The Farpool (58 page)

Toward he had no idea where.

Chase decided they’d better come to a full
stop, maybe even surface and see if he could figure out where they
were. He informed his passengers of this.

Veskort was nervous about the idea.
“Notwater…this is a bad idea,
eekoti
Chase. Notwater is forbidden.”

“Yeah, but that’s Seome. This isn’t
Seome.”

Chase planed the little ship upward anyway,
toward blue-green light and the surface.

He heard no further complaints from his
passengers about being so close to the Notwater. When the sled
breached the surface and rolled in the swells and waves, Chase saw
it was daylight, early morning from the sun angle.

It was a refreshing, even inspiring view.

But it wasn’t the Gulf.

He decided against opening the cockpit, owing
to Veskort and Pulkor not having any protective gear. Instead, he
let the little sled drift with the prevailing currents. Initially
they were in a light fog but the sun soon burned that off and
that’s when he saw several ships…fishing trawlers from the looks of
them, with tall masts and stout deckhouses and nets cast in all
directions.

“Fellows, I’m not sure where we are exactly
but there’s no way this is the Gulf. The water’s too dark and those
look like mountains in the distance.”

It was Pulkor who observed, “Longsee said the
Farpool can’t always be predicted…the algorithms aren’t
perfect.”

“And the Umans have changed the way they
operate,” added Veskort. He was clearly uncomfortable being so
close to the Notwater, a low moan and something that sounded like
nervous humming filled Chase’s ears.

“Well, maybe so, but we need to know where we
are. I’m heading for those mountains. Land can’t be too far away
and there are several ships nearby too.”

Veskort was cautious. “We should avoid
the ships,
eekoti
Chase. We
don’t know how they might react.”

“Good idea. Plus I don’t exactly look
like anything
they’ve
ever
seen,” Chase replied. “We’ll go below.”

He planed down to thirty meters depth and
headed for the sound of the ships, passing under two of them. Chase
had finally begun to gain some comfort with the kip’t controls,
just making the right series of clicks and honks and whistles would
cause the jets to speed up or slow down, the planes and rudders to
turn. It wasn’t exactly natural but when an insistent beeping
informed him the seabed was close and rising, he knew they were
near the shore.

He surfaced the kip’t and found himself
riding along the crest of a long breakwater. A sign and a signal
buoy bobbed nearby. It said:
PORT MCNEILL
HARBOR…SPEED 5 KNOTS…NO WAKE ZONE.

He steered them around the end of the
breakwater and found a sandy spit just below some wharves. He
beached the kip’t there.

“I’m going topside,” Chase told his
passengers.

“This is not a good idea,” Veskort insisted.
“We should at least wait until there is less light.”

But Chase was not to be dissuaded. “I’ll just
pop out and head up…maybe I can find something to show were we are.
I won’t be long.”

After some discussion about water
conditions—it was Veskort who pronounced the harbor water of Port
McNeill as p’omor’te…turbid and salty…”tastes like ertleg guts,” he
said sourly, Chase was able to devise a way to crank open the sled
and slide out quickly, while Pulkor cranked the cockpit shut again,
thus preserving as much of the original conditions as possible.

“Wish me luck,” Chase said. He slipped
overboard, the Omtorish prodsmen jerked the cockpit hatch shut and
he was off, kicking his way toward the bright lights of the
surface. He breached beneath a wharf, clinging to
barnacle-encrusted pilings, while waves slapped him back and
forth.

Now what?
he
wondered.
If I climb out, looking like a
gigantic frog, somebody’ll start screaming and the guns and knives
will come out.

Cautiously, he stroked out from underneath
the wharf and found himself abreast of the stern planes of a small
fishing trawler. Conveniently, she was drying her nets and most of
the gear had been slung overboard. It seemed like climbing up the
net, if it would support his weight, was the best option.

So he climbed.

He clambered onboard the deck and stood
dripping, looking around for a moment. Nobody was in sight. There
was a small deckhouse ahead, only a few steps, but before Chase
could get there, he heard a voice from behind. A crewman had
spotted him—

“Hey…Jesus Christ…
hey
…
what the
fuck
?…get away…hey…get out of here…go
on--!”

The crewman was a short, stout, heavily
bearded man, a cigar stub in the corner of his mouth, brandishing a
stick, and he came at Chase with the stick, swinging it back and
forth. It clipped Chase on the arm and stung momentarily but Chase
realized his outer scale and armored skin was pretty good
protection. Instinctively, he lunged at the crewman, knocking the
stick from his hands. His assailant stopped short, his mouth agape
and turned to run.

Chase was on him in a second, hoisting the
man over the railing. He went headfirst, flailing and screaming,
into the water.

Now, I’ve done it.
Chase was momentarily paralyzed…which way to go? The rest of
the crew would be coming, already doors and hatches were slamming
open, feet were drumming on the deckplates, clip-clopping down from
the bow. He stepped momentarily into the deckhouse and his eyes
were immediately caught by a poster taped to the annunciator
panel…and to a picture on the poster.

It looked just like him!

On impulse, he snatched the poster and
stuffed it in his mouth. How could the crew of a fishing
trawler—but he didn’t have time to figure that out. Shouts filled
the air.

Chase saw faces, more faces, the crew was
gathering fast. He saw something flash by the door entrance…a gun
muzzle, then a speargun.

Chase took a few deep breaths, with the
crumpled poster still in his mouth—
can’t
swallow it, don’t swallow it!—
then tore open the
deckhouse door, pushed wildly at several bodies blocking his way,
and fled for the railing. He reached the edge and heard something
whistle by his ear. Someone had fired and more missiles were
coming. One grazed his shoulder.

He levered himself over the side and went
headfirst into the water.

He kicked and pulled to go deep, just as a
few bullets hissed into the water, making little contrails of
bubbles as they entered. Somehow, he managed to avoid being hit. He
groped and swam and stroked until he found the relative safety of
the wharf pilings.

There…he saw the kip’t. Veskort and Pulkor
were still inside, looking like sardines in a can. He pulled up
short, waved at them and Pulkor popped the sled canopy. As quick as
he could, Chase climbed and squeezed in, then the canopy was dogged
shut and latched around him.

He clicked and honked as well as he could and
somehow the kip’t controls responded. The sled scooted off,
scraping the wooden pilings and the harbor seabed, before Chase
managed to get enough control to steady them.

They cruised out of Port McNeill harbor
unmolested, though there seemed to be a flurry of boat activity
overhead.

Soon, they were headed out to sea again, to
the relative safety of deeper water.

That’s when Chase let the kip’t drift for a
few moments and scanned the poster.

Vancouver Aquarium

Come See It!

Terrors of the Deep

See Sheena…The Prehistoric Princess

Six-Month Engagement

In the Main Ocean Gallery

9:00 am to 7:00 pm everyday

Chase studied the images and sucked in his
breath. It was Angie! It had to be…he’d recognize those dorsal fins
and scaly armor anywhere.

Then he almost laughed out loud. He explained
it to Pulkor and Veskort.

“Guys, we didn’t land in the Gulf.
Vancouver…this has to be the Pacific.”

The description meant nothing to the
two prodsmen. “You know where your
eekoti
friend is?” Pulkor asked.

Chase said, “I’ve got a pretty god idea. Come
on…let’s surface…maybe we can figure out where we are from the sun
angle.”

By crude dead reckoning and sighting, Chase
determined that the Farpool had deposited them in the eastern
Pacific, not far from the coast of British Columbia. Vancouver
couldn’t be that far away, south from the sighting.

“I’ll skirt the coast…with any luck, we’ll
pick up a lot of ship traffic. We can follow them in.”

Several hours later, Chase had managed to
steer the kip’t to a position just west of the main channel, just
outside Stanley Park, on the English Bay side. They surfaced
briefly and followed the contour of the seawall and biking trails
that led around toward Third Beach and the Lions Gate Bridge. The
aquarium was situated on a rocky headland near the bridge, looking
from offshore like a collection of huge seashells mounted on a
ridge. Pedestrians walked along the hiking paths cut into the
hillside and Chase could see an outdoor pavilion where more people
congregated.

“Angie’s in there, somewhere,” told his
passengers. “Somehow I’ve got to figure a way to get inside and
find her.”

“Perhaps there is an entrance from the
sea,” Pulkor suggested, hoping there wasn’t. This
eekoti
was a strange beast and he
already regretted the assignment from the Metah to accompany Chase.
The world of the Umans, to judge from their waters, was dirty,
noisy place, not suitable for intelligent life. Pulkor told himself
that Longsee and his engineers should abandon any thought of
emigrating to this world.

“Maybe you’re right,” Chase agreed. “But I’ll
have to wait until night…if I show up on the shore looking like
this—“he thought back to what had happened when Kloosee and Pakma
had done the same thing off Scotland Beach…the police officer had
opened fire immediately, people ran screaming in all
directions.

So he parked the kip’t beside an underwater
cave, just half a kilometer south of the bridge. There was a steady
flow of ship traffic beneath the bridge, passing between English
Bay and Burrard Inlet. Stanley Park was a small peninsula, sticking
out of the north shore of the city proper. The cave would mask
their presence well.

Now more or less hidden from the Umans,
Chase went out with Pulkor and Veskort to reconnoiter the area…and
to find something to eat. They found clam beds nearby, or what
Chase thought were clams…not greatly different from
ertleg
. Veskort was hungry enough to
give one a try, pulling off a leg and sucking the meat out. He made
a slight face, but pronounced it edible.

They gorged on the clams.

“Once it’s dark, I’m surfacing again,” Chase
told them. “I’m going ashore to try to find a way inside the
aquarium.”

So they rested for a few hours.

Dark came quickly and Chase planed the kip’t
upward toward the surface. He breached near the bridge pilings,
then scootered along the shore until they came to the headland
beneath the aquarium. By now, Veskort and Pulkor had grown more
accustomed to the proximity of Notwater; as long as the kip’t was
kept filled with water, they seemed okay. Veskort was always
anxious as they approached the surface, clicking and wheezing
nervously. Pulkor was calmer.

Chase found a narrow inlet and stopped the
kip’t just offshore. He discussed what they would do next. After
some discussion, it was decided that Chase would exit the kip’t
from deeper water and swim to shore. Pulkor would pilot the kip’t
back to the cave, if they could find it. In one hour, the Omtorish
prodsmen would return to the same inlet and Chase would be there,
ready to be picked up.

It was as good a plan as any.

Chase climbed out and headed ashore. Behind
him, the kip’t disappeared out of sight quickly, no doubt heading
for colder, deeper water. The Omtorish were nervous enough in Uman
waters. Surrounded by land and Notwater, they were mortified.

Chase crept up onto the beach. He saw no one
and began climbing the rock cliff as best he could. Here, he found
his outer skin armor helpful, for the crags and folds of the rock
were sharp and the footing uncertain. Finally, he made the top
ground, alongside a bike path.

No one was coming, so he hoisted himself
upright. Looking around, he was on a narrow path cut right into the
rock hillside. Bikers and hikers had an impressive view of English
Bay below, where the surf hissed and crashed against more
rocks.

He scrambled along the bike path and followed
it to the outer fencing of the aquarium, which he scaled easily. He
found himself in a parking lot, well lit and saw a truck was
following the driveway around from the front of the complex.

Chase hid behind some bushes. The truck
was pulling a trailer. Chase stared in fascination at the diorama
mounted on the trailer. It was an underwater scene, made out of
faux coral and plastic sea flowers, with a variety of
creatures—animatronic and robotic, he would learn later—stuck in a
variety of poses about the display. Most of the creatures seemed,
in the parking lot lamp light, to be menacing and threatening a
pair of small children, themselves animatronic figures. There were
several creatures that bore a resemblance to he and Angie. There
were two whales, standing upright improbably on hind legs, almost a
comical view of things. A few fake squids and octopi, rounded out
the display. Lights above winked on and off, a litany of horror
films and vids from the past…
Moby Dick…The
Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms…Creature from the Black
Lagoon….