer.

Casey hemmed and hawed and finally, after
some haggling, a price was set.

“Now, we just have to work out the matter of
getting Nessie down to the aquarium.”

Fort already had the details worked out.
“We’ll have an animal transporter here first thing to tomorrow.
Nessie’s amphibious, so we need to keep her in a wet environment.
Can’t say if she’s a mammal or what exactly, so let’s replicate the
conditions you’ve maintained in the locker for the time being. I’d
like to make a quick examination, if I may.”

Casey was already printing out the
final pages of the contract of sale, licking his lips over what
this little extra transaction would add to their month’s
catch.
A nice little bonus for me and the
officers, at the very least
, he imagined.

Fort and Casey signed. Casey buzzed for one
of the plant catchmasters to escort Fort back to the locker.
“You’ve got half an hour, Dr. Fort. Then we’ll start getting Nessie
ready for her little trip south.”

***

Nessie was placed initially in the Graham
Amazon Gallery at the aquarium. Room had to be made for the new
exhibit, so other snakes, spiders, birds and lizards were
temporarily re-located. Fort arranged to make a full physical exam
of their newest attraction, while she was still sedated.

Fishermen use way too much
of that Maropitant citrate,
he thought.
The poor thing’s been knocked out since Kitticut
put into port.

He and two vet techs performed the exam,
taking notes and snapping pictures the whole time.

They didn’t realize that Nessie was awake and
conscious the whole time.

Angie waited a decent interval, until the
last of the vet techs had left the gallery, then opened her eyes
further and tried to take in her surroundings. She was in a large
pool of some type, warmer than the ocean. Fake trees and vines hung
low over the water…it was, after all, the Amazon Gallery, though
she didn’t know that. Mists shrouded some of the side decking. The
pool was an elongated double-oval shape, large enough to take a few
strokes but definitely not the Gulf of Mexico.

Where the hell am I?
Then it came to her:
this is a
freakin’ aquarium, just like Scotland Beach.
But this
wasn’t Gulfside, no way.

Somehow the Farpool had deposited her in
another place. And she had no idea what time she was in, and no way
she could see to find out. Aquarium galleries didn’t post calendars
for their exhibit animals.

Pretty depressing, all in all. But maybe it
was cosmic justice. Kloosee and Pakma had wound up in an aquarium
on their last visit to Earth. They’d been shot and treated as
monsters, then treated as lab rats, before she and Chase had sprung
them free.

Jeez, now
I’m
an exhibit. In a freakin’
aquarium, for God’s sake.
Angie was depressed at the
thought.
I’m must look like a dinosaur or
something to them, with all these scales and skin and
all.

She figured the best thing was to try to
explain things, explain to somebody just who the hell she was and
how she had gotten there.

A door to the gallery opened and light blazed
in. It was one of the vet techs. Or maybe it was a custodian. She
didn’t really care.

Now’s my
chance
. Angie staggered to her feet—the pool wasn’t
really that deep—and slogged her way through the water to the edge.
The custodian hadn’t seen her yet; he was untangling a pail and a
mop.

She reached the edge, found a point of
purchase, and started to haul herself up over the edge, calling out
to the man as she did so.

“Hey…hey…I’m human…it’s not what it looks
like--!”

The custodian whirled about, stood mouth open
at Angie crawling dripping and hissing out of the ersatz swamp
water and immediately dropped his pail and mop. He stared
dumbfounded for a moment, then streaked for the still-open door,
screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Jesus…it’s escaping…it’s
vocalizing…it’s getting loose
--!!”

The custodian fled the gallery. That’s when
Angie saw two silhouettes blocking the door he had just gone
through.

She immediately recognized a security guard
by the gun in his hand. The other figure was Dr. Maureen Corley,
veterinarian on duty that evening.

“Help me…can you help! I’m…my name’s
Angie--!”

Dr. Corley put her hands to her mouth. She
had just finished reading Justin Fort’s examination notes on the
proto-ichthyosaur the aquarium had just purchased from some whalers
up at Port McNeill. She had planned to come down to the gallery
later that evening and make a few notes of her own….maybe a few
pictures…they’d look great at the conference in Seattle next
week.

“Oh, my God---it’s trying to vocalize---“

The security guard lifted his gun, but Corley
put her hand over his arm.

“Don’t shoot, Joe…let me get some
tranquilizer…” she hustled off for a moment, then came back with a
tranquilizer gun herself. She loaded one of the darts and aimed at
the creature’s chest.

“Please don’t shoot me—I’m just--!” Angie
pleaded. She took another step, then felt the first dart hit,
sinking in just below her neck. In seconds, the world turned gray
and she dropped to her knees, then pitched forward, slamming her
chin on the tile floor of the gallery.

In her last few wisps of consciousness, Angie
saw Dr. Corley and the guard approaching cautiously, creeping
forward step by step, a Glock and a tranquilizer gun both trained
on her.

I came all the way back for
this,
she thought as the black closed in.
Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all.
Chase, if you’re—

Then there was nothing.

Chapter 16

Seome

Omsh’pont, kel: Om’t

Time: 767.4, Epoch of Tekpotu

Chase learned that the hearing to determine
the fate of Tulcheah kim was set for the next day. He asked Kloosee
about Seomish law and justice…how did that work? Kloosee said it
varied from kel to kel. To learn more about law and justice in
Omt’or, Kloosee told him to consult his echopod.

Chase
kloooshk’ed and klooooshk’ed
until he finally
got the thing to work….

“Omtorish law is officially
codified in the mind and memory of the Metah. The Metah regularly
consumes a special substance, called
tekn’een,
to improve her memory and recall. The theory is
that since all laws and decrees come from the Metah, only she can
determine if they have been broken.