Ocean: The Awakening

by Brian Herbert

  On a split screen she displayed a series of still photos, along with color videos that showed fish, turtles, and other marine animals in action in the water.

  “While diving and walking on the shore in the past few days, I saw fish behaving very erratically. These are videos of what it looked like two days ago, when a school of butterflyfish frightened me. I’m talking about normally docile fish and other species that inhabit the reefs and other waters around the Hawaiian Islands, the kind our area is famous for. Usually it’s like swimming in a giant aquarium of tropical fish, but they swam toward me very fast—a huge school of them—and only veered off at the last possible second. It was very strange, and very unsettling.”

  She showed him the video of this, and of other strange events in the water, including porpoises swimming in circles just offshore, and whales doing huge body flops in the water, sending waves crashing against the rocks. She also spoke of the dead baby porpoises and big chunks of coral that had washed up on shore.

  “The marine animals seem to be frantic,” she said, “though we cannot tell why. It involves numerous species, all behaving in unfamiliar ways.”

  “Any more box jellyfish sightings?” he asked. “Or stonefish?”

  The prim woman nodded. “Jellyfish. One of the young men helping me reported he was stung on the legs while swimming near the ranch, but by the time he showed me his legs a short while afterward, they were healed.”

  “Just like the victims at Olamai Beach, who experienced non-lethal attacks by potentially deadly creatures.”

  “Right, and just today I heard about shark and barracuda scares in the Wanaao area, too—this time not by the Ellsworth Ranch. In one of the new incidents, half a dozen sharks swam fast toward a pair of divers near the town dock and bumped into them, before swimming off. As the divers were hurrying to climb a dock ladder to get out of the water, a barracuda threatened them, too, showing a mouthful of teeth before changing course.”

  She brought up a map of the island to show where the disturbing events had occurred—all in the past week. “So far it seems to be predominantly the eastern shore, around Wanaao and the Ellsworth Ranch,” she said, “so it could be something in that area that’s stirring them up. The Navy has been experiencing trouble with military dolphins and porpoises in Pearl Harbor, too—but that’s the only example I know of away from Loa’kai.”

  “Could it be underwater volcanic activity?”

  “I looked into that, spoke to a university seismologist. Nothing unusual has turned up. There’s a rumor that it might be due to toxic chemicals in the water, but dive crews have been unable to find any barrels dumped, or any other source of leakage. I don’t think it’s a virus, either; no evidence of that.”

  “Could the behavior of the sea creatures be predictive, like cows lying down or dogs barking before an earthquake? Could they be warning of a tidal wave, caused by an impending earthquake?”

  “Hard to say, but that’s possible, I guess.” She pointed back at the map, at shoreside grandstands on the Ellsworth Ranch. “I have one more data point here, at the aquatic park they operate. I wasn’t sure if it was related before, but now I think it might be. It seems that the dolphins and porpoises have been slow to perform their usual tricks for spectators—they’ll do the tricks sometimes, but not without a great deal of extra effort on the part of the handlers. The animals are also stubborn about learning anything new.”

  “That could be something I can help with,” Heinz said. “In the Navy, we’ve used dolphins for underwater military tasks—guarding harbors and warships—and there’s been progress made in communicating with them.”

  “Are you suggesting that the fish at the Ellsworth Aquatic Park might actually tell us what is going on?”

  “Just an idea, something to look into. It’s a long-shot, especially considering problems with our Navy dolphins, too.”

  “I discussed the Wanaao situation with Mr. Ellsworth just before I left. He wants me to do more research, said he’ll even pay for it to protect the tourism industry. I know he’s your friend, but the old patriarch’s demanding personality irritates me, and I feel like he’s talking down to me because I’m a woman. I know the marine crisis is important, so I’ll go back out there, but I need to steer clear of him as much as possible.”

  “Old patriarch, eh?” The Governor felt mildly amused. “What sort of old fellow am I, then?”

  She stared at him, and then smiled a little. “Well, looking at your long gray ponytail, I’d say you have progressive hair on top of a right-wing brain.”

  “Cute. Now I’ll have to get even with you when you least expect it.” He paused, and said, “Preston doesn’t mean to offend you. He’s just gruff and goal-oriented, wants answers, and wants them right away. He doesn’t mean anything against you or any other woman.”

  Both Heinz and Fuji had attended the town meeting in Wanaao, where they witnessed the confrontation between Preston Ellsworth and Ealani Pohaku. Now they spoke of this for a while, going over what the Hawaiian woman had asserted, that sea creatures were protesting against pollution of the ocean and other human activities involving the water.

  “Her claim is interesting,” Heinz admitted, “but not provable. I think she’s stretching reality, trying to use the recent events to further her own radical environmental agenda.”

  “She’s not involved with any radical groups. I checked.”

  “Well, her husband was a fisherman, and you told me there are unusual stories about the son spending a lot of time in the water, and fish gathering around him. Doesn’t it sound like there’s a link there? What’s that kid’s name?”

  “Kimo. He’s in his early twenties. Yes, fish gather around him, I’ve interviewed witnesses and I tried to get to him myself, but his mother intervened and told me to leave him alone, insisting he didn’t have anything to say. She’s very protective of him.”

  Fuji paused, and added, “They are an unusual family; there’s no denying that. But I’ve heard of other people that attract fish to them—we can do it ourselves if we go in the water carrying food that they smell. Maybe he feeds them when he’s in the water.”

  “Did you ask anyone that question?”

  “Yes, but no one knows for sure.”

  “I see.”

  “My gut feeling is that the Pohakus have nothing to do with whatever is happening in the water, and Ealani is just trying to capitalize on it to make a point about human-related harm to the ocean. She’s been known to admonish tourists for taking lava and other unacceptable behavior, so maybe this is her way of saying people need to be more environmentally conscious when they visit the islands. She’s not the only native Hawaiian who feels that way.”

  The Governor scowled. “Well, something is sure the hell going on in the water over there, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “At this point, we just don’t know what it is. There are millions and millions of mysteries in the ocean, and this is the latest. Over the centuries there have been attacks against humans by sharks, barracudas, jellyfish, whales, stingrays, squid, and other marine animals—it’s not all the subject of fantastic fiction, you know. My guess is that this will pass, whatever it is.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  ***

  Chapter 19

  For a week, Kimo had been having difficulty sleeping. It started back on the moonlit night when sea creatures called to him imploringly, causing him to go out and swim with them in the water, to calm them down.

  Since then, he’d been lying awake in bed each evening, listening for them to call again. Sometimes he awoke from a light slumber, thinking he heard something—and then realizing he hadn’t. The urging from his father to do more to help the ocean was another burden on his mind that kept him awake. Tiny Pohaku was relentless, pressing Kimo every day, telling him to shut down the beaches of Hawaii to get the attention of the haole usurpers.

  At dinner the day before, Tiny had said, “A fishing buddy of mine from the Oakland ghetto onc
e said to me ‘Dude, always look for ways to stick it to the Man’, and he was right. I just never saw how to do it until now. You’re the one, Kimo, the one who has to stick it to the Man.”

  Kimo had still not committed to doing as his father wished, and suspected the unwell old man was acting vicariously through his son, or attempting to do so—like a parent urging his child to perform well in sports, music, or some other profession that the parent had always wanted to do. Kimo didn’t want to be anyone’s alter ego, not even for this wonderful adoptive father who had done so much for him, and whom he loved dearly. Kimo wanted to be his own person, his own man.

  He cared about a beautiful young woman now, too—Alicia Ellsworth—but with all of his troubles, he was having second thoughts about getting into a relationship with her. Their families were enemies, and there would be a great deal to overcome—too much, and his father was dying. Kimo felt drained emotionally, didn’t think he could devote enough time or energy to getting to know her better. But he hesitated breaking it off with her completely, so he had not called her, had been trying not to think about her and anything special they might have together.

  And one problem rose above the others, towering over everything else—going way beyond either the Pohakus or the Ellsworths. Whenever Kimo thought about the serious unrest in the ocean, he kept coming back to the realization that his father was right. Kimo had to at least make the effort to lead the sea creatures, to the limits of his abilities. He had to try.

  But when, and exactly how? Maybe he should wait, because the situation with the animals might improve. It might just be ephemeral, a collective agitation that would pass in time. He didn’t like that option; it was like hoping a problem would go away, instead of confronting it, instead of having the courage to do the right thing.

  Tonight Kimo lay in uneasy slumber, tossing and turning on the firm woven-mat bed. He’d never thought of how hard and unforgiving the surface was before, but now it was hurting his hips and shoulders, not giving him any comfortable way to rest. He seemed to feel every fiber of the lauhala mat beneath him.

  Customarily, Kimo required only around four hours of sleep a night. It was known that whales, dolphins and other marine animals required even less than that, because of the weakened force of gravity when they floated in the sea—and Kimo attributed his own minimal need for rest to the fact that he split his life between the land and the sea.

  Finally he fell asleep, and dreamed of a faraway land in which there was a picturesque village by a rocky seashore, and an elfin girl visible behind the barred window of a large structure. She looked like a prisoner up there on the third floor, but Kimo saw a man in a white medical smock behind her, talking to her, trying to get her to turn around. A doctor, Kimo decided.

  Kimo heard the man’s voice without being able to comprehend the words, but he felt powerful mental impulses coming from the girl—a teenager, he thought. A very small and intense person, and she was thinking of something, thinking hard, trying to ignore the doctor.

  The vista changed, and it was as if Kimo was looking through her eyes now, and almost touching her thoughts. Her gaze was focused on the sea—dark blue and cold—unlike the warm, sparkling turquoise waters of Hawaii.

  Kimo awakened, though he would have preferred to remain in the dream and explore the thoughts of the girl. As he lay there, he tried to tell himself it was nothing but a dream; that the girl did not exist. But he was having trouble convincing himself of this. It had seemed so real.

  Abruptly he found himself asleep again, and he was back with the girl again, this time deeper into her mind. She was extremely unhappy, and through her he heard some of the myriad sounds of the sea—the mournful song of a whale, the squeaks and whistles of dolphins, and the cries of gulls as they flew low over the waves, looking for fish near the surface.

  This time their brains connected on a much deeper level, and Kimo shared the thoughts of the girl in the window, her concerns about being abandoned in this institution by her family, her intense love for the sea and her extreme worries about it. One of her thoughts was repeated in her mind, over and over: “The ocean is dying. The ocean is dying.”

  He sensed her helplessness and frustration, and suddenly he felt a flow of data that seemed to come from the sea, passing through his sleeping brain and into the mind of the girl. A huge amount of raw information was being transferred to her—all about the ocean—and he sensed this was not the first time it had occurred this way. Somehow it seemed familiar. With this occurring, he could barely have any thoughts of his own. He struggled to locate them, and finally he was able to find a small compartment of his brain that remained independent.

  The flowing information, the raw data from the sea about the sea, sped up, as if the flow pressure had been turned up. And Kimo realized he was little more than a conduit, a way of passing information on to this strange girl. It struck him how uniquely intelligent she was, with an incredible capacity to absorb huge quantities of data. He realized as well that he and the teenage girl—who seemed so real—had an important goal in common, the preservation and advancement of all things to do with the ocean.

  The teenager was in a mental hospital, Kimo decided, providing him with an explanation for the doctor and the barred window. He didn’t know what her ailment was, except that people thought she was retarded. In reality it was exactly the opposite—she was so far ahead of them that they could not come close to comprehending her.

  For a moment, the sleeping man touched the periphery of extremely complex calculations the girl was performing in her mind, as she added her own new data to what she already had. He understood nothing of the numbers she was developing, and reached the point where he was afraid to delve deeper because her thought processes were so incredibly complicated and convoluted that he might not find his way out of the maze of her mind. On this venture into the dream he began to feel uncomfortable, and he wanted out, wanted it to end so that he could retain his sanity and not awaken in a damaged mental state.

  Finally he succeeded in returning to consciousness, and sat straight up in bed. Swinging out of bed onto a mat on the dirt floor, Kimo looked out his window in the direction of the sea, but saw only darkness and bright stars in the vault of the heavens.

  It had been nothing, he decided, just a vivid dream, inspired by his close involvement with the ocean. Convinced of this, he returned to bed and promptly fell asleep.

  Dawn finally entered the room and seeped around his closed eyelids, waking him up. Kimo stared for a few moments at a small book shelf on one wall, where he and his mother kept a few volumes, on a variety of subjects.

  He rose and stretched, then looked into his father’s room, hoping he was awake. Tiny Pohaku was breathing fitfully, gasping.

  Ealani was with him, propping him up on a pillow so that he could breathe easier, but the old fisherman did not open his eyes. In the low gray light of dawn, his fleshy face was anguished, as if he were in a nightmare from which he could not emerge.

  “I fear he has slipped into a coma,” Ealani said, her voice breaking. “Hurry! Go get the doctor.”

  The Pohaku family had no telephone, so Kimo ran to a neighbor’s shack for help. When he returned home, he found his mother saying a Hawaiian blessing over Tiny Pohaku, praying for the deliverance of his spirit from suffering.

  “He is still hanging on,” she said. “But his body is shutting down, telling us he cannot go on much longer.”

  While they waited for help, Kimo told his mother about the strange dream of the young woman and her incredible mind, and of her thoughts about the dire state of the world’s ocean—and how it had seemed too real to be a dream.

  Unable to look away from his dear father, tears streamed down Kimo’s face. Wiping his cheeks, he said to his mother, “I think I should do what he wants. I should try to shut down the beaches as a demonstration against human misuse of the waters.”

  “That is good,” she said, with a gentle, pained smile.

  Crying s
oftly, they held hands while awaiting the doctor.

  ***

  Chapter 20

  Alicia had never been close to her older brother, though she’d made the effort so many times without success that it embittered her. Jeff seemed passionless when it came to sibling affection, forming a wall around himself that she hadn’t been able to penetrate. The only passion she ever saw in him was vitriol toward her, and jealousy for anything good that ever happened to her.

  He’d been making extra efforts (obvious to her) to position himself closest to Grandfather Ellsworth, and she’d been allowing him to do that, without any countervailing moves on her part. A pattern became apparent in which Jeff would notice something wrong at the ranch, perhaps an employee slacking off or stealing something, and he would report it directly to the old man. In the first few weeks, this had put her brother into favor with him, but as the tattletale pattern continued, and Jeff began distorting information in order to continue to “prove” himself, or treating good employees poorly, he began to arouse widespread enmity—and this aura of bad feeling eventually reached the ears of Preston Ellsworth III.

  A day ago Jeff had attempted to limit employees to fifteen minute breaks, which he timed on a random, spot-check basis—ignoring entirely that many of them put in longer hours than they were paid for, or were valuable to the ranch for other reasons, because of their special knowledge and experience.

  To Alicia’s dark amusement, this actually had the opposite effect on their grandfather than her brother wanted. That afternoon she had been going to see the old man at his office when she heard him through a partially open door, railing at Jeff for going beyond his duties and alienating employees. She’d waited outside in the wide, open-air corridor that was lined with big-leaf plants and flowers, listening as her grandfather shouted.