The Farpool Read Online Free Page B

most
influential of all the em’kels…the traditional house of learning
with its academies and labs and observatories and institutes and
societies and foundations and studios. The project leader was none
other than Longsee lok kel: Om’t, a name that evoked respect in
every sea around the world.
    Kloosee and Pakma parked the kip’t and supervised lab attendants
as they unhooked the cargo pod and steered it off to a nearby
conservatory for initial exams and feeding. The two of them headed
for the floatway leading to the Lab itself, situated under an array
of tents and canopies halfway up the outer flanks of the seamount
T’or, the tallest sentinel in the city.
    Longsee was studying something under a
beatscope when they arrived. He looked up, pulsed them happily and
they all hugged like long lost friends.
    “How was it, going through Farpool this time?
I’ve heard it’s getting rougher…harder to navigate…did you come out
at the right place and time?” Longsee’s innards bubbled like a
steam vent; he did that when he was excited and the old Director
didn’t get excited about much lately.
    Kloosee told him. “It was rough…you have to
be very precise how you control it. We were able to hit our target
within a few weeks and close to our location…but it was close.”
    Longsee understood. “Instabilities are
growing. We’ll need to do more analyses, do a better job at
predicting how it operates. Probably the Umans are doing something
with their weapon that’s affecting it.”
    Pakma added, “That’s what we want to talk to
you about…the Umans.”
    But Longsee was already focused on other
things. The project director was single-minded in wanting to learn
more about the home world of the Umans…it was only by chance the
Farpool had made that possible. “You’ve brought back more specimens
I see.”
    Kloosee looked at Pakma. “The same type. Only
one this time. We had trouble with the breathing pod…the creature
didn’t want to use it, so we had to sedate him. Now—“Beyond the
canopy of the lab, they could see their captive inside the
containment tank, part water, part Not-Water, circling and probing
the tank confines restlessly. The structure was an enclosure built
out from the side of the seamount. “—this specimen seems to be
male, possibly very young.”
    Longsee was already moving in that direction.
“Let’s see—tell me about the capture…did you talk with it?”
    The three of them floated to the containment
hold. The transparent pen was filled with treated water, but air
captured from Seome’s atmosphere, the Not-Water, had been added to
the hold, as the captive was an air-breathing creature.
    They couldn’t pulse directly through the
structure, so they listened to its squeaks and whistles, and
watched.
    Longsee ventured a question. “You had no
conversations?”
    Pakma felt sorry for the thing. “We don’t
understand its language at all. It’s not like anything here…maybe
it’s not so intelligent after all.”
    Longsee adjusted some controls, bringing up
the bio-luminescent lighting to full. “That’s still to be
determined…from what I can tell, the specimen is of the same
category as others you’ve brought back. It’s just a matter of
analyzing the sounds it makes—“
    “They seem to use no tools we can find…they
live in open water, in small groups—that’s true—but they have no
observed technology, no communities like ours, no obvious
civilization of any type,” Kloosee said. “Longsee, we both saw
something that made us think these creatures are not the most
intelligent beings on the planet of the Umans.”
    Longsee turned sharply. He pulsed
Kloosee, finding only shoo’kel , calm and controlled. No lies, no
deceit there. “What are you saying? That there’s another
species?”
    Pakma related what had happened with the
Tailless people in the surface craft, how they had assaulted
Kloosee with a long rod. “We had to suppress them…they