Ocean: The Sea Warriors (25 page)

“You heard what I said to them?” Kimo asked, after motioning her to come closer.

“I heard!” she said, in her throaty voice. On the whale’s back, the humanoid teenager was only a little below Kimo’s eye level, a short distance away. “You are quite poetic. The Battle of the Hawaiian Sea has a nice ring to it.”

“Too much blood has been shed here,” Kimo said.

“I know.”

Making sure no one was eavesdropping, he leaned over the side and said to her in a low voice, “Gwyneth, I want you to leave for San Francisco within the hour. I’ve already sent for a school of the fastest jetfish to get you there, in a sealed, high-speed pod. They are in the French Shoals, and are on their way. Three other Sea Warriors will accompany you—Jacqueline Rado, Professor Marcus Greco, and one of the impressive young recruits, J.D. Watts. Of that group, only the oceanography professor has not shown any obvious bodily changes, though he is still a functioning hybrid with gills and other underwater capabilities. Because of his normal human appearance, he will bring shoes and street clothes in a waterproof pack, so that he can go freely onto the land whenever necessary.”

“San Francisco,” she said, also keeping her voice down. “That’s what I recommended two days ago.”

His eyes were sad. “If we have to blockade that port it will be a major escalation, sure to provoke the rage of the U.S. government. I hope we can avoid taking that step, but I’m not optimistic.”

“If we go through with the blockade, should I set it up at the Golden Gate Bridge?”

He paused. “A couple of hundred feet away from the bridge would be better, to keep anyone from using it as a platform to drop explosives.”

“I can swim very fast myself,” she said. “Perhaps I don’t need the jetfish pod.”

“I want you to stay with your team. The jetfish will form a water-filled reservoir for you onboard, so that you can remain moist during the trip and will not suffer. It will be in the forward section of the passenger cabin, and you will still be able to speak to the others when your mouth is out of the water. As

soon as you are in San Francisco Bay, you can try to interact with me by molecular communication, and I’ll let you know if the President has backed down.”

“I’ve been thinking about the molecular transmission system,” Gwyneth said, “and even if we could communicate in that manner across a great distance, there would be a delay factor of three or four hours. If our unique form of communication were merely a matter of the speed of sound through water—which is almost five times the speed of sound through air—it would be theoretically possible to send each message between Hawaii and San Francisco in less than an hour. But our system is more complicated than that, and would take longer over that distance.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “In that case, send Professor Greco ashore in street clothes after the forty-eight hour deadline is up, to see if the U.S. government has accepted our terms. If not, you know what to do.”

“You’ve thought of everything.”

Kimo looked at her somberly. “In wartime it is not possible to think of everything. And make no mistake about it. We are at war with the United States of America, and potentially with the rest of the world.”

***