Fires of Eden

by Dan Simmons

  Trumbo felt something like rage rising in him. He had had about enough of this. Things were getting out of hand. He took half a step toward the bed, ready to take the pistol away from this spoiled bitch and spank her until she screamed.

  The radio buzzed and squawked where he had tossed it on the wicker chair. Trumbo paused and then picked it up. “Yeah?”

  “Boss,” came Will Bryant’s voice, “you’d better get back here.”

  Trumbo continued to glare at Maya. She was not aiming the pistol at him, but had rested it on her raised knee and was inspecting her long nails. Trumbo’s palm itched in expectation of the spanking. “Why?” he snarled into the handset.

  “It’s Briggs and Dillon,” rasped Will’s voice.

  “What about them?”

  “You’d better get back here.”

  “In a minute,” said Trumbo, and thumbed the radio off. He pointed a blunt finger at Maya. “Give me that.”

  The supermodel’s eyes flashed. “No.”

  “You’ll fucking shoot yourself.”

  “Maybe.” Her accent slipped a bit when she was angry. “The tabloids would love that as well.”

  Trumbo took a step toward her and then stopped. “Look, honey… I’ll be honest with you. Caitlin’s here. With her lawyer. They arrived tonight without warning.”

  Maya’s lips thinned. “That bitch? Why?”

  “She’s trying to queer the deal with Sato. She and Koestler have gotten an investment group together and they think they can steal the Pele from me at a ridiculous price…threaten me into selling.”

  Maya’s eyes changed, deepened. “Doesn’t she know you at all, Byron?”

  “No,” said Trumbo. “Now put that thing away.”

  She dropped the automatic into her bag. Trumbo considered grabbing the bag, but then left it alone. “I need your help, kiddo.”

  “How?” She raised her head and the soft light from candles illuminated her perfect cheekbones.

  “Amscray tomorrow. Don’t let Caitlin find you here and add that to her list of things to get vengeance for.”

  Maya’s perfect lower lip pouted out.

  Trumbo sat on the edge of the bed and caressed her leg through the sheet. “Listen, kiddo. It’ll just be another month or so. Then this shit will be over and we’ll get married. Once I sell the Mauna Pele, things will be back on track. We’ll honeymoon anywhere you want. Trust me.”

  Maya cocked her head at him. “Then it’s not true about this…this Bicki person?”

  “I’ve hardly even heard of her.”

  Maya leaned forward, rubbing her short hair against his forearm. “All right. But you have to come back here to sleep tonight.”

  Trumbo hesitated only a second. “Yeah. Sure. But give me the gun.”

  Maya pulled the bag out of his reach. “No. I’ve heard scary things about this hotel. You told me yourself that people have disappeared here.”

  Trumbo sighed. Then why the hell did you come, you little dipshit? “Honey,” he said, “I’ve got two guys out there in the rain guarding your hale right now.”

  Maya glanced toward the uncurtained windows.

  “They can’t see in,” said Trumbo. “We’re twelve feet above the ground and there’s nothing to the west but rocks and the Pacific. But you don’t need the gun.”

  “I’ll keep it until you get back.”

  Trumbo shrugged. He recognized the tone. He was glad that most of the people he had to negotiate with were men. “OK, kiddo, but it’ll be late. I’ve got a shitload of work to do.”

  Maya slid lower so her huge eyes were just visible above the sheet. “I’ll wait up,” she said.

  Trumbo leaned forward and kissed the top of her head. Outside, pausing on the porch and listening to the rain pounding the thatch on the roof of the huge hale, he thumbed the radio back to life. “Will?”

  “Yeah, boss. Over.”

  “What the shit is all this about Briggs and Dillon?”

  Static rasped for a moment. “I’m not sure this frequency is secure…”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Dillon’s in the infirmary. Briggs is missing. Over.”

  Trumbo leaned on the porch railing. The surf crashed against lava rock not thirty feet from the hale’s front door. Lightning flashed somewhere behind him. “What happened? Over.”

  “We don’t know yet. Dillon can’t talk. There may be something down in the…” Static crashed over his assistant’s voice as lightning flashed again and thunder rolled over the palm trees.

  “Will? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes. Over.”

  “I’m going over to see…” Trumbo paused and looked at the closed door behind him. “I’m going over to the construction shack before coming back. Have Fredrickson send another man out here to guard Maya’s hale and tell him to meet me at the shack in about forty-five minutes. Tell him to wait outside.”

  “All right, Mr. T. But I think you might want to…”

  “I’ll see you in about an hour,” interrupted Trumbo. He pocketed the radio and bounded down the stairs to the covered golf cart. The little vehicle’s single headlight illuminated a thin cone of rain and thick vegetation as he turned the humming cart around on the asphalt path and headed back down the peninsula. Thirty feet down the path he paused to talk to a dark figure huddling under a tree. “Michaels?”

  “Yessir.” The security man wore a soaked windbreaker and a baseball cap that was dripping water from the bill.

  “Where’s the other guy?”

  “Williams is over on the north side,” said the security man. “We take turns on the patrol.”

  Trumbo nodded. “Fredrickson’s sending another man. You got a radio?”

  “Sure,” said Michaels, touching his earphone and the small unit clipped to his belt.

  “Have them bring out another gun for you,” said Trumbo. “Give me yours.”

  “Another…sure,” said the security man, reaching under his windbreaker and pulling out his weapon. He handed it over. “It’s a Browning, Mr. Trumbo. Nine-millimeter. There’s a safety catch on the…”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Trumbo. “I own one of these. You get on the horn and tell Fredrickson to send you out another.”

  “Yessir.”

  Trumbo started to hum away but looked up as he realized that Michaels was jogging along beside him. “What?”

  “Uh, Mr. Trumbo, sir… I was wondering…”

  “What?”

  “Well, sir… I was wondering that if… I mean, after you’re through with it… I mean, could I get the automatic back? My first wife gave it to me. It has…you know…sentimental value.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Trumbo, and drove off into the downpour.

  June 17, 1866, Along the Kona Coast—

  We were sheltered out of the storm in the abandoned hut near the ancient heiau when the horses began to rear and whinny in panic. Reverend Haymark jumped to his feet and Mr. Clemens reached into his coat pocket to extract the large pistol loaned to him at Volcano House. All three of us stood at the open doorway and peered into the dark and rain.

  Torches were moving among the stone avenues of the heiau. Above the noise made by the terrified horses, I could make out the sound of drums and nose flutes raised in some wild tune. Moving as one, the three of us stepped onto the veranda. Reverend Haymark tried to calm the horses as Mr. Clemens and I stood looking at the moving lights amidst the maze of stones.

  “Kapu o moe!” came a cry from the direction of the moving torches. “Kapu o moe!”

  “What is that?” I whispered.

  Still stroking the horses’ noses, Reverend Haymark whispered back, “It is a warning cry to close one’s eyes or lie prostrate. I believe it is used only in royal processions or by the Marchers of the Night.”

  “The Marchers of the Night?” whispered the correspondent. The pistol was still in his hand. His eyes were bright. “Ghosts?”

  “The natives believe that their former royalty returns from
the dead in these marches,” said the Reverend, his voice rising a bit to show his lack of fear of these superstitions. “Sometimes the gods themselves march.”

  Just beyond the nearest stone wall of the heiau, the torches and music passed our clearing. Wind whipped at the trees as if a cyclone were blowing from the landward direction at the same time the storm blew in from the sea. In spite of Reverend Haymark’s soothing, the horses continued to pull at their tethers and show the whites of their eyes.

  “Come,” I said and impulsively set off into the rain. Mr. Clemens followed at a jog. Reverend Haymark called something but then made sure the horses’ tethers were secure and moved quickly across the clearing after us.

  We had to walk some twenty yards to reach the end of the wall that separated us from the heiau’s entrance and courtyard, and when we came around the obstruction, the procession had moved on. We could see the torchlight and hear the chanting and music from the opposite side of the heathen structure.

  A bit out of wind from my rush across the clearing, I said to Mr. Clemens, “They do not sound ghostlike.”

  “Perhaps,” said the correspondent and pointed to the pathway where we stood between the walls.

  The day’s rain had turned the narrow path to a slough of mud. Our own footsteps around the south end of the wall to this point were quite clear, as was the sucking sound as Reverend Haymark waded up to us. Of the procession that had just passed, there was no sign in the oozing soil.

  I touched my cheek. “Could they have come another way?” I knew the answer. Beyond us was the massive structure of the heiau itself. For the torches to have been visible, the procession must have passed down this muddy avenue.

  “We should turn back,” said Reverend Haymark, panting heavily. The rain ran from his hat and shoulders. “We have no lantern, no candles.”

  As if in response, lightning flashed on the rocks and palms around us.

  “I must see this,” said Mr. Clemens. I noticed that the pistol was back in his coat pocket. The correspondent started down the path and I followed. Reverend Haymark muttered something but came along.

  By the time we reached the north side of the heiau, the procession had moved into the forest beyond. The call of “Kapu o moe” was still audible, but further away. We followed the path into the trees. Foliage had dropped from the palms far overhead and now littered the ground. Mr. Clemens peered upward in the darkness. “How did they cut these? And why?”

  “Tradition has it that when the gods march, nothing may be suspended above them,” said the cleric. “But tradition also has it that the gods are not accompanied by music when they march. Only the dead chiefs march to music.”

  In the intermittent glare of lightning I could see Mr. Clemens raise a bushy eyebrow. “Reverend, for a man of the cloth you seem to know much about the beliefs of these non-believers.”

  “I have had the pleasure of working with Mr. Hiram Bingham in Oahu on his compendium of ethnological treatises concerning the Sandwich Island natives and their quaint beliefs,” said Reverend Haymark a bit stiffly.

  Mr. Clemens nodded and pointed in the direction of the receding procession. “Well, if we don’t skedaddle after them, this is one compendium of quaint beliefs that’s going to leave us behind. I am curious what these Sandwich Islanders find so important that it is worth coming out in the rain and getting their feathers wet for.”

  We followed the path into the jungle, each lightning flash showing our footsteps quite clearly in the unsullied mud. The way was littered with branches and boughs, as if some invisible force had sheared off everything above the procession, even though most of the trees were sixty feet tall and taller.

  Some quarter of a mile north of the heiau and we were all ready to turn back. The storm had moved inland and left no source of illumination. I cursed myself for not bringing candles from my saddle-bag. Although the torchlight had become visible again far ahead, we never seemed to catch up to it. The music was no longer audible. At least the rain had all but stopped, leaving only the dripping from the jungle around us. My dress was soaked quite through to the stays of my undergarments.

  We had stopped in a small clearing to discuss turning back, when a final flash of distant lightning revealed the scene around us. The path curved to the east and downhill from this point, obviously heading toward one of the few beaches we had seen from our vantage point higher on the volcano. Torchlight was visible on the distant beach through the last screen of trees and brush before the path descended a cliff face. Also visible was the small clearing in which we stood. Branches and boulders were strewn across the lush grass, as were a few fallen coconuts looking like hairy severed heads. Even as I thought of this grisly allusion, I noticed a real head lying in the grass, then saw the pale shoulders. I believe that I stifled a scream even as Mr. Clemens showed a startled expression in the lightning flash and reached into his pocket for the pistol.

  Around us in the clearing lay at least half a dozen naked bodies, all frozen in the uncomfortable attitudes of death.

  The lightning flash ended. The darkness of the jungle descended once again, unrelieved by starlight or even by the distant glow of Kilauea, shrouded as that was by the moving storm.

  At that moment, in the darkness, I heard Mr. Clemens curse some yards from me, heard Reverend Haymark clear his throat some yards beyond that, and distinctly felt a cold hand grasp my ankle in the tall grass.

  It was lucky, Eleanor thought later, that Cordie Stumpf did not fire her heavy pistol at the footsteps in the dark. Eleanor was certainly spooked enough that she might have, had she been pointing the weapon toward whoever or whatever it was advancing toward them in the catacombs.

  A tall young man with an expensive suit and neatly tied-back long hair stepped into the small circle of light. Cordie lowered the pistol.

  “Mr. Dillon!” said the young man, and quickly crossed to where Paul Kukali held the injured security chief upright against the wall. The young man ran his hand in front of Dillon’s unblinking eyes and looked at the others. “What happened?”

  “We don’t know,” said Paul. “We were just passing through when the lights went out.”

  “Who are you?” Cordie asked the young man. She put the pistol back in her straw bag.

  “Will Bryant. I’m executive assistant to Mr. Trumbo. You’re the contest winner… Mrs. Stumpf, right? What are you doing with that revolver?”

  Cordie smiled. “You tell me, Mr. Bryant. Ain’t this the place where guests disappear like canapés at a cocktail party?”

  Will Bryant grunted and said to Paul, “Will you help me get Dillon upstairs?”

  “Of course, but…” At that moment the lights came on. Cordie squinted at the glare and flipped the cover on her lighter.

  “The staff infirmary is down here,” said Paul.

  Bryant shook his head. “We’re going to shut down the service tunnels for a while. We’ll take Dillon to the guest medical services in the Big Hale.”

  “He’ll need a real hospital,” said Cordie.

  Will Bryant and Paul each took an arm and helped the security chief to his feet. Dillon did not protest, but he showed no interest in the maneuver. “Yes,” said Trumbo’s assistant, “but we’ll have the staff doctor look him over first. Did Mr. Dillon say what happened?”

  “He said nothing,” offered Eleanor. She pointed down the corridor toward an open door beneath the sign that said DIRECTOR OF ASTRONOMY. “He came from that direction.”

  Will Bryant nodded and said, “Dr. Kukali, can you hold him for a moment?” As the art curator held Dillon upright, Will walked down the corridor, glanced inside the astronomy office, and slowly closed the door. “OK,” he said upon returning, lifting one of Dillon’s limp arms over his shoulder.

  The corridor filled with people from the laundry and bakery, everyone milling toward the exit. “It’s all right,” announced Bryant, identifying himself to the workers. “Supervisors report to Mr. Carter’s office. Everyone else has the night off.” T
here were expressions of relief as the local workers disappeared up the stairways and ramp into the Big Hale.

  “I was in the main corridor when the lights went out,” Will Bryant was saying as they helped Dillon into the elevator in the basement of the Big Hale. “I saw the flicker of your light and walked toward it. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “You didn’t scare me,” said Cordie.

  “I really think you should leave the weapon at the main desk for safekeeping until you leave,” said Trumbo’s assistant. “It’s against the law and hotel policy for guests to carry concealed weapons.”

  Cordie grunted. “I bet it’s against hotel policy for dogs to be carrying around people’s hands and for the main security guy to get all clawed to shreds, isn’t it?”

  Will Bryant said nothing.

  “I’ll keep my pistol,” said Cordie. “If Mr. Trumbo don’t like it, please tell him for me that he can kiss my serene Illinois ass.”

  Bryant smiled slightly. “Here we are.” They helped Dillon off the elevator and down a tiled corridor to the medical suite. Bryant had called ahead on a small radio and Dr. Scamahorn was waiting in the hall. “Thank you for your help,” Bryant said to the women. “Dr. Kukali, could you please wait a moment so I could talk to you?”

  Paul looked at Eleanor. “I was going to escort the ladies to their room and hale.”

  “We don’t need an escort,” said Cordie. She swung her heavy bag over her shoulder. “Give us that umbrella there and I’ll walk back to Eleanor’s shack with her.”

  Eleanor started to point out that she needed no escort, but something in Cordie’s tone told her the other woman wanted to talk. They passed out of the open lobby of the Big Hale together, down the staircase past the Whale Watching Lanai, and along the path toward the beach. The storm had let up considerably and only a light rain was falling. The Big Hale was a blaze of lights behind them; the path was illuminated by gas torches and low electric lights lining the way. They did not speak as they wound their way through the tropical vegetation south of the Shipwreck Bar past dark hales on their stilts. The porch light on Eleanor’s hale had come on automatically, but the rooms were dark behind shutters. Eleanor unlocked the door and turned to say, “Did you want to…”