by E. Coulombe
Huikilau was the seasonal harvest for the Nakoan fishing community. The entire village planned to cross over to Lehua island, the sea mount off shore from Ko`olau kai, and the men and women would stretch a huge net out across the bay and catch the deep sea alua and panini which swam in close during mating season. Dried, this fish would add to their evening meal for several months, even sustain the Hawaiians during times of drought. Moki had helped the men prepare the boats, while the women packed the food. He went into the house for what he hoped would be the last load, and nearly ran into Emma bounding down the stairs ready for the huikilau.
“Where’s Andrew,” he asked. “Is he ready?”
“He says he can’t make it today, something about a call in to UH.”
He saw the sadness in her eyes, and cursed Andrew under his breath. Damn that man, he thought, he’s got it all mixed up.
Unlike Andrew, Moki had never left Nakoa. He rememberd the day they left. Mrs. Collier sobbing on her knees unable to let go of her boys, and the father’s large, red-handed grip surrounding their skinny white arms while he dragged them across the sand onto the waiting barge. They turned and waved, a brave gesture it seemed to Moki; tears were running down Andrew’s face; Grant’s countenance was hard as stone. They were miserable to leave their mother and their home, but oddly enough, they never once asked after Moki. Children never do, Moki had thought, or was it something else.
That had been a bad day. The worst day of his life.
He’d loved them as brothers and they had left. It wrenched a hole in his heart big enough to kill a lesser man, he thought, but they didn’t say a word to him. Not even when they came back for the funeral. They ignored him. Moki stayed behind that day and never again confused the relationship between owner and owned.
The Collier’s had an impressive library, the one thing Old Miz Collier couldn’t leave behind when they ventured into into the New World. So when the boys left to see the world outside, he stayed behind and explored it through books.
Moki had read parts of all and finished most of them, and although he would have liked to go to school to share his new knowledge, more strongly did he feel he never wanted to leave the island. He was sure of this when Grant returned.
Grant was damaged goods, everyone could see that, and Moki kept his distance. They’d developed a working relationship, different, not easy like before, but then they weren’t children anymore and men cannot meet in the same way they can as boys.
Like other Nakoans he had mixed feelings about Andrew’s return. Andrew had changed also, but more so, maybe he’d been gone too long. He no longer had his easy, casual manner. The way he’d been when Moki’d pulled in an opaka triggerfish the size of his forearm and Andrew’d laughed and teased him about the “guppy” he’d caught. His infectious laugh had filled the small boat, Moki remembered, and then spilled out to sea. And Andrew’d always looked after Moki. If they were hiking Kahili mountain and Moki went on ahead (he was the best hiker of the three of them), soon as Andrew couldn’t see Moki up ahead he’d call out “Moooookkkkiiiiii, Mewwwwkkkkiiiiii” sounding unconcerned, but not stop yelling ‘til Moki finally’d answered. Andrew cared back then.
Moki didn’t see that anymore.
Andrew was still contagious, his spirit strong, everyone said so, but he was also sharper now. Before, when he lived here, maybe his spirit had been rounded and pounded by the Hawaiian waters and like the shore rocks it’s edges had been smoothed. When he came back Andrew’s spirit was jagged, more like the cemented beach rock at Salt Pond, pointed pinnacles that hurt even Moki’s toughened feet, dangerous, and not to be ignored. Boston had done that to him? Maybe, Moki thought. Or maybe something else.
The last time he’d seen Andrew was at the funeral, when his mother’d died, and they went hiding up in the old tree fort together. Moki’d told him about how scared he’d been to find Andrew’s mother hanging from the rafters in the old barn. He didn’t realize Andrew’d never been told. Andrew’d lost it, smashed their treasure box, screamed at Moki that it was a lie, and why would he want to lie about something like that.
That was the last time he’d seen Andrew. Andrew didn’t even come home for his Dad’s funeral, told Moki’s mother his dad had died a long time ago. Maybe was going to take more than a bit of pounding from the surf to smooth those edges once again.
But Emma, she was different. She was a special one. She’d been adopted almost immediately by the Nakoans, and told Moki that she loved it here. She loved the humor- filled lifestyle, the way they did everything socially, even cooking, and said she didn’t feel alone here like she often had back in New England.
She came down the stairs dressed in a bikini and pareaia wrapped tightly around her hips, and her jet black hair was secured on the back of her head with a large clip. She’s even beginning to look like a local, he thought, but as she neared he noticed something different about her stomach. It was bigger. She caught him staring at it, and her laughter missed a beat for a second.
“What’s this,” he asked.
“Eating too much of your good food,” she laughed, ran back upstairs and returned seconds later wearing a dress.
Chapter Twenty Seven
“What did you say this organism is?” Dr. Kaneshiro’s grad student asked when he saw the new tank.
“We don’t know,” Dr. Kaneshiro replied, “it was just sent over. Do you recognize it?”
“No. Is it a larval form?”
“Good guess. Look again though. Does it resemble anything else that you know of?”
Kaneshiro’s teaching assistant, Johnny, had grown up in these waters. An avid collector, he was always hoping to discover and identify new species. He was the one Dr. Kaneshiro wanted to share this with. If he had never seen it before, no one in Hawaii had.
“It looks familiar. Where is it from?
“Nakoa.”
“Well, that could explain it,” Johnny said, “it’s different over there. This may be something that was common in Hawaiian waters but is gone now. Fished out by locals or over collected by tourists. It looks familiar, but I can’t think…”
Dr. Kaneshiro didn’t want to feed ideas into his head. He had seen George’s photo of the Ediacarian find and so he was already thinking about ancient sea creatures. He wanted the boy to come to it by himself, but when that did not work, he had to come right out and ask.
“I know this will sound crazy, but do you know anything about trilobites?”
“Trilobites? Not much. Except that this can’t be one because they’ve been extinct for about 400 million years!”
“Just asking.”
Johnny quietly observed the black slug like creature a third time. “But I do know someone who does.”
Dr. Kaneshiro waited to find out, but the young man needed prodding. “Who?” he finally asked.
“You know him. Sam Le? Ecologist for a local non-profit? He must have done his master’s research on trilobites, because he just recently posted the most impressive web site I have ever seen on any sea creature. He won an award for best science web site last year. It’s about twenty pages in length, and as far as I can tell, a complete analysis of trilobites. If anybody knows trils it’s Sam.”
“Can you get him in here? Now?”
“Well, let’s put it this way,” the young man answered, heading out the door, “I don’t think I’ll have to ask twice.”
Chapter Twenty Eight
Ku’ulei was sitting on the shore, digging her feet into the sand, splashing water with her toes. For a seven-year-old girl, her face had a mighty solemn expression.
I am not too young, she thought, why do they say I am too young to go out on the boat. They don’t even give me a chance. “I am not like them,” she said aloud to no one and pointed down the beach at the younger children playing. She could just hear the ‘adults’, laughing in the boats, and calling to each other, getting ready for the throwing of the nets. She counted five boats in the bay and she knew that her family wo
uld be in one of the canoes. But from here she could not see which one.
The older children were lined up on the shore. They would help when the boats circled round, while the smaller keiki were told to “go and play”.
Again, she huffed. Humph, she thought, play on the beach. Like we don't do that everyday. I don’t see why I cannot help, I’m just as good as that Ho`okano boy. Just cause he’s a boy that he gets to go. Oh heck, I’ll show them all. I’ll catch my own fish. “The biggest one of all!” she shouted out to sea.
Jumping up, invigorated by her own brilliant idea, she searched for something she could use to catch ‘the biggest one of all’. Here is a stick, and if I could find some line and a knife? She ran to get her brother’s gear, which he had left behind. He won’t know, she convinced herself, stealing the courage to rummage inside the sacred backpack. She wrapped the borrowed line around the borrowed knife on the end of her stick, fashioning a deadly spear. When she was finished, impressed by her own resourcefulness, she waded into the shallow waters.
Those too old were left behind, the tutus charged with tending the keiki. But, they were absorbed in the scoring of the game and they didn’t see her enter the ocean.
Right away, she spotted something. A black thing moving along the bottom, about the size of her foot, and shaped like a stretched circle. What is that thing? She thought. She moved out further into the water to get behind it and coax it onto shore. She gently pushed it with her spear, ready to stab into it if it tried to swim away. But, it didn’t. Instead, it scurried along the bottom like a crab. “But you not a crab,” she said out loud, “crab’s legs long, not little short things you got.”
Well you big, whatever you are, she thought. “This’ll show ‘em. Biggest fish of all!”
She used her spear to coax it toward shore, it’s shell surfaced in the two inch deep water. The gently lapping ocean almost carried it away, she quickly blocked it with her spear. “Come on you cute little thing,” she said to it, “I don’t want eat you. I’ll make you pet.” It crawled onto the sand and she could see it more clearly. It was even longer than Ku`ulei’s skinny, dark arm and covered with a shiny black shell divided down the center. It scurried down the beach with Ku`ulei running after it. “Hey, you no move sideways like a crab, unless maybe you a stupid crab,” she teased. She knelt down behind it and looked more closely. Suddenly, what seemed like a hundred pair of legs came out from the sides. “Whoa, you a centipede?” Ku’ulei asked as she jumped back, afraid it would have a poisonous sting. The thing scurried back into the water, turned over onto it’s back and began to swim away. She reacted quickly with her spear and flung it onto the dry sand, flipped it over and pinned it on its back.
“No, you not a crab or a centipede. I never seen you before. And you not getting away from me.” The numerous legs clawed in unison, desperate to get away from her spear. She held it firm.
“But how I gonna keep you here?” Dig a trench and you’ll go around, she thought. Build a sand wall and you climb over. Leave to get a bucket - so will you. She looked around: rocks, shells, coral, sand, sticks. The beach was littered with white washed driftwood piled up over the years. Still holding the spear, she reached around and grabbed the nearby sticks, capturing the creature in a wall of driftwood. She let go her spear to collect more wood and it fell to the ground. The creature immediately kicked itself upright. But it sat there. She quickly reinforced her make-do prison then came around to the shore side and knelt in front of the thing to place more sticks into the sand. Her overwhelming curiosity made her reach out and touch it’s back. It seemed harmless enough, kind of like a turtle, one big shell with legs all tucked up inside. She reached down.
“Ttttttttttttttt.”
She snapped her hand back. “You just growl at me?”
It had sounded like a rasping, guttural sound and it had definitely come from the creature. “I don’t think crab make no sound. I don’t think anything in water make sound like dat.”
She looked again at her precious prisoner. Wow, won’t brother be impressed. And Lono, and even Kalani. Wait till I show ‘em. “What are you anyway?” she asked her creature. “You a big black lobster? But, no tail. And you growl at me. And, you no even got claws?!”
Ku’ulei moved to collect more sticks. She didn’t see the creatures claw like legs come out from under - searching for prey in the nearby sand.
Chapter Twenty Nine
As predicted, before Johnny had finished the words ‘looks like a trilobite’, Sam was out the door. Even though, it was so unlikely that it was a tril, no way was he not going. Just to see something that looked like a trilobite was enticement enough for Sam. And…, it was a stretch, and…., Sam tried not to let himself go there, but….there’s always the possibility of a remnant! Like the nautiloid that was discovered floating in the deep waters off the coast of Indonesia. Remember, he told himself, ‘extinct’ can be a euphemism for ‘not yet rediscovered’.
Maybe this would be it? Why not? Johnny had said it was from Nakoa. It was possible there were many unidentified organisms in the near shore waters of that mystery island. No one had explored Nakoa, at least no one from UH as far as Sam knew. His adrenaline spiked as he ran across campus.
Scanning each tank as he entered the room, he stopped dead as soon as he saw it.
“Oh my god.” He softly mumbled, practically falling to his knees in front of the tank. “Oh my god, this is it.”
Chapter Thirty
Exhausted, Kerri slept in the next morning. She stepped outside into an empty kitchen and helped herself to a few pieces of smoked ahi, and a glass of fresh-squeezed juice from the oranges scattered on the koa wood table. Finished, she headed to the lab in search of Andrew.
Before she could even get the door closed, his head popped up from the microscope, a broad smile across his face. He had interesting news for her, but first, politely answered her questions about the organism they had carried back from Ko`olau. Yes, it was fine. Yes, he and George had been able to send it out that morning by helicopter. Over to UH. To Dr. Kaneshiro. “Can we talk about something else now?”
“What is it Andrew?” she felt as though she were restraining a child.
“I think I may have figured out a piece of the puzzle, as to why I can’t repeat that experiment. It may be that those changes in the halobacterium could only occur if the bacteria were in the conjugal phase. We know that sexual reproduction in bacteria was the great accelerator in their evolution, and maybe that’s in part because it enabled the reprogramming of the hox genes.”
“So,” Kerri picked up the thread, “you think your cultures were in a conjugal phase when the Mutator worked and you made those photos?”
“Could be. And maybe that wasn’t happening the next time and that’s why it failed to mutate. Could you check the protocols for your Harvard experiments to see if conjugation was a prerequisite for the directed mutation?”
“I don’t need to check, I already know it was.”
“You know?”
“Obviously. The mutant used is located on the F plasmid. Surely you knew that?”
“Yes.”
“So. The F plasmid is the piece of DNA transferred during conjugation.”
“Of course!” Andrew jumped up and ran about the lab, prepping the equipment he would need to check the growth phase of the bacteria. “Why are you sitting there? We need to rerun that experiment – now!”
“You’re welcome,” Kerri mumbled under her breath, although, she couldn’t sustain her anger towards this man with the manners of a child. He is really going to do it, she thought. He is actually going to re-create evolution. When Kerri woke from her reverie, she caught Andrew watching her.
"What," she asked coquettishly.
"Nothing."
"No...really, what are you looking at?"
“Uh…just that magazine you’re carrying,” he lied.
"Oh, I forgot. I brought this with me to Nakoa, and just found an article you might want to r
ead. Could be another piece of the puzzle.” It was the most recent issue of Embryology. He read the title of the article and looked at her quizzically.
“Okay, listen,” she was becoming exasperated. “Apparently, the Canadians recently discovered the gene, in ovarian cells of the female fruit fly, which sends mRNA into what will be the head end of the egg. Then the message creates the ‘bicoid protein’, which diffuses through the embryo creating a concentration gradient. The gradient acts like a master switch: different concentrations of the protein turn on different genes, determining which segment will be the head, the body, etc. In other words it signals to the hox genes, which then initiate development."
“I'm sorry, I don’t think I get it,” Andrew said impatiently. “We already knew about the bicoid gene and the protein gradient. I showed you. I used the bicoid in the Mutator because it is one of the very first signals to occur in development. Remember?”
"I know. But, you’re not hearing what I said,” Kerri spoke harshly, hurt by his insolent tone of voice. “You used the bicoid gene from the hox genes of the fruitfly itself. You thought the original signal was read from the embryonic hox genes, but now they’ve found it actually comes from the ovarian tissue. It could be the original signal cause it’s coming from the mother.”
Andrew was silent. His mind raced on the thinkers high. “Of course! That's it. The last piece. That’s the pathway to get the signal from the mother to the egg! Good job girl, you’ve done it again!”
Kerri smiled demurely.
Chapter Thirty One
“Pull!” shouted Kalani, one of the larger Kanaheles, a family known for their size. “Pull, you pussy’s, with every thing you got!”
All five of the Nakoans six-man outriggers had paddled across the bay, following Lono in the lead canoe, and dropped net, weighted to hang vertically in the water, encircling the bay. Fifteen men on shore held the two ends, several hundred feet apart. When the net was fully positioned, Lono ordered the boats to paddle in, bundling up the slack, while in unison, the men on shore stepped out into the waist high water and followed Kalani’s directive.
