House of the Sun

19

The situation had gotten even worse, I discovered as I watched the trid over my room-service breakfast. Monobe security forces had tracked the bombers-or some convenient "suspects," at any rate-and gotten into a high-speed pursuit through the streets of Aiea. All the suspects had been shot while trying to resist arrest (tell me another one). What was worse, all in all, was the total casualty count: four suspects killed, two innocent bystanders geeked when a Monobe MPUV "Hummer" T-boned their car, another non-combatant winged by stray gunfire and not expected to make it, plus four more civilians messed up to one degree or another. Frag it all, if the corps had decided to go out of their way to stir up popular sentiment against themselves, I couldn't think of many more efficient ways of going about it.

The news crews also showed several pretty nasty demonstrations against the Ali'i-one right outside the Iolani Palace. The protesters must have had a shaman or mage among their number because the statue of King Kamehameha the Great had been magically altered to include bugged-out eyes, a bleeding tongue, and a noose around its neck. Nice.

I know a little about demonstrations from my time with Lone Star. No matter how nasty they may look, their real significance depends on who's involved. Average slobs-on-the-street, who really believe in what's going down? Troubling, chummer. Professional agents provocateur-"rent-a-mob?" Much less troubling… although it's still something you don't want to turn your back on. Which was it in this case? I had no way of knowing.

The tridcam focused again on the magically altered face of Kamehameha the Great, prompting a new thought. Did Gordon Ho know what was going down? I don't mean the bombings and the protests and that drek-of course he'd know about that. But maybe he didn't know that someone- probably Harlech-had blown my connection with the Ali'i. I'd promised to tell him anything that Barnard passed on to me about the situation, hadn't I?

And besides, I had the gross and chilling conviction that things were starting to come apart around me, which was giving me the strong urge to talk with somebody- anybody-about it. Ho just happened to be the closest and most convenient. I pulled out the mylar card the Ali'i had given to me, crossed to the telecom, and punched in the number.

I waited out the usual delays and ghost-clicks; by now I was getting used to cold relays. Finally, the Ringing symbol flashed on the screen. A few seconds later, one last click indicated the circuit was complete.

"Ia wai?" The screen stayed blank.

I hesitated. The voice didn't sound like Gordon Ho's… or was I just being paranoid? "I want to speak to the Ali'i," I said.

"Ka?" the voice asked. Now I was sure-it wasn't King Kamehameha V. "Who is this?"

I struggled to keep my face expressionless, silently cursing myself for placing this call with my own video pickup online. "The fact that I know this number means I don't have to tell you that," I said coldly, playing my corp hard-man act to the hilt. "Put the Ali'i on. Now."

"I'm afraid that's impossible," the voice said, matching my tone chill for chill. "The Ali'i is indisposed at the moment. Leave your name and contact information, and I'll pass it on."

I was already reaching out to slap the Disconnect key. With a sigh I leaned back in the chair.

Frag it to hell. Something was seriously wrong here. Ho had stressed to me that the number on the mylar card would reach his personal line, no matter where he was. If he couldn't answer for whatever reason-if he was "indisposed," for example-no one else would pick up the line. Obviously, the ground rules had changed. Maybe "indisposed" was just a polite circumlocution for "deposed." Was Gordon Ho still Ali'i of the Kingdom of Hawai'i?

I turned and stared out the window. Almost since this thing had started, I'd felt like a rat in a trap. Now the trap seemed to be shrinking. Options and alternatives were slowly being stripped away. For a while, I'd fooled myself into thinking I had a powerful patron in the Ali'i. No more, chummer. For all I knew, maybe Gordon Ho was swinging at me end of a rope, eyes bugged and tongue bleeding like the magically altered statue. Even if he wasn't, it was a pretty good bet he had more important things on his mind than the travails of one Dirk Montgomery.

And Barnard? Frag, I'd already given him my best pitch, and he'd decided to leave me "in-country" to reality-check his other informants. How could I convince him to pull me out? Snivel and whimper?

Maybe ALOHA was hiring. I wondered what the going rate for burned-out haole street ops was these days…

The telecom buzzed, and I almost went over backward in the chair. I glared balefully at the incoming Call symbol on the bottom of the screen.

Who had this LTG number? Monot, obviously, and anybody else she'd happened to tell at Telestrian Industries Corporation. And that was about it… wasn't it?

A little apprehensively, I tapped the key to accept the call, but only after turning off the telecom's video pickup. "Yeah?"

The screen filled with an image of Gordon Ho's strong features. "Mr. Montgomery?"

I hurriedly keyed my vid pickup back on. "It's me," I told him unnecessarily. "Where the frag are you?" And then an ugly thought hit. "And how the frag did you get this number?"

The Ali'i of Hawai'i gave me a tired smile. For the first time I noticed the bags under his eyes, the lines of strain in his face. "As to your second question, Mr. Montgomery, I think I told you once before that some members of my military intelligence community were still loyal to me personally. Fortunately, that still seems to be the case. As to your first question, I'd rather not discuss that, for reasons that should be obvious."

"What the frag's going down, e ku'u lani?" I asked.

His tired smile grew sad. 'That form of address isn't appropriate anymore, Mr. Montgomery."

I nodded. "A palace coup?"

"More or less. The throne has been taken-I prefer the term 'usurped,' of course," he added with a wry grin-"by a distant cousin of mine who apparently has been groomed for the position by certain factions within the legislature."

"A mouthpiece for Na Kama'aina" I translated.

"Of course."

"And you?" I asked him.

"Accused of high treason, what else? How else could Na Kama'aina have played it?" He shrugged his muscular shoulders. "I left the palace one step ahead of a warrant for my arrest."

I shook my head. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold, and all that drek. "You've got some people with you?"

"Some," he acknowledged. "Trusted friends."

"And a safe place to hang?"

"For the moment, yes."

I rubbed at my eyes, which suddenly felt very tired. "So what happens now?"

The erstwhile Ali'i smiled. "I think I'd rather not discuss that at the moment, Mr. Montgomery," he said quietly. "After all, my people have compromised this line…" He didn't have to finish the thought.

I sighed. "Yeah." What the frag else was there to say? Things had gone way too far beyond my ability to affect them-mat's the way it felt, at least. I was adrift on some dark, empty ocean, with no compass or rudder. "Well," I told the ex-Ali'i, "if there's anything I can do to-"

He interrupted gently. "That's not why I called you, Mr. Montgomery."

I blinked. "Oh?"

"I've been asked to pass on a message to you."

"From whom?" Suddenly, bleak fatalism morphed into paranoid imaginings.

"Someone who claims to know you." Ho's voice and body language were giving nothing away, no matter how hard I scrutinized him. "Someone who wishes to meet with you. It's your choice whether you accept the meeting or not, of course."

Well, thanks for that, at least, I thought. "Who?" I asked again.

"Two people, actually." Ho replied slowly. "That was made quite clear to me. Apparently, one of them you'll particularly want to speak with."

"Why? And who the frag are they?"

Ho seemed not to have heard my question. "If you wish, I can help you arrange the meet, Mr. Montgomery," he went on. "Some of my people can escort the… the parties… to any meeting site you wish and guarantee that nothing untoward happens."

"Yeah, thanks, sure," I said distractedly. "But who the frag are they, huh?"

Ho looked a little uncomfortable. "I'm assuming this means something to you. It certainly means nothing to me. I was asked to convey to you that there is a message from 'friends of Adrian Skyhill'."

Oh, just fragging great. The fragging bugs. Wonderful, excellent, oh joy.

I accepted the meeting, of course. Frag, what else would I do? Sheer, drek-headed curiosity was enough of a motivation. After the pogroms and all that drek, after the infestation of Chicago by the bugs, after the revelation of insect spirits and their shamans as the next worst thing to the Antichrist himself… wouldn't a bug shaman have to have one fragging good reason to risk his precious, creepy little skin, arranging a meeting with me? (Curiosity-it's a wonderful thing, neh? Think of all the marvelous boons curiosity has brought humanity-thermonukes, germ warfare, trideo sitcoms…)

Once that decision was made, it was a no-brainer to accept Gordon Ho's offer of resources. Although I couldn't imagine that a bug shaman would go to all this trouble just to geek a null like me, I figured a couple of hard-men would be good to have around. (If for no other reason than to stop me from geeking him. I figured I still owed the "friends of Adrian Skyhill" for what happened to my sister, Theresa.) And come to think of it, physical protection wouldn't be enough, would it? I'd need someone who could do the astral thing as well-preferably a shaman rather than a hermetic, on the assumption that "like understands like." A shaman on my side might be able to predict any assorted weirdness the bug-guy might be considering.

So that's; what I asked Ho for: a shaman plus three hoop-kicking bodyguards. I wanted two of the razorboys with me before the meet; the shaman and the other gillette could pick up the bug-boy(s) and escort him/them to the spot. Ho agreed at once; I think he was almost as curious as I was about the whole scam, and expected his people to give him a complete debrief afterward.

As to the site, well, why not right here, room 1905 at New Foster Tower? I ran a quick mental cost-benefit analysis of security concerns, and on balance the risks seemed lower if I stayed put, avoiding any undue exposure on the streets before, during, or after the meet. If necessary, I'd bail out of the Tower afterward, and find myself another flop. A fragging alley, if nothing else presented itself.

So that's the way it shook out. The meet was set for eighteen hundred; a gillette and a shaman provided by Ho would escort my visitors to room 1905 at that time. Two hours before the appointed time, the other two assets were knocking on my door.

My paranoia was in full flood, so I checked the door viewer before snapping back the m'aglocks. Through the distorting lens I could easily imagine I'd seen the two slags before. Even though facial features and other superficial details vary, I've always felt there's an underlying sameness about the really good bodyguards. Maybe it's the level of confidence, of belief in and understanding of their own capabilities. Or maybe it's the recognition that their job could require them to kill, or the, at any moment. Whatever the truth of it, I always get a vaguely hinky feeling around people like that. Of course, this wasn't a social occasion, and I was glad this pair looked competent.

The taller of the two figures held something up to the door viewer-a duplicate of the deputy's badge I still had in my pocket. I unlocked the door and swung it back.

The two muscleboys didn't so much as acknowledge my presence. Silent as wraiths in their dark suits, they seemed to teleport by me. The shorter of the two-I noticed with a slight shock that she was female-shut and relocked the door, while her taller companion just stood in the middle of the room scanning it with a gaze as piercing as a surgical laser.

After half a minute he nodded minusculely and finally turned toward me. "Mr. Montgomery," he acknowledged, his voice as empty of emotion as a vocoder. "I'm Louis Pohaku. My associate is Alana Kono." Neither of the hard-types offered to shake hands, so I just nodded to them. "Have you done a security survey?"

"You're the experts," I said with a shrug.

Pohaku shot a look at his partner, then they split up, and basically started taking the hotel room apart.

1 watched them as they worked. Pohaku was the boss-man, quite obviously, and he'd been in the game for some time. I guessed him to be in his late thirties, maybe a few years older than me, and that the world hadn't been kind to him. His face was drawn, his eyes slightly sunken, his skin sallow. Hell, he looked like a walking corpse dressed up for the prom. He moved well, though-even just walking across the hotel room, I could see he was toned and cranked up. He didn't have any obvious cybermods, but I'd have bet big cred that his reactions were juiced to some degree.

Where Pohaku was tall and spare, Kono was small and pleasantly rounded. (I wouldn't let myself so much as think the word "chubby," because she'd probably tear my liver out.) Broad face, dark hair in bubbly curls, and curves in all the right girl-places. Her eyes were dark and alive, and even the slightest trace of a smile would have made her fragging near beautiful. Of course, smiling wasn't part of her job description. Woman-trappings or not, she could just as well have been Pohaku's soulless clone-brother.

The two hard-types in their matching dark suits gave the place the security version of a white-glove inspection. They tried the sealed windows, they checked out sightlines, they scanned every millimeter of the walls with electronic detectors of some kind, they hooked little black boxes up to the telecom, they even-I drek you not-looked under the bed, and test-flushed the drekker. A couple of times I considered telling them to lighten up. Hell, I'd spent one night in this room already; I'd used the drekker, even, and my anatomy was still intact. But I kept my yap zipped. They were the pros, after all, and I might as well let them have their fun.

Finally, they were done, and Pohaku came toward me. Part of my mind expected a brisk, "Crapper secured, sah!", but of course all I got was a cool nod. My security assets were satisfied with the situation, so I should be as well. Taking my cue from Pohaku, I just nodded in return and waved them wordlessly toward the couch.

I've never been particularly comfortable waiting for something to go down. I was even less comfortable sharing the room with the emotionless Bobbsey Twins. If Pohaku and Kono had done something even slightly human- belched, maybe, pulled out a book, or used the (secured) drekker-it would have made things a lot easier. No luck, chummer. They just sat on the couch, one at each end, spines ramrod straight, staring off into space.

No, that wasn't quite right. They didn't zone out. They didn't look at me or at each other, but they didn't slip into the thousand-meter stare that I always associate with boredom, or with no coffee for breakfast. Instead, their gazes kept flicking around the room, never settling anywhere for long, like the eyes of a pilot monitoring his plane's instruments. I considered trying to strike up a conversation, but that idea withered away pretty damn quick. Instead, I snagged myself a fruit juice from the fridge, but didn't offer any to the Bobbsey Twins. If they wanted something, they could crack their adamantine shells long enough to fragging ask. Then, juice in hand, I slumped down into a chair and worked on my patience.

According to my internal, subjective clock, we sat there like that for, oh, nigh on a year or so. (My watch said it was little more than an hour and a half, but what the frag did it know anyway?) A few minutes before the official time of the meet, a knock sounded on the door.

Pohaku and Kono were on their feet so fast I didn't even see them move. (Yep, boosted reflexes, both of them.) Kono flickered across me living room, taking up cover position in a small alcove. Pohaku fragging near teleported again across to the door. Weapons, nasty little chopped-down SMGs, were in their hands as if by magic.

Pohaku said something I couldn't make out-probably a code word of some kind-and rapped a rhythmic sequence on the door. (Why not just look through the viewer lens? Think about it, chummer. Bad guy on the outside waits for that little viewer to go dark-telling him the good guy's eye is up against said viewer-and sends a round or two right through it Ouch.) I didn't hear the countersign, but I could hear the answering rap code; it sounded like a musical quote from Take Five.

Either it was the right code, or Pohaku liked jazz. The two gillettes' SMGs vanished again, and Pohaku unlocked the door. He stepped aside as one figure entered, then shut and relocked it I looked at the newcomer, and my stomach did a one-and-a-half gainer.

It was the fragging bird-boned woman, the little old scag I'd seen through the security camera of Cheeseburger in Paradise and then later in the coffee shop next to the Ilima Joy. She was dressed the same as when I'd seen her the other two times, in a shapeless sack of a dress that had once been black but had now faded to a kind of careworn gray. Her bright eyes flickered over to me and pierced me like a butterfly pinned onto a display board. Then she returned her attention to Pohaku, and they talked in quiet tones.

"Hey, wait just one fragging tick here," I said loudly and crossed the room toward them. Two sets of dark eyes-one sunken, one sharp and almost beady-settled on me. "Who the frag's this?"

The bird-boned woman flashed me a quick and knowing smile, but it was Pohaku who answered. "You asked for shamanic support," he said flady.

"Her?"

I hadn't thought it was possible, but his expression grew even colder. "Akaku'akanene has the full confidence of the Ali'i," he said sternly, leaving the rest of the thought-"and that should be good enough for the likes of you"-unspoken.

I raised a hand, palm out. "Afai-what?"

"Akaku'akanene." This from the bird-boned woman. Her voice was brisk, sharp, abrupt. "My name. Means 'Vision of me Goose'."

"Uh-huh." I paused. "Look, I don't want to sound like a paranoid buttbrain, but…"

Akaku'akanene flashed me another of those quick smiles of hers. (For a moment my memory superimposed an image of my old chummer Buddy over the shaman's face. The mannerisms were painfully similar. With an effort I swallowed my sadness.) "Did I follow you?" she finished for me. "Yes."

I shook my head. That wasn't the answer I was expecting. Frag, I'd been looking for a nice, reassuring, "Don't be a dickhead."

"How?" I asked. "Why?" Then I went back to, "How?" again. The two times I'd seen me old shaman had been before my first conversation with Gordon Ho, the Ali'i. How the hell did she even know I existed?

"Why?" she echoed. "Nene sang of you."

I waited for her to go on-for her to say something that actually made sense. When she didn't, I responded, "Huh?"

"Nene sang of you," she repeated patiently. "She sees your 'uhane. Your spirit. You are the axle. Important things turn around you." She said all this as if it were totally obvious, as if I were a pluperfect dolt for not knowing it already.

Okay, so I guess I was a pluperfect dolt. I didn't know what the frag she was talking about. Nene… that was a goose, wasn't it? Yes, that was right, the nene was that Hawaiian goose-the one with the claws, that likes volcanoes or some drek-that Scott had rattled on about. So a goose had talked to this woman…?

Or maybe Nene was some local totemic creature. Sure, that made at least some sense. In the Pacific Northwest, Bear is a popular totem, as is Wolf. On the Great Plains, Snake and Coyote get the nod. Down in Florida, Gator's a fave. So why not Nene in Hawai'i? Of course, that didn't settle my doubts much. I've never been too comfortable with the idea of totems as real, discrete entities'. I guess I've always mentally labeled them as psychological constructs that shamans use to make sense of magic, with no real distinct existence of their own. So whether Akaku'akanene was following me because a goose told her to, or because a voice in her head told her to, I still felt a little hinky about the whole thing.

Well, anyway, none of this was on point at the moment Let the old woman listen to birds if she wanted to. "What about the visitors?" I asked her.

"Outside," she said. 'Two of them."

"Clean?" Pohaku asked.

"No," Akaku'akanene answered firmly. "No weapons, though." Pohaku blinked at that; it made me feel a touch better to realize that he found the shamanic worldview a little disconcerting from time to time, too.

"Lupo's with them?" the bodyguard pressed.

Akaku'akanene nodded.

Pohaku turned to me. "Ready?"

I shrugged. "No," I admitted honestly. "But let's do it anyway."

The bodyguard nodded and made a quick gesture to Akaku'akanene. The old woman opened the door and stepped back outside. Behind me I heard Kono shift into a better covering position. Pohaku's own weapon was out again, pointed at the ceiling, but off safety. I stepped back into the middle of the room and I did what I could to prepare myself. "Friends of Adrian Skyhill." Just fragging peachy.

The door swung open, and another bodyguard in the same mold as Pohaku-this had to be Lupo, I guessed-stepped inside. A small figure followed him.

A human male, he was, midheight and of midbuild. His hair was midbrown, his features were nondescript. Frag, he was the closest thing to a nonentity I think I'd ever seen. If I'd passed him on the street, I don't think I'd have noticed him. I certainly wouldn't have remembered him. The only thing that set him apart was his eyes.

Gray, they were, pale and watery gray. They glistened, as if he was on the verge of crying, or as if he'd rubbed glycerin into them. And they never seemed to blink. Those eyes, set in an expressionless face, settled on me, and I felt the urge to hide behind a couch.

Then Akaku'akanene escorted his companion in, and I forgot about the gray-faced man.

"Oh, Jesus fragging Christ, no…" My voice was a pitiful whimper. It was all I could do not to sit down in the middle of the floor, cover my face with my hands, and cry like a fragging baby.

The second member of the contingent had the same glazed eyes as the nondescript man, except that they were brown instead of gray. I knew those eyes; I'd seen them laugh and cry.

"Hello, bro," said my sister Theresa.