The Pouakai

  Despite the general gloom, Colin and Alan were thrilled to be here. The two exobiologists were excited because this was the first time they, or anyone else, had ever had a chance to watch the Rocs up close for this long. So instead of trying to study the Rocs amid the panic and confusion of Cairns during an evacuation, they could spend their time out on the beach with the locals, watching the Rocs go through their daily lives.

  Around noon on our fourth day on Nanumea, I was avoiding the worst of the tropical heat when Colin plopped down next to me in the sand of the shelter. The skinny, fair-skinned professor had a scorching sunburn, but also a gleam in his eyes that I recognized as pure excitement.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “It’s just unbelievable, Boonie. The Pouakai are simply amazing! I never thought I’d get a chance to study them like this.”

  “You’re calling them Pouakai? Are you going local on me?”

  “It’s as good a name as any. I never liked the name ‘Rocs’ anyway. These things are nothing like real Rocs.”

  “Rocs never existed. They’re a mythological bird. What the hell is a Pouakai anyway?”

  “Another mythological creature, also a man-eating bird from Polynesian legend. The Chief said his people started using that name after the first islanders were killed early on. I guess it stuck.”

  “Roc, Pouakai. Either way, it’s an imaginary bird.”

  Colin shook his head, but had a big grin on his face. “You know what I mean. Unicorns don’t exist either, but everyone knows what they look like. Anyway, Alan and I have seen Pouakai behaviors never reported before. We think we understand their energy source too.”

  “Their what?”

  “Where they get their energy. We’ve never seen them eat. Anywhere. They don’t even have mouths as far as we know. Up to now, nobody has discovered how they sustain themselves, but we think we’re on to something.” He left it hanging, expecting me to prompt him further. I was too exhausted to play along though.

  “They’re solar powered!”

  I did raise an eyebrow at that. “They’re what?”

  “Their skin. We think it acts like a solar panel. A couple of researchers in Japan had put that forth as a possibility, but none of us took it too seriously. We’d always assumed they ate while underwater. But we’ve been watching them in the waters around here, and several never leave and never submerge, so they can’t be feeding underwater. They just float or flop on the surface all day. We’ve seen a noticeable decrease in their energy level during the later hours of nighttime too. In the mornings, they align their bodies so they are broadside to the sun as it rises. It really looks like they’re using solar power and an organic battery system to power themselves! That might explain some of the really odd organs we’ve seen on the carcasses we’ve dissected too.”

  I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly through pursed lips. I just couldn’t get excited about this new information. “This helps us get off the island how?” I asked a little too snidely. Colin didn’t seem to notice.

  “Everything we learn about the Pouakai helps. Any little bit of data may be the one that opens the door to controlling them.”

  “I don’t want to control them. I want to wipe them off the face of the Earth.”

  “We might be able to learn a lot from them,” Colin said, the smile leaving his face. “After what I’ve seen here, I’d bet a fortune that they really are extraterrestrial, and that creates a lot more questions. Like, where are they from? How did they get here? Are they intelligent?”

  “Questions,” I snorted. “What I want are answers.”

  Colin ignored my slam. “Hell. If they aren’t from here, they’re the first extraterrestrial organism we’ve ever encountered. Alan and I are wondering if they’re a natural evolution of another species. Or maybe, since they seem to survive on Earth okay, they’re an engineered organism.”

  “A what?”

  “An engineered biological entity. Something that isn’t natural, but engineered, designed, for its purpose in life.”

  “Seriously? You think someone made these things?”

  “Not anyone here,” Colin replied, “though maybe something from out there did.” He pointed up at the sky.

  I shook my head. The last thing I wanted to worry about was the possibility of an alien race having dropped these things off here as some sort of weapon.

  “Does it really matter now?” I said. “All I care about is making sure we survive, and find a way off this island.”

  Colin took a deep breath and then shrugged. “Yeah, you’re right. We each have our jobs to do.”

  I closed my eyes, and leaned my head back against the corrugated wall of the hut. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to jump all over you like that.”

  “No problem buddy. You’ve had a lot to take care of the past few days.”

  He stood up and left. I checked the time; ten more minutes until I had to be out at the taro patch to help the locals with weeding and harvesting. My shoulder felt better, and I tried to help out our hosts as much as possible.

  A loud peal of thunder rolled across the island. I’d be getting wet outside. At least the Rocs tended to stay put when it rained. Another clap of thunder echoed across the island, as big fat raindrops hit the sandy ground with a hiss, a moment of normalcy in what had been an unreal string of days.

  I mused on that thought for a moment. The dark clouds and rain meant less sunshine coming through, and if Colin was right, less energy for them. I told myself to forget it though. That was someone else’s job to worry about. My job was, first, to keep us alive. And second, to find a way back home.

  Day Five

  “Here, hold on to this,” Jeff whispered, early the next morning.

  I grabbed the loose cable he held out to me, and pulled it away from the opening in the floor of the cockpit.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said quietly, as he withdrew his head from the avionics bay. I poked my head into the opening and looked around. The radio compartment under the cockpit had taken the brunt of the impact as we slid across the water and up onto the beach. It had saved us in the cockpit from certain death, but in the process, the racks holding the radios had ripped apart. It was a jumbled mess of cables, twisted metal, sand, and water.

  “I don’t suppose you took a class in avionics repair,” I sighed.

  Jeff shook his head. “The closest I came was trying to build a crystal radio for Boy Scouts. It didn’t work. I never got the merit badge.”

  We both stared at the wreckage.

  “I don’t think we could have done anything with it anyway,” I said. “Unless you know a way to make a coconut battery like they had on Gilligan’s Island.”

  “Yeah,” he said, without a hint of a smile. “I guess this was worth a try, but not likely to work.”

  Jeff had been showing some signs of depression, as were a lot of my passengers and crew. I wanted to restore some hope for my people, if we could get the radio and a battery off the plane. But the radios were smashed beyond our ability to repair, and the main batteries were underwater near the tail.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s get the food out of the galley.”

  Jeff followed me down the aisle. The Rocs had beaten on the fuselage when they were chasing after us that first day. The whole plane now looked like it had been through a boulder attack, with dents over practically every square inch of exposed surface. Jet fuel leaked from the battered engine nacelles, leaving an oily sheen on the lagoon, and a stench of kerosene in the humid air.

  “Peanuts, pretzels, and soda pop,” Jeff reported, as he opened the galley carts. “All the major food groups.”

  I smiled. Maybe he hadn’t gone completely into a depression yet. “Now if I can only find…Damn,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “The coffee. The packets are all torn apart. Doesn’t look like there’s anything salvageable here.”

  “Shit. Now that is depressing,” he replied.

  We gathered
what we could, put it into a couple of canvas sacks the Chief had given us and, after checking to see if any Rocs were in the area, dropped to the sand. With our meager booty in hand, we hiked back to the village under a scorching sun.

  Day Ten

  Five days later, I stood on a rock a few feet from the beach, with a long fishing pole in hand. I cast the lure as far as I could onto the reef, and slowly reeled it back in. The sun had just fallen below the horizon and the first stars were becoming visible. After spending more than a week on the island, it felt like we were settling into a routine. A few people were still recovering from injuries sustained in the crash but everyone else had healed up nicely, thanks to the Nanumeans. That didn’t mean we were all helping out with daily life though. Half my crew and passengers were in a deep depression I couldn’t do anything about. They moped about the shelter and did little work. The rest of us pitched in as best as we could, remaining quiet while outside, the whoosh of a passing Roc hardly even noticed now.

  With so much time spent taking care of my passengers and crew, fishing was one of the few times I could be alone to think. I tried not to dwell on the flight and crash, but it was like an itch that wouldn’t go away. In an endless loop, I wondered why I hadn’t listened to Jennifer and only worked the safe trips. Had I been trying to thumb my nose at the Rocs? Had I actually flown these trips to prove to myself that they didn’t have the upper hand yet? Normally I’d have said no, but in these quiet reflections, I had to admit to myself that it was a possibility.

  At least while fishing I could get a little enjoyment out of our situation. I did a lot of surf fishing at home in Hawaii to relax. A lone Roc passed overhead in the dying light, heading out to the far end of the island. It all seemed so strange, yet peaceful. Here I stood, fishing like nothing unusual had happened, while a Roc sailed by. Was there actually a way to co-exist with these things? Could we learn to live alongside the Rocs? Big cities would certainly have to change, or not exist where the Rocs settled. Smaller outposts like this might survive, given the right information.

  These thoughts were rolling around in my head when a strange shape appeared in the water. At first it looked like another pregnant Roc, but it had only one lump, and I couldn’t see the wings or spike. It dipped below the surface, and then appeared a few feet closer, heading straight toward me. The darkening skies reflected sapphire and orange on the ripples of water, and I couldn’t see what lay below the surface. The lump reappeared twenty feet away, and then rose out of the ocean. My heart skipped a beat. Colin’s suggestions about the Rocs being created by something else raced through my mind, and for an instant I felt a rush of panic. Then I recognized the lump.

  It was a man. A man in a high-tech scuba outfit, carrying a rifle. More men rose out of the ocean around him and stood waist-deep in the waters of the reef. Seeing half a dozen armed men appear in front of me was not what I’d expected that day.

  “Are you from the crashed aircraft?” he asked, in a voice that rolled like thunder.

  “Shhhhh!” I whispered as loudly as I dared. I waved him closer, and lay my fishing pole on the rock. He waded through the water as I glanced around. No Rocs yet, so I took a deep breath. He came up next to me, his rifle held across his chest.

  “Yes, I am. Have your men follow me,” I whispered. “Make sure they don’t talk, don’t make any noise at all. And if you want to stay alive, for God’s sake, don’t fire those weapons.”

  He turned to his men and made some quick signs with his hand, and then nodded to me. Shaking, I climbed the shore toward the village. When I turned back, they looked like half a dozen shadows following me. In the fading light, I couldn’t make out any details. One could have been standing in the shadow of a palm tree, and I’d never have known it. If they were who I thought they were, we might yet get off this island.

  I walked them to the shelter, and as we entered, a silent riot erupted. Everyone dashed over to us, most in shock to see someone new. Even the worst victims of depression had a look of hope on their faces. I shushed them all and turned to the leader. Salt water still dripped from his wetsuit, as well as from the small, high tech modules attached to the webbing on his chest and waist. He had pulled his facemask back on his head, and carried his rifle with practiced ease.

  “Navy Seals?” I asked. The leader nodded, and a small smile crossed his face.

  “You are the survivors of the crash?” he asked, looking around at us.

  “We are. Sixty-five out of the seventy that were onboard.”

  He looked at me, positively appraising my efforts. “Nice job.”

  “Thanks. How did you get here? I didn’t think the Navy sent any ships down this way.”

  His smile grew a little wider. “We don’t, but submarines do come this way, a lot.”

  My jaw dropped. I’d been an idiot. A submarine—I hadn’t even thought about that.

  “Can you get us out of here?” one of my passengers asked breathlessly.

  “Certainly,” he replied. “That is why we’re here, assuming you want to be—” He turned as the Chief entered the shelter, followed by a couple of dozen locals. The Seals stiffened, but did not otherwise react.

  “Chief,” I said, hoping to avoid any sort of distrust from either side. “These men are from the US Navy, and are here to rescue us.” I turned to the leader of the Seals, and motioned to the Chief. “This is the leader of the island, Chief Kalahamotu. Chief, this is—”

  “Lieutenant Hanson,” the leader said. “US Navy.” Hanson held out his hand, and the Chief took it.

  “Welcome to Nanumea,” the Chief said.

  “Thanks,” Hanson replied, flustered. “We didn’t expect to find anyone else here with the survivors.”

  “You are the second set of unexpected guests we’ve had this month. Welcome.”

  Hanson looked around at the locals. “How many of you are there?”

  “Five hundred twelve.”

  Hanson looked thoughtful for a few seconds. “We weren’t planning on rescuing that many people. The sub won’t be able to hold all of you.”

  “Oh no,” said the Chief. “We do not wish to be rescued. This is our home. We are fine here.”

  The lieutenant raised an eyebrow. “But, the Rocs—”

  “Lieutenant,” I said. “I’ll explain later. I agree with the Chief, though. If they don’t want to be rescued, we don’t have to take them along.”

  “They won’t survive down here with the Rocs around. There’s nobody alive anywhere down here. No survivors anywhere in the central Pacific.”

  “They have survived here,” I said, pointing at the Chief, “and for all we know, there may be others around the world. It’s a long story, but we have the trip home to talk about it. For now, just believe me. They have been living with the Rocs for years, and will be fine. But we have information that is vitally important to get back home, and I’m sure that we’re all more than ready to get going.”

  Day Eleven

  We shuttled out to the sub the next evening in a rubber boat with a silent electric motor. The sound of the wind and the slap of the waves on the reef were louder than the boat’s passage. I remained on the shore until the last group was picked up. Before climbing in, I shook hands with the Chief.

  “Thanks,” I whispered. He nodded, but kept quiet. “Good luck,” I added, and climbed into the boat.

  We slipped over the reef, and bounced through the waves of the open ocean. Spray flew through the air, and soaked us. Without the moon it was pitch dark, and I didn’t see the sub until we were almost on top of it. A huge black bulk rising out of the water, it stretched a hundred feet in either direction. The sail towered overhead, fins protruding like wings. Many hands were there to lift us out of the boat and onto the deck. Within seconds I was ushered through a hatch and down into the bowels of the sub. Dim red lighting greeted us once we got inside. A strong mixture of smells permeated the air; diesel fumes, electronics, and sweat. I heard men talking above us on the deck, then they
climbed down too, and the heavy hatch shut with a metallic clang.

  The Captain of the sub came up to me and shook my hand. “You are the Captain of the aircraft that crashed?”

  I nodded. “Mark Boone, sir.”

  “Baker,” he said. “Riley Baker. Captain of the USS Ohio. Welcome aboard.”

  Short and lean, Captain Baker wore wire rimmed half-glasses perched on his nose. He moved quickly and purposefully.

  “We’re pretty damn happy to be here,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. Having an extra sixty-five people down here will be a tight squeeze. We took three of your people to the infirmary, but the rest of your group is in the enlisted mess. That’s the biggest area we have. We’ll be back in Hawaii in six days. I hope you can put up with the cramped quarters for a while.”

  “It’s all fine with us, Captain. We’re just happy you found us.”

  “It wasn’t us. The search and rescue people picked up the signal from your beacon. The coordinates moved around a bit on the island before the signal faded, so they assumed someone was still alive and carrying the beacon with them. We were on patrol east of Hawaii, and they dispatched us to take a look.”

  “However it happened, we’re glad. Thanks.”

  The Captain took us toward the mess. The inside of the sub was small and densely packed with pipes and wiring, but spotlessly clean.

  “I can’t believe there have been people living on Nanumea all this time,” the Captain said, as we walked down the corridor.

  “They got lucky,” I replied. “They did all the right things, although they didn’t know it at the time. They stayed quiet and didn’t disturb the Rocs.”

  “That’s really all it took?”

  “Apparently, yes. We learned what to do from the locals, and even in the short time we had on the island, I got a chance to watch the Rocs up close, without them attacking me. We have two biologists, Benoit and Gee, with us too. They’ve been studying the things around the clock and it sounds like they have come on some important finds.”