Ocean: The Awakening

by Brian Herbert

  Kimo remained aware enough to doubt all of this new information, just as he had already doubted the contents of the earlier dreams. But as he struggled with the surge of vivid details he felt his awareness splitting. On the one hand he remained convinced that these were all nothing more than dreams, creating an alternate reality that his mind was filling in with information as a means of occupying his troubled thoughts, of giving them a diversion, an outlet. But on the other hand, like waves pounding against a shore and eroding it away, he felt a force trying to convince him that everything was real. For one thing, he had never experienced a series of seemingly related dreams like this, with each building upon the one preceding it.

  When the names and other details finished appearing, the sleeping Kimo felt himself rising into the air and looking down on an eerily-illuminated Crimson Cove, as if from an aircraft that was lifting off. He saw himself and Alicia lying on the sand in each other’s arms, and moments later, from a much higher vantage, he saw the specific locations where the various people of his recent dreams supposedly lived and worked. Two of the names were of real people, famous people, and he saw their homes from the air.

  Suddenly he sat straight up and pulled away from Alicia. Peering around in the starlit darkness, moments passed and he began to make out the shadow-shapes of the cove as well as of Alicia.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. Visible only as a shadow to him, she touched his arm gently and said, “You’re trembling.”

  “I need to write all this down,” he said.

  She sat up. “All what?”

  “After I tell you, you’re really going to think I’m crazy.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Alicia, I’ve had another dream, and now I have complete names and other details of the people who seem to be associated with the ocean. I need to write it all down before I forget it. Two of the people are very well known—the environmental activist Napoli Mora and the actress Monique Gatsby.”

  “I’ve heard of Monique Gatsby,” Alicia said. “She’s contributed time and money to stopping gill-net fishing, the horrible practice that kills dolphins and other creatures that need to be protected.”

  “These dreams are starting to wear me out,” Kimo said. He switched on the flashlight. “Do you have paper and a pen or pencil?”

  She rummaged in a pocket of her skirt. “I have a pen I was using to make a sign in the hotel. No paper, though.”

  “Well, that’s something. No paper?”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll lose all this stuff in my head.” He removed his shirt. “Quick now, I want you to write the details of my latest dream on my back.” He held the flashlight over one shoulder, pointing the light at his bare back. “And you’d better write small, because my tattoos take up a lot of skin.”

  “This pen has a fine point so that I can use it for drawing, but it’s a permanent marker, so it’ll take some time for it to wear off your skin. Maybe a few days.”

  “That’s all right. It’s more important not to forget the information. I already know my recent dreams are not ordinary; the only question is, are any of the details correct? I’ve been trying to convince myself that it’s all fabricated, but now, with the two real, famous people included, I’m starting to think differently.”

  “All right, I’ll do what I can.”

  Kimo began reciting the details of each of the people, one by one. He could not spell some of the names or locations, so Alicia had to guess, using phonetics. Writing very small, she filled his back (and the back of his neck) with information, all around the tattoos of the giant octopus on his back and the moray eel draped over his shoulders. He even gave her permission to write on lighter portions of the tattoos, because the pen marks would wear off eventually.

  As she reached his waist with the list, Kimo kept providing details, which she then continued around the side of his torso, up it, and then across his chest (where he had no tattoos), and onto his arms, all around. He even had to remove his trousers so that she could write on his legs and on the tops of his feet.

  Laughing at how silly the situation was, they tried to get all of the information down without Kimo having to remove his shorts. When they ran out of space on his exposed skin, Alicia wrote the rest of the names on her own legs and stomach, just as the flashlight charge began to give out.

  When she was finished, the light flickered off, just as dawn approached.

  She said to him, “You told me your father wanted you to shut down all the major Hawaiian beaches for a demonstration, and names have been coming to you in dreams, supposedly of people who are involved with the ocean. What if—and this sounds really weird—what if all those people are supposed to help you shut down the beaches?”

  Her comment stunned him. “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem possible, but so much has happened, so maybe–“

  Alicia was excited. “If these are all people who have important skills and sympathize with the cause of the ocean, we could contact them and see what they can do to help you.”

  “You mean before I try to shut down the beaches?”

  “Yes.”

  “After the first two dreams, I assumed they were nothing more than worthless mental excursions, that they were not real—so I didn’t say anything to Moanna about them. Now I’m wondering if they could be real.” He paused. “I need to ask her about this.”

  For a long moment, Alicia didn’t say anything. Then: “Yes, the Sea Goddess.” She laughed. “I feel like I’m in a dream, too. But before you contact her, maybe we should investigate some of the details in your dreams, and see if they are accurate. Then you could go to Moanna with more information. Just because there are two famous names on the list doesn’t mean anything, because you might have learned things from publicity about them.”

  “You’re right,” Kimo said, putting his shirt and trousers back on. “I think we should do our own research first, and then I will ask Moanna what to do.”

  In the wee hours of the morning, as dawn spread soft light across the cove, Alicia and Kimo hurried back along the trail.

  ***

  Chapter 28

  “This seems to be more than you can grasp,” Governor Heinz Churchill said. He and his wife, Fuji, had ridden bicycles from their home in Honolulu to the Tamoa Oceanography Institute where she worked, a glass-walled building with a commanding view of the city and harbor. With their busy schedules, neither of them had been getting enough exercise, and bicycle riding and hiking were among their normal pursuits. But these were not normal times, they realized, not by any stretch of the imagination. They had barely been able to fit this ride in.

  “More than I can grasp? What do you mean?”

  The aging Governor was breathing hard from the uphill climb. “I’m sorry, that didn’t come out right. I meant to say that this situation with ocean animals is bigger than any of us seem capable of understanding, even qualified experts such as yourself. We have Navy personnel working on the problems involving our dolphin training program and the other disturbing events in the Wanaao area, but we all have to remain low key to keep from panicking the tourism industry, and to maintain our own military secrets.”

  She smiled thinly. “So you didn’t mean to insult me individually, only as part of a broad-spectrum of condemnation?”

  “That’s one way to put it, I suppose, but I was being equally critical of myself and of American military experts. Remember, I spent most of my adult life in the Navy, and I’m still close to them.”

  They put their bikes in a rack for employees and visitors, didn’t bother to lock them because of the security on premises. Then, inside the high-walled, mirrored lobby, they climbed the stairs to the second floor and entered Fuji’s outer offices.

  The slender Asian woman spoke briefly with her male secretary, then led the way into her office and closed the door. “He’s ordering sandwiches for us from the company café,” she said. “I know what you like.”

  “Good.” He glan
ced at his watch. They had almost an hour and a half before the others arrived—Admiral Nelson Parté of the Third Fleet, along with other U.S. Navy brass and two high-level scientists from their ocean-research division. Up until now, Heinz and Fuji had mostly conferred with them by telephone, e-mail, and video conferencing. This would be the first face-to-face meeting with these key parties since the crisis began, to discuss what to do.

  As head of this privately funded institute, Fuji Namoto had an office with an even more spectacular view than that of Governor Churchill at Pearl Harbor, with hers featuring Waikiki Beach, Diamond Head, and the classic old Royal Hawaiian Hotel.

  For several moments, she stood at the window gazing out, toward the sea. A head taller than she was, Heinz stood beside her.

  “In the past,” she said, “I used to enjoy looking out at the large pleasure boats anchored just offshore, thinking of how picturesque they were. Lately the opulent watercraft have seemed different to me somehow, even menacing. Look at that huge motor yacht, for example.” She pointed to a craft that was anchored farther out than smaller power boats and sailboats, which were closer to shore. “It must be owned by a trillionaire, a yacht so big it’s a ship, not a boat.”

  He nodded. “It’s big, all right, worth tens of millions of dollars.”

  “I’ve been thinking about what that Hawaiian woman said at the town hall meeting.”

  He scowled, remembering that his friend Preston didn’t like the Pohaku family. “The large lady in the back of the church?”

  “Uh huh. She said that humans have been polluting and otherwise harming the ocean for so long that sea creatures might be rising up against us, in a protest against careless, self-centered human behavior.”

  “Nutty talk, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not so sure. If she’s right, the creatures of the ocean don’t want people to operate yachts like that on the water. Just imagine the pollution that floating monster dumps in the ocean as it goes from port to port. Then multiply that by the millions of power boats on the planet, big and small. And add in all of the merchant ships and the vessels of navies around the world, including ours. The pollution from all those sources—with leaking fuels as well as sewage and garbage dumping at sea—has to be mind-boggling. It’s a wonder the ocean isn’t black with goo, and I’m sure it would be if not for the natural cleansing action of tides, currents, and other aquatic elements.”

  “You’re beginning to sound like Ealani Pohaku.”

  “But she may have a point. No sane person can deny the damage humans have done to the ocean, damage that continues as we speak. Yet because the ocean cleans up some of the mess naturally, and a lot of the gunk and junk sinks to the bottom—and the ocean is deep—we don’t always think about the harm we’re causing. Out of sight, out of mind. But dead porpoises, dolphins, and coral are washing up on the shores, and other bad things are happening, especially in an area of the Hawaiian Islands that the sea creatures seem to have selected as a focal point. How many incidents have there been in the Wanaao area?”

  “Nine in all, at least that I’ve heard about.”

  “And elsewhere?”

  “Three reports around the islands, and the situation with our Navy dolphins here in Honolulu. It seems to be confined to Hawaii so far.”

  “Assuming that Wanaao has it worse than anywhere else, what is it about that area that’s causing the phenomenon? It’s not a magnetic disturbance or abnormal tectonic activity; we’ve investigated those possibilities and others, and nothing has been discovered out of the ordinary. What is it, then? What is it about Wanaao that’s unique?”

  “Something we’re missing, obviously. It’s a helluva mystery.”

  “Yes it is,” Fuji said, “and I don’t like it. I have a dark feeling that it’s going to get worse.”

  “You could be right.”

  They ate their sandwiches and then participated in the meeting with the other naval officers and scientists—a session consumed with reports of unusual marine-animal activity, and nothing to explain the anomalies. The information was being compiled into a report that would be sent to the President of the United States. He had heard about the abnormal events, and had ordered more details, and regular updates.

  Later that afternoon, as the session concluded and Admiral Parté and the others were leaving, Heinz thought of how they had agreed on more tasks to complete, and additional scientific avenues to explore, but he had the feeling that they were no closer to an answer than before, and no one knew enough to ask the right questions. All of this was upsetting his wife a great deal—so much that she said she was going back to Loa’kai Island and Wanaao Town in a few days, to perform her own investigation. Other ocean experts were going to the area as well, so Wanaao would receive plenty of attention.

  At the meeting, Fuji had asked a question that resonated in his mind: “How could creatures of different species seemingly act in concert? Had human behavior incited them, as suggested by the native woman in Wanaao Town, or was something else going on? Could it be a virus that crossed species, maybe a virus caused by the dumping of organisms in garbage?”

  Heinz felt as if the things people were considering were only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and the ocean held countless more secrets than anyone could ever fathom. He wondered what his wife would discover.

  ***

  Chapter 29

  Alicia had risen at her normal time to go to work at the aquatic park, but had only managed to get three hours of sleep during the night, after taking Kimo home at shortly after dawn. They’d had a long and interesting talk at Crimson Cove, in which she learned more about his unusual childhood and other fascinating events in his remarkable life. He’d told her that until last night, only his family knew of his special talents; he had not felt comfortable sharing the information with anyone else—not until he met her.

  Later today they would get together, and use her laptop computer to enter the names and other information from his dreams. Then she would check the details through the internet. If all the people in the dreams were real—and that would be remarkable—Alicia and Kimo would attempt to make contact, but they still needed to figure out what to say to them.

  Alicia had no doubt of Kimo’s unique affinity with the sea (or abilities in it), and no uncertainties about her feelings, or about his toward her. It was all happening quickly between them, but the developing and substantial love they felt for one another was obvious to both of them, and certainly to her.

  Yet as Alicia’s relationship with Kimo deepened, her relationship with her grandfather was declining—and it would get even worse if the old man found out about the ceremony for Tiny Pohaku, and the fact that his ashes were now on the land.

  At least Preston Ellsworth had not attempted to prohibit her from seeing Kimo, but the tension in the air over this issue had been palpable, as he shot her glares and expressions when they discussed Kimo, telling her without words how he felt. The breakdown between them made her sad, but not as sad as she would feel if she could not be with the young man she loved.

  She had given herself to the Hawaiian man on a starlit, secluded beach, and for her it was not only the sex, which had lifted her to unimagined levels of pleasure; it was also the simple touch of his hand on hers, sending tingles through her entire body. Now she longed to be with him again, to look in his eyes, hear his voice, and make love with him.

  After getting ready quickly, Alicia was about to hurry to work. But when she opened the door she found her grandfather standing there, about to knock. His creased, aged face was consumed with rage.

  “How could you do such a thing?” he demanded. “You allowed the ashes of a Pohaku to be spread on my ranch, on my property? It is a sacrilege! I feel like that damned fisherman has urinated on my sleeping body. You did this without my permission! Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

  He was so angry now that she worried about him, fearing he might suffer a heart attack.

  “Grandfather, I hoped you
wouldn’t find out, but our family has been wrong in the way we have treated the Pohakus. We stole the land from them.”

  “Stole it?”

  “I told you I read the files, and I know what my great-great grandfather did to get the land; the fact that he bribed a public official is obvious.”

  His eyes flashed. “All right, maybe that did happen. But do you think you can right a wrong by letting the Pohakus urinate on me?”

  “I didn’t do it to hurt you, Grandfather. I did it for them. Can’t you see the difference? It’s the least I could do.”

  Feeling her own anger, she moved past him into the corridor. He seemed stunned.

  “I’m sorry this had to happen, Grandfather, and I love you very much. You had nothing to do with the theft of the land, but we need to make up for it, in whatever way we can. You did a wonderful thing when you brought Jeff and me here and gave us new lives, taking us away from the drugs and other problems on the mainland. It was extremely generous of you, a loving thing for you to do, and I hate to disappoint you with my actions. But please believe me, I never intended to be disloyal. I fell in love with Kimo, and with his family. I only did what I had to do for them, the only decent thing I could do, short of returning the land to them. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me, and understand.”

  Now he looked more crestfallen than angry, but at least he had calmed down somewhat. He stared at the floor.

  “After my work shift today, I’m quitting,” she said, having made the decision during the night. “I’m going to rent a furnished apartment in town, and see Kimo whenever I want to. Wherever that takes me in life, Grandfather, it’s what I want.”

  “How are you going to pay for the apartment?”

  “I’ve been saving my salary, most of it, anyway. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I love Kimo desperately. You’ll never accept that, will you?”