Nightworld

They'd gone about half a dozen miles or so on Route 37—some of the signs called it "Haleakala Highway"—driving on stinking pavement slick with the crushed remains of countless dead fish. The outskirts of a town called Pukalani were in sight when Jack glanced back at the lowlands behind them. It was fairly dark below; lights were few and scattered; the airport was completely dark. He glanced beyond the coast to the strange-faced moon peeking huge and full above the edge of the sea, but when he saw the sea itself, his heart fumbled a beat and he squinted through the thickening dusk to confirm what he thought he saw.

"Whoa, Ba," he said, grabbing the Oriental's shoulder. "Check out the whirlpool. Tell me if you see what I see."

Ba braked and looked over his shoulder.

"There is no whirlpool."

"Thank you," Jack said. "Then I'm not crazy."

He wished he'd thought to bring the binocs so he could get a better look, but even from this distance in the poor light it was plain that the huge pinwheel of white water in the sea off Kahului Bay was gone.

Had the hole in the ocean floor closed up?

"I don't understand any of this," he muttered. "But then, I'm not supposed to. That's the whole point."

He was about to tell Ba to drive on when he noticed a white area of boiling water bubbling up where the center of the whirlpool had been. The bubbling grew, became more violent, and finally erupted into the night. Not volcanic fire, not steam, just water, a huge thick column of it, hundreds of feet across, geysering out of the ocean and lancing into the sky at an impossible speed. It roared upward, ever upward, ten thousand, fifteen thousand, twenty thousand feet in the air until it plumed into billowing cumulus clouds at its apex.

And it kept spewing, kept on pouring unmeasured thousands of tons of water into the sky.

"My…God!" was about all Jack could manage in the face of such a gargantuan surreal display.

"It is as the attendant said," Ba said. "The whirlpool backs up at night."

He threw the Jeep back into gear and continued up the highway. They had the road to themselves.

Three or four miles uphill from Pukalani heavy drops of seawater began to splatter all around them. Jack rolled up his window as the shower evolved into a deluge, forcing Ba to cut his pace.

A few minutes later, a blue and green parrot fish bounced off the hood with a nerve-jarring thunk. Then a bright yellow butterfly fish, then they were being pelted with sea life, banging on the hood, thudding on the canvas top, littering the road ahead of them. The ones that didn't burst open or die from the impact flopped and danced on the wet pavement in the glare of the headlights. A huge squid splatted against the windshield, momentarily blocking Ba's vision; when it slid off he had to swerve violently to the right to avoid a six-foot porpoise stretched dead across the road.

And then fish weren't the only things in the air. Chew wasps, spearheads, belly flies, men-o'-war, and a couple of new species Jack hadn't seen before, began darting about. Ba accelerated. Jack was uneasy about traveling at this pace through pelting rain and falling fish over an unfamiliar road slick with dead or dying sea life. But the headlights and speed seemed to confuse the winged predators, and Ba plowed into the ones that wouldn't or couldn't get out of the way.

After they passed through Kula, Jack spotted the turn-off for 377. Ba slid the Jeep into the hairpin turn as smoothly as a movie stuntman, downshifted, and roared up the incline.

Jack had to admit—silently, and only to himself—that Ba was indeed the better driver.

The Waipoli Road turn-off came up so quickly that they overshot it. But Ba had them around and back on track in seconds. And then the going got really rough. The pavement disappeared and devolved into an ungraded road that wound back and forth in sharp switchbacks up a steep incline. The slower pace allowed the night things to zero in on the Jeep. They began battering the windows and gnawing at the canvas top.

I had to choose a jeep.

But soon the headlights picked out a brightly painted hand-carved sign that read Pali Drive. Ba made the turn and the road narrowed to a pair of ruts. They bounced along its puddled length until it ended at the cantilevered underbelly of a cedar-sided house overlooking the valley. Ba stopped with the headlights trained on a narrow door in the concrete foundation.

Jack rechecked his map and notes by the dashboard light.

"This is it. Think anybody's home?"

Ba squinted through the windshield. "There are lights."

"So there are. I guess that means we've go to go in."

A spearhead rammed its spike through the canvas top then, narrowly missing Jack's head. Hungry little tongues wiggled through the openings behind the point and lapped at empty air. As it pulled back, sea water began to pour in through the hole.

"Let's go," Jack said. "Shotguns and clubs?"

Ba nodded and picked up the other Spas-12.

"Okay. We meet at the front bumper and head for the house back-to-back. Use the shotgun only if you have to. Go!"

Jack kicked open his door, leapt into the downpour, and dashed-splashed toward the front of the Jeep. Something fluttered near his head; without looking he lashed out at it with the wasp-toothed billy. A crunch, a tear, and whatever it was tumbled away. He met Ba in the glow of the headlights and they slammed their backs together. A spearhead darted through the light, low, toward Jack's groin, while a belly fly sailed in toward his face. The falling sea water stung the healing area on his arm where the first belly fly had caught him. He didn't want to let this one in close. He swung the club at the spearhead and shredded its wings while ramming the muzzle of the shotgun into the belly fly's acid sack, rupturing it.

"Let's move." Jack shouted. "I'll lead."

Like a pair of Siamese twins fused at the spine, they moved toward the door, Jack clearing a path with his billy and shotgun, Ba backpedaling, protecting the rear. When he reached the door, Jack began pounding on its hardwood surface, then decided he couldn't wait. He handed Ba his billy and pulled the plastic strip from his pocket, all the while congratulating himself for bringing Ba along. The big guy was faced into the headlights now, a club in each hand, batting the bugs away left and right. Fortunately, the bugs weren't nearly as thick here as they'd been in New York, but even so, without Ba, Jack would have been eaten alive as he faced the door.

Jack quickly slipped the latch and they burst into a utility room. He spotted a sink and a washing machine before they slammed the door closed behind them and stood panting and dripping in the safe quiet darkness.

"You okay?"

"Yes," Ba said. "And you?"

"I'm just groovy. Let's go see who—"

Suddenly the overhead lights went on. A tall, dark-skinned man with reddish hair stood in the doorway. He was dressed in a loin cloth and a feather headdress and Jack might have laughed except that he was pointing a Marlin 336 their way.

"Who are you?" he said.

Jack put his hands up. "Just travelers seeking shelter from the storm."

"No shelter here for malihini" He stepped forward and raised the rifle. "Get out! Hele aku oe!"

"Easy there," Jack said. "We're looking for Miss Bahkti, Kolabati Bahkti. We were told she lived here."

"Never heard of her. Out!"

Even if the guy hadn't flinched at the sound of her name, the necklace around his neck, a perfect match to the copy Jack carried in his pocket, would have proved him a liar.

Then Jack heard a woman's voice call his name.