Again the warden lifted an arm to stop Zena's surge forward.
“Warden, that swimmer was dragged right across a strand of knife coral,” Zena said. “She lost four fingers off her right hand. Full fingers, back of the bone—they're not going to grow back. Her skin is shredded, and her right gill was ripped halfway off.”
“Where is she now?” the warden asked. Her expression remained calm.
“Infirmary,” Zena said. “But she'd have been better off if he'd killed her outright. What kind of life can she have on Lesaat if she can't swim?”
The warden turned slowly. She settled her fists on her hips. “Mr. Klooney, I recall giving you a direct order that no new recruit was to be used under the nets without a fully trained swimmer as backup.”
His eyes narrowed. “That so?” A smirk lifted one corner of his mouth. “Well, I don't rightly remember hearin’ that, Boss.”
The mountainlady didn't even blink. “I also gave you a direct order concerning the division of Company and non-Company crews.”
The smirk twitched. “It's your Pukui crew that's refusin’ to work. I been mixin’ ’em up just like you said.”
“And giving us all the shit work,” one of the Pukui crew called.
“Yeah, an’ you can't even do that right,” a Company man close to Klooney returned.
“Shut up. All of you,” the warden said. “Klooney, you're off the job. Confine yourself to quarters until transport back to Landings arranged. The rest of you get back to work.”
“You can't order me off the job,” Klooney said. The smirk had disappeared. Now comes the trouble, Pua thought. Hurry, Fatu! One of the Pukui men stopped her from getting closer.
“Ain't nobody here can prove I did anything wrong out there,” Klooney said. He smiled. “Besides, there's no way you can clear those pens before the storms without Company crews.”
“I'm not firing your swimmers, Mr. Klooney. Just you.”
“Company squids don't swim without a Company boss on-site,” he snarled. “That's the law.”
“Right now, I'm the law,” the warden said. “Shooter's privileges, remember? I can truth-probe you, too, if I decide it suits me.”
That caused a murmur among both the Company and the Pukui swimmers. Klooney glanced to one side, making eye contact with several of his own people. Most of them had backed off, not enough to break ranks with one another, but enough to distance themselves from him. Klooney met Pua's stare and glared, before returning his look to the warden.
“You're already breaking the law out here, lady,” he growled. “That algae's not supposed to be touched, and you know it. If the security squads were still—”
“Take your complaints to whoever hired you to sabotage this harvest,” the warden said.
He reached for her. A swift upward thrust of his hands, fingers outstretched.
“Watch out!” Pua cried, but the mountainlady had already moved. She snagged Klooney's wrists in her own long, strong fingers and yanked them to the side. He struggled, but could not break her grip.
“Ordinarily, I dislike killing people, Mr. Klooney,” she said. “But if you force me into it today, it won't even make me blink. Ehu?”
“Aye?”
“Get some people you trust and take this—squid—to his quarters. See that he stays there until a flit is sent out from Landing.”
“Aye!”
Ehu, Kobe, and Dave Chan immediately relieved the warden of the cursing, struggling Klooney. “You won't get away with this!” he shouted as they dragged him away. “You won't...”
The warden turned back to the startled swimmers. They looked as surprised as Pua felt at the ease with which the Earth woman had disarmed Klooney. “We need crews in the water,” she said. “We need them there now. What's it going to take?”
The question made Zena stand straighter. “Pukui's crews and the independents will swim with Klooney gone, but"—she glanced at the Company swimmers—"they can't. That slime mold was right about them not being allowed to work without a Company boss on-site.” The Company swimmers shifted and muttered, many of them obviously uncomfortable, but none of them disputed Zena's words.
“I'll boss ’em,” a soft voice said. Pua looked up in surprise to see Lili Kanahele step forward from the Company ranks. “For a fee.”
“Who are you?” the warden asked. She looked Lili up and down slowly.
“Liliuokalani Yee Kwan Kanahele,” Lili said. “I've bossed enough Pukui harvests to know how to do this one better'n it's been done so far.”
The warden caught Zena's eye, and Zena nodded. Lili was one of the best of the Company bosses. She had been one of Pua's favorites in the days before her parents had died. Pua was surprised that Lili had been working ordinary net shifts with the rest of the Company swimmers. She was known for her carefree spending habits, though. Maybe she needed the bonuses the warden had offered.
“You were on the shuttle, weren't you?” the warden asked suddenly. “You're the one with the ribbon.”
Lili grinned. “You impressed the hell out of me, too, Warden.”
“What were you doing on Earth?”
“Tech training course at Saipan,” Lili replied. “Company paid for the trip, but I still owe big for the fun I had on a little side trip to Guam. What do you say? You want me to do the job?”
“How much?” the warden asked.
“Double what Klooney was getting; double again for overtime,” Lili said without a pause.
Pua wasn't the only one to suck in her breath. She had never heard of a Company boss being paid so much.
“Greedy bitch,” one of the Pukui swimmers muttered.
The warden watched Lili for a long moment. Finally, she said, “Zena, will you work with her?”
“Aye, but Pukui shouldn't have to pay—”
The warden lifted a hand. She glanced around, matching looks with the Company squids. “What about the rest of you?”
They shrugged and murmured their general assent.
“It's done, then. Lili, see that you're worth the price. Now, get these people back on those nets.”
“Aye, Boss,” Lili chuckled before snapping a list of orders to the startled Company crew. They scrambled for the waiting buses.
“Zena,” the warden said, turning back. “Is it settled? Can you work with it now?” Her voice was quiet but firm.
Zena's sigh was barely noticeable. “I sure as hell hope so,” she said.
The warden nodded. “Make sure the injured swimmer is taken care of, then get things back on-line as quick as you can. Fatu's on his way.”
Zena turned her slow, frowning gaze toward Pua. Pua shrugged and tried to look innocent.
“Tell him the comm lines to the house and shed are out,” the warden said. “I want him to see to the repairs personally.”
“Aye,” Zena said. She gave Pua one last look before turning away to board the Pukui bus.
As the warden started back toward the house, she motioned for Pua to join her. “Let's go take a look at those comm towers on Second.”
“Now?” Pua asked.
“Now's as good a time as any. We can use the flit comm to call Landing.”
Despite both Katie's and Pua's objections, the warden still kept Toma's flitter parked just outside the house. “Do you want to pilot?” she asked as they reached it.
“Don't you have any excess adrenaline to get rid of?” Pua returned. The warden laughed, and slid into the passenger's seat. While Pua lifted the flitter and set a course for Second, she opened the comm and transmitted a terse order for Toma's immediate presence at Pukui.
“Tell him I want him personally to escort Mr. Klooney from this reef,” she said. She flipped the comm off without waiting for a reply.
As they approached Second Island, Pua turned the flitter into the deep cleft that separated it from Home. It wasn't a necessary part of the tour, but she had always wanted to fly through the narrow passage. Her father had let her fly only over the low reef islets. S
he was surprised, but pleased, when the warden's hands remained relaxed on her knees.
“It looks like the whole side of the mountain split off,” the warden said.
Pua nodded. “Mauna Kea Iki was a lot higher once, back when the volcano was still going. Then it started to sink, and coral grew up around the outer edge. That's what made the barrier reef. Then the volcano erupted some more and the mountain got high again, only not as high as the first time. Then it sank partway down again. The edges of that second mountain are where the inner reef is growing today. That's what my dad said. I think the mountain cracked while it was sinking.”
“Must have been a rough quake to crack it wide open like this,” the warden said.
“It happened a long time ago,” Pua assured her. “About a million years or so, I think. You don't have to worry about it happening again now.”
The warden's mouth twitched into a small smile.
Pua lifted the flitter from the canyon between the mountains and flew toward the summit of Second Island. “There's the burial cave,” she said.
“Where?”
Pua dipped and slowed, then hovered over a small clearing. “That narrow crack back in the bushes. See? It looks like somebody's cleared a lot of brush away. It used to be harder to see.”
“I don't—oh.” The warden leaned forward and blinked. “It's awfully small, isn't it?”
“It's great big inside. It goes way back into the mountain. It's scary in there.”
“Set us down. I'd like to see it.”
“You want to go in there now?”
The warden turned to her. “Is there some reason why I shouldn't?”
“Yes! Fatu just took that crewman's bones in there a couple of days ago! His ghost is probably still walking around looking for somebody to eat!” Pua remembered suddenly that the woman had been dead once herself. Maybe ghosts didn't matter to her anymore.
The woman blinked again, but this time it wasn't to adjust her focus. “His ghost?”
Pua shivered. “I'll drop you off if you want, but I'm not going in with you. Not this soon after.”
The warden watched her for a moment, then turned back to look at the cave entrance. “When will it be safe?” she asked.
Never! Pua thought. “You'd have to ask Fatu,” she said. “He's the one who knows about ghosts and things.” She glanced at the woman. “I thought you knew that.”
The warden looked honestly surprised. “How would I know that?”
“You asked him to take care of the crewman's body,” Pua said. “He's the one who always takes dead people into the cave.”
The woman said nothing for a moment. Then she shook her head in that way that meant she had come across some new and confusing piece of information. “Let's go up to the towers,” she said; and willingly, Pua lifted the flitter away from the clearing. The warden twisted around in her seat to stare back at the cave.
They spent only a short time at the towers. The warden inspected each of them quickly, frowning when she found exposed wires on the weather tower. “This isn't a good time to take chances with incoming weather transmissions,” she said. Pua frowned, too. She had never seen the weather and comm towers in anything but perfect condition.
* * * *
That evening, as they sat together on the lanai, Pua asked, “Have you ever killed anybody? Anybody human, I mean?”
The warden rested her glass of candleberry wine on the arm of her chair. “Why do you ask?”
“You told Klooney you didn't like killing people. I just wondered if you'd ever really done it, or if you were just trying to scare him.”
The mountainlady picked up her glass again. She frowned. “I've killed three,” she said. “One was a man already half-dead of pain and with no hope of recovery. One was caught in a rock slide with no way out. And the third was someone who deserved to die. I would have preferred not having to kill any of them. I don't like deliberately destroying life.”
Pua thought about that for a while.
“I killed a man once,” she said. “Back at the recon station.”
The mountainlady stopped in mid-drink.
“It was before you got there. I snuck into the morgue to see my mom and dad, and there was a man there. He was—doing things. My mama's body was all in pieces. He was cutting on her gills.” She looked down at her hands. “I wrapped my fingers around his neck, and I choked him. After he stopped breathing, I broke his neck. I would have ripped his gills out if he'd had any. I wanted to cut him up like he was doing to Mama, but Mr. Crawley came in and stopped me.”
The warden sat silent for a long time. “Is that how Crawley got the scar on his face?” she asked finally.
Pua nodded. “I like the ones you did better, though.”
The mountainlady closed her eyes and took the drink she had started earlier. She drained the glass.
“You should have killed Klooney today,” Pua said. “You shouldn't have let him go.”
“You can't kill everyone who does something you don't like, Pua.”
“Klooney is bad,” Pua said. “He's like that bacteria that gets into the loli and makes people sick, only he does it on purpose. He likes hurting people. I can taste it when I'm in the water with him.”
The warden put her glass on the floor and leaned forward. “Pua,” she said, “if Klooney ever comes back here, you stay away from him. You take your rays and all your other water friends, and stay as far away from him as you can get. Do you understand?”
“If Klooney ever comes back to Pukui,” Pua said very carefully, “I'm going to kill him.”
Chapter 15
The next morning, the warden returned to the burial cave. Pua followed, as she always did when the warden roamed the island, but when she realized where the woman was leading her, she quickly let the distance between them grow.
Nothing, she decided, is going to make me go inside that cave. If the Earthwoman gets herself eaten in there, it's her own damn fault.
She waited until the warden crawled into the cave, then chose a hiding place on the far side of the clearing. She stayed near the path, but not directly between it and the cave mouth. She didn't want to be in the way if some angry spirit came rushing out. She settled down to wait.
And wait. The sun kissed zenith and traveled on. Pua moved farther back into the shade. She braided clinger vines and wrapped them in patterns around her arms and legs. She wove herself a headband of paperflowers and counted the spore spots on the undersides of fern leaves. She was unbearably bored.
By late afternoon she was also hungry. When a sugarbug landed on her arm, she caught it in her fingertips, pulled off its leathery wings, and ate it quickly. Then she was sorry, because its sweet crunchiness made her even hungrier. She wished she had thought to carry mountain apples in her pockets like the warden always did. She wished she were in the water where there was always food nearby, and where boredom didn't exist.
Finally, when the sunlight was beginning to fade and Pua was sure the Earthwoman must be dead, she heard scuffing sounds from inside the cave. Hurriedly, she pressed deeper into the shadows. She held her breath as a light flashed out through the cave mouth, then sighed in relief as it was followed by the warden on her hands and knees—dirty, but unharmed.
The woman flicked off her light, glanced around the clearing, then strode back down the path. Pua followed as closely as she dared, not sure which was the most frightening, the ghosts of the dead behind her or their near kin on the path ahead.
During the following days, the warden explored the islands and the reef, sometimes on foot, sometimes from the air or by sub. On a few occasions, Pua swam with her to inspect the coral.
The woman swam strongly, and well, but she never stayed beneath the surface long. The rays were disappointed by that, even though Pua explained to them that the woman wasn't always as entertaining as she appeared on those few short trips under the water. When Pua showed the warden the rock eel's former territory on number twelve's barren reef flat
, she studied it closely, even pausing to run her fingers carefully over the flat edges of the broken knife coral.
Aside from occasional on-site inspections and frequent reports from Zena and Fatu, the warden took little part in the algae harvest. She expelled three more Company swimmers after they were caught deliberately tearing the nets so that the algae spills were larger and took more time to clean up. But otherwise she left the crew operations to Fatu, Zena, and Lili. The last proved to be surprisingly efficient—even the Pukui crew commented on her speed and fairness of job allocation.
The warden spent most of her time in the control shed, poring over the farm records, or studying the house computer library. She inspected the research labs and the infirmary, the algae-processing plant, even the underwater pump stations. She questioned everyone—including Katie, although those conversations never lasted long, and she always walked away looking confused. That made Pua laugh. Only her mother had been able to make any real sense of the slow-minded drone. She was surprised that Katie talked to the warden at all.
Toma came and went. He always arrived during the day, and the warden always talked to him on the dock or at the flitter landing pad. She did not invite him back into the house. Their conversations were short and sharp, with many more questions being asked than answers given—by either of them.
Whenever the discussion over crew or supplies became heated, the woman would say, “Shooter's privileges, Inspector. Read my contract,” and Toma would smile a brief, tight smile and grow silent. He relayed official Company protests against the continuing harvest, but did not suggest returning the security squads to Pukui. He removed Klooney and the other troublemakers without comment.
“That special order of yours is on the manifest for tomorrow's shuttle,” he said one afternoon about three weeks after the harvest had begun. The woman had asked him about it more than once.
“It's about time,” she replied.
“What's the matter?” Toma asked. “Having trouble thinking?”
The warden smiled, an open, bright smile the like of which Pua had not seen in recent days. And Toma matched it. Pua wished he would offer to do sex with her again, as he had that first morning at the house. After what the woman had talked about in her sleep, and knowing what she knew of Toma, Pua suspected that a match between them would be an event well worth watching.
Reefsong Page 20