Reefsong

by Carol Severance

  “He's doing it because of me,” Angie replied.

  Pua's brows lifted. She looked up from where she was braiding colored seaweed into the edges of her shirt. She had a pencil-thin scarlet coiler wrapped around one wrist and a circle of feather ferns attached to the other. She was as colorful as the reef itself.

  “My contract is worded so that I have to find the TC enzyme records and save Pukui before I can complete my obligations and return to Earth for payment.”

  “You mean he wants you to stay here?”

  Angie shrugged. “I doubt the Company considers me a good risk for being sent back to Earth right now, Waterbaby. They know damn well I'd do everything I could to expose what's gone on here. Even if I couldn't prove anything legally.”

  Pua was quiet for a minute. “Well, if you're going to stay,” she said finally, “you should probably start being nicer to Uncle Toma.”

  Angie glanced at her. “Why?”

  The corners of Pua's mouth twitched. “Because Toma makes good babies.”

  “Mother of mountains,” Angie muttered, and turned back to the flickering screen. “Damn,” she said as soon as she saw it.

  “What?”

  Angie pointed toward an incoming message. “The diversion didn't work.”

  Crawley, apparently unwilling to wait the full day or more that the emergency at Kobayashi's would take, had ordered the U.N. team and half his security squad aboard a Company hydrobus. The bus was already on its way to Pukui.

  “Spit,” Angie said. “If they're running at top speed, which I'm sure they are, they'll be here by dawn.” She glanced once more at the satellite weather map and saw that the nearby storm was just beginning to turn north, away from Pukui. At least something was going right. She touched off the comm.

  “We have to stop that bus,” Pua said. “Come on. I know how to do it.”

  “We're not going to sink the hydrobus, Pua,” Angie replied quickly.

  Pua gave her a long-suffering kind of look, as if sinking the bus and every Earther on it wasn't exactly what she would do if she thought she could get away with it. She looked down to inspect her braided fringe, then up again, coolly. “You always try to solve things using legal stuff, like talking and things like that, before you do anything. Sometimes that's backwards. Sometimes you have to just do things and talk about them later.”

  Suddenly she grinned. “Can we go if I promise not to break any laws, Mountainlady?”

  And because there was nothing more to be discovered through the comm lines, and it was foolish to take the chance of being caught by Fatu if they joined the work crews, Angie had finally agreed. Now, shoulders numb with fatigue, she clung to the velvety back of another, or perhaps the same, ray and listened to the water sing while racing through the open ocean.

  After a long, long ride, Pua signaled them to the surface. Dawn was still at least an hour off, but the moonlight and the rings and the water's phosphorescence made the night almost as bright as day.

  “I feel the bus coming,” Pua said as soon as they reached the air. “This is where we need to do it.” She pushed herself up to sit astride her ray's narrow middle. Angie did the same, and the rays moved slowly across the water, lifting and lowering with the shapes of the swells. It was like riding a double-winged horse.

  Pua grinned. “These high seas are going to make it fun.”

  “Make what fun?” Angie asked. “Pua, what are you going to do? That bus is going to be moving well over a hundred kilometers an hour. How can you slow it without getting killed? You're not planning to show yourself, are you?”

  “With swells like these, they're probably only doing about a hundred,” Pua said. “Toma's going to be slowing things down as much as he can. And no, I won't show myself. Toma wouldn't stop, anyway, and if somebody else made him, I'd just get the fireloving hell out of here. I don't want to get anywhere near those people.”

  She rubbed her ray's back, then clicked a signal—first outside the water, then under it. Instantly, the rest of the ray pack surfaced, slammed their wings against the water, and dove.

  “Pua, what's going—”

  “Come on,” Pua shouted, dropping back to her stomach on the ray. “You just watch!” Angie had just time enough to grab her own mount's forward wing edges before being pulled under again. Thank god for the adrenaline rush, she thought as she pressed her cheek against the ray's back. It continually astonished her that the ray's skin was so warm.

  They dove deep—deep enough for Angie to feel the pressure change. She's going to kill us both, she decided, before finally she saw the ray pack rising toward them. Something large and red was rising with them.

  As they drew closer, Angie saw that the rays were carrying the red thing in their teeth. She was as shocked at the size of the rays’ protruding gray teeth as she was at the sight of the snakelike creature that twisted and writhed in their grasp. It was as big around as her waist, and if it were stretched out straight it would measure at least ten meters. A dozen or more adult rays held it taut, lifting it, fighting it, closer and closer to the surface. The single-winged youthful rays circled, but stayed back from harm's way.

  Angie's ray, too, held back from the thrashing, struggling pack, but Pua's took her directly into the maelstrom. Pua reached up as they swept beneath the scarlet creature and slid her hand along its skin. The circle of red at her wrist matched the giant she caressed.

  “Dear god, it's a coiler!” Angie whispered into the waves. It was the great-great-grandmother of coilers, from what she could see, and it was making a tremendous effort to spring inward around the rays—and Pua.

  “Get the hell out of there, you idiot!” Angie shouted. Her ray bucked slightly, startled, no doubt, by the alien sound of her voice.

  Suddenly Angie became conscious of a new sound, a different feel to the sea. The hydrobus—approaching at high speed. Her ray carried her upward, parallel to the pack, close enough for her to see but not be caught in the turbulence of their passing.

  The rays carried the coiler directly into the speeding hydrofoil's path. Just when Angie was sure the entire pack, Pua and coiler included, would be sliced through by the hydrofoil's submerged wings, the rays released the coiler. Instantly, Pua and her mount dropped with the others into a steep dive. The coiler, still stretched open, was struck by the starboard forward foil.

  It snapped closed instantly, coiling itself tightly around the outer edge of the foil and one of the struts.

  The bus dropped and skewed sharply to starboard, its hydrodynamic lift destroyed. The throttle was chopped immediately, and the bus's hull settled with a heavy thud into the water. The hydrofoil wings quickly retracted. Only the port fore and aft wings pulled fully into their holding bays, however. The tightly wrapped bulk of the coiler prevented the starboard wings from retracting all the way inside. The bus continued to skew slowly to the right, listing sharply in the swell.

  “Holy mother of mountains,” Angie breathed. “She did it!” Her ray moved—whether at the sound of her voice or at some command of Pua's, she wasn't sure—toward the surface. Pua met her there and motioned her off the ray. Treading water so that only their heads would show, they watched as the crippled hydrobus circled. Because of the heavy seas, they could only catch glimpses of the chaos on the bus's deck before being dropped back into watery troughs.

  Pua was beside herself with delight. “Did you see her, Mountainlady? Did you see how long she was. Wasn't she beautiful? I never saw such a beautiful coiler! Her skin felt like snow-tree bark.” She laughed and spluttered as a breaking wave tip caught her face-on. “She was as smooth as the sea. Oh, I love that mama coiler! I do.”

  She unwrapped the tiny coiler from her wrist, stretched it out between her hands, and kissed it. Then she set it free. It snapped into a tiny tangle and tumbled toward the deep.

  “Grow!” she called after it. “Grow into the greatest coiler of them all.” And then she laughed and stroked the crowding rays, praising their strength and agility and
fantastic bravery—and despite the chill the scene aboard the hydrobus had given her, Angie laughed right along with her.

  “How long will that thing stay on there?” she asked.

  “At least a day,” Pua said. “Look, they're going in the water. Come on.” She led the way under. She was careful, Angie was pleased to note, to remain well distant from the swimmers who had come to surround the great tangle of scarlet coiler.

  Angie recognized Toma's powerful form and, to her disgust although not her surprise, Klooney's blocky body, as well. She blinked extreme focus, watched for a time more, then motioned Pua back to the surface.

  “Klooney!” Pua spat as soon as she reached air.

  “Worse than that,” Angie said. “Did you see the hands on the swimmers in gray?”

  Pua shook her head. “What was wrong with them? How can you see that far?”

  “Wait,” Angie said. They reached the top of a swell, and she blinked long focus again to study the humans aboard the bus. Most had been riding on the open deck, and it was clear that there had been injuries among them. Of the twenty or more she could see from this angle, all but three wore bodysuits of steel gray.

  “Spit,” she said. “We're in for it now.”

  “What?” Pua asked. “What do you see?”

  “There's a whole troop of Earther waterguards on that bus,” Angie replied. “Come on, let's move back. The last thing we want now is to be seen anywhere near here.”

  “What's a waterguard?”

  “An Earther with gills. A swimmer trained as a soldier to patrol Earth seas. They're all straight Company liners. Crawley's not taking any chances with waterworlder loyalties this time.” She remembered that he had said he had permits to bring the waterguards here.

  “But what—” Pua began as she and Angie rose upward on the back of another swell.

  “Sink, Pua. This is serious.”

  Pua disappeared. They met the rays underwater and swam farther back from the bus. Very carefully, Angie surfaced again, just long enough to see that the swimmers had returned to the deck of the bus. She gave Pua a thumbs-up signal under the water. The bus was well and truly crippled. There was no way they could remove the coiler without lasers, and that would damage the foil.

  The bus was wallowing in the rough seas, riding off-angle and deep in the water. They could not achieve hydrofoil lift, so they would have to proceed to Pukui hull down. They would be lucky to make more than twelve knots. Pua and her rays had given Pukui at least a fourteen-hour reprieve.

  When Angie submerged, she gave Pua a sound hug—laughing at the girl's look of astonishment—then motioned them back toward Pukui.

  They found Fatu in the community cookhouse, pounding boiled taro root with a stone pounder twice the size of his massive fist. His oiled body glistened in the morning sunlight. He swayed to the rhythm of his strokes and the beat of some ancient Island chant.

  Pua motioned Angie to silence and squatted just outside the open door to watch and listen. Angie, not sure she would be able to get up again if she sat down now, leaned against the doorjamb. She wasn't aware of making any sound, but Fatu stopped suddenly in mid-stroke and turned toward them. He was on his feet instantly.

  “Please don't throw that,” Angie said quickly as his grip tightened on the pounder. “I'm not sure I could dodge it right now.”

  “Where is Pua?” he demanded.

  “I'm right here,” Pua said.

  He turned his startled look toward her and the tension drained visibly from his stance. “Where were you all night?” he asked.

  “We went to meet the bus,” Pua said. She stood. “We dumped it right in the water, Fatu!”

  “What?”

  “Crawley was coming to Pukui on one of the Company buses, so the rays and I snapped a coiler around one of the hydrofoil wings and wrecked it. You should have seen her, Fatu! That coiler was the biggest one I've ever seen, and the rays held her in their teeth. They said after that it was fun, and wanted to do it again, but I wouldn't let ’em, ‘cause we only needed to do it once. And anyway, I don't think Le Fe'e would have given us another coiler. This one might get killed if they try to use lasers to get her off.”

  Fatu knelt in front of Pua and took her shoulders in his hands. “What are you talking about?”

  “The bus,” Pua said. “The Company bus was bringing Crawley and the Earthers, so we wrecked it.”

  He glanced at Angie, then back at Pua. “You sank a hydrobus?” His expression made it clear that he believed her fully capable of doing such a thing.

  “With a coiler,” Pua said proudly.

  “They didn't sink it,” Angie said. “The bus is just disabled and slowed way down. The passengers might have a few broken bones and plenty of bruises from the sudden stop, but nothing more serious.”

  “Holy mother of god,” he said.

  “They did the methane blow at Uncle Kobe's,” Pua said. “That's why Mr. Crawley's on the bus. He didn't want to wait till tomorrow for the air transports to get back to Landing.”

  Fatu's attention snapped back to Angie. “You opened the incoming comm lines?”

  “Just enough to get information. No Company orders got through. I made sure of that. I presume that's why you set up the scramble?”

  He nodded slowly.

  “What's all the food for?” Pua asked. She peered around him into the cookhouse. “Hi, Katie,” she called.

  Fatu shook himself slightly. His look remained on Angie. “Was it your idea to go after the hydrofoil?”

  Angie shook her head. “I was just an observer. Remember how you said you weren't sure which of Pua's stories were true? After what I saw tonight, I'd be willing to bet most of them are.”

  Pua tugged at Fatu's lavalava. “What's the food for?” she asked again.

  “A welcoming feast,” he said.

  “For Crawley?” Pua voiced Angie's startlement.

  “Just because we don't like him,” Fatu said, “doesn't mean he's not an important guest—and he's not coming alone.” He looked back at Angie. “You've been studying Island history, Warden, you should understand the importance of a welcoming feast and its attendant ceremony, particularly under the present circumstances. Lesaat custom dictates that we treat our Earth visitors with proper Island protocol.”

  Angie stared at him for a moment, before suddenly understanding. “Present circumstances meaning the need to gain as much time as possible before Crawley takes control of Pukui?”

  He nodded and seemed to relax slightly.

  “Do you think he'll stand for it?” she asked. “He's not likely to be interested in formal greetings and food presentations. He'll want to get right down to business.”

  “Crawley has sat through feasts on Lesaat before,” Fatu said. His voice and his body had grown calm again, although he remained obviously and fully alert. “Most of the inspection team he's bringing have, too. Earthers consider ‘traditional’ Lesaat feasts to be one of the perks of traveling this far. It gives them the chance to yuk it up with—and at—the ‘natives.'”

  “So even if Crawley objects, the others are likely to want to go through with it,” Angie said. “It might just work.”

  “Crawley accepted food from Lehua the morning she died,” Fatu said. “He won't conduct business here again without first facing full and formal Pukui ceremony.”

  “I'm not sure any of those Earthers are going to feel like eating when they get off that bus,” Pua said.

  “That's true,” Angie said. “Have you checked the weather map recently, Fatu? The swells out there seem awfully strong.”

  “The storm's moving slowly, but it's still on track to the northwest. It'll parallel Pukui for a while more before moving out of our range,” he said. “The only thing showing behind it is a full seven days away. If we can keep the Company crews working for at least one more day, we'll be able to clear the rest of the algae on our own.” He paused. “Are we working together on this, Warden?”

  “We've been worki
ng together all along, Fatu. It's just that neither of us was sure of the other's boundaries.”

  He waited.

  “Pili has your habit of silent patience,” she said.

  He blinked and tensed. “You met him?”

  It was her turn to nod.

  “Do not mistake my self-control for patience,” he said softly.

  There was no danger of that. “We went to Sa le Fe'e,” she confessed. “I saw five of the kids. Six, counting Pili. I spoke briefly with Nola. Then we left. Nobody got hurt.”

  “How did you get out?” he asked. “Nola wouldn't have let you go willingly, not without authorization from here.”

  Angie nodded toward Pua, who had squatted beside Fatu's pounding board and was scooping up wads of taro paste to suck noisily from her fingers.

  Fatu sighed. “With Kiki and Keha's help, no doubt.”

  “And Pili's,” Angie said.

  “Of course. There's no way Pili would stand aside if there was trouble to get into. He and Pua are a pair.”

  “So I saw,” she said, smiling. “Are you familiar with the Native Reparations Act, Fatu?”

  His eyes darkened. “The sellout of Earth's last few indigenous peoples?” he said. “Of course I'm familiar with it. I grew up on one of the reef reservations, remember?” He motioned toward Pua. “Her mother grew up on that pitiful piece of land at South Point, thanks to that tide-pissing act.”

  “I spent some time studying it tonight,” Angie said. “I think I might be able to use it to help your kids.”

  He shook his head. “We already tried that, years ago when they first changed the inheritance laws. Earthers on Lesaat are formally classified as immigrants, not indigenous peoples. Native rights don't apply here. Neither the Company nor the U.N. will even listen to your case.”

  “They might,” she told him, “if the natives in question control access to the TC enzyme.”

  He blinked, caught his breath, then became very still. “You found the records?” he said very softly.

  She nodded. “Lehua told me where they are.”

  He reached for her, but she stepped easily aside.

  “What—” Pua began.