"Ke-ola, will you tell them-" Marmie began, but Ke-ola raised his hand.
"You don't need an interpreter, Madame, if that's what you think. Keoki doesn't have good manners, like me. But everybody here knows Standard. The company makes us all learn it so we can get along on the job later on."
"Of course," Marmie said. "How silly of me." She raised her voice. "Hello, everyone," she said, but for once her presence didn't work. Maybe it was because her stately form was enclosed in a bulky space suit and she was standing just outside of a shadowy chamber even more dramatic than she was.
The people kept talking among themselves and pointing at the newcomers or splashing across the lake to see what was going on.
"Hey, everybody!" Ke-ola bellowed. His voice echoed through the cavern. Ronan was glad they weren't still wearing helmets. The feedback would have deafened them, maybe permanently. "All of you pipe down a minute and listen to this lady.
This is Madame Marmion de Revers Algemeine who runs the school I've been at and a lot of other stuff too."
Keoki gave Marmie a once-over that was pointless considering the sexless space suit, and scoffed, "If she's so important, how come she's with you, bruh?"
"She and these other friends of mine came to save your sorry butt, Keoki."
"From the meteor shower? You're a little late. Good thing for us we got the Honus.
They told us to come here. If it wasn't for them we'd have been squashed into poi."
"We got a Honu too," Ke-ola said. "He told us you were still alive. He said your
Honus would have warned you about the meteors. He's back on the spaceship."
"You got a Honu on a spaceship?"
"Yeah," Ke-ola said. "A little one."
"We have an otter too," Murel put in, just in case anybody was interested.
A woman wearing the ragged remnants of a ship suit got up and walked over to them, giving Keoki a disgusted look and reaching out to pull Ke-ola into an embrace. "Welcome home, little bruthah. We knew about your Honu. Keoki's just being a pain. We got the message a long time ago from the space-station school 'bout your Honu needing a mate. We wondered when you were gonna bring him home to find one."
"We found another home, Leilani, someplace we can all live if we want to," he told her.
Turning back toward the rescue party, Ke-ola said, "This is my sistah, Leilani,
Madame, Captain, Murel, and Ronan. Leilani, Murel and Ronan are my friends from Petaybee. They can explain about the new home better than me."
"First, however," Marmie said, "Leilani, Keoki, is everyone all right? Does anyone need medical attention?"
"Yes, Madame," Leilani said. "We all got inside the tube before the first rocks began to hit. We didn't stay up there to watch the show, though. The Honus told us to take them and take cover so we did."
"It's a good thing," Ke-ola told her. "Your biospheres are nothing but holes in the ground. We thought at first you were in them, then that you'd gone underground in the root canals. That was before our Honu sensed that you were someplace else and okay. The meteors have stopped for now. We got room for anybody who wants to come on board Madame's ship. Who's coming?"
"Not so fast, Ke-ola," Leilani said. "Go where? Why?"
"To Petaybee," he said.
"What's that?"
This is where we come in, I guess, Murel told Ronan, then addressed Leilani and
Keoki but turned to include anyone else who wanted to listen too. "Petaybee is our planet. We came to tell you that you're welcome there."
"We're welcome here too," Keoki told her, an angry edge to his voice. "What is this, some new company scam to get us to move again because they've found something they need that makes this place too good for us to live here?"
"No," Murel said. "We're not from the company. I told you we're from Petaybee.
It's where the company moved our grandparents a long time ago. The company figured it was too cold for anyone to survive there, but the planet helped us and adapted everybody so we've all done fine. Only once you grow up, you can't leave again because of all the adaptations. That's why they sent Ronan and me to invite you."
Leilani crossed her arms over her chest as if she were shivering. "If it's colder than here, count me out."
"Where we'll live isn't going to be so cold," Ke-ola said. "It's in the middle of the ocean, between the poles, and there's hardly any ice there since the volcano started blowing."
"Ice and a volcano?" This from a wizened little old man. "Sounds like we'll be homesick for the meteor showers."
"No, really, it's a good place," Ke-ola said.
"The volcano wouldn't bother you folks very much, probably," Ronan said. "All you have to do is keep chanting to it like Ke-ola did and-"
"What chant was that?" Keoki asked. "What you been telling these people? Some of that old voodoo Aunty Kimmie used to talk?"
"Used to?" Ke-ola said, and looked from face to face. He didn't find the one he was searching for.
"She died two turns ago, bruh," Leilani said.
"None of her homemade poison could stop her coughin'," Keoki said. "'Bout drove everybody nuts hackin' her head off till she finally croaked."
"What's the matter with you?" Ke-ola asked his brother. "You didn't used to be like this. You got no respect now for anything. Aunty Kimmie knew about our people. Her medicines worked too."
"Keoki, you should be ashamed talking like that," Leilani said. "Aunty Kimmie may have been kind of old-fashioned but she was important to a lot of people,
'specially the older ones. And most times her medicines did work-they just tasted like crud."
She turned back to Ronan, Murel, Marmie, and Johnny. She was a very thin lady, much older than Ke-ola, Murel thought. But he'd said he had a big family, and if she was the oldest sister, she might be almost old enough to be his mum. His real mum was dead, Murel recalled him saying.
Later, Murel realized they could have been there arguing without accomplishing anything until the next meteor shower had it not been, once again, for the Honus.
As everyone else chattered, the great sea turtles swam to the bank of the black lake, making their decision on the matter known. As the first turtle reached the bank, three men hauled it toward them and gently lifted it among them.
"The Honus say it's time to go now," one of the men said. "Can you folks move aside so we can pass? Ours is a very old, very well-fed Honu."
"Go where?" Keoki asked.
"They say they want to go to the Honu on the lady's spaceship."
"She can't take our Honus away without us!" Keoki said.
The spokesman for the first turtle's team shrugged, then, in one strong heave, the men lifted the huge Honu up over their heads. His weight was so great, as the twins knew from their acquaintance with their own much smaller Honu friend, that his flippers were too fragile to carry him on hard ground.
Murel got an idea then, and whispered something to Marmie, who nodded.
"Come on, Ro, let's show them the way," she said aloud.
Okay, but that's not really necessary, is it? Won't the Honu guide them onto the ship? her brother replied in thought-talk.
Yeah, but I just thought of a way to make the people feel welcome, only we have to be there in time to greet them the way I plan.
After a few words with Marmie, they scuttled back up the tunnel ahead of the first
Honu bearers, who were followed by several more turtle-toting teams. The gravity made the twins less than speedy, even when they used the lightest setting on their boots, but at least they didn't have to carry turtles as big as they were while they climbed.
The first flitter, on Johnny's order, picked up the twins and took them back to the Piaf. They looked behind as they left and saw the first Honu and its bearers being loaded into a second flitter.
We'll have time, Murel said. It's going to take the flitters several trips to ferry all the Honus and people from the cave to the ship.