She wanted to go on: It’s not an either-or matter of personal choice and everybody making the correct renunciation. It’s that we have always been a young folk. Merriment and recklessness, sudden moonlit lovemaking and houses full of growth, birthday festivals, carp flags flying in springtime, yes, and reverence for the aged, whose wisdom not many of us have reached to, all these things and more have always been our lives. We can’t instantly become something else.
And then, the Keiki Moana are our spirit kin. Very likely we have learned more from them than ever they from us. Forebears of ours were caretakers of their colony, after it outgrew its Big Island refuge and was moved to Niihau. (Fireball, its original protector, had disbanded. Guthrie himself had gone to Alpha Cen-tauri. Somebody must mediate between these beings and the human-machine world. Have you forgotten the history that made us, you men?) As they began to sustain themselves, other humans joined in, to help and to share. Selection: The new recruits were they whom sea and open sky, village and open boat, firelight and starlight, called away from the cybernetic world. They raised their children accordingly. Those of the next generation who did not like it moved elsewhere. Those who did like it stayed, and their children in turn became still more the Lahui Kuikawa, the Free People. And they were oath-siblings to the Keiki Moana, fared with them, foregathered with them, rejoiced with them, mourned with them, until those strong sea-born instincts roused human urges that they had believed were safely buried.
No, she wanted to say, we haven’t gone into hiding. We haven’t tried to bring back an ideal Stone Age that never was. I’m proof of that. But we have made a life that is our own, that is us, and we will not willingly let it die.
Useless, here. She had said quite enough.
Hakim smiled—a little regretfully, she thought. “I can sympathize,” he told her. “I expect that after further study I will recommend that the government agree to your proposal and see if any arrangement can be made with the—the kauwa. At least, with this particular, perhaps unique band of them. We will rely heavily on you … civilized … Lahui, to help negotiate and afterward keep the arrangement in force.”
His lips drooped. He shook his head. “But in honesty, mamselle, I do not expect anything important to result. At best, the robbers will agree to be fed and medicated and otherwise provided for. History suggests that this will demoralize them, encourage the criminal element, and do nothing to curb their breeding. There is also your culture to deal with. In many ways it seems admirable. But can it accommodate itself to—let me be frank—to the real world?”
Time, Aleka wanted to cry. Give us time, give us space, land, and waters where everything isn’t owned or regulated; let us be alone a generation or two, till we have changed ourselves without destroying ourselves.
Useless, here.
Useless, likewise, to linger. After what had happened, the team wouldn’t cruise farther. It would report and doubtless be ordered back to base, whence it would be dispersed on other duties. If the counsel of Delgado or Hakim was wanted, their telepresence would be immediately available, wherever they might be On Earth.
Aleka had a familiar sense of lying in a box while the lid closed.
Nevertheless she stayed for two or three hours. The men had questions for her, shrewd but courteous. They were more ready to listen than to talk. She found herself telling them unexpectedly much about her home, the island, a mountain looming above coral ground, orchards, meadows, parklands, once lovely in their sea-girt loneliness but now with little solitude anywhere, because the village had grown till it was—the town. Formerly a longhouse stood surrounded by the cottages of the dwellers, who had it in common for their ceremonies, celebrations, and mutual business. Today a dozen such clusters served as many ‘ohana—extended families, whose members shared in caring for each other from birth to cremation. Yes, of course children knew who their parents were and took the most love and guidance from them; but uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, great-grandparents were nearly as close and you were always welcome in their homes. Yes, of course people quarreled, feuded, lied, swindled, stole, betrayed, perhaps more than among atomic individuals with easily made, easily dissolved relationships; but their ‘ohana found its ways to compose matters. Besides friends, respected elders, and traditional mores, they had the influence of the luakini—the temple, where they attended the simple rites and heard anew the simple words of the Dao Kai that Kelekolio Pela had uttered long ago, the Sea Way for a sea folk. They also held secular assemblies, where those adults who wished could debate and vote on public questions and where cases were tried. Criminals were handed over to the police on Oahu, but the worst punishment was exile, expulsion from the island, the ‘ohana, the people—