The Farpool (59 page)

Workmen climbed out of the truck cab and
helped guide the driver as he backed the trailer-diorama into a
small garage. As Chase watched, the garage doors came down. Nobody
came out again. It seemed as if the garage was connected to some
part of the aquarium interior, perhaps a workshop.

That gave Chase an idea. He made his way back
to the shoreline and waited for Pulkor and Veskort to arrive in the
kip’t.

“It’s some kind of exhibit,” Chase explained.
“They trot it out during the day, out front of the aquarium, I
guess. At night, they wheel the trailer back inside. That’s my way
in.”

Pulkor tried to follow the echopod
translation. It was clear that he didn’t fully understand what
Chase was describing.

“Eekoti
Chase,
what will you do inside?”

Chase hadn’t really given that much that. “If
Angie’s in there, I’ve got to figure a way to get her out. We
managed to release Kloosee and Pakma from a similar place in
Scotland Beach. Maybe that will work here too.”

Veskort was skeptical. He clicked and wheezed
and Chase’s echopod couldn’t keep up. Most of it came out like
noise.

“Shkreeeah
….
kkkkllllccckkk
….if
eekoti
Angie does not want to come
back?”

Chase got the gist of the question. It had
troubled him too. He wasn’t sure where their relationship
stood.

“I have to see her. I can’t explain it better
than that. You know…ke’shoo and ke’lee…life and love. We love each
other…we always talked about getting married…how do you say
it…bonded something or other—“

Pulkor was sympathetic. He nuzzled his
beak around Chase’s nose…a common Omtorish endearment. “We
are
tekmetah
to help
you,
eekoti
Chase. But I do
not know if we can go back through the Farpool….or if we can even
find it.” This made Pulkor sad. “Here
you
are in homewaters. We are
visitors.”

Aware of proposals to emigrate from Seome,
Chase said, “Someday this may be your homewaters too.”

Veskort spat. “
Kah
, it’s a bad idea…Longsee—“ His whole body
shuddered with disgust. “Some kelke have dreams that should stay
dreams.”

The three of them occupied the rest of the
daylight hours by reconnoitering the bays and inlets around Stanley
Park, recording scents and sounds, taking measurements. Chase had
never been to Vancouver, the Pacific or to Canada, for that matter.
They ate clams and slept, cavorted with local dolphins—Veskort
pronounced them crude beasts “—like Ponkti, but without prods…” As
the sun dropped, Chase piloted the kip’t back to the small inlet
they had first visited and hovered just below the surface of the
water.

“Wish me luck,” he muttered as he climbed
out.

Pulkor said, “Shooki is with
you,
eekoti
Chase.” The
cockpit hatch was closed and sealed, the kip’t scooted off into
deeper waters and Chase stroked for the surface and the rock-strewn
beach below the headland. Breaching, he took a quick look around,
spying a few bicycles on the trail above. Otherwise the headland
and cliff seemed unoccupied. He climbed out.

Chase found that by scrambling from bush to
bush, he could make the roadside and soon disappeared into a hedge.
He heard a distant voice and peered out.

A man in some kind of preposterous green fish
suit was waving a placard back and forth at bikers and hikers and
the occasional airboard as they streamed by. Squinting into the
afternoon sun, Chase could just make out the words on the
placard:

Terrors of the Deep

Come see Sheena

Goosebumps and Ice Cream at 4pm

Pavilion Entrance

On impulse, Chase rose up out of the hedges
and walked deliberately toward the man in the fish suit. The
sign-waver spotted him, froze momentarily, then slowly put down the
placard and backed away, fear growing on his face.

“It’s okay, man…I’m your replacement.”
Chase wondered what
that
sounded like, coming out of his echopod.

The man said something like: “Jeez, what the
f—“, then wheeled about and fled down the side of the road. He
didn’t look back.

Chase picked up the sign, waved it at some
passing power walkers and didn’t miss a beat.

The walkers were two young girls. They
giggled and waved back shyly.

Now to work my way toward
that exhibit
. He slowly maneuvered himself to the
front entrance of the Vancouver Aquarium, spotted the marquee,
displaying words that mimicked what he had first seen on the flyer
from the fishing scow, and when he figured no one was looking, he
clambered into the exhibit and found himself a comfortable sitting
position, directly below a robotic man wielding a
trident.

He didn’t have long to wait.

The sun had just dropped below the cliffs
when a truck pulled up. Two men got out, secured a chain to the
trailer upon which the exhibit was mounted, smoked and chuckled a
few moments, then got back in the truck. The exhibit trailer
lurched and jerked and was soon rolling along behind the truck.

They turned into a driveway and went around
back of the aquarium, where the trailer was backed into the same
garage he had seen the day before. The men secured the trailer and
some gear, smoked some more, popped a few cans of something, then
lowered the garage door and disappeared outside.

Chase waited a few minutes to be sure he was
alone. When he was sure, he extricated himself from the clutches of
the man with the trident and hopped down onto the garage floor.

There were two doors in the corner, both
locked.

Chase soon found a crowbar in the bed of the
truck and popped one of the doors. He crept inside, still
brandishing the crowbar. It led into a series of workshops and
utility lockers. Past the inner door, he found himself in a long
curving corridor, lined with tiles done up to resemble scales and
waves…a true marine look.

How tacky
, he
thought.
Even Gulfside doesn’t do
that
.

There were signs posted for him to
follow:
Tropic Zone, the Wild Coast,
Clownfish Cove.
He wondered where they might have put
Angie. Then he heard something. Gulfside used sentry bots for
nighttime security. Perhaps Vancouver did too. Chase found a closet
and hid.

Once the hall was clear again, he
stepped out, now acutely aware of the security cameras above, and
how exposed he was. He studied the visitor maps—
You Are Here
—and decided to check out both
the
Graham Amazon Gallery
and
Treasures of the B.C.
Coast.

He found Angie lolling in the shallows of the
Amazon Gallery.

Stifling a cry, Chase splashed into the water
and knelt down. Angie startled awake and jerked back, then realized
who it was. They looked at each other for a moment, all scales and
fins and armored skin, then hugged tightly. They thought to kiss,
but each found the other’s face so disgusting, they couldn’t.

“Chase…how…where…how’d you find me--?
Chase…oh, it’s been so—“

He put a hand to her mouth.
“
Shhhh!
There are sentry bots
around…keep quiet!”

They both partially submerged in the waters
while wheels trundled outside the gallery. Chase assumed there were
cameras watching everything, but the bots passed by the gallery and
didn’t come in.

Finally, Chase pulled Angie up out of the
water. They hugged again.

“How did you—?

Chase said, “It’s a long story. I was worried
about you…what happened?”

Angie told him about how the Farpool had
deposited her in the north Pacific, how she had followed a pod of
whales, how she’d been anesthetized and brought to the aquarium.
“I’m their prize exhibit…can you believe it…just like Kloosee and
Pakma. Chase…you really do look disgusting. Get me out of this
place.”

“I plan to. I came with two fellows from
Omt’or. Pulkor and Veskort. They’re prodsmen, kind of like police
or something. We came in a kip’t.” He explained how they had found
out where she was. “The kip’t is just offshore. We’re supposed to
rendezvous just below that cliff, other side of the bridge. We
agreed they’d be there every day just after sunset. What time is
it?”

Angie attempted a shrug, then realized nobody
could tell if she was shrugging. “How should I know? I look like a
frog on steroids.”

Chase spied a clock on the wall. Near
sunrise. “Come on. We can make it while it’s still dark outside.
We’ll just have to hide until sunset tonight, then get into the
water.”

They waited until they were sure the sentry
bots were not around, then clambered out of the pool. Padding as
softly as they could, Chase led her back to the garage, where he
showed her the aquarium exhibit and diorama.

“They roll this out to the front entrance
every day at opening. It’s supposed to attract more visitors. At
night, they roll it back inside here. I hid there—“ he pointed to a
clump of fake rocks, and the “man” with the trident. “—right below
Diver Dan there.”

The two of them crept carefully out of the
garage and made their along the edge of the driveway to the
aquarium front entrance. A huge sign, now dark, proclaimed the
aquarium’s new exhibits and operating hours.

Angie sniffed. “I hope they charged extra for
me.”

Out on the highway, Chase had an idea. “It’s
a good couple of miles along this road back to the bridge. We’re
bound to run into traffic if we walk. But look…there are weeds and
brush along the side. What say we make like salamanders and sort of
crawl, you know---through the weeds.”

Angie tried to make a face, then gave up.
They dropped to their hands and feet and started slithering through
the grass.

“I hope there aren’t snakes in these weeds,”
she said.

Chase was ahead of her, wriggling his scaly
ass back and forth like an alligator. “If there are, I’m not sure
who’ll scare who. You look pretty frightening.”

For that, he got a pinch right in the
rump.

They made it to the bridge and slithered down
the rocks and grass to the stony spit of land that passed for a
beach. Chase saw that the sun was already peaking over the tops of
the cliff to the east of Park Drive. At least, no cars or trucks
were coming.

“We’d better hide here, Angie. Make yourself
invisible…just cover yourself with weeds and brush…here, I’ll help
you.”

They spent the next ten hours like that,
buried in high grass along the north shore of Stanley Park,
fighting off flies and fleas and gnats and other things that made
Angie cringe. The irony that she looked like an enlarged version of
many of the creatures wasn’t lost on either of them. They cuddled,
sort of, and talked.

Finally, Angie said, “I’m thirsty.”

“Well, I don’t have a canteen. Swallow a few
times. It’ll go away. Hey, did they feed you right at the
aquarium?”

“Oh, sure…some cod, some herring, whole fish
too. I thought I might ask for some fillets with French fries, but
I didn’t.”

Chase sat up on his side, propped on an
elbow, chewing on the stem of a grass blade. The sun overhead was
warm, not hot, and low, hidden partly by clouds scudding by
overhead. It looked like rain.

“Hey, Cookie—“ he knew perfectly well she
hated that sobriquet. “—I was worried about you. I came back, to
see if you wanted to come back. To Seome, I mean.”

Angie lay back in the grass and watched the
clouds roll by. “I’m glad you came back, Flip. Really I am. I don’t
know what I was thinking…I wasn’t expecting to wind up like this. I
sort of thought I’d be okay going back through the Farpool. But I
want to stay here…it’s home. I just want to be home.”

“You’ll have to come back if you want
Kloosee and Pakma and the Omtorish to change you back…go back to
what you were. It won’t happen here. Reversing the
em’took
can’t be done
here.”

“I know that,” Angie said softly. She
felt something like a tear forming in the corner of her
eye—
jeez, now I’ve got actual crocodile
tears.
“But that place, Seome, Omt’or, Ponk’et…it’s
so…so---“ What
was
she trying
to say? “So different. I mean I like Kloosee and Pakma and me were
getting close…I guess I sort of miss her. Learning about the
scentbulbs and all. But there’s so much conflict there, Chase. It’s
like a war could break out any day. And the Umans. And that
machine…how do they live with that noise?”

“I don’t know,” Chase said. “There is a plan
to emigrate here, occupy Earth’s oceans, come through the Farpool
and set up shop right here…the Pacific, the Atlantic.”

“What
?”

“It’s true. It’s controversial…nobody’s said
anything official. But the guys with me, Pulkor and Veskort,
they’re supposed to take more measurements, do some recon, that
sort of thing.”

“Chase, tell me the truth. You like living on
Seome, don’t you? You want to stay there, make a life there, don’t
you?”

Now Chase was quiet. Offshore, a small boat
puttered by the rocky beach…early morning fishermen hunting schools
of something. They both lay back down in the weeds, reasonably sure
they couldn’t be seen. Above them, horns honked. Traffic was
building by the hour along Park Drive. Hikers and joggers could be
heard too, clip-clopping along the trails.