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.
20
"Ah, Christ, Theresa…" I felt as though all the blood had been drained from my body and replaced with ice water. I felt as though the underpinnings of my world had been kicked out from underneath me. I felt like a child who's been forced to look at the disemboweled body of his pet puppy. I felt like… How could I describe it, even to myself?
My sister. In all my life, the one thing I'd done that I could point to with pride-the one stupid knight-in-shining-armor knee-jerk reaction that had worked out for the best- was hauling Theresa out of that little suburb of Hell beneath Fort Lewis. Helping her through the nightmares and post-traumatic stress syndrome and all the drek that followed. Seeing that she was clean, sober and sane, and then letting her go about her own life.
For what? What had been the use, tell me that? All the pain, all the heartache… for what? Frag it, I might as well have just left her attached to that pus-yellow umbilicus in the Fort Lewis hive. Might as well have left the astral parasites-the Wasp spirits-in her aura. It had all been for nothing, I could see that in my sister's glassy eyes. The one thing I thought I'd done right in my life… now that had turned into drek, too. Ah, what the hell anyway? Might as well stay consistent, neh? At least I can be proud of that.