“Roll net!” The order was accompanied by a shrill keening wail. Not even a totally untrained squid could hear that sound and not understand that it meant danger in the waters ahead. Pua swam closer to watch as the screeching winches began hauling the net.
The barge traveled lengthwise along the pen, drawing the net toward the center as it pulled up the slack caused by removing the sludgelike algae from inside. The net was squeezed between two giant compression rollers to press the excess algae back into the pen. Had this been an ordinary harvest, the net would have been set on a continuous slow lift. Instead of being piled on deck, it would have been automatically reset off the back of the barge.
This time, because the algae was rotten and the net had been allowed to grow so full that it touched bottom in many places, it was being hauled in sections and kept on board for a later full inspection and repair. The furnaces burned slowly and steadily.
Some of the net crew worked to quickly disentangle the fine mesh as it lifted slowly away from the rough, jagged coral. Others tied up or patched resulting tears and holes. The cleaners moved among them scooping small bits of escaped algae into their nets, then transferring the slime to the portable vacuums. When the main net caught on higher-than-usual outcroppings of coral, netters and cleaners worked together to maneuver it free.
Pua stayed back, knowing from experience that the Company crew, at least, would consider her help an intrusion—despite the fact that she could tie net faster and tighter than the best of them. Or maybe because of it. She patrolled the middle depths instead, the area where the net began drawing together as it was being pulled toward the compression rollers above.
When she spotted holes that the base crew had missed, she flagged them with yellow markers so the deck inspection crew would have an easier job finding them later. She paid little attention to the others and was startled when a strong hand wrapped around her left thigh. It pulled her down and away from the net.
She kicked and turned, fingers spread ready to defend herself, but the swimmer let her go without a struggle. It was the Company crew boss. She recognized him from previous harvests. Klooney was a man whom she had never liked much, but he was in great demand on the harvest circuit because his crews were fast and efficient.
Fatu had told her that Klooney had been one of the most persistent Company searchers at Pukui, even after losing the tip of his finger in the burial cave and suffering from severe over-exposure to prickly dust. Pua thought it was particularly clever of Fatu to have sprinkled the burial baskets with the highly irritating powder. Klooney's hands and face were still red lined from scratching, and the rumors about a Company curse at Pukui were stronger than ever.
Klooney pointed with his stubby finger up toward the place where the lifting net began folding in on itself, just below the compression rollers. He pointed at Pua, and then he twisted his fingers together into a tight tangle.
Pua spat a quick stream of bubbles. She signed to him that she wasn't about to get herself caught in the net and pulled up through the rollers. He jerked a thumb toward open water, ordering her off the site.
“Kiss coral,” she started to sign, but was interrupted by a shrill whistle from the base crew. Klooney ordered Pua away again, then dove toward the group of swimmers who had called. Pua followed close behind.
One of the new recruits—not one of Pukui's, but Pua recognized him from the shuttle—had gotten his hand caught in the net as it scraped across a branch of knife coral. The tips of two fingers were torn and bleeding. One of the swimmers quickly sealed a medical sack around the injured fingers, and Klooney signaled for the nearest cleaner to vacuum up the blood. This was not a good time of day to attract the suckersharks.
He ordered a swimmer to lead the injured worker topside before turning back to the net. It was still being dragged slowly upward and to the side across the razor-sharp coral. One of the women attempted to cut the knife coral with a rocksaw, but Klooney waved her away. It would take hours to cut through even a few of the iron-hard branches.
Cut and patch, he signaled instead.
Pua moved back. Cutting the net enough to free it was going to cause a large release of algae. Most of the net's slack had already been taken up, and the pressure against the inside was strong. Already, the water was marbled with strings of orange-gray sludge escaping through the coral tears.
Pua glanced up, wondering why Klooney didn't just stop the haul. Profit, she thought. Time is money, so haul it in as fast as you can and never mind the consequences. She moved back farther. A ray slid along her side, then flashed away.
The swimmers arranged themselves around the coral outgrowth, hands reaching toward the opening that would soon be cut. They attached a stretch of patching net above and to the open side of the tangled net. Then Klooney reached underneath with his rocksaw and sliced as far as he could reach around the top and sides of the coral.
“Tie!” came the immediate order, and as the winch continued to haul the net up and away, the crew began attaching the patch around the hole as fast as they could tie. The pressure of the shifting algae ripped the main net upward but the double-strength patching held and kept it from tearing higher.
Maybe he's not so dumb after all, Pua thought as the net began to lift clear of the coral. The tying crew worked furiously to maneuver the patch through the thick algae sludge so they could seal the hole before too much more had escaped. The cleaners drifted at the ready, waiting to move in as soon as the way was clear.
Suddenly Pua became conscious of a new vibration in the water, a shiver of movement that sent chills along her spine. She whistled an immediate warning. Puhi ‘ai pōhaku! she flashed when the swimmers turned her way. Rock eel! Get away from the net. The rays swept close, drawn by her whistle, then spun away again.
Klooney frowned, then dropped his own hold on the patch as the puhi poked its pink snout from a hole halfway between him and Pua. It was within meters of the tangled net.
“Stop roll!” he shouted into his shoulder mike. “Stop roll!” He signaled the crew to back off and then cursed as a portion of the net fell back across the knife coral. Rocksaw in hand, he joined the swimmers as they clustered near the cold-water pipe about thirty meters away.
“Idiots,” Pua muttered. They should have gone straight to the surface before the puhi came out of his hole. At least they had stayed together. Rock eels were cautious creatures, not likely to attack a large group of human swimmers if easier prey was at hand. She clicked a signal to the rays to stay away, and slowly, carefully moved to join the others around the pipe.
The eel emerged sinuously from its hole. It wasn't large by Pukui standards, but it was big enough to be dangerous. It wavered for a moment with its tail still hidden inside its home in the coral. It turned toward the net, then swung back toward the swimmers. Pua and the others held very still. She saw that one of the Pukui men was holding a new recruit's arm tightly. The new squid's face was tight with terror.
The eel watched them for a time, first with one glassy green eye, then the other. Then, abruptly, it turned back toward the partially repaired net. Sliding the rest of its two-meter-long body from the hole, it undulated slowly toward the branching knife coral. The blood, Pua thought. He must be awful hungry for such a little bit to draw him into the open with all this activity going on.
The eel nosed the net and the coral, then abruptly opened its wide jaws and snapped them closed around the piece of coral where the new recruit had cut his hand. The coral cracked off as easily as if it had been paperwood.
There was a flurry of movement to Pua's right. The new recruit pulled away from the Pukui swimmer's hold and kicked away from the group, toward the surface. Instantly, the puhi twisted back. It hesitated only long enough to finish crushing its mouthful of coral. Then it spit out gravelly residue and snaked toward the lone swimmer.
Quickly, Pua and the Pukui old-timers rose as a group to intercept the eel. To Pua's astonishment, she saw Klooney signal the Company swimmers not
to join them. His swimmers stared, first at their boss, then back up at the eel. Many looked angered by the order, but they did not disobey it.
Pua spun back to grab the rocksaw one of them held out to her, then raced upward toward the others. At first the eel veered away at the sight of them. They stayed close together, trying to reach the thrashing recruit before the eel turned back. One of them grabbed the man's flipper, then his foot, and tried to pull him into the protection of their group.
Had there been more of them, had the entire group come up together, it could have worked. A larger group would have been able to control the panicked swimmer's thrashing and perhaps scare the eel away long enough for them all to reach the surface safely. But there were only four of them, not enough to physically restrain the panicked man. He had completely lost control, his fear broadcast so strongly Pua could taste it. The puhi ‘ai pōhaku turned back.
It attacked. The recruit thrust his arms out to protect himself, and one entire hand disappeared between the rock eel's jaws. The eel twisted and jerked away. Blood sprayed through the water. One of the Pukui men struck the eel with his hand vacuum. Pua thrust at its face with the rocksaw, while the others tried again to restrain the injured swimmer. The eel jerked away, slapping Pua hard across the chest with its blunt tail. A strong hold from one of the others kept her from being knocked away from their tight group.
Where are the other swimmers? she had time to think before the eel struck again.
Again, it attacked the new recruit, ripping away a section of the man's shoulder and neck before the others could beat it away. The blood was flowing so thickly that they could hardly see. Pua could feel the distant, dark approach of a suckershark pack and, like the others, kicked hard for the surface. The injured crewman had stopped fighting. He hung limp in their arms.
Once more the eel attacked. Pua jammed the whirring rocksaw against its side at the same time one of the others shoved the end of a vacuum tube into the creature's mouth. The suction was on full, and the eel thrashed away and twisted into knots of agony as it attempted to fight its way free of the machine. The tubing crunched under the force of the eel's powerful grinding plates as the swimmers raced the last few meters to the surface.
Pua's head wasn't even out of the water before strong hands pulled her onto the stern ramp and then up onto the deck of the barge. She lay still for a moment, shaking, listening to her heart pound against the cold deck. Her chest ached where the eel had hit her.
“...kid was the one who saw it coming,” she heard someone say. She looked up to see that the speaker was one of the Company net crew who had been with them below. They must have surfaced while the Pukui swimmers were fighting the eel. How could they have done that?
“You sure she wasn't the one who called it up?” another replied. “You saw how she ordered those rays around.”
“Who is she, anyway?” a third asked. “She looks—” They grew silent when they noticed Pua listening. She sat up, wrung the excess water from the bottom of her shirt, and then sat defiantly on a stack of patching net where the reef-pissing Company squids would have to look at her. She watched and listened in silence as Klooney and the Pukui workers argued over what had happened below. Someone had laid a green plastic cover over the Pukui recruit's mutilated body.
She was not surprised that he was dead. There had been too much blood for the man to have survived. She shuddered and ran her fingertips over the braid of her mother's hair. You'd better go back to your hole, brother puhi, she urged the eel silently, or you'll end this night as a suckershark sponge.
It was the sharks that Zena and the Company crew boss were arguing about. Klooney stated emphatically that his swimmers did not stay in bloodied waters. Not at Pukui. Not at late evening. And he didn't even attempt to defend the order that had forced the Pukui crew to fight the eel alone.
“I protect my own people,” was all he said. “If yours choose to separate from the group, they're on their own.”
That brought a murmur of dissatisfaction from even his own crew. Swimmers worked together, or swimmers died. That was the way it was in the Lesaat sea. Pua glanced back at the dead crewman. Despite a hastily applied sealant spray, blood was still running from under the plastic. The hum of an approaching flitter caught her attention. Toma's bird landed on the starboard deck, and Fatu and the mountainlady stepped out.
Fatu met Pua's look immediately, and she signaled that she was safe. He said something to the woman, who nodded. Then they walked aft together. The warden lifted the bloody plastic and stared down at the dead crewman. Pua glanced at the place where the man's arm and hand should have been, then looked away. She tried not to listen as the argument started all over again.
After a moment the warden stopped it. “Fighting about this won't change anything now,” she said. “The man's dead and is going to stay that way. We'll deal with the reasons why later. Zena, what's the status of the net?”
“Not good,” Zena replied. “It's still hung up on the knife coral. We can't try to drag it off without a containment crew in the water because it's too close to the outlet valves on the deepwater pipe. If it snags, we could break the whole thing open.”
“You're gonna have a reef-lovin’ mess if that happens,” Klooney said. He pulled his bodysuit open and rubbed his chest. It, too, was lined with overlapping scratch marks. Even without the residual prickly itch, Pua wondered how he could stand being suited up with all that body hair. She hoped none of the babies she hoped to have someday would ever look like that. She would have to remember to be careful when she started choosing mates.
“We'd have to shut down the pumps all the way along the line if we break the main feeder line open,” Zena agreed.
“And keep ’em shut till that rock chomper is cleared out of the area,” Klooney added. “It ain't gonna abandon that hole now, not as long as it thinks there might still be food nearby. Best thing to do is wait for the suckersharks to clear, won't take more'n an hour, then send a marksman down there in the sub. He can drop a minicharge down that bastard's hole, and when it comes out, blow its head off.” Pua frowned and looked up from carving designs in the crystals drying on her arm.
“Zena?” the warden said.
Zena shrugged. “We can't wait around for the eel to decide to move on its own. It could take weeks. The pen's still two-third's full, and the algae's decaying fast. We've got to get it out before the entire area is fouled.”
The warden watched her for a moment, then turned to Pua. “What about you? Any other ideas?”
Pua blinked. She had not expected to be included in this public meeting. She wasn't sure she wanted to be included. The encounter with the rock eel had left her shaken. She should have been aware of its presence much sooner; she should have noticed the well-chewed coral around its hole. With the usual bright colors gone from the dying reef, she had forgotten to watch for the eel's obvious signs. Stupid, she thought. She had even gone into the water without her knife again. I've got to stop acting like an Earther.
“Pua?”
“You could try clearing the net from the other side,” she said.
The warden's look remained noncommittal, but both Zena and Klooney shook their heads.
“Moving the whole operation to the other end of the pen's a hell of a lot more trouble than that rock chomper's worth, little girl,” Klooney said. “We'd have to call in another disposal barge from Landing, ‘cause this one can't be moved with the net like it is.”
I'd like to feed you to that rock chomper, Pua told him silently. She crossed her arms against the pain in her chest and focused her attention on the warden.
“There's an opening under the algae just a little way beyond where the net is caught. At least there was yesterday. I swam completely under, from one side to the other. If you could get enough tension on the net, somebody might be able to follow the pipe far enough under to put a cap on the outlet valves. Then you could haul the net off without harming the pipe.”
“With the ee
l still down there, we'd have to haul all the way to the surface without being able to patch,” Zena said. “It would leave a hell of a spill directly on the reef, and the net might just keep tearing.”
“Use the sub to lure him away from his hole while the pipe valves are being capped,” Pua said. “If you feed him chunks of sponge coral, one after the other, he'll probably follow you all the way to the barrier reef. Once he finds himself surrounded by live coral again, he'll settle into another hole over there, and we won't have to worry about him anymore.”
Zena looked thoughtful.
The Company boss stood. “We're wastin’ our time here, Warden. I say we just kill the bastard and get on with it. Kobayashi, get your gear.”
“Hai,” came the quick reply.
“Sit down, Mr. Klooney,” the warden said, still with that same neutral expression.
The Company man glared at her. He remained standing at the side of the folded net. The rest of the crew grew silent.
“I have a few more questions, Mr. Klooney.”
Finally, he sat. Pua was not the only one to release a long, slow breath.
“These eels,” the warden said. “Can they be eaten?”
Zena gave a short laugh. “Only if you want to die of a hundred different kinds of coral poisons. Puhi eat anything, especially if it's got calcium inside.”
“In general, are they a problem on the reefs?”
“Hardly ever see ’em.”
“And when you do?”
Zena shrugged. “Ordinarily we just shift operations till they move on. They never stay in one place more than a few weeks. This one probably fell asleep and got caught under the sinking net. Otherwise it would have moved to a better feeding ground long ago.” She paused. “We've never had a situation quite like this.”
Reefsong Page 16