The Farpool Read Online Free Page A

direction—
    Only when the water calmed did both of them
catch a breath. Kloosee checked the sounder…clear ahead and the
rocky seafloor was opening up and spreading out, giving onto a
steep tongue of seafloor that led straight down to the Omme’tee,
the vast abyssal plain that covered much of the central Omt’orkel
Sea.
    The seamounts of Omsh’pont were now less than
two hundred beats away.
    Kloosee had been thinking about what
Pakma said. He liked Pakma; they had a lot in common. Sure, she
wasn’t too keen about joining his em’kel ; but she was strong and smart and she had
her own ideas about things. She was an artist with the
scentbulbs….people still talked about her first big show,
the Puk’lek it was called.
Really, it took something special to do that.
    He knew Pakma had learned to create and
appreciate scentbulbs from an early age. One of her first
accomplishments as a scentbulb artist was to capture and catalog
scents from seamothers who occasionally wandered into Omtorish
waters in small packs. In this, she exposed herself to considerable
danger, but she was able to obtain scents and smells from
seamothers in a variety of states: eating, sleeping, copulating, in
distress, fighting. The traces were in the waters of the Om’metee,
south of the traditional seamother feeding grounds…not far from
where they were now. Technically, the waters were off-limits, but
Pakma ignored the regulations.
    That’s what Kloosee liked about her. He was
attracted to Pakma, so he always liked to say, because she was so
sure of herself. She was gifted, and she knew it. She was strong
willed and he liked that too. He particularly enjoyed sparring with
Pakma, physically and intellectually, though Kloosee knew he
himself was no great intellect.
    “I am going to tell Longsee what we found,” he decided. “The
project’s not going anywhere…the Mektoo are getting restless. And
if the Metah decides to stop supporting us…” he let that lie where
it was, not wanting to finish the thought.
    “I just hope they let us make another
trip…and the Umans don’t do anything to mess with the Farpool…they
don’t even realize what we’ve found.”
    “No, and we should keep it that way. The
Umans can fight their wars, if they want. Leave the Farpool to
us….”
    They both grew more and more excited as
the echoes of their home became stronger and clearer. Presently,
the towering seamounts of Omsh’pont sounded strong and sure and
when the murk cleared, the great city finally lay before them.
Kloosee slowed the kip’t down
to approach speed and homed on the signals from the Kelktoo lab,
occupying several domes and pavilions along the southwest ramparts
of the central mesa of the city.
    “Homewaters—“ breathed Pakma, taking in a big
gulp. She savored the scents and odors and whiffs and aromas of
everything she had grown up with…the accumulated wisdom and noisy
clamor and clashing pulses of the only place she had ever called
home.
    Omsh’pont…heart and soul, the shoo’kel of life itself. Calm and
clear waters everywhere you pulsed.
    “Litorkel ge ,”
she breathed.
    Kloosee had to agree. It was a hoary
old saying but it was comfortable too. “ Litorkel ge —“
    They drifted toward the landing pads of the
Kelktoo labs.
    By sight, Omsh’pont could barely be seen in
the silt and murk of the central sea of Omt’orkel, but even a
cursory pulse would betray the outlines of a great city. The main
axes were wedged in between towering seamounts, held, as it were,
in the bosom of the mountains atop a flat mesa-like plateau in the
middle.
    Pulse in any direction and you would learn of
domes and pavilions and floatways and more domes, interspersed with
cylindrical structures and pyramids and cones, a geometric forest
of cubes and humps and tent-like coverings, all of it crammed and
pungent with noisy, honking, bellowing, clicking, snorting
life…that was Omsh’pont, the city of Om’t.
    The Kelktoo was the largest and