House of the Sun (26 page)
I snorted. "You mean I've been deputized?"
"You might think of it that way," the
Ali
confirmed with a smile. "When you display the badge, you can expect at least some degree of cooperation from servants of the Crown—government agencies, even
Na
Maka'i,
the police. Not the military, however." He shrugged. "You might even find that Tokudaiji
-san
's security personnel will think twice before gunning you down if they see that," he added thoughtfully. "After all, Tokudaiji-
san
was a servant of the Crown, in his own way, and his help did not go unreciprocated."
I looked skeptically down at the badge in my hand. Maybe the
Ali'i
was right, maybe Tokudaiji's samurai would feel some kind of ... I don't know, patriotic loyalty to the Crown or some drek ... and decide not to pulp me if they saw this. Maybe not. I certainly wasn't going to depend on it. I'd made the mistake of thinking a badge could protect me during an earlier phase of my career, and it hadn't taken me long to realize how fragging wrong I was. Still, it couldn't hurt. I nodded thanks to the
Ali'i
and pinned it onto the collar of my shirt.
Ho's eyes never left my face. "I wouldn't force you into a situation that you find uncomfortable . .."
I finished the thought for him ". . . But you
do
want me to get word to Barnard that you're trolling for ideas." I sighed again. "Yeah, okay, I'll see what I can do ...
if
it doesn't mean too much exposure." Frag, intermediary
again
. Why oh why don't people
ever
learn that killing the messenger just isn't a good idea?
"I appreciate that, Mr. Montgomery. Now—" Ho stopped as a knock sounded on the door. "
Hele
mai
. "
The door opened, and a functionary—not Ortega, though he could have been the gray-faced man's Polynesian half brother—stepped into the room.
"Kala
mai
ia'u,
e
ku'u
lani,
" he began, then noticed me for the first time and clammed up on the spot. He looked at the
Ali'i
with a "what the frag do I do?" expression on his face.
Gordon Ho chuckled. "This man is in my confidence," he told the functionary quietly. "You have a report for me?"
"
'Ae,
e
ku
'u
lani,
''
the older man said with a bobbing nod.
"I
luna
o
ka
Puowaina
. "
"In English, please," the
Ali'i
said sharply.
The functionary looked almost as scandalized as Ortega had in the throne room. Just to make sure he got the idea, I pulled back the lapel of the jacket Ortega had loaned me, so he could spot my deputy's badge nice and clearly.
He spotted it, all right, and I could see in his eyes just how little he thought of the whole thing. But at least he managed to control himself.
"Ae,
e
ku'u
lani
. Yes, O my royal one, of course.
"The"—he shot me a sidelong look, and I could
see
him mentally editing what he'd been about to say—"the
incidents
on Puowaina seem to have escalated,
e
ku'u
lani
. The most recent one is quite disturbing—that's how the chief of
Na
Maka'i
describes it, 'quite disturbing.' The ...
level
of
activity
is more intense."
"But nothing could come of it, correct?" Ho asked.
The functionary looked really uncomfortable ... and not just because of my presence, suddenly. "The
kahunas
think not,
e
ku'u
lani
."
"
Think
not?" Ho sounded surprised.
"That's what they told me,
e
ku'u
lani
."
"Interesting.
Na
Maka
'i
are continuing their investigation, of course?"
"Yes,
e
ku'u
lani,
they have the area sealed off."
"Good." The
Ali'i
nodded approval. "Do you have anything more to report?"
"Not at this time,
e
ku'u
lani
."
"Thank you, then." Ho dismissed him with a nod.
Once the functionary had shut the door behind him, the
Ali'i
leaned back in his seat and shook his head.
"What was that about?" I asked.
Ho sighed. "Puowaina," he said, then waited.
"Punchbowl," I said after a moment.
"That's right," he confirmed. He turned in his chair and pointed to an area of the holo "mountains" behind him. "There. Puowaina, just north of the city. Its name means 'Hill of Sacrifices,' referring to the old religions. It seems as though someone is taking that name a little more seriously than they might."
The
Ali'i
nodded. "It's not unheard of, unfortunately," he admitted. "Hawai'i has its fringe cults, just as the UCAS does. In the first eight years after I assumed the throne, there were half a dozen . . .
incidents
of that kind. Animal sacrifices—dogs and pigs, mainly, the sacrificial animals most commonly used in the old faiths. Usually, the sacrifices would be just that and nothing more: some unfortunate animal with its throat slit, then burned. Once or twice, there were hints that someone was trying to link magical activity with the sacrifices—incomplete hermetic circles and things of that sort." He shrugged. "My
kahunas
assured me that the people conducting the rituals were totally deluded. The magical trappings would never have worked.
"Things change, though," he went on quietly. "Have you ever given any thought to the fact that fringe religions—crank religions, you could say—become more pervasive when a people is troubled? It's true," he confirmed with a nod, "check it out yourself. UFO fever a century ago, during the height of the cold war. The proliferation of psychics and spoon-benders in Russia after the collapse of the USSR. The 'Church of Christ, Geneticist', during the throes of the VITAS epidemic. The fascination with reincarnation during the 'teens ..."
I nodded at that one. I remembered reading once that two—count 'em,
two
—scam artists had built careers on their claims that they were the reincarnation of proto-angst rocker, Kurt Cobain.
"The Brotherhood of the Eternal Now," the
Ali'i
was going on, "in the years before the Treaty of Denver. The Universal Brotherhood—
that
perversion—when 'future shock' really hit the UCAS. And here? Here, we've got the people sacrificing dogs and pigs and goats up on Punchbowl." He smiled wryly. "I suppose I might take it as a criticism of my rule."
"It's becoming more common, then?" I suggested.
"Precisely. Six or seven times in the first eight years of my rule. Then, in the past two years . . . would you care to guess?" I shook my head. "Seventeen incidents. No," he corrected himself quickly, "eighteen now." He sighed. "Crackpots."
For some reason I suddenly didn't feel so sure about that. "Your chief of police seems to be taking it more seriously," I pointed out.
"It's his job to take it seriously ... if only because the people behind the sacrifices might decide to ... to
graduate
... from dogs and pigs."
I waited, but the
Ali'i
didn't continue. Well, if a king chooses not to share all his thoughts with you, what the frag can you do? After a few moments Ho smiled. "Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Montgomery," he said warmly. "I've enjoyed our discussion. Please, make what efforts you can to communicate with Mr. Barnard. And please stay in touch, to inform me of anything you should learn. Agreed?"
"What about contact procedures?"
"Here." He handed me a mylar business card—no name or address, just an LTG number. "This node will transfer you to my private line, wherever I happen to be. If for some reason I'm unavailable, no one else will answer." He hesitated. "Be aware that I can't vouch for the complete security of the relay." He grinned wryly. "My military intelligence traffic-analysis teams have been a little zealous of late."
"Agreed," I told him.
King Kamehameha V pressed a concealed button on his desk, and seconds later a functionary arrived to escort me out. I traded in my jacket and tie to Ortega for my Manhunter, and then I jandered out of the Iolani Palace. The
Ali'i
's deputy badge was a comforting weight in my shirt pocket. I figured that wearing it openly might attract too much attention, but I certainly wanted it close to hand.
What the frag was I supposed to do now? Contact Barnard—that's what Ho wanted ... but for the moment, at least, I felt like keeping a nice, safe distance from Yamatetsu and all the other megacorporations.
As if by magic, my eyes were drawn to the hills overlooking the Honolulu sprawl. There was Punchbowl—Puowaina. What the frag, I didn't have anything I really needed to do at the moment, did I?
I turned my back on the palace and went looking for a bus stop.
I remembered a little bit about Punchbowl—Puowaina—from my data search on the suborbital. Apparently, as the
Ali'i
had implied—it used to hold one mega-important place in the ancient Hawai'ian religion. It was up on Puowaina—Hill of Sacrifices—that the old Hawai'ians used to cack their human sacrifices to placate their gods. Who
were
those sacrifices? Volunteers? Criminals? Virgins bred specially for the task (what a fragging waste)? "Prisoners of war" from other islands? Search me, chummer. All I knew was that it came to an end with the
haoles
—the priests and missionaries and pineapple plutocrats—who moved in and "civilized" the place, of course.
I guess Pele, goddess of the earth and of volcanoes, got a mite ticked that nobody was placating her with blood anymore, but it took her a while to do something about it. (You know how it is with goddesses: never a free moment...) In 2018, Haleakala, a huge volcano on the island of Maui, blew its top. Well, not its top, really, more like its side. A ridge on the volcano's west side collapsed, and a massive lava flow obliterated the luxury hotels and tourist traps of Wailea and Keokea. (Tourist fluff still refers to the area—a lava rock wasteland—as "Pompeii of the Pacific.")
In any case, in the twentieth century Puowaina had become a military cemetery for the United States—the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, a kind of "Arlington West." Predictably, it didn't stay that way after Secession. The government, under Gordon Ho's dad, exhumed all the bodies—more than 26,000 of them—and shipped them all back to the mainland, with appropriate honors. (That slotted off more than a few Americans, of course, but after the Thor shots at the Pearl Harbor task force, nobody really dared push the point too hard.)
And that's where The Bus dropped me off in the middle of a baking-hot Hawai'i afternoon, Puowaina, now a public park. A pretty place, an ancient, eroded volcanic crater shaped something like a big bowl. Grassy and green—did that mean artificial irrigation? not necessarily, I supposed—with trees and flowers—forty or so hectares of peace just twenty minutes from the pressure of downtown. From the rim of the crater I imagined you'd get a spectacular view of Honolulu, in all its finery, but I didn't bother looking. More immediate things were attracting my attention.
The Hawai'i National Police Force copmobiles—two of them—were crisp tropical white with rainbow logos on the doors, not the blue and gold of Lone Star Seattle. But it takes more than a flashy paint job to make a Chrysler-Nissan Patrol One look anything other than brutal and threatening. Only half the strobes on the two vehicles' light-bars were operating, but I still had to shield my eyes from the glare, A couple of cops—what had Scott called them?
Na
Maka'i,
that's right—were squatting down, doing something vaguely forensic, near a little copse of flowering trees. Another uniformed officer was sitting on the ground, back up against a tree. He looked drugged or chipped out of his pointy little skull, but I knew better. I recognized that vacant expression; I'd seen it all too often on the faces of Department of Paranormal Investigations officers—"Dips," to street grunts like myself—who'd butted into some of my cases while I was with the Star. Okay, I thought, so at least one cop
-kahuna
was doing the old "ghost-walk" around the area, looking for astral evidence. There was only one more cop there, bringing the total up to four. He was one big boy—a human, but with a gut worthy of a sumo wrestler—and he was talking to a couple of shorts-clad local kids. Witnesses, maybe?
Na
Maka'i
had cordoned off the crime scene much the same way we were taught in the Star. Where trees, picnic benches, and the like were conveniently placed, the cops had strung up that universal yellow police line tape between them. To cover open ground, they'd used the collapsible lineposts that every cop car on the planet has somewhere in its trunk. I ambled over, and when I reached the police line, I held up the yellow tape and ducked under it. I took another step toward the two cops crouching on the ground ...
And rapped my nose and forehead against an invisible barrier that was as unyielding as a concrete wall. "Frag," I granted. Instinctively, I tried to step back.
No go. There was an invisible wall behind me now, too. And one to the right and to the left when I checked. It was like I was in an invisible and slightly undersized phone booth. For a couple of seconds I did the old street-mime shtick, palms pressing flat against unseen walls. Then I cringed and covered my ears as a high-pitched siren shrieked from somewhere behind my left shoulder. Frag, why not? Invisible walls—why not an invisible burglar alarm, too?
