The Farpool (62 page)

“You see what we’re up against. I’ve got to
keep the Twister online, at least until we get more ships into the
area. After that, we can talk. Sector Command can make a decision.
But without Commandstar—“ Dringoth’s voice trailed off, unwilling
even to explore that possibility.

Chase said he understood, though he really
didn’t, and said he would carry the news to the Omtorish, hovering
just offshore. He made his way awkwardly down the sand hill and
dove head first into the water. The kip’t was nearby.

Chase explained what Dringoth and Golich had
told him. “We’d better go talk with Longsee.” Kloosee said little
but he could pulse the dejection inside Chase…flat echoes, dead
bubbles, there was no hiding it. He turned the kip’t about and
headed for the project site a few beats away.

And the Time Twister continued its pounding
for the whole trip.

Discussions were muted, solemn, even resigned
around the encampment. Chase knew without being told that there was
now a hard limit on how long he and Angie could stay. He looked
about for Angie and eventually found her trying to sniff a
collection of scentbulbs that Pakma had given her. She was inside a
small canopied enclosure, next to a staging area for coils of
tchinting fiber. Chase poked his head under the flap and saw Angie
making faces as she tried to understand what the scents meant.
Finally, seeing Chase, she decided to give up analyzing the bulbs
and just sniff.

Chase told her what he had learned. “As soon
as the Sector is cleared of Coethi ships, the Twister can be
dismantled and re-located. Longsee says they’re going to mount it
on the T’orshpont seamount.”

“Where’s that?”

“The other side of the world, other side of
the Serpentines, up north. The noise will be blocked by the
mountains and won’t be as strong. The thing is that once it’s
dismantled, nobody knows for sure what will happen to the Farpool
and the wormhole. Longsee says it’ll probably collapse.”

Angie put down the scentbulb she had been
smelling. “Then I can’t get back. Chase, we can’t let them do that.
We can’t—“

Chase grabbed her by the shoulders,
tried staring into those green reptilian eyes. In spite of himself,
he shuddered. But it
was
Angie…somewhere in there.

“Hey, I know that, I understand… don’t go
ballistic already. We just have to make a big decision.”

Angie tore herself loose from his grasp
and lay her snout on a table laden with bulbs. She sniffed, one
after another. “You mean about the procedure…the
em’took?”

“Yeah…you want to do it, don’t you…go back to
like before?”

Angie couldn’t deny it. She waved a bulb in
front of her face and winced. It smelled like hog piss. “I want to
be Angie…the human Angie. I want to go home and be a teenaged girl
again. What’s wrong with that?”

Now it was Chase’s turn to sniff a few bulbs.
Most of them made him nauseated…the odors and smells were
concentrated inside and very powerful. He scrunched up his face,
put the bulbs back.

“Nothing. Except you heard Kloosee before. It
might not work. It’s risky. You could die.”

“I don’t care. I’ll take that chance.
This…
life,
it’s not for me.
Chase, what’s happened to us? We seem to be drifting
apart.”

“I know. I don’t like it either. But I’ve got
to stay here. They need me here. They don’t yell at me here. I’m
somebody other than Mack Meyer’s son here. That means a lot to
me.”

Now Angie looked at him, really looked at
him. He had a face like a gator…and just the thought of that
brought back bad memories. Her Dad had been a prof at the
University of Florida. A different kind of gator. Then he ran off
with that harpy Cecelia whateverhernamewas.

“Chase, remember when we first met. Algebra,
tenth grade. Mr. Winans—“

“Yeah, old Wino. But I was a junior.”

Now Angie reached out and they touched hands,
scaly reptilian hands. She closed her eyes and now they weren’t
freaky frogs in a waterworld anymore. Now, if she thought hard
enough, they were back at the Easter sock hop and dance and Chase
was with the Croc-Boys and even then, he looked like a lost little
surfer boy, blond curls in his eyes, deep tan, crooked smile trying
to act grownup.

“I first saw you at the hospital, Chase. Your
Dad was recovering from that holdup at the shop. You looked so
lost, so forlorn. I felt sorry for you. But you stuck that chin out
and that told me you weren’t going to let it get you down.”

“I was scared,” he admitted. “Nothing like
that had ever happened to me before. I didn’t know what to do, I
felt so helpless—“

Angie decided not to open her eyes. She liked
the images that were coming to her. “At the Easter dance, you
kissed that Valerie girl. We had a fight.”

Chase grinned. She didn’t see it, but she
could ‘feel’ his grin, just the way his face twitched. “She was a
lollipop…I don’t know what I was thinking. She was a roadie, hung
around with the Boys all the time. It never would have lasted.”

“You shouldn’t have kissed her…practically
right in front of me, you know.”

“Angie—“ his voice, modulated by the echopod,
seemed to turn serious. “I don’t want you to die. I thought you
were glad to come back with me…why did you come back, anyway?”

“That’s easy…I want to get modified
again. I want to be me again, not---
this
—“ She finally opened her eyes.

“You want to go home.”

“I want to go home. Don’t you?”

Chase shrugged. “Not just yet.”

They were quiet for a moment, then their
reverie was interrupted by Kloosee, who burst into the tent. He was
clearly agitated, his tail whipping from side to side.

“Have you heard?” Kloosee asked.

“What is it?” Angie said. “What’s wrong?”

“The repeaters are singing of a great
landslide, near Omsh’pont. Great destruction, a whole seamount
collapsed…it’s the wavemaker…all that noise and vibration. It’s all
over
ootkeeor.”

“In Omsh’pont?” Chase tried pulsing his
friend, but it was chaos, bubbles on top of bubbles, frenzied
echoes. He’d never seen Kloosee like this before.

“Near by. Longsee knows about it. Pakma, too.
We’re leaving in a few hours. There’ll be a small group left
behind, with the signaler, in case the Umans want to talk. But most
of us are going back.”

Angie was shocked, saddened and hopeful all
at the same time. She was sympathetic. “Kloos, that’s terrible. Was
anybody hurt?”

Kloosee could hardly stay still. “The
repeaters don’t say…the songs just tell of the landslide and the
destruction. From what I’ve heard, it sounds like many injuries,
perhaps many died. Shooki has judged us.”

The three of them discussed the news for
awhile, then Kloosee said he had to go. “I’ve got to get our kip’ts
ready. You’ll both ride with me and Pakma…we have a larger kip’t.
But I’ve got to get provisions, make sure the ones staying behind
know what to do.” Kloosee’s face was a grim mask, no longer the
slightly bemused smile so many Omtorish maintained. “I have to find
Pekto…he’s a repeater. I want him to ask for more details before we
leave.”

“Where’s Pakma now?” Angie asked. A thought
had just occurred to her.

“She’s with Klekor and some others…they’re
gathering gisu, ertleg, anything they can find for food. It’ll take
us three days, maybe more, to get back to Omsh’pont. Longsee’s
trying to find out if the Metah survived, or any of her court.”

Angie said, “I need to find Pakma. Point me
in the right direction.”

They left the tent and Kloosee took Angie to
a field over the top of some low hills, surrounding the ravine. The
water was bitterly cold but in the distance, Angie could see a
small gathering of kelke, hovering over a bed of plants that
sprouted from cracks in the lava tubes, plants warmed and enriched
by minerals seeping up from below the crust.

Pakma was there with two other females, Keeko
and Opont, collecting seed pods from the plants and rooting in
among the lava tubes for crab and gisu. Angie cruised up.

“Shoo’lee, eekoti
Angie,” Pakma murmured. She nuzzled Angie under the neck, a
manner of greeting Angie still had trouble getting used to. “You’ve
heard the news…the repeaters are so sad…so terrible—“

“I heard,” Angie admitted. “Kloosee said
we’re going back.”

“Yes, this is true…we’re
gathering
gotlak
here for the
kip’t…you haven’t had this before, have you? Tastes like
spicy
ertleg
.”

“Uh, Pakma, do you think you and I could,
like…kind of talk. I want to ask you some things.”

Pakma looked at her with curiosity,
pulsing something she couldn’t quite make out. “Surely…here—“ she
handed her sack to Keeko. “These two will continue…we’re leaving
very soon, you know. You and I will
vishtu
…we can roam about the hills
here—“

“Sure…but you’ll have to go slow…I’m not that
great a swimmer.”

Pakma took her hand and said, “Come, let’s
go.”

With a hard tail slap, Pakma scooted
off and Angie kicked to try and keep up. Soon, they were beyond
sight of the
gotlak
beds,
cruising over broken lava tubes and rubbly mounds of long-cooled
magma that looked like bread loaves to Angie, what she could see of
them. Small chunks of ice drifted by overhead.

They roamed for a few minutes. Then Angie
asked a question.

“Pakma, you know I want to go home. You
know I want to change myself back, go through the
em’took
again.”

Pakma was sad. “Yes, I have pulsed
this…you have great distress over this. But this is a great risk.
No one has ever gone back through
em’took
…and survived. You are welcome here,
among my kelke. Stay with us.”

“I can’t, Pakma. But Chase wants to. We
disagree all the time. My question is this: do you ever have a
situation in your relationships when one of you wants something and
the other wants something else and you can’t get through that, you
can’t get over it?”

For a few moments, Pakma said nothing. They
roamed further, Angie struggling to keep up with Pakma’s effortless
stroke. It was cold and dark and Angie could see little.

“Eekoti
Angie,
you have been all over our world, have you not?”

“A lot of it, yeah, I have—“

“Then you know there are many currents
in our world. The Omt’chor, the Sk’ork, even the Ponk’el Currents.
Many cross currents too. There are places where the currents clash,
where the water is…we say
mee’tor’kel
…I hope your pod translates that
okay.”

“It comes through as rough, turbulent. I get
the idea.”

“Eekoti
Angie,
we Omtorish, all the kelke are like this. Currents and
cross-currents. It is better to flow with the current than against
it. We call this
shoo’kel
.
You know this phrase?”

Pakma let Angie grasp hold of her tail,
so she could keep up. “I think so…my pod calls it clear water, calm
water…even something, oh, yeah. God light.
That
I don’t understand exactly…but I get the
picture.”

“When currents clash,
eekoti
Angie, even inside of us,
even between us, all Omtorish, even the Ponkti, are raised to do
whatever is needed to keep shoo’kel…to stay in balance. You cannot
read the inner echoes of others as we can…you don’t pulse as we
do.”

Angie gave that some thought. “Maybe not
quite like you…but we read faces, body language. We have words. We
study eyes, how a person’s lips and mouth change. That tells us a
lot about what they’re thinking.”

“Eekoti
Angie,
when there is conflict between kelke, each must do what is needed
to restore balance. Shoo’kel…the smooth current…flowing with the
current…we strive for this. You understand?”

Angie said, “I think so. So you think I
should do what Chase wants, whatever it takes to keep our
relationship going?”

“No, this I did not mean. Our relationships
are different. We are not bonded for life in the same way…you call
this marriage.”

“Chase and I aren’t married, Pakma.”

“But when you talk of
eekoti
Chase, I pulse
shoo’kel
inside you…currents don’t
lie. They’re swift and straight when you talk of
eekoti
Chase.”

“I guess I can’t hide anything from you, can
I? Maybe Chase too.”

Pakma said, “To keep
shoo’kel
, that is the most important
thing to us. Between kelke, among the em’kel, among the larger
kels. We don’t always achieve this. But this we strive
for.”

They had circled the small ravine and
returned to the small fleet of kip’ts. Overhead, ice floes seemed
to be thickening. Pakma told Angie they should find Kloosee and
help with loading and provisioning.

“Shoo’kel
is
greatly disturbed in Omsh’pont…the repeaters sing of great
destruction. We need to leave very soon.”

Angie allowed that she understood that much
very well. Pakma and Kloosee just wanted to go home.

So did Angie. But she also understood
that she and Chase seemed to have crossed some kind of irrevocable
line. They had differing ideas on just what
home
meant.

The trip west and south took the Omtorish
fleet most of three days. It was crowded in the kip’t, with Chase
piloting, Pakma directly behind him. Chase and Angie squeezed into
the aft end of the cockpit, nearly cheek to cheek. It was
uncomfortable and strained for both of them. They said little, were
exaggeratedly polite to each other and for hours on end, were each
lost in their own world. Angie closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
But she was so blasted freakin’ cold, she could only shiver and
even the warmth of Chase nearby didn’t stop the shivers.