At the end, she too had her say. Thereafter, “[So shall flow this tide,]” the alpha bull grunted, and went back to his gathered followers. Brief raucousness resounded. As one, they plunged. Time passed before she saw them emerge, far off, bound north. Several of them towed pursed nets full of a harvest that glistened.
“What is this?” Delgado was crying. “What have you done?”
Aleka sighed. The hour had exhausted her, wrung her bloodless. “We agreed they could go—”
“Scot-free? Carrying off their booty? No!”
“Senor, they lost two camaradas, others of them are in pain, and their efforts have gone for very little. The fish they took are already dead. If you let them return home in peace, they’ll leave the bioranges alone for three months as measured by the Moon, and won’t raid fish herds either. They’ll subsist as best they can on what they catch in the wild. Meanwhile their
leaders will negotiate with … acceptable representatives of your side, trying for a permanent arrangement. You can pursue them and start real hostilities going, if you like, but / think you’ve come out of the affair mighty well.”
Delgado gnawed his lip. Finally: “Would you come aboard and tell us more, seflorita?”
“Oh, yes, yes.”
As she slipped closer, Aleka’s pulsebeat accelerated. She spoke the Thorn Mantra to herself and strength flowed back from some inner well. A single bound lifted her out of the cockpit; she caught a rail with one hand, pressed bare feet against the sun-warmed metal of the submersible, and swung herself onto its deck. Her boat drifted free, Ka’eo watchful beside it.
The constables stared at the visitor, the men with pleasure. They saw a young woman—twenty-eight— of medium height, clad in shorts and halter. Swimming, running, climbing, strenuous play had made her figure superb. Many breeds of human had come together in tawny skin, wavy blue-black hair bobbed just below the ears, round head, broad face, short nose, full mouth, big russet eyes. Disciplined, the squad members stayed at their posts while one man accompanied Delgado to greet her.
Stiffly, the commander shook hands. Her palm was hard to the touch. “Bienvenida,” he said. “I don’t believe you’ve met Dr. Zaid Hakim. He joined us to observe for the Ministry of Environment. Dr. Hakim, Seflorita Aleka, uh-m, Kame?”
She smiled. “Alice Tarn, if you’d rather speak straight Anglo,” she said. “Buenas tardes, seflor.”
Hakim, in workaday civilian clothes, bowed. “How do you do,” he replied. His usage was scholarly, his accent clipped. “My compliments on a remarkable performance. Do I understand correctly, you speak for your community, Mamselle Tarn?”
“No,” Aleka told him, surprised. “No one person can do that. I’m a, an interpreter, you might say.” But why should he know much about her folk? How many different groupings were there in the world? Half a million? And a number of them changeable as foam, too. The Lahui Kuikawa amounted to about ten thousand humans on a small Hawaiian island and maybe fifty thousand Keiki Moana, maybe considerably more, prowling the greatest of the oceans.
Had their obscurity been what protected them, and was it now coming to an end?
“Let’s go below and talk,” pelgado proposed. To the crew: “At ease, but keep alert.”
His cabin was cool and dim after the molten-bright water outside, cramped but adequately equipped. It extruded three chairs. “Do be seated,” he urged. “Refreshment?” A servotube brought coffee for him and Hakim, beer for Aleka. She felt she’d earned it.
Was earning it. The catnip tingle vanished from her awareness as Hakim said, “Yes, you did amazingly, mamseUe, but I fear it was basically futile.” He raised a hand. “No, no, we shall not give chase. However, the Federation cannot strike deals with a bandit gang.”
Aleka braced her spirit. “They aren’t that, senor.”
“What, then?”
“Nothing you—the Federation has a word or a law to fit, really. They are kauwa.”
“Please explain.”
“Where shall I begin? ‘Kauwa’ in modern Hawaiian usually means a servant, but it can also have its old meaning of an outcast, an exile, not necessarily a public enemy but someone who doesn’t fit into society, maybe because his birth was irregular, or because he doesn’t conform to the rules, or he’s simply been too long away from his people.”