“You were dead?”
“Technically. For a while.”
Pua stared at her. “Wow!”
Angie smiled. Telling the story had somehow made it easier to accept. She had told it to others, of course, but never to one who had known what the experience had done to her. Troubleshooters made a point of never admitting to true terror.
“Maybe we should go down to the ocean,” Pua said cautiously.
“It's now or never,” Angie said. “I only have so much in the way of guts, and I'm pushing my limit right now. Sink, so I can watch.” Her hands had become alien again, twisting into rigid fists at her sides. Or did that mean they had become more a part of her? She was sure her own hands would not have been relaxed at this moment.
Pua cocked her head. Slowly, the awe left her eyes. “Why should this be any harder for you to do than closing the hatch on the flitter?” she asked.
Angie closed her eyes. I don't know who taught you to deal with panic, Waterbaby, but they were good. I thank them most sincerely, She met Pua's carefully neutral look again.
“Sink,” she said.
Pua grinned, blinked nictitating membranes into place, and slid beneath the clear, cold water. Her hair spread in a dark cloud around her. Just as Angie wondered how she would keep the long strands from tangling in her fanning gills, Pua scooped her hair over her shoulders and knotted it at the back of her neck.
She looked upward through the water and offered Angie an openmouthed grin. Bubbles bounced upward along her cheeks. The golden necklace floated for a moment, then sank and settled. Her gills bulged slowly open and began a rhythmic pulsing.
When she surfaced a moment later, the gill flaps sealed shut smoothly and instantly.
“You didn't do anything,” Angie said.
“You don't have to do anything,” Pua replied. “You don't even have to open your mouth if you don't want to, but I like to taste what's around me.”
Angie reached out to touch Pua's neck. Pua jerked back. “Don't do that!” she said. “Don't ever do that!”
“I just wanted to feel...”
“Here on Lesaat, your gills are your life, Mountainlady. Never let anyone touch your neck. If you try to touch someone else's, they'll think you're trying to kill them.”
“Kill them?”
“If you get in a fight,” Pua said, “and the other guy reaches for your gills, move fast. Rip his out first.”
Angie stared at her.
“When somebody's gills get touched without permission,” Pua said, “somebody dies. That's the way it is.”
Angie could see that Pua was speaking the truth. A sudden thought struck her. “Have you ever killed anyone, Pua?”
Pua's face closed so tight and so fast that Angie couldn't even guess what she was hiding.
“I promised I'd help you go under the water,” Pua said a moment later. She was still frowning. “So, let's do it. You come down with me this time.”
Slowly, Angie followed her underwater. At first she felt nothing, only the cold water caressing her face. She held her breath, lips pressed tightly closed, and lifted a hand to a tickling at the sides of her neck. Abruptly, an unexpected surge of adrenaline sent her bursting back to the surface. She fought for breath, heart racing.
Pua popped up and spat a mouthful of water. “What happened? You were doing fine.”
Angie forced her breathing to slow. “I don't know. I wasn't down there long enough to get this scared.”
Pua instantly looked contrite. “Oh, the adrenaline. I forgot to tell you about that part. You get a rush whenever your gills come fully open. It triggers the oxygen absorption.”
Spit! Angie thought. Then she thought again. She had been accused more than once of being an adrenaline junkie, of taking on high-percentage risks just for the natural biochemical kicks they provided. Angie had never been one to disavow the claims. Her adrenaline highs were much more exciting than any artificial stimulants she had ever tried.
“Maybe I can learn to live with this after all,” she muttered. She crossed her legs and sank to the sandy bottom of the pool. She had to blow out all the air in her lungs to sink fully.
Pua squatted in front of her. Angie watched, fascinated, as the girl's gills fanned, fluttered, and settled into their steady rhythm. They seemed as much a natural part of her as her long, slender hands, which rested calmly now on her upraised knees.
Angie's second adrenaline rush was not as pronounced as the first, since her system was already well stimulated, but she recognized it when it came. She smiled slightly, and Pua cautiously smiled back. A trickle of bubbles escaped from one corner of Angie's mouth. She blew out lightly, and more bubbles floated up.
Water seeped into her mouth. I should be able to just swallow it, she thought. She tried it, and the cold water slid into her stomach like ice. She needed to take a breath.
Angie closed her eyes and forced herself to picture oxygen filtering through her gills, sliding effortlessly into her bloodstream, slowly refilling her lungs. She needed to breathe!
Pua took her hands. Angie met her distorted look through the water, snapped her nictitating membranes into place, and met it again. Pua lifted the thumb of one hand in the signal for all's well. I'm suffocating! Angie tried to tell her, but Pua did not release her hands. Water filled her opened mouth. She tried to pull away, but was stopped by Pua's superior strength.
Angie panicked, and gasped for air...
Her nose and mouth filled with water. Frigid liquid sang in her ears. I'm drowning! She remembered the experience very clearly. The darkness would come next. Then the suffocating tightness of her body closing down from the inside out.
But nothing more happened.
Pua still held her hands tight. Trembling, Angie forced herself to remain sitting at the bottom of the pool.
Pua nodded, very somberly, and gave her the thumbs-up signal once more. Oh, mother of mountains, they work! Angie thought. The damned gills work! The realization brought her more horror than the touch of the water had.
I am so afraid, Angie admitted to herself suddenly. I am so afraid of this place, this water, this body that is no longer entirely mine. She met Pua's look again. I am so afraid of you, Pualeiokekai Pukui.
It was the first time since Angie had awakened from the fire that she had admitted fully to her terror. It was the first time in her life that she could remember allowing anyone to share so intimate a glimpse of her personal vulnerability.
How can I cry without air? Angie wondered.
Abruptly, Pua let go of her hands. She stood like some fearless water sprite and walked from the pool, gathering Angie's clothing along the way. Very carefully, Angie followed. Her gills sealed instantly shut as she took a deep, deep breath of Pukui's golden air.
She bent to retrieve her shirt from atop the bush where Pua had tossed it, and tied it sideways around her waist. The rest of her clothes were too dirty to put back on now. She noticed an orange stain spread over the toe of one her boots.
Pua was standing a few meters downhill of the pool, with her arms crossed and her back turned. Angie doubted it was because of modesty. What's wrong now? she wondered. The sweet scent of candleberry surrounded her. The aftersmell of the soap.
There was a long silence. Then Pua said, “Why did you say that about my mother?” The anger, the suspicion, the deep, deep sadness—were all back in her voice.
“What are you talking about?” Angie asked.
Pua turned. Her eyes were much angrier than her voice. Angie was suddenly glad they were no longer in the water.
“To Toma. Why did you say that about him and my mom?”
Angie thought quickly. When had she...
“I was under the house this morning,” Pua said. “I heard everything you said to him.”
“Oh, dear god,” Angie breathed. She heard me ask him if he'd been having sex with her mother!
“Pua, I was only—”
“My mother was good! She was better than you'll eve
r be, even if you do climb mountains and save people from fires and—!”
“I was interrogating him, Pua. I was trying to startle him into saying something he might not otherwise say.”
“But it wasn't true!”
“Of course it wasn't true.” Angie took a step toward her. “Pua, every single thing I've heard or seen or learned since I've been here tells me that your parents were devoted to each other—and to this place, and to you. I did not mean to question your mother's integrity.”
Pua's eyes narrowed. “You wanted to have sex with Toma yourself, didn't you?”
Angie sighed. This had gone far enough. “Troubleshooters often share sex, Pua,” she said, “and Toma had just told me he was one. His offer, and my response, had nothing to do with anything else that was going on.” She lifted a hand. “Look, Pua—”
“If you touch me, I'll kill you, Mountainlady!”
Angie stopped.
Far enough, indeed. “You won't kill me, and you know it. Not while you're still under my protection.”
“I don't need you to protect me!”
“You need me if you want to stay on this planet,” Angie said. She pointed toward the lagoon. “You need me if you want to save that damned reef!”
Pua's chin trembled.
“Our reasons for being here differ,” Angie said, trying to control her own frustration. It wasn't the girl she was angry with. This whole situation was impossible. “But we're working toward the same goal. If we're going to work together, or at least not against each other, you've got to stop judging my motives by every separate thing I do or say.”
“You're just—”
“She's right, Pua. Listen to her.”
Angie and Pua both spun around at the man's voice. It was Toma. He was standing at the head of the path leading back to the house.
“Get off my property!” Pua shouted.
“Pua, listen—”
“Go away!”
“Why are you still here?” Angie demanded. “You said you were going back to Landing.”
Toma gave her a long, dark look. The wet shirt clung to her legs, clammy now in the on-shore breeze.
“I changed my mind,” he said. “My office staff has taken care of your requisitions; the first load of extra swimmers is already in the water at number twelve. I decided to stay and keep an eye on things.”
He turned to Pua. “We need to talk.”
“I don't want to talk to you,” Pua cried. “You murdered Mama and Daddy, and now you're trying to take Pukui away from me, too.”
“I didn't—”
“You were our friend, Uncle Toma! You were our family!”
Toma grabbed her by the shoulders. “Pualei, I did not kill them!” There was a movement near the path. Angie saw Fatu there, ready as always to protect the girl. Before either of them could intervene, Pua twisted in Toma's hands. She slipped away from his hold and snaked her long fingers toward his neck.
“No, Pua!” Fatu called, but Toma jerked back and turned quickly away. Pua's nails caught his shoulder instead of his gills. They ripped through cloth and skin. He quickly moved farther back.
“Pukui is mine!” Pua screamed. “Go away!”
Toma pressed a hand over his bleeding shoulder and glanced at Angie.
“You heard her,” Angie said.
“You've got a job out here that you haven't even begun to understand, Warden,” he said. “You're going to need all the help you can get.” He glared at her for a moment more, then turned back toward the house and docks. Like a massive shadow, Fatu followed.
When Angie turned back to the pool, Pua was gone.
Chapter 11
Pua splashed across the overflow stream and headed straight downhill. She thrashed through the thick undergrowth, cursing at the stinging tugs of the nettle-bush seeds and stomping aside clinging friendly vines. Because of the tide, she had to run, then wade a long way across the shallow fringing reef, before she could swim. When she finally did submerge, she welcomed the rush of adrenaline. She used it to refuel her anger.
She swam toward the farm pass, so as not to meet any of the work crews traveling back and forth to number twelve. She would go outside the barrier reef, she decided, swim naked in the deep ocean, all the way to Landing, and be damned with them all.
Then she changed her mind. “It's my lagoon!” she shouted. “I can swim in it if I want!” She turned back. A pigfish blundered blindly into her, squealed, and bumbled away. It was the only living thing that came near.
This swim was far different from the one she had taken the night before. Then, even with Fatu beside her, the rays had swum close, sliding their wings along her body and sharing their warmth and their speed. The reef and its multitude of occupants had sung to her of home, and the glowing nighttime sea had brought her comfort.
Now she swam alone. The sea around her was empty, and she could feel nothing but her own rage. She knew it was her own broadcasting of her anger that kept the reef dwellers away. How are you going to feel, she asked them silently, when you find out I brought a once-dead woman back to swim in our lagoon? She wondered if she would ever get the tide-pissing woman into the lagoon. Why had everything gone so wrong?
The rumbling vibration of the disposal barge entered her consciousness. She surfaced to watch from a distance as it lumbered slowly along the upper end of the number-twelve pen. Its surface pipes sucked in steady streams of dead and dying algae to feed its grumbling furnaces, while its screeching winches periodically lifted sections of the net up and through the compression rollers. Acrid green-black smoke billowed from the barge's tall stacks.
“Fire,” Pua muttered. “That's her element.” She thought of the snow trees and the woman's obvious emotional response to them. “And the land,” she added grudgingly.
Still, it had been the water that had made the woman cry. Pua felt her own eyes sting as she recalled that terrifying, exhilarating moment in the bathing pool when the Earther had admitted openly to her fear. It had been that one moment of complete honesty that had given Pua the strength to leave her there unharmed.
Pua had held her anger in all morning just waiting for that moment, and then ... She sank until only her eyes were above water, so she wouldn't have to smell the burning algae.
“I don't know what to do,” she said into the sea. “I don't know who to trust.” Le Fe'e offered no answer.
She dove deep again.
She wasn't sure anymore if Toma had murdered her parents. Fatu said he couldn't have, and from the woman's voice through the library floor, Pua suspected she didn't believe Toma guilty either. Pua had seen true sorrow on Toma's face, heard it in his voice and felt it in his hands.
But if he hadn't done it, or hadn't at least condoned it, then who had? And why had he fought so hard with her father, trying to get him to give up the enzyme research after all they had been through to develop and protect it? Toma had always helped Pukui before, imposing Company policy only as strictly as necessary to get the Company to leave the farm alone. He had been her uncle. He had been her friend.
Well, he wasn't her uncle now. And she had no friends, except for Fatu and Pukui itself. She wished the rays would come closer. She pulled the tiny snowball from her pocket and rolled it between her fingers. It glistened pale green in the refracted sunlight. It was cool, even in the water.
Pua had found her other snowballs that morning, while she was under the house listening to Toma and the warden. Katie had buried the shiny balls, one each, under Pua's coral markers. Without light, they had remained solid and bright, undamaged, unmelted. According to Katie's mumbled explanation, she had put them there for safekeeping until Pua's return. Pua drifted for a moment with the smooth gem pressed against her cheek.
She could think of nothing, nothing she could do but follow the—
She kicked suddenly for the surface. A ray jumped and splashed far ahead.
“I have to do what she says!” she called to it. “I don't have any choice. I have to
do what she says.”
For now, she amended silently. She slipped just beneath the surface and swam hard after the ray. As if sensing her changed mood, the ray pack turned and sped back to meet her. In the frenzied collision of their greeting, they tumbled and turned until Pua was choking on her own laughter.
“Come on,” she said finally, clicking her nails to give them the message in a language they understood. “Let's go look at that stupid algae.”
She grabbed the nearest ray's forewings and swung onto its back. When she bumped it with her knees, it surged forward so quickly that she almost lost her hold.
As they approached the barge, the ray slowed and she dropped off. She shooed the pack away and swam closer to the human work crews. The swimmers were idling under the barge, holding onto handbars or just drifting in the warm, smelly water. They were taking a break while another load of algae was sucked from the net.
Only a few of the swimmers noticed Pua's approach; fewer yet acknowledged it with more than a frown or a curious glance at her hands and feet. Pua was glad she had left her clothes on. Fatu had been right about that—and about the small number of old-time Pukui crew left on-site. She saw only three that she knew well—they were the ones who had smiled or nodded when she came near. She recognized some of the others—they were regulars on Company harvest crews. Two of the new Pukui recruits, as well as two others she had seen on the shuttle, were also among the workers. The rest were all strangers.
She wondered why so many old-timers had left. She doubted it was because of larger bonuses offered elsewhere, as the Company had claimed. More likely it had to do with the five Pukui squid who had died since the Company had taken over the farm operations—in accidents or of loli fever, Fatu had said.
“Nobody got bad loli from my reef,” she muttered.
The staccato beat of a Ready the net! order, a harsh metallic pounding transmitted through underwater speakers, sent the swimmers scrambling into quick formation. The yellow-clad net crew divided—two swimmers to the surface at each side to release the net from the float lines, the rest to the base of the net to disentangle it from the coral and repair any resulting tears as the net was lifted. The cleaners, carrying hand vacuums and pickup nets as green as their coveralls, followed the base-net crew down.
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