I sipped at my second beer. Scott was still nursing his first and refused my offer of a refill. "Drinking and driving ain't a good thing with a vehicle control rig," he told me firmly.
A knot of real hard cases were talking biz in the back corner. Macroplast glinted momentarily in the light as a credstick changed hands. I leaned over toward Scott and nodded toward the negotiators. "What are the shadows like around here?" I asked quietly.
He sipped beer to give himself a moment to tiiink. "Pretty dark, brah," he said at last. "When the sun's bright, the shadows can get pretty fragging dark."
"Big shadow community?"
He shrugged. "Depends on how you define it, I guess. There's a fair bit of biz to be done, that's what I hear at least." He grinned crookedly. "Comes from having such a big megacorp presence, that's the way I read it.
"But the core group, the real players?" He shrugged again. "Not too many of them, I guess. Probably fewer than where you're from. And fewer wannabes, too."
"Why's that?"
The ork smile turned predatory for a moment. "Nature of the islands, hoa, that's all. It's a small community here. You frag up, and there's no space to run. The way I hear it, you're good… or you're dead."
I nodded slowly. That made a disturbing kind of sense. As a kind of mental exercise, I ran through a few contingency plans for getting off the islands if things went screwy in a hurry… and quickly realized how few options there really were. Disturbing. I always liked to have running room. "How much actual biz goes down here?" I asked after a moment.
Scott raised his eyebrows. "Hey, you're asking the wrong wikanikanaka, brah," he protested mildly, "I'm just a chauffeur, here."
My expression communicated just what I thought of that disclaimer. "Get actual, chummer," I told him. "You're connected. Somebody like you has got to be. Right?"
I watched his eyes as he debated standing pat with his bluff, and eventually decided against it. He smiled a little self-consciously. "Yeah, okay, I got my ear to the ground. I hear things." He paused. "Some biz goes down here, and in other places like this. But the shadows are different here than they are elsewhere-that's the way I hear it, at least. On the mainland, if you got a good brag-sheet, you get biz. Fixers deal with you on the basis of your street rep, doesn't matter whether they know you or not. Right?"
"Sometimes," I allowed.
"That's not the way it happens here, hoa," he said firmly. "Not the way I hear it, at least… and keep in mind this is all secondhand; I'm a driver, not a runner, okay?" He paused, ordering his thoughts. "The way I hear it, in the islands it's personal relationships that matter more than a brag-sheet, even more than a street rep. People deal with people they know personally, people they've come to trust. Some malihini newcomer to the islands rolls up with a brag-sheet as long as your fragging leg-'I shaved Fuchi ice, I blew away a division of Azzie hard-men, I took Dunkelzahn in a con game'-and nobody's going to touch him, 'cause he's an unknown quantity, see? The kalepa-the fixers- they're going to go with the runners they know, the ones they've dealt with personally before… even if it means going with some hawawa who's not as good as the newcomer. At least the kalepa knows exactly what to expect."
I nodded slowly. That made a certain amount of sense in a tight community with limited running room. You're less likely to bet on an unknown quantity, because if the drek drops into the pot you might find you don't have anyplace to run.
A tight knot of people-lots of black synthleather and studs-jandered in and cruised over to the bar. I could almost feel the attitude from where I sat. Beside me, Scott looked up and grinned. "Somebody you might want to meet, hoa," he told me. Then he raised his voice. "Te Purewa. Hele mai."
One of the black-clad arrivals turned and looked our way. I felt his eyes on me like lasers, burning out of a face that could well have been chiseled from black lava rock. Hawk nose, duck brows, short black hair. And tattoos all over his fragging face: swirls and geometricals and curlicues around his eyes until he looked like a paisley necktie. He smiled- the kind of expression I associated with thoughts of ripping out someone's liver-and he strode over toward our table. He was one big son of a slitch, I saw as he loomed up over us. Big and broad; the bulges of his muscles had bulges on them. "Howzit, Scotty?" he rumbled.
Scott shrugged. "Li' dal." He gestured my way. "Want you to meet somebody, Te Purewa. Bruddah from the mainland, Dirk Tozer."
Te Purewa-was that his name, or some Hawai'ian phrase I hadn't caught yet?-turned those burning dark eyes on me. "Kia oral" he barked at me. And then he bugged out his eyes and stuck out his tongue.
My natural response was to laugh; and when I saw the anger flare in those eyes I knew I'd made a mistake. The big guy scowled, and his tattoos seemed to writhe. Then, without another word, he turned his back on us and strode away.
I turned to Scott. "Oops," I said quietly.
"You got that, bruddah." The ork shook his head. "Shoulda warned you, I guess. Te Purewa-"
"That's his name?"
"Yeah, it's Maori, from Aotearoa-used to be called New Zealand." Scott signed. "Every time I see him, he's more Maori. Good guy, at heart, but sometimes he takes things too far, y'know? All this heritage kanike… Last year it was the tats"-he traced imaginary lines on his face-"then a coupla months back he got himself a linguasoft so he could speak Maori. And now he's doing the traditional greeting crap as well. That whole tongue stuff? He says Maoris look fierce at you as a sign of respect." He shrugged. "Sounds like kanike to me."
"So now he hates me forever?"
Scott chuckled. "Honestly? Te Purewa doesn't have the attention span for holding long grudges, hoa. Next time you see him, snarl at him and say 'Kia oral', and he'll treat you like a long lost bruddah." He paused, and his smile faded. "Thought you might like to meet him 'cause he's the closest thing I know to a real shadowrunner. Te Purewa's SINless, he hangs with some of the fringe kalepa, the fixers on the edge of the action. Don't know what land of biz he does for them-don't really want to know, is it-but he's the closest thing to real street action I know around here."
He glanced at his watch. "Another beer?"
I thought about it, then shook my head. "What's the next stop on the tour?"
The cultural/historical part of the tour was next, it turned out. Scott tooled the big Phaeton back through the financial heart of downtown Honolulu, then continued east into the government sector of the city. First stop was a relatively undistinguished two-story building that looked as though it was made of dressed lava rock. Despite the fact that the place was nothing special, it looked vaguely familiar, as if I'd seen it before. It took me a few seconds to tag the memory. That was it-an old two-D TV show I'd seen at some retrospective festival up in Seattle, something about cops in Hawai'i; that's where I'd seen the place before.
I mentioned this to Scott, but he just shrugged. "Don't know about that, brah, but it's possible, I guess. That's the Iolani Palace. Old place, century and a half old."
"But what is it?" I asked.
The ork looked at me like I'd just misplaced a couple of dozen points of IQ. "It's the palace, hoa. The capitol, where the Ali'i lives and holds court with his kahuna."