by Dan Simmons
“You destroyed our fish ponds, haole.” The grunts came quickly now.
“Fish ponds?” said Trumbo. “Oh, yeah…but I saved the petroglyphs.”
The Hawaiian grunted. “You have none of the spirit of malama the ’aina…the care for the land. You rob and destroy for profit.”
Trumbo stared at the larger man a moment and then shrugged. “All right. I won’t argue with you. I’m a capitalist…an entrepreneur. Robbing and destroying for profit is my thing. So your queen got whacked by the Marines a hundred years ago and now I bulldoze some run-down old fish ponds. What are you going to do…chop me and my friends up with your axe?”
Jimmy Kahekili made a rude noise that may have been assent and lifted the axe with both hands.
Trumbo was thinking, The clip carries nine slugs. I don’t think that will be enough. He wondered how fast a five-hundred-pound behemoth could run. Aloud, he said, “I have a better idea for you.”
This time the giant’s grunt may have been interrogative. Trumbo took it as such. “Look, Jimmy,” he said, half turning and gesturing toward the Japanese waiting forty feet away, “I’m getting out of the hotel business. These guys are the ones you’ll be negotiating with in the future. I don’t think it will help your little nationalist scheme to chop up the head of their corporation. They might not be as amenable to your ethnic and cultural sensitivities if you send their patriarch home in a bunch of Glad bags.”
A softer grunt.
“But I have sympathy for your goals,” said Trumbo. “In fact, I’ll show you how much sympathy…ten thousand dollars’ worth.”
The folds of fat squinted at Trumbo.
The billionaire held his hand out. “I shit you not. All you have to do is keep your fellow Hawaiian patriots off my neck for another few days…a week at the most…and the check is yours. Hell, the money is yours today, and I’ll make it cash. I trust you.”
A grunt. The axe shifted.
“OK?” said Trumbo. “Let’s shake on it.” He held out his hand. After a moment, the giant extended the huge roll of fat that was his arm. Trumbo’s hand disappeared and for a moment the billionaire had the image of his arm being wrenched off his body—Wouldn’t Caitlin just love that?—but then his hand reappeared again.
Will Bryant came up with Michaels and Smith. The two security men had their hands under their suit jackets. “Ixnay on the unsgay,” said Trumbo. “Will, would you accompany Mr. Kahekili here back to the Big Hale and have Mr. Carter give him ten thousand dollars from the incidental cash fund? List it under grounds maintenance.”
“Boss?” said Will Bryant.
“You heard me.” Trumbo smiled at the giant. “Thank you for dropping by, Jimmy. We’ll talk soon.”
Trumbo turned his back on the Hawaiian and walked back to the putting green.
Eleanor returned to her hale and switched off the coffeemaker, showered quickly, pulled on cotton slacks and a T-shirt, and rushed to meet Paul at the Big Hale. Along the way she glanced to see if Cordie was out and about, but she did not see the woman on the beach or at the Shipwreck Bar or lanai.
In the lobby, she said, “I’d like Cordie Stumpf to come along.”
“Of course,” said the curator. He seemed resigned to never being alone with the history professor.
Eleanor rang Cordie’s room but there was no answer. She peeked into the Whale Watching Lanai, but the restaurant was empty. The entire resort seemed emptier than usual. Leaving a message with the desk clerk telling Cordie that she would see her in the afternoon, Eleanor caught up to Paul between the praying bronze disciples guarding the entrance.
“I’m afraid well have to rent a Jeep,” he said. “I have my Taurus here, but the roads where we’re headed are a bit rough.”
“I have a Jeep,” said Eleanor. She jangled the keys she had just picked up from the front desk.
“Mrs. Stumpf?” queried Paul as they walked out under the porte cochere and into the perfume and color of the bougainvillea hedges that lined the road and walkways here.
“Can’t find her,” said Eleanor. “I guess it’s just you and me, sir.”
Paul Kukali smiled.
Eleanor stopped in surprise as they came into the parking lot. Her Jeep was one of only half a dozen or so vehicles on the expanse of tarmac. “It looks like the place emptied out overnight.”
Settling into the passenger seat of the Jeep, Paul said, “That was another reason I was looking for you this morning. Mr. Carter is warning the guests of possible danger with the lava flows.”
Eleanor dropped onto the hot seat but waited a second before turning the key in the ignition. “Lava flows? But aren’t they still miles south of here?”
“Yes, but there is always a problem with toxic gases. And Dr. Hastings… Mr. Trumbo’s man at the Volcano Observatory…believes that other flows are moving down this southwest rift but have not reached the surface yet.”
“Lava tubes,” said Eleanor.
“Precisely.”
Eleanor chewed on her lip as she started the Jeep and drove down the long lane, past the north course, past the gardens and tennis center and rows of bougainvillea. She caught a glimpse of one group on the golf course and a single gardener working, hat shading his face, but other than that, the grounds and tennis courts seemed deserted. Beyond the golf course, the road deteriorated and wound through the desert of high a’a. With the blue sky above and the shoulder of Mauna Loa ahead of them, the miserable road and rough lava fields did not seem as threatening as they did when Eleanor and Cordie had arrived at night.
A security man stepped out of the guardhouse and nodded at them as they left. “Someone’s still working,” said Paul as they turned right onto Highway 11.
“Are people not coming to work?”
Paul’s sunglasses turned in her direction. “Some still are. Many aren’t.”
“Is it the volcano or the weird goings-on at the Mauna Pele?” asked Eleanor. No traffic passed them headed north on the highway as they drove south. She could see the cliffs and peninsula where she had jogged.
“People around here are used to the volcano,” said Paul. “It’s the weird goings-on they don’t care for.”
They continued south past Puuhonua O Honaunau, the so-called City of Refuge. Beyond the tiny roadside town of Kealia, the only signs of habitation were one or two shacks along the highway and the narrow roads running east to the villages of Hoopuloa and Milolii. Paul said that both towns had been evacuated because of the lava flow.
Miles before they could see the lava, Eleanor marveled at the amount of smoke and steam rising ahead of them. It was a wall of blue-black smoke and—seemingly directly ahead of them—a tower of white steam that rose fifty thousand feet or more. It was frightening to continue driving toward such a dynamic sky.
There was little warning of the roadblock. One minute the Jeep was humming along at forty-five miles an hour, the wind ruffling Eleanor’s short hair, and then they came around another curve and barricades, flares, and two Highway Patrol cars blocked their way two hundred yards ahead. Eleanor slowed and pulled up to where an officer was standing by the first flare.
“Road’s closed, ma’am,” said the officer. He was Hawaiian but had startling blue eyes. “Lava flow’s cut it here and farther east. Best you head back. Oh…hello, Paul.”
“Eugene,” said Paul Kukali. “I’m surprised there aren’t more folks down here rubbernecking.”
“We had our share.” The officer grinned. “Some of the big resort hotels sent down tour buses up until this morning. But there’s a warning of gases and more flows back from the way you come, so they’ve stopped that. Most of the tourists are over on the Hilo side. That and helicopters.” As if to punctuate the state trooper’s words, a jet copter roared low over the lava fields to their right, swooping out and around the rising column of steam.
“Can I show Ms. Perry here what pahoehoe looks like when it’s fresh?”
“Sure,” said the officer. “Just park over there o
n the shoulder. Don’t get too close. We had a lady from the Mauna Lani tour bus keel over and faint this morning. The heat’s pretty bad, still, and the gases are tricky.”
Paul nodded. Eleanor parked the car. They walked down the highway past the barricades and state police vehicles.
“This is incredible,” said Eleanor. It was. A wall of gray lava covered the highway to a height of eight or ten feet on its way from Mauna Loa to the coast a mile or so east. Smoke still rose from the convoluted gray surface. Where the thick folds of pahoehoe reached the asphalt of the highway, the orange glow of active lava could easily be seen, like light from under a doorway. Tiny flakes peeled off the cracking, shifting rope lava and fluttered away on currents of hot air even as Eleanor watched. The entire surface was cracking and shifting as it cooled. Grass near the flow was burned black or actively smoking, and shrubs on both sides of the highway were either burning or standing as charred stubs. Luckily the smoke was blowing south, away from them, but the heat was so intense that they had to stop fifteen or twenty feet from the wall of gray lava. As Eleanor looked, folds and curves of seemingly cooled lava hatched like an egg and the yolk of molten fire flowed out and onto the highway or smoldering grass. Anything the lava touched burst into flame.
“Incredible,” she said again, shielding her face from the heat.
“This flow crossed the highway yesterday morning,” said Paul. “There were already at least five flows south and east of here cutting the road.”
Eleanor peered up the shoulder of the volcano. Most of it was obscured by smoke. “Can they see it coming?”
“Usually. But this particular flow emerged from a lava tube only a couple of miles uphill. It caught the authorities by surprise. That’s why they evacuated Milolii and Hoopuloa. They’re just not sure what the volcano has in store.”
Eleanor looked toward the southwest to where the steam cloud rose. “I wish I could see where this hits the water.” Glancing back toward the police, she said, “Does this mean we can’t see your friends, the kahuna?”
Paul Kukali hesitated. “There might be a way. With a Jeep. Knowing these old men, I don’t believe that they’ll let the haole authorities chase them off their land. But we’ll have to cross that.” He gestured with his right hand toward the wall of smoke and fire between the highway and the coast.
“Cross that?” Eleanor’s voice was high. “You mean the old a’a?”
“I mean the new lava flow. This first one, at least.”
“How can we cross that?” She stepped back as another gray egg hatched out of a blast furnace.
Paul shrugged. “With the Jeep we can get to the lava flow and decide if we can. It’s the only way we can see the kahuna you wanted to talk to. It’s up to you.”
Eleanor looked at the curator a moment. Heat waves rippled between them. If he wanted to dissuade her without arguing, this was a clever way. “Let’s do it,” she said.
They hurried back to the Jeep.
Cordie was hallway to the boy on the raft when she saw the shape in the water. It was nearer to the terrified child than to her and it swam lazily about fifteen feet under the surface. It was white. Even from this distance, Cordie could see the huge mouth and the rows of sharp teeth. The kid on the beach had been right; it was a shark.
Water spattered her face and forearms as she paddled furiously. Cordie had got the rhythm of it now, feeling the fiberglass kayak slicing through the water as she shifted the stroke from left to right, left to right. Muscles in her back protested at the exertion and her forearms were aching. Cordie felt the sharp lines of pain in her lower abdomen that had been pulling tighter since the surgery. She ignored that pain as she had for weeks. Leaning forward over the streamlined hull, feeling her breasts pressing against the fiberglass, Cordie paddled harder.
“Look out!” screamed the boy as she drew within thirty feet. “The shark!” The child almost pitched off the jackknifed raft as he pointed.
“Careful!” cried Cordie as she let up on the frenzied paddling. She was out of breath. The kayak slid forward over slow swells as she caught her breath. She could feel the current that had pulled the boy so far out. If she let the kayak drift now, the tide or current or whatever it was would pull her out with the boy, both kayak and raft reaching the high waves breaking across the coral reef some thirty yards farther out. She could hear that surf now as a series of explosions; the spray drifted across the quieter water of the lagoon. When she looked back over her sunburned shoulder, the beach of the Mauna Pele seemed impossibly distant. “Careful,” she cried again, voice more in control this time. “Don’t fall off.”
The raft had lost almost half of its air and the boy was driving out more of it in his wild attempt to keep his feet and legs out of the water. This child may have been a year or two older than his brother on the beach, but he was slim and pale with a sunken chest and a few freckles on his back. His short hair stood up in wet spikes. Now he pointed to the water again between the kayak and the raft. “It’s back!”
Cordie had to lean out to see the thing. It was deeper now, perhaps twenty-five feet beneath the surface, but the water was clear. The shark teeth smiled at her from its open maw. But beyond the unmistakable mouth, the creature seemed deformed, twisted. Instead of the aerodynamically perfect shark’s body with the powerful, bifurcated tail, this pale form seemed to have swellings and protuberances and no fins at all.
Like the back of a human with a shark’s jaw where the top of the spine should be.
“Hang on to the raft!” called Cordie. “Don’t move. I’m coming alongside.”
“No!” screamed the child, obviously terrified at the thought of losing his precarious balance.
“I won’t touch you till you’re ready,” called Cordie. The sunlight danced on the water and made her squint. She held up one hand to shield her eyes. The ocean swells were taller and broader here—one minute she would be three feet higher than the boy and the raft, another second several feet below him—but this was nothing compared to the violence of surf toward which they drifted. “Hang on,” she added, stroking easily with the paddles. She wasn’t sure how she would get him aboard when she got there…there was room for only one person in the kayak’s little cockpit…but his raft was losing air fast.
“Look out!” the boy screamed again at the same instant that something hit the bottom of the kayak with tremendous force.
The light went blue. Sound suddenly seemed both amplified and muffled. Cordie felt the shock of water against her face and eyes and she realized that she had not had time to get a deep breath of air before the kayak had capsized. She knew at once that something had capsized her—she had seen a hundred outdoors documentaries on cable where some hunk in his twenties flipped his kayak while paddling down some wild rapids—only in the TV shows, the guy always flipped the little boat right side up again within seconds. Cordie struggled, but stayed upside down. Bubbles rose around her. The full weight of the kayak seemed to hold her down, keep her inverted. Twist as she might, she could not flip the boat right side up or get her head moving toward the surface four feet above her.
Cordie felt the last of her breath failing, saw spots in front of her eyes mixing with the cascade of silvery bubbles, and tried to pull her way out of the circular cockpit. She could not swim and knew that the water was deep here, but if she could get out and grab the hull of the kayak, she might be able to use it as a float, kick her way over to the boy.
Aunt Kidder’s diary. The thought that it would fall out when she pulled herself free made the panic worse. She felt her heart pounding. Her chest ached with the urge to expel her breath and try to breathe in water.
Cordie stayed with the kayak and tried one last time to right herself, swinging her body to the left toward the silver ceiling of the surface.
She bobbed back and hung upside down. Something large and white swam by just beyond her focus.
With the last bit of air in her lungs, Cordie leaned forward as she had when she was paddlin
g, set her chest against the fiberglass of the inverted kayak, grabbed the hull of the thing as if it were some sort of recalcitrant hoopskirt, and tugged with every ounce of her upper-body strength.
The kayak righted itself and Cordie choked in air, coughing seawater and retching, still leaning forward and holding the bobbing little boat upright by the force of her will.
The child was still screaming to her left. Cordie raised a hand to rub water out of her eyes and saw the inflatable raft sinking, the child pointing and shouting.
Hands came out of the water on either side of the kayak and seized the boat, rocking it. Cordie threw her arms out in a reflex action, trying to balance. The strong, brown hands twisted and the kayak flipped over to the right again, Cordie hitting the water hard.
She did not go under this time. Her arms and hands still splayed, she pushed off the water and righted the kayak. The boy was in the water up to his chest now, with only the front and back of the raft still inflated and pressed against him like leaking water wings. “Behind you!” he screamed and something hit the kayak hard.
Cordie heard a screech of rending fiberglass and the kayak spun almost completely around. A white form split the water and dove again. Cordie could see the splintered hull, just above the waterline, where sharp teeth had taken an eighteen-inch bite out of her boat. The shark form circled the screaming boy once, brushed against his feet, and came hurtling back toward Cordie.
Cordie had trouble getting her arm down between her thighs and for a moment she thought the tote bag was gone, but then she found it and tugged it closer. She heard the water parting before and behind the attacking shark-thing just as she fumbled out the book, tossed it back in, felt the familiar heft of her ex-husband’s long-barreled .38.
Teeth scraped along the side of the hull, sending long fiberglass splinters peeling back, and Cordie almost capsized again, but she flung her arm out—almost lost the pistol in that hand—kept her fingers on it, kept the weapon from submerging as she rocked back the other way, and then she was aiming the revolver with both stubby hands as the white form lunged at the boy’s sunken raft. The child was treading water now and crying without sound.
