Reefsong

by Carol Severance

  Pili nodded, wrapped his arm tighter around the warden's waist, and let go of the strut. They all kicked along with the current and shot like a triplet of rays through the long, straight lava tube. Pua was sorry the woman was too frightened to enjoy the ride.

  They surfaced as quickly as they could after reaching the lagoon. Shadow's position showed that a third of the night was gone. Pili and Pua helped the warden across a narrow shelf of coral and onto a sandy beach. It had rained while they had been below, and the air smelled of the distant stormy sea.

  As soon as they let her go, the warden sat on the ground, hugging her knees tightly. She was trembling.

  “Are you okay?” Pua asked. She spoke softly, as she always did when one of the other kids was with her on the surface. There was clearly no one around, but she never took chances with her babies. Not until tonight.

  The woman took a long, shuddering breath.

  “Mountainlady?”

  “Little Fe'e,” the woman said, after yet another of those ragged breaths, “someday I'm going to stuff a real snowball right down your shorts.”

  “Ha!” Pua shouted in a whisper. “You made it!” She jumped up and grabbed Pili. “We made it!” They wrestled each other to the ground, laughing without sound, hugging each other tight. They rolled over and over through the course sand. It stuck to their wet, mucus-slicked skin and felt good! It was so good to be home!

  Finally, they rolled to a stop. Pua brushed the sand from Pili's cheeks, kissed him soundly, and then pulled him back toward the mountainlady.

  The warden was still sitting with her arms tight around her knees, but the terror had left her eyes. She was staring openmouthed at their play.

  “This is Pilimanaia noun Fatu o le Motu me Ehukai,” Pua said. “He's eleven—the oldest, except for me. We're going to build a house on Second Island someday, and he's going to live there. And we're going to make a bridge between Second and Home, and carve a path right down to the water. And we're going to grow mountain apples and sell them to the Earthers, and when he gets big enough we're going to do sex and make babies and lots of other stuff.”

  The warden blinked.

  “I'm big enough now,” Pili said.

  Pua looked him up and down. His naked skin glistened where it wasn't covered with sand. He had a coiler wrapped around his left wrist, and a fringe of braided seaweed tied just below his right knee. He was as beautiful as Little Ten, and it was true that he had grown—he was almost as tall as she. Still...

  “I don't think so,” she said. “Not quite yet.”

  The mountainlady started to choke. Quickly, Pua squatted beside her and slapped her back. “Are you okay? I'm sorry about the pipe, but it was the only way out.” She frowned. “I guess it wasn't such a good idea to take you in there like that.”

  “I'm fine,” the warden said, pushing away Pua's hands. Pua realized she was not choking at all. She was laughing.

  “What's funny?” she asked.

  “Nothing, Waterbaby,” the warden said. She laughed again. “Everything. Where the hell are we, anyway?”

  “On the barrier reef. This is one of the reef islets. We just came through the cold-water pipe channel.”

  “That much I'd guessed. How soon can Nola contact Toma about our being down there, and about our escape?” She stopped and peered closely at Pili. “Are you Fatu's son?”

  Pili nodded. “And you're Puhi ‘ai Pōhaku, the mountainlady, right?”

  The warden sighed. “Right.”

  Pua grinned. “With so many Company crews on-site, Nola won't dare send a swimmer out, and they never use the comm system when there are outsiders in the lagoon. Unless Fatu comes out here tonight, and I don't think he will, he won't find out about us being here until after Crawley leaves.”

  “That was a good trick you did with the snowballs, Pua,” Pill said. “Where'd you get so many?”

  “They're my old ones,” Pua said. “The ones I kept in my room before I went to Earth. Mama told Katie to bury them.”

  The warden sat up straighter. “What?”

  “They don't melt if you keep them cool and dark,” Pua said.

  “No,” the warden said. “What did you say about your mother?”

  Pua hesitated. “I guess Mama wanted Katie to save them for me. Katie knew I used to hide my shells and other important stuff under the house, so that's where she put them. It was a good idea. She might have forgotten where they were, otherwise.”

  The warden stared at her for a moment, then turned to look across the lagoon. Mauna Kea Iki was barely visible behind scudding rain clouds. “Well, I'll be damned,” she said softly.

  “It's a good thing you had so many,” Pili said.

  Pua laughed. “It's a good thing Auntie Puhi fit through that pipe!”

  “How far are we from the nearest farm access comm?” the mountainlady asked suddenly.

  “Not far. The rays can take us if you want to go. Why?”

  “Are you going to help us?” Pili asked.

  The warden was still staring at the distant mountain. She nodded. “I'm going to try, Waterboy. I'm sure as hell going to try.”

  Chapter 20

  “Nightcrawlers!” Fatu muttered.

  He stared down at the poor dead creatures. Six of them, each coiled tightly at the center of its spilled dye sack. “She fooled me with a handful of nightcrawlers.”

  Brilliant yellow trails, bordered by lines of scattered moat grass, told the tale of Pua's deception. Since nightcrawlers never crossed moat grass, their steady, slow roaming had eventually led them to the edges of the bed, the bureau, and the stool.

  One by one over the last hour and a half, they had fallen, thunked solidly to the floor, and then wandered the shadows for a time before reaching the patch of moonlight shining through the window. Then they had punctured their dye sacks to release their spores. Fatu had heard their small sounds and thought it was Pua moving around in the room.

  He had expected silence from the warden. She was, physically, one of the quietest humans he had ever known. She moved only with a purpose, and rarely made a sound even then. Pua, on the other hand, never stopped moving, and the noise made by the nightcrawlers had been just enough to convince him she was still safely inside her room.

  “Don't blame yourself,” Toma said. “I knew better than to let Dinsman out of my sight. I just didn't want her standing over my shoulder smirking while it took me half the night to unlock the damn flitter. We both should have guessed Pua was up to something when she refused to speak or to open her door for so long.” He looked up from his examination of the window seal.

  “This isn't the first time she's gotten out this way. She even managed to reactivate the lock after she was outside. The warden's window was closed so the alarm wouldn't trigger, but the lock was jammed. She's good with those hands, but she can't match Pua. My guess is, Pua went out first, and the warden followed.”

  “Pua would have headed straight for the lagoon and then Sa le Fe'e,” Fatu said. “Once she was in the water, she couldn't have been followed without being aware of it. The rays would have told her the woman was following, if she didn't hear her herself.”

  Toma glanced back at him. “Well, there's no way we can stop either one of them now. If the warden somehow finds the nursery, with or without Pua's help, Nola won't allow her to harm the kids, or to leave until she gets clearance from us. As for Pua, I suppose she's as safe there as anywhere for the moment.”

  “Pua has sense enough to stay out of sight while Crawley's here,” Fatu said, “but we'd better be prepared for the warden to show up at any time. Looks like we end up having to trust her after all.”

  Toma shrugged and stood. “The hell of it is, I've trusted her all along. It's just that what I trust her to do isn't necessarily what we need done. She'll honor her contract no matter what else happens.” He glanced out the open window. “And aside from the satisfaction, it won't do her a damn bit of good. That lady doesn't stand a skudder's chance in a pu
hi hole of getting back to Earth, not with her connections there and what she now knows about Lesaat.”

  “You think Crawley will try to kill her?” It was as much a statement as a question.

  “He might,” Toma said, “although it's awfully hard to get away with killing a U.N. troubleshooter. It's more likely he'll just make it impossible for her to return to Earth now, and maybe try to arrange for an accident later. According to her contract, the payment of her medical bills is contingent on her finding the TC records and saving Pukui's reef. She may have accomplished the latter, but she's no closer to finding the TC than we are. Judging from what I've seen of her personal financial records, she's going to be stuck here for a long time.”

  “I sense that wouldn't make you entirely unhappy,” Fatu said with a small smile.

  Toma looked embarrassed for just an instant. “I have to confess, she's the first woman I've been attracted to since Kilisou died.”

  Fatu lifted a brow.

  “For more than strictly physical reasons,” Toma amended.

  Fatu sighed. “Well, no matter what else she does here, we have to thank her for at least giving the reef a chance. We're harvesting the last of the primary pens now. If we can keep it moving for another forty-eight hours, we'll beat this next storm. So far, it's staying right on track, so we'll get the edges of it as it turns north, but it shouldn't be anything we can't handle.

  “Once the algae is clear, we can batten down the farm for the direct hit that's bound to come next. We'll be safe for the season then, because after tomorrow night, we'll be past the alignment tides and even the direct storms won't carry as much force.”

  Toma shook his head. “That's not the report Crawley's going to want to give the inspection team. He wants this place to be in enough danger for the Company to reclaim the lease. My guess is, the minute he's off the shuttle, he'll order the harvest stopped.”

  “I'll take care of that,” Fatu said. “Harvest crews can't follow orders they don't get. You stall Crawley at Landing as long as you can, and we'll keep shoveling algae. Pukui may be flat broke when this is over, but with any luck at all, we'll still have the reef, plus an outdated processing plant full of prime algae to get us started again.”

  Toma nodded. “Ehu's already on her way with the flit and the locators. The Company snoops are bound to be monitoring our comm channels, so we can't chance calling her back now. I told Ehu to ignore all calls for the warden, so that'll slow things up some, too.” Toma squeezed Fatu's arm before starting down the stairs. “We've known all along it wasn't going to be easy, my friend.”

  “Aye,” Fatu said. But I never imagined it could be this hard, he added silently.

  He waited until Toma was outside before looking down again at the dead nightcrawlers. Casualties of war, he thought, and wondered how many more Pukui lives would be lost before this was finished. The pain of Lehua's and Zed's deaths was like a scarlet coiler crushing his soul.

  Did we do the right thing? he wondered. Did we do the right thing by bringing those babies into a world that might be taken from them before it's ever really theirs? He brushed the remaining moat grass from the bureau top.

  Katie was going to be furious about the stains. She was already upset about his opening the warden's crate down in the library. She had actually tried to chase him out of the house. But, “troubleshooters never do anything without a reason,” Toma had said, so while Toma unlocked the flitter, Fatu searched the crate. He had found nothing but boxes of candy, and indications that this was not the first time the crate had been searched. Whether it had been done by the warden or by others before her, it was impossible to tell. Probably both, he decided.

  There was nothing to be done about the stains now. He scooped the nightcrawlers into a fold of his lavalava, then relocked the room. Hopefully, Katie wouldn't notice the mess until he had thought up an acceptable excuse for it. Admitting that he had locked Lehua's precious daughter in her room was not likely to please the overly protective drone any more than the stains. He wondered, How can I even be thinking of such unimportant things?

  “Because it's all part of the same thing,” he muttered. “You can't create a future unless you care about the little things right along with the big ones.”

  After setting a scramble on all incoming transmissions to Pukui and then locking the comm, Fatu left the house. He tossed the dead crawlers into the grass and made a careful circuit of the building. It didn't take long to find the spot where Pua had come down from the roof. He could even see where she had trapped the nightcrawlers under the house.

  The moat grass had come from Matt, of course. Fatu stopped to run his hands over the poor, plucked creature and set it back up on the lanai. Matt could make its own way back to the door.

  He studied the shadows across the lawn for a moment, then followed the route Pua always took to get her to the sea as fast as possible.

  In the jungle, he found signs of her passing—a bent leaf, an overturned seedpod, a freshly snapped bough on the mountain apple tree—and, farther on, the shards of an apple peel. A true Islander. He couldn't help smiling. She never passed up an easily available meal. He bit into one of the apples he had picked for himself.

  At the beach, Pua's broad footsteps led in a straight line across the smooth sand. With the locator gone, she would have headed straight for Sa le Fe'e. Fatu didn't doubt it for a minute. It was a testament to her trust in him and his cautiously worded warnings that she had not gone there before. He had not dared to be more specific for fear of what the bastard Earthers might have done to her.

  He stared out at the distant reef.

  “Be careful, Little Fe'e,” he murmured. “Be careful who and how much you trust.”

  Le Fe'e's song was powerful in the cool night air. Pua claimed that the darkness that eclipsed the rings each night was not really the shadow of Lesaat blocking the sun's rays. It was, she said, the great god Le Fe'e, crawling across the sky to survey his domain.

  Fatu looked up at the spreading shadow. He wished he could believe in the demigod in as literal a way as Pua did. He wished he had a way to call some powerful mythical creature to her aid. An image with the face of the Earthwoman was the only one he could conjure and that was not in the least reassuring.

  Fatu could find no evidence of the warden's presence on the beach, but that didn't surprise him—nor did it mean she hadn't come this way. The woman traveled as effortlessly on the land as Pua did in the water. Pua had told him some days before that despite the mountainlady's being such an obvious land person, she stayed as deliberately conscious of her surroundings as a reef dweller. It was the highest compliment Fatu had ever heard Pua give to an Earth-born human.

  A gust of wind, the harbinger of an approaching squall, lifted the edge of his lavalava. “Another few days,” Fatu asked of the wind. “Just give us another few days, and we can offer you a clean reef.”

  He turned his look back toward the glowing reef. The wind quickened. It was useless to waste time searching for either the warden or Pua, and delaying Crawley was up to Toma for the time being. Fatu couldn't even go out to help on the nets, because he had to be there when Crawley arrived, and there was no telling when that would be.

  The approaching squall hissed like an oxyworm out of water as it rushed toward him across the inner lagoon. The first drops of rain struck wet and cool against his skin.

  Delay, he thought. But how? Everything that could be done had already been set in motion. Then he thought of the Earthwoman again, the anthropologist, and what she had said about their way of life.

  “Syncretism,” he said. “New traditions created by combining the old.” An idea began to form. He smiled slowly. It would not hold Crawley off forever, but done right, it would provide at least a few extra hours. Right now, every one counted.

  He took a quick last look toward the barrier reef, scuffed away Pua's footsteps, then headed for the cookhouse.

  Chapter 21

  It was Pua's idea to meet and delay
the Company bus.

  After Pili had returned to Sa le Fe'e, she and Angie had ridden the rays to the nearest, and most private, computer terminal—in one of the underwater pump stations. While Pua patrolled outside, Angie carefully set to work bypassing the various locks and alarms that had been set during her brief absence. She finally gained access to the farm library and began searching the files.

  “What are you looking for?” Pua asked once when she slipped inside to check on Angie's progress.

  “Precedents,” Angie said.

  “What's that?”

  Angie laughed. “Legal ways to keep you out of trouble, I hope. Go guard the door, Waterchild. I'll explain later.” It took her two hours to find what she needed.

  When she had it, she called Pua back inside and showed her a carefully shielded incoming transmission from Landing. Just before shuttle touchdown, an unplanned methane blow at Kobayashi's Reef had resulted in an emergency call for all available cleanup crews.

  All air transport had been pulled off Landing to ferry swimmers to the damaged reef.

  “I'll bet that's a diversion,” Pua said. “I heard Fatu and Uncle Toma and Kobe planning it a long time ago. Toma probably ordered it to try to keep Crawley away from Pukui so we'd have more time to clear the algae.”

  Angie nodded. “That would explain the scramble that's been set up to block all incoming transmissions. Company crews can't follow orders they don't receive, and Crawley would have tried to order them out of the water as soon as he got off the shuttle. Fatu probably did that. It has his touch.”

  “How come Crawley's still trying to destroy Pukui?” Pua asked. “Fatu told me that he was sure the Company was only using that as a threat to make him tell where the TC records are. Nobody ever really believed the TC enzyme was in the algae pens. It's stupid for them to destroy the reef when they don't have to. Even if the Company doesn't own it, it still makes a lot of money for them.”