Reefsong

by Carol Severance

  He lifted the staff, small and broken. He held it as Pua had done. “I will tell you a story that my good friend, Pualeiokekai, once told me.” The Earthers shifted and whispered, then stilled. They were wise to fear him just now. The troubleshooter watched them all without apparent emotion.

  “The shadow you've seen crossing Lesaat's heavens each night is not a shadow at all,” he said, “but Le Fe'e, crawling along the rings to survey his domain. Tonight, when Le Fe'e reaches halfway, he will be close enough to reach up and touch both moons. He is attracted by their light, and they will tempt him, as they do every three years on this special night, to join them in their cold, dark sky.

  “'The tips of your tentacles are warm,’ they will call, for they remember how Le Fe'e was pulled from the Earth long ago. They will try to trick him, for they are greedy and would like to have his full warmth, not caring that it would leave the planet below bereft.

  “'Wrap your tentacles around us and share your warmth,’ they will say. ‘We will light your ocean in return. See how brightly we shine, both of us traveling so close together, sailing hand-in-hand in the sky.’

  “And because Le Fe'e is a great and generous god,” Fatu said, pulling the staff close again, “he will offer his hospitality to the cold moons.”

  Fatu's fingers played along the carvings of the orator's pole. What magic do these markings hold? he wondered. And then, Is this how a belief system begins? Fatu was no longer sure what he believed, only that it was rooted in this time and this place. His fingers reached the crack in Pua's small stick.

  He went on. “A great battle will ensue. For the moons have conspired to trap Le Fe'e's tentacles between them just as they cross paths. With their doubled strength, they will try to dislodge him from the rings.

  “But Le Fe'e always keeps two of his long tentacles anchored around his Pukui home. He does not wish to leave this joyous, golden place.” A tear scalded Fatu's cheek, and he rocked with the cadence of Pua's song. The sound of wind and pounding surf slid through the cracks in his words.

  “The moons will pull and pull. They will pull Le Fe'e so hard that his hold on Pukui will stretch the very seas. The water will rise higher and higher as Le Fe'e is stretched away by the moons. The struggle will cause a great whirlpool of wind and rain, which will rip and tear at Le Fe'e—and at Pukui, and at all things nearby. Mountainous waves will be torn from the sea and thrown onto the land. Maram and her small sister, Maram Iki, will pull and pull until Le Fe'e is nearly torn in half.

  “But always, the great and gentle Le Fe'e will continue his journey across the rings. Using his four remaining arms, he will pull and crawl his way along the rings’ sharp edges. He will be cut and bloodied, beaten and battered, but he knows that if he can reach the western horizon, the moons’ strength will fade. Their light will be made useless by the coming dawn. They will be forced to release their hold, and Le Fe'e and Pukui will be free.”

  Fatu looked slowly around at them all. “If you have a god that you pray to,” he said softly, “spend this night praying that Le Fe'e has the strength to reach the western horizon before Pukui is ripped entirely from the sea.”

  He bent and laid the orator's staff beside Lili. She covered it with a protective hand. Fatu wiped a trickle of blood from the wound in his chest and crossed again to the cave's entrance.

  “Do not follow me outside,” he said without looking back. “No unprotected Earther will survive Shadow's crossing tonight. Le Fe'e has promised me that. Your only haven is this cave of the dead.”

  As Fatu crawled from the burial cave, the wind suddenly slowed. He stood, and the howling scream stopped. Fatu o le Motu walked forward into the eye of the storm.

  Chapter 28

  Angie reached the outer cave just as Pua fell. She kicked hard toward her, but was slammed away and into the wall by Klooney as he dove toward the exit channel. A waterguard, the last Angie could see in the bloodied water, fired at her from close range. She tried to turn away from his line of fire, but the water slowed her movements. A short, barbed spear caught her left hand near the base of the last two fingers. She shook her hand, but the spear did not dislodge.

  The waterguard fired again, wide to Angie's left, then made the mistake of attacking with his hands. There was no contest then. Even with her left hand disabled, Angie's long, strong fingers reached his gills easily. The guard's eyes opened wide, his mouth wider in a scream, as Angie's nails caught and ripped through the sensitive tissues. She kneed him in the stomach and left him to retch and choke as she turned back to Pua.

  Pua had sunk to the bottom of the cave. She was blinking rapidly, hugging her right arm tightly around her chest. Her left hand was not moving. There was no question that she was hurt. She jerked when Angie touched her, but before Angie could move her or even speak, she said, “Get ‘Umi! Go, Mountainlady!”

  Angie hesitated. She didn't want to leave Pua like this. There was no telling what internal damage the girl might have suffered. The skin along her chest and thighs was scraped raw where she had slid along the wall. If it had not been for the friendly vines that patterned her body, the wounds would have been much deeper. As it was, they glowed with embedded shards of slime mold.

  “Go.” Pua pushed her away and struggled upright.

  Angie knew she was right. They could not allow Waight to escape with Little Ten. She brushed her good hand along Pua's arm and dove for the exit. As she swam through the dark, watery tunnel, she faced her suffocating terror of such places once again. It had not diminished, but this time she accepted it as a gift, because it was a good, clean fear, born of simple accident rather than human greed.

  As she left the shelter of the channel, she was struck by the underwater fury of the storm. She had almost forgotten that it was still going on. The continuous roar of the swells pounding the reef had become background noise inside Sa le Fe'e. White noise, she thought nonsensically as she kicked away from the reef into the furiously bioluminescent sea.

  The noise was no longer background. It pummeled her like a living thing, tugging and pulling at her like the wildly fluctuating currents. Far to the left, she saw the foaming mouth of the tunnel exit. The effervescent, debris-laden current stretched far out to sea. Gray-clad swimmers moved here and there along the reef face between her and the outflow tunnel. Setting charges, Angie thought.

  A swirling eddy caught her and thrust her back into the coral. She managed to stop herself before being scraped too far across the jagged surface, but then her left hand brushed against a jutting branch of knife coral. The spear caught in the iron-hard thicket. A plume of sand and shards of broken coral swirled past. Shreds of rubbery orange sludge clung to her skin.

  Algae, she thought. It's already being carried outside the reef. Thank god it's dead!

  A movement away from the reef face caught Angie's attention. She activated her distance focus. It was a swimmer—no, two swimmers close together, fighting the current toward the dark oblong shape of a minisub. She blinked rapidly again, and saw that it was Waight, still carrying ‘Umi Iki. The waterguard with her carried a bright yellow detonator on his belt. He was dragging Waight along with the aid of a hand jet.

  Angie twisted and pulled at her hand again, but it was well and truly caught. There was only one way to free herself. She ducked a tumbling chunk of brain coral as she wrapped the two caught fingers around the razor-sharp branch that held them. She yanked. Hard and fast, with all her strength—

  —and shuddered with screaming pain as the barbed spear, and her fingers, were sliced away. Quickly, she wrapped a strip of her shirt tightly around her hand. She held a breath she didn't have and blinked back to a clear focus. She kicked away from the reef and into the swirling storm.

  “Le Fe'e,” she called as she fought against the conflicting currents. “If you exist, this would be a good time...” Her air ran out just as she caught the edge of a current that drew her faster in the direction of the sub. She saw a pair of waterguards point and start her way, but t
heir hand jets were not strong enough to carry them through the crosscurrents between them.

  Angie wished she had one of Pua's rays. They had moved so effortlessly through the storm-tossed seas. At least Waight and the waterguard seemed to be having as much trouble controlling their movements as she. More, she saw. The minisub suddenly bucked, rolled, and swung away, then began making its slow way back toward them. It would not be an easy pickup.

  Another of the free-swimming waterguards saw Angie and turned her way. He stopped abruptly as a small scarlet coiler, riding open on the currents, brushed against one of his legs. The coiler snapped shut, and the waterguard bent hurriedly to try to pry it off. Angie concentrated on the swimmers ahead.

  An algae-laden current struck her from behind, and suddenly Angie came face-to-face with Ruby Waight. The same current that threw them together swept Waight's waterguard up and away. The touch of yellow at his belt flickered through the phosphorescent sea.

  Waight stared at Angie through wide, pale eyes. She clutched ‘Umi Iki to her chest with one hand, while paddling uselessly at the surging water with the other.

  Angie reached, not for the baby—'Umi was too small to survive a tug-of-war—but for Waight's oxymask. Waight twisted away. She lifted the baby to shield her face. Little Ten hung limp in her hands, and Angie couldn't tell if the child was alive or dead. Waight resisted with surprising agility. She refused to release the infant even when it was clear she had no hope of reaching the sub, which had been forced far off again by the swirling seas.

  Waight bared her teeth behind her transparent airmask, and Angie could taste her hatred right through the storm. They tumbled and rolled at the mercy of the conflicting currents. They were deep enough so that the main fury of the storm was above them, but the currents were still strong—strong enough to sweep yet another pair of waterguards away. Still, no matter how she twisted and turned, Angie could not get a hold on Waight without endangering the infant.

  Suddenly, there was a change in Waight's expression, and a tension in her body that had not existed the moment before. Fear. Angie recognized it instantly. Terror flooded Waight's icy blue eyes.

  All at once, she stopped fighting. She released Little Ten, and Angie snatched the child into her arms before the current could sweep the tiny thing away.

  Instead, it was Waight who was drawn away, away and down. Something dark and thick had wrapped around the old woman's legs. Angie blinked. Waight screamed behind her mask and bent to scrape her hands along her thighs.

  There's nothing there, Angie told herself. She's just caught in a current. She blinked again, but could see only inky darkness engulfing Waight's lower body.

  Waight stared up at Angie. She cried out and lifted her hands. She screamed and shrieked; Angie heard her clearly through the sea. Angie reached out with her injured hand—an instinctive move, human to human in this tumultuous alien ocean—but an icy current swept her and Little Ten up and out of reach. Only Angie's torn hand did not feel the cold; her missing fingers burned as if they were still back in the fire where the battle had begun.

  She twisted and turned, fighting the water's pull, but by the time she could turn back, Waight had disappeared.

  The baby moved, and Angie shifted her far enough up her chest to hold her with her injured hand. She was tremendously relieved to see that the child's tiny gills were flared and pulsing. Little Ten twisted her miniature fingers in the tatters of Angle's shirt, clinging instinctively, as Angie tried to turn back toward the reef. The infant's skin was warm and slick.

  The current that had separated them from Waight collided with another, and they were tumbled and rolled and tossed back down. Knowing that the deeper water would be calmer, Angie finally stopped fighting the current and let it carry them deeper.

  A shadow crossed their path. Klooney, making for one of the subs. If she had not been holding the baby, Angie would have gone after him. Troubleshooter's ethics be damned. She would have gone after him and killed him right here in this storm-tossed sea.

  Then she saw Pua.

  The girl was swimming with her left arm limp at her side, her father's knife clenched between her teeth. Torn friendly vines and seaweed still circled her limbs, and a long, thin strand of algae trailed from one ankle. She followed haltingly on Klooney's bloody trail.

  Klooney must have sensed her approach, for he turned suddenly and looked back. He tensed, then relaxed. A slow grin spread across his scarred and bloodied face. He pulled a knife from his own leg sheath. Again, waterguards tried to intervene. They aimed their hand jets into Pua's path, but she evaded them without ever straying from her own straight course toward Klooney.

  Angie glanced down at the baby. There was no way she could help. If the sea had been calm, she could have left the baby to drift, at least for a short time, but in the battering storm currents, she could not let the child go. And she could not fight with the baby in her arms. She rode the current and watched.

  “Take care, Little Fe'e,” she whispered into the water.

  Would the thing from the deep rise to rescue Pua as it had Little Ten? Angie wondered. She saw no sign of whatever it had been. It was just a tide-pissing current! she told herself forcefully. Still, she watched for its return.

  Pua came within reach of Klooney. She still held the knife in her teeth. He thrust at her with his own knife, and she bent away from his reach. Angie saw her face twist with pain. Pua slid her sharp nails along Klooney's arm. He yelled silently and backed away. They circled.

  If the currents were affecting them, Angie couldn't see it. It was as if they were fighting in a vacuum, a closed space all their own. No waterguards went near them.

  Klooney struck again, nicking Pua's left arm. Again, her nails reached him, this time along his left side. He winced and turned, and she raked him across the back.

  He was furious now, wilder in his movements—and at every instant of carelessness, Pua bloodied him further. Little Ten squirmed, and Angie looked down at her. She did not want to watch Pua kill, or be killed by, this man. This was a different battle from those Pua had fought inside Sa le Fe'e. There, she had struck in an instant, killing fast and sure to save her own life and those of the people she protected. Just as Angie had herself.

  Now, it was almost as if Pua were toying with Klooney, scratching at him line by line, although Angie was certain that the instant an opening occurred, Pua would rip out not only the man's gills but his blackened heart if she could. She wondered why Pua did not use her knife.

  Something velvety smooth slid along Angie's back. She spun around, not an easy thing to do in the turbulent sea, and almost wept with relief. It was one of the reef rays. She stroked its wings as it swept past a second time, and when it returned to lift under her, she gratefully accepted the ride. She clung to it with her legs and her one free hand.

  She saw the other rays then. Many of them, circling the roiling currents. Human swimmers, in pairs and sometimes threes, were clinging to their backs. Even some of the smaller, single-winged rays carried riders. The Earther waterguards had begun gathering around the minisubs. The rays took their riders near and slowed for them to dismount.

  Angie wondered if the rays themselves would attack the Earthers, but they did not. They swept in wide circles, defying all but the strongest currents, and left the humans to fight their own battles.

  The waterguards turned instantly to the defense. It was clear they fought as a well-trained unit, swift and sure of their movements in the sea, even this turbulent sea. They fired quick volleys with their hand spears. Two of Pukui's defenders were struck before they could get close.

  Then an Earther jerked and sank back. Another quickly followed. And a third. The Earthers broke ranks suddenly and scrambled to take cover behind the subs. Angie saw Kobayashi take aim again, and another Earther tumbled away with a bright yellow dart protruding from his chest.

  Another pair of waterworlders were struck by the Earthers’ crossfire, but by then the rest had gotten close en
ough to fight the Earthers hand to hand. The Earthers’ stubby hands were no match for the waterworlders’ long, needle-tipped fingers. Years of working the algae nets had left the Lesaat swimmers strong and agile in ways the Earthers had never faced before.

  One of the subs powered forward and rammed three of the waterworlders. They spun helplessly away. Two others tried to grab the sub as it passed them, but they could do nothing to stop it. It started into a wide turn back. But it skimmed too close to the powerful tunnel current. The clang of metal striking metal shivered through the water as some shredded remnant of Pukui farm equipment struck the sub. The vessel tumbled helplessly, out of control in the storm-fed current, toward the open sea.

  A roar and a rumbling crash sounded from the reef face. An explosion! Angie huddled over Little Ten and clung to the ray as the shock wave passed.

  They were blowing the reef, just as Waight had said. The waterguard with the detonator must have made it into the remaining sub. The ray would not take Angie to Pua, so she urged it back toward the reef. She had to find Toma, or Pili, or someone who knew the click-talk of the rays. They had to evacuate Sa le Fe'e before the rest of the charges were blown.

  “Pili!” she called to the ray, thinking that Pili would probably be the most familiar to the rays. Her mount's great wings lifted and lowered. They slid through the battering sea almost as if it weren't there. We'll have to pull everyone from inside the reef, injured or not, Angie thought, and take them deep enough to ride out the storm. She thought of Nola and her twisted leg and wondered if it could even be done.

  Suddenly, Pill was beside her, astride the back of one of the largest rays. He stared at her across the distance between them, the width of two rays’ wings, then suddenly grinned when he saw Little Ten. The baby was sucking contentedly on Angie's shirt. For just an instant, Angie wondered what seawater would do for the infant's digestion. She motioned Pili close.