Reefsong

by Carol Severance

  The message was relayed to the swimmers, but it was too late. Pua was already well ahead, guiding them through the narrow opening under the net.

  Fatu turned the sub back toward the inner reef. As they powered forward, Kobe joined them on the observation deck. He nodded to the warden, shifted his pick from one side of his mouth to the other, and began dismantling his speargun. He looked genuinely pleased that he hadn't had to use it.

  “Give me a line to the swimmers,” Fatu ordered.

  “Line open,” came the voice from the bus.

  “How's it going, Ehu?” he asked.

  There was a pause. “It's spookier than a damn burial cave under here,” Ehu said finally. Her water-transmitted voice echoed eerily inside the sub.

  “Stow it, Ehu,” a man's voice replied. It, too, came from underwater. “It's bad enough down here without waking up the ghosts, too.”

  Ehu laughed.

  “Okay,” she said some time later. “We're on the main pipe. It's reef-pissin’ hot, Fatu, even with the side lines open. Friggin’ Company oughta be sued for turning ’em off in the first—” She ran out of air.

  “Any problem reaching the release valves?” Fatu asked.

  Another bubbling pause. “Hold a minute. We're checking under the pipe. Can't get through on top. The net's too heavy, even with the tension.” There was another pause, broken by occasional echoing curses from the distant swimmers.

  “None of us fits under there,” Ehu said finally. “Pua's going to try.”

  “Damn,” Fatu said softly, then blinked when one of the three lights on the locator grid began separating from the others along the straight line of the deep-water pipe.

  “Relax, waterman,” Ehu said. “I clipped my locator to her pants as she slid under.”

  “Hey, I owe you for that one, lady love,” Fatu said.

  “I'll take it in flesh,” came the quick reply. “Tonight, behind the freshwater pool. Be there when Maram Iki kisses zenith, and we'll work out a payment schedule.”

  Fatu grinned. Kobe punched him in the side.

  “Nothing I like better'n a hot woman under a cold moon,” Fatu said into the mike. “I'll be there.” Even the warden laughed at the creative suggestions that followed from the other two swimmers.

  “Pua's coming out now,” Ehu said awhile later. “Looks like she's widened the hole enough for Lui to get under with the capper. She's got a few coral scrapes but doesn't look too much the worse for wear.”

  They listened while Ehu reported the crew's continued progress under the net. “How much longer before you can clear the area?” Fatu asked finally.

  “Cap's in place now and looks solid. We're just untangling and tying holes now,” Ehu reported. “You want us to go home?” She sounded eager. Fatu didn't doubt they were all ready to get out from under the load of rotting algae. As a courtesy, he glanced at the warden. She nodded without hesitation.

  “Okay, get your tails topside,” he said. “We've got a whole bargeful of netters real anxious to get back on the job. Save a little work for them.”

  “Aye,” came the quick reply, and two of the lights on the locator grid began moving back toward the inner lagoon. The third lingered until one of the others returned, paused, and then followed the errant light into the open. Abruptly, that light went out.

  “She must have just noticed the locator,” Fatu said.

  Kobe laughed. “I wouldn't want to be Ehu right now. Pua'll probably sic the rays on her.”

  “Job's all yours, Zena,” Fatu said.

  “Net crews in the water,” Zena ordered instantly. “Roll net. Let's get this mess cleaned up.”

  “How long will it take for the reef under Twelve to grow back?” the warden asked after they had dropped off Kobayashi and begun the farm tour.

  “Twenty, thirty years, maybe,” Fatu said. “We can speed it up some by transferring sections of live coral and coralline algae from other parts of the reef, but it's going to be slow.”

  He pointed. “Here comes trouble.”

  The warden tensed, then relaxed again when she saw that it was only Pua swimming toward them through a narrow coral passage. She was wearing clothes, Fatu was pleased to see, shorts and a shirt with sleeves ripped into fringes. The shirt was tucked in at the waist, which meant she was probably hiding a bruise from her fight with the puhi the night before.

  She had one of her father's diving knives strapped to her thigh, and a crimson coiler as big around as one of her fingers wrapped snugly around one ankle. The little fool. Her mucus-coated skin glistened and flashed in the refracted sunlight.

  Pua grinned as she swam toward them. She spread her hands on the outside of the observation bubble. Another coiler, this one only hair-thin, circled her right wrist. Fatu reached up and matched her touch with his own. His fingers were shorter, and except for the tips, much broader. He motioned her inside the sub. She shook her head and signed for them to follow her instead. Fatu smiled and gave her a quick thumbs-up sign.

  “She's gonna show off now.” He laughed as Pua jackknifed off the observation bubble and kicked cleanly away. Her movement made only the lightest vibration in the sub's stable ride. Fatu followed above and behind as Pua slipped effortlessly through the narrow, jagged openings between coral outcrops.

  “Is that safe?” the warden asked.

  Again Fatu laughed. “Pua claims it is, and I admit I've never seen her get caught up on anything down there. But...” He shook his head. “Sometimes I think she's got seawater for brains. Like last night, for instance, when she went back in the water after the suckers were there. See that small circular scab on her calf? That's where one of them managed to attach.”

  The woman glanced at him, then looked back at Pua. “That's why she took your knife,” he said. “She wanted to make an impression on the crews, but knew she wasn't likely to get away completely untouched. She needed the knife to scrape the sharks off before they could insert their primary sucking probosces and start using their teeth. That's one she didn't get to in time.”

  The warden frowned.

  “It wasn't really as dangerous as it seems,” Fatu went on. “Not for Pua. Her skin exudes a protective mucus coating when she's in the water. It acts as a sealant for her own body fluids, and at the same time makes it a lot harder for things like suckers to get a grip on her. It protects her from some of the coral poisons, too. Watch her now—she's found something.”

  Pua had paused beside a small hole and was wriggling one fingertip inside the dark opening. Suddenly a flash of pink appeared, much the same color as the rock eel. As the coral fish darted from its hole in an attempt to catch her finger, Pua snagged it in her palm. She lifted it quickly to her mouth and bit it behind its bulging eyes. Instantly, it was still.

  Pua lifted the fish like a trophy, then swam from sight beneath the sub. She reappeared through the hatch to the lockout chamber.

  She grinned and shook the water from her face. “Where're you going?” she asked. If her trip under the algae net had caused her any damage, it didn't show. Her dark eyes sparked with merriment, and her skin shone with the same color as the sea. It was like having life itself back, having Pua back on the reef. Fatu restrained an urge to run a hand across her cheek, to pull her into a hug.

  “Farm tour,” he said instead.

  Pua grinned at the warden, then held the fish out to Fatu. He took it, inspected it, and handed it back. “Want to come along?”

  “In this?” She laughed, and shook her head. “I'll take my own tour.”

  “Stay away from the Company crew,” he said. “Especially Klooney. He's not on his best behavior today.”

  “I'm not afraid of him,” Pua said.

  “You should be,” Fatu said. Her eyes widened. “Do this one for me, okay?”

  She sighed, then grinned again. “I don't want to be around him, anyway. He tastes like rock bread.” She glanced at the warden and giggled.

  “One more thing,” Fatu said. “Get that coiler off yo
ur leg. It's too big.”

  “It's pretty,” she said. “I like it there.”

  “It's cutting off your circulation. Take it off.”

  Pua gave an exaggerated sigh, rolled her eyes dramatically, and dropped back into the lockout chamber.

  When she reappeared outside the observation bubble, she was carrying the fish between her teeth, and the half-meter-long coiler stretched between her hands. It was clear that it took her full strength to keep it pulled straight. She tossed the coiler away from her, and it snapped in on itself like a spring. Pua grinned and waved and disappeared back into the coral.

  Chapter 13

  “What was that business with the fish?” the warden asked as Fatu piloted the sub along the outer edges of the primary growing pens. “It had the look of ritual.”

  “That particular section of reef belongs to me,” he explained. “Pua has unrestricted use rights, but since I was there, she paid me the courtesy of offering me her catch. If I'd been hungry, I would have kept it and sent her after another for herself.”

  “Is that a Hawaiian custom?”

  “More Micronesian,” he said. He turned them toward one of the deep-water pump stations.

  “You follow a rather mixed bag of Island traditions here,” she said.

  “We use whatever works,” he replied. “Historically, Pacific Islanders were noted for their ability to adapt to new physical and social conditions. Traditional Island ways have all but disappeared on Earth, but we're reviving some of the more useful ones here.”

  She glanced down at his tattoos.

  He shrugged. “And some of the purely artistic ones.”

  “Women have children, men get tattooed,” she quoted, surprising Fatu. Then he remembered her profession and that she said she had visited the South Pacific at least once. She had no doubt studied the same historical tapes that he and the other Lesaat settlers had.

  “As I understand it,” she said, “the tatau ritual involves a lot more than the purely artistic; at least it did originally. Isn't it supposed to be one of the steps into Samoan adulthood?”

  “It's hard to say what the original meanings were,” he said. “There are as many interpretations as there are Westerners who've written about it over the centuries, and I suspect most of their ideas were distorted to start with. The Samoans themselves no longer remember, and only a few of the very oldest care.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Respect,” he said, “for ancestors long gone, and for whatever spirits inhabit this new place. For me, it represents a bridge between ancient Earth and the Lesaat of tomorrow. The concept of the tatau is old and alien to Pukui, but the designs in the tattoo itself are all taken from land and sea life here. Maybe someday it'll help my grandkids understand the similarities as well as the vast differences between Earth and Lesaat.” He laughed. “Or maybe, it'll just confuse them.”

  The warden sat back in her seat. She looked thoughtful, as if she had just learned something of considerable interest.

  “Syncretism,” she said after a moment. “Diverse cultures blending to create something entirely new. I've seen it before, but never on such a large scale, and never where it's been so consciously and deliberately directed.” She glanced up at him. “It's encouraging that you're selecting your new ‘traditions’ with some regard for your new environment.”

  “Ah, yes,” Fatu said. “The environmental anthropologist's perspective. I'd almost forgotten.”

  She looked directly at him. “You don't impress me as a man who forgets much of anything, Fatu. Least of all who I am and why I'm here.”

  Fatu stopped the sub's forward motion and set the rear thrust to hold them steady against the current. They were about twelve meters deep, halfway between the inner and barrier reefs. Above them, the surface flashed white and gold. He turned to face her.

  “Is that why you asked to come out here alone, Warden?” he asked. “So you can question me privately about the TC enzyme?”

  “I asked to come out here because I wanted to see the farm,” she said. “But if you'd like to talk about the enzyme, I'm willing to listen.”

  Fatu remained silent.

  “Do you know where the missing records are?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Walter Crawley, the admin liaison who briefed me, ranked you right at the top of the list of people to question,” she said. “Right next to someone named Sa le Fe'e. I haven't been able to find any reference to the latter in the farm records.”

  Fatu tried not to react visibly but saw by her expression that he had. He said, as carefully as he could, “I am ... honored to be placed in such esteemed company.”

  The warden lifted a brow.

  “Le Fe'e is a creature out of Samoan myth,” Fatu said. “A kind of demigod that was believed in the old days to live deep in the Pacific Ocean.”

  “Crawley referred to him as an old man who lived somewhere here at Pukui,” she replied. “He said that if I could find Sa le Fe'e, I was almost certain to also find access to the hidden TC records.” She paused. “Why is this making you so angry?”

  Fatu took a deep breath.

  “Le Fe'e is Pua's special friend,” he said finally. “She would never have told Crawley about him without coercion, and there is no one else Crawley could have learned about him from. After all Pua had already been through, you people could have at least left her the privacy of her own imagination.”

  “You called Pua a ‘little fe'e’ yesterday,” she said.

  You don't forget anything either, do you, lady? he thought. “It's a term of endearment. A private variation, if you will, on the more common ‘squid.’ Pua fancies herself to be more like an octopus than a squid. ‘Le Fe'e translates as ‘the octopus.'” He glanced at the woman's hands. Those hands made him angry, too, but he understood from Pua that the warden did not have them by choice. She followed his look, then met his gaze again.

  “If Pua would speak of this Le Fe'e under controlled questioning,” she said, “it must be something she cares deeply about. Something she believes very strongly.”

  “It's hard to tell what Pua actually believes,” he said, deciding truth might well be the best deception with this woman. “We've been sharing Le Fe'e stories, some made up, some traditional, for years. I don't doubt that she's come to believe in him as some kind of physical entity. Especially since she moved him formally to Pukui.”

  Fatu smiled as he remembered. “At her tenth birthday feast, Pua dressed up like a Samoan talking chief and announced that she had something important to tell us. It seems Le Fe'e had become bored with Earth's oceans. He had experienced all the adventures that were to be had there, and he had decided to find and explore the fabled golden seas of Lesaat.

  “First, he swam to Hawaii. There, he wrapped his tentacles around a rising shuttle and let it pull him into high orbit. Then he crawled through the wormhole nexus, having adventures all along the way, exploring places no human has ever seen. When he reached Lesaat at last, he searched the great, golden sea until he found the richest and most exquisitely beautiful site on the planet.”

  “Pukui,” the warden said with a slight smile.

  He nodded. “He made the reef his home.”

  “She used to tell me stories while I was in the dep tank,” the warden said thoughtfully. “I don't remember the words, but I can recall hearing her voice.”

  “She told me she thought you were dead at first,” Fatu said. “She said she picked leaves from potted plants around the recon station and put them in the gel with you, so you'd have some connection to the living world.”

  The warden sighed, and turned her look back to the sea. She started when she saw the oxyworm that had attached itself to the observation bubble behind her. It was as big around as one of her arms and lay neatly coiled against the smooth glass. She recovered quickly and leaned forward to inspect the worm's tiny suckers and its rhythmically irising mouth.

  “We call them oxyworms.” He laughed. “It's j
ust a tubular stomach. It feeds by filtering microscopic plankton through from its mouth to its tail. The bubbles lifting off the skin are pure O2.”

  The warden looked skeptical.

  “The digestive process releases photosynthetic pigments,” Fatu explained. “When they're secreted through the skin they interact with the water to produce oxygen.”

  “Is this a large or a small one?” she asked, glancing up to follow the worm's effervescence toward the surface.

  “Pretty good sized for inside the lagoon,” he said. “They're fairly fragile and light enough to drift with the currents. Unless they find something smooth to attach to, they usually get carried into the coral before they get much bigger than this. The coral slices them to shreds.”

  “What about in the open ocean?”

  He shrugged. “Well, Pua claims she and Le Fe'e once found one big enough to swim through without touching the inside walls.”

  “What!”

  He laughed. “I know. I don't believe it either. At least I don't think I do. I can only imagine what would happen if a human got caught inside one of those things. It's sometimes hard to tell which of Pua's stories are true.”

  He glanced toward the surface and then the chronometer. “We'd better get moving or we'll never make the whole trip in one day.” He activated the engines again. The oxyworm peeled away from the smooth glass as they moved slowly forward. The warden watched it closely as it drifted away.

  She remained silent as they inspected the deep-water pipes and the underwater pumping station, then followed the main updraw pipe all the way down to the underwater tunnel that carried it through the barrier reef to the open ocean. “Can't get any closer right now,” Fatu said as he held off some distance from the actual tunnel entrance. The sub's engines strained against the pull of the current.

  “How do you do repairs and maintenance?”

  “On the turning tide, when the current slows. Luckily, this pipe doesn't need much attention. It was a tide-pisser of a job to lay it—it all had to be done by hand. But that tunnel's solid basalt all the way through, an old lava tube from the days when this whole place was above water. Best protection in the world for a solid length of pipe. Nothing falling on it, nothing growing up around it. It just lies there real quiet feeding deep-ocean water through as we need it.”