The Koreans, also known as the People of the Sun, held two ships on the other side of the Freedom Ship which the Japanese called home. The Koreans kept to themselves. Besides an affiliation with
Los Tiburones
, Kavika knew little about them.
Los Tiburones
were multi-ethnic gangs. They owned the drug trade and did swift business in betel nut and marijuana. They had harder chemicals if one wanted, but Pali Boys laughed at the idea that something man-made could be better than a natural high.
The Mga Taos were perhaps the strangest of all the groups. They were monkey-worshipers, and allowed the creatures to roam their temple ship at will. Kavika shuddered. If anything was a sign of bad luck, it was the monkeys. No one really knew why, but the Corpers used them to filter blood, something to do with trying to find a cure for Minimata. One moment a haolie would be enjoying life and living as large as he or she could, the next they’d have a monkey surgically attached to their backs, tubes driving their blood through the monkey’s organs to filter them for some strange experiment.
The Real People constituted the largest group of organized haolies. They were all white of some sort. They controlled a dozen ships and pretty much lived at peace with everyone.
The last major ethnic group was the Vitamin Vs. Their home comprised three former Russian nuclear submarines, interspersed around the city. The crews had mostly left ship and assimilated into the city, leaving only a core group who still maintained the submarines. Many of them had taken wives or husbands. They were the only contingent of whom the Corpers were afraid. Rumor had it that their missiles were armed and ready. They said that as spread out as the Vitamin V subs were, all they had to do was begin firing inwards and the city would explode. Kavika didn’t know if this was true or not. The only thing Kavika was certain about was if you wanted liquor, the Vs had the best hooch in the city.
A cry went up and was answered across the rigging.
Kavika echoed the call, turning to see where it originated. It took a few seconds, but he pinpointed it at about the time the others did. He climbed the netting, then dove across a gap, catching hold with both hands. Soon he was moving fast, using the nets and cables to propel himself just as he’d learned when he was seven and his father had first taken him into the heights.
They converged on one of the Real People ships. Several dozen haolies surrounded a body on the deck. Pali Boys from everywhere were converging.
Kavika felt a sour pit yaw open in his stomach. It looked like someone had fallen. “Oh, Lono,” he murmured, invoking the God of wind and storms. “Let him not be a crip.”
Kaja was the first one to get to the body. Akani and Oke were close behind. By the time Kavika arrived, there were twenty Pali Boys either hanging or standing nervously nearby. He slid down a line and joined Kaja on the deck. It was Akamu. He was a year older than Kavika. They’d played in the lower nets as kids and had crazy days leaping into the water, only to be fished out by the Water Dogs.
But Akamu’s days of leaping and living large were over.
His skin had turned a light shade of gray. His eyes stared skyward; his mouth open in a scream. His legs were splayed but unbroken. The only signs of life were in his fingers; they slowly curled and uncurled, as if they were trying to clutch the air. His chest held the ghoulish evidence—nine puncture wounds, three by three—that he hadn’t fallen.
Kavika brought his own hand to his chest, just as many of the other Pali Boys had already done.
Blood rape
.
Someone had taken Akamu’s blood.
Akami kneeled and held the Pali Boy’s head in his lap. “I got no pulse.”
“Then why is he still moving?” Kavika asked.
Akani shook his head. “Reflexes. I don’t know.”
They all watched as Akamu’s hand uncurled, then stayed that way, a spider’s legs dead on the ground.
Kaja was the first to act. He spun towards the haolies that had gathered around them. “Which one of you did this? Who did this? Was it you?” He pointed at a man who stood towards the front.
The man’s eyes widened and he shook his head. Everyone shook their heads. Many of them stepped back.
Kaja balled his fists. “Who saw this happen?” He turned in all directions, trying to make eye contact with everyone in the crowd, but most looked away.
Kavika could see it if Kaja couldn’t. No one here was involved. This was Corper madness. This was something they did. Everyone knew it, but it would be easier if it was a haolie. Pali Boys could get retribution from a haolie. Getting even with the Corpers was like trying to punch the ocean.
Akani waved for several Pali Boys to help him with Akamu. Soon they were carrying him back to the tanker. Kaja fell in line close behind, his head down, while Kavika walked after the Pali leader. Above them swung the others. They took up a mournful howl. And after a while, it seemed as if the wind itself had joined them.
CHAPTER THREE
“Y
OU NEED TO
watch yourself, Kavika. Don’t let what happened to Akamu happen to you.”
Kavika nodded as he knelt beside his mother and sister. Their assigned living space was five feet wide by six feet deep and less than a hundred feet from the reservoir of oil still stored in the aft section of the hold. Although ventilation shafts had been punched through the sidewalls, the smell of oil permeated everything. That there were people who lived closer to the oil showed that their life wasn’t as bad as it could be. But if it wasn’t bad, it was close enough to be a first cousin. Kavika hated it. He hated more that he couldn’t do anything about it.
“If he hadn’t been doing his stunts, this never would have happened,” his mother continued.
Kavika knew that he shouldn’t argue, but he couldn’t help it. “He wasn’t stunting, mom. He’d been walking on the decks and was attacked.” He dared to look up and saw the impatience in her eyes. He offered her a smile. “If he
had
been stunting, whoever it was would never have got him.”
“You don’t know that for sure.” She frowned as she punched a needle through a stiff length of shark skin. She was making a dive suit for the Water Dogs. Once completed, it would allow her family unlimited fishing rights for a time. But completing it was difficult. Everyone wanted shark skin, and it was rare that the distribution made it to her on the lower levels. It seemed to Kavika that she’d been working on the same suit for years.
“They found the holes in his chest. It was a blood rape,” he said.
“Ssst.” She cut him off as his ten-year-old sister stirred. “Do you think she needs to hear such things? We know about the holes. Everyone on ship knows about the holes. No need to broadcast the fact.”
Kavika watched his sister for a time. He remembered back when she was eight and how much energy she’d had. Who knew that a bad load of fish could so change her existence? Now when she walked it was as if she were a doll and her legs weren’t her own. She still had convulsions, although they were becoming more and more infrequent.
“How is Nani?”
“She’s getting better. The nurses think she’ll come around. You know that she would love for you to spend more time with her.”
“I’d love that too,” he said.
“Then why don’t you?”
How was he to explain something she didn’t understand? He had to sleep on deck. He had to be part of the group of boys wanting to be full time Pali. How else was he going to have a chance to better their lives?
As if she could read his mind, she said, “You should try and work with the others up top. The Third Mate is always looking for good maintenance workers. You could learn how to weld and then you’d have a trade.”
Kavika shook his head savagely. “I can’t do that. I’m a Pali Boy. I can’t be something I’m not.”
“Your father said the same thing and now look at us.”
“My father wouldn’t want me to keep hidden in the dark.”
“Your father would want you to take care of your sister.”
He felt the blood boil inside him. “I am taking care of my sister.” He stood. His hands were shaking. “I’m trying to move her and you to a better level.”
His mother paused from her work and stared at him. He watched as her anger slid into something much worse... disappointment. “Your sister can’t tell which level she is on. But she
can
tell whether you are here or not.”
The guilt almost overwhelmed him. On one hand he knew that his sister needed special attention, but on the other he had a need to be with the others so he could have a chance of making their lives better. He felt stifled below decks. Even staying here for the few moments it took to talk to his mother felt like punishment.
He reached over and placed a hand on his sister’s forehead. He held it there for a moment, then stood. “Listen, I got to go. Is there anything you need?”
She shook her head sharply and resumed sewing. “We’ll make do.”
The last time he’d been here they’d argued as well. When he’d left, he’d stooped to give her a kiss and she’d turned away, saying, “Only boys kiss their mothers. You want to be a man, act like one.”
Still, he lingered, wanting to kiss her, wanting to hug her and tell her how much he loved her. But by the stern set of her jaw, this was not something she’d accept. The wanting of it wasn’t enough, but it was all he’d ever have. After all, he was a descendant of an ancient warrior line and he should act as such.
So Kavika set his jaw, turned and made his way carefully through the families who lived on the lowest of levels. He tried not to make eye contact with anyone. He kept his gaze focused on the square of light filtering down the stairwell from the deck high above. He was so keen on thinking about his mother and sister that be bumped right into someone, knocking them to the ground. He mumbled an apology and continued on.
“Fucking piece of Tuna guts Pali Boy, why don’t you watch—” Suddenly the speaker began laughing.
Kavika walked two more steps, but the laughing got even louder. He turned and saw that he’d knocked down a slip of a girl. Then the girl spoke again, and the voice was anything but a girl’s.
“Go figure. I get knocked down by a wannabe Pali Boy who can’t even stunt on his own.”
Kavika stared hard at the figure on the ground for a moment, then turned and walked away.
The figure leaped up and followed. “Wait a minute, Kavika. I was coming to see you and your mother.”
“She’s back that way,” he said, hooking a thumb back the way he’d come. “I’m going this way. See you later.”
The figure paused to glance backward into the depths of the hold, then decided to follow Kavika anyway, not catching up until he was almost all the way up the stairs and out into the sea air.
“Kavika, wait!”
She grabbed Kavika’s arm, and he stopped and turned. She was a scant Filipina who couldn’t weigh more than eighty pounds. Her long hair and fingernails were perfect. Her pouty lips begged to be kissed. Her long, fake eyelashes accentuated her eyes. She went by the name Leilani. If her real name hadn’t been Spike, he’d be sorely tempted to kiss her.
“What do you want, Spike?” He gently removed her hand from his arm.
“You hurl me to the ground and this is all you can say?” She wiped at her shimmering gray dress and found a microscopic piece of dirt. “And you got me filthy in the process.”
Kavika smiled thinly, then turned and walked to the port rail. Spike hurried after him.
The old oil tanker towered over its closest neighbors, offering a bird’s eye view. Immediately below them was a day tripper that had originally come from San Francisco. The words ‘Alcatraz’ were still edged in a glossy blue that had somehow withstood the elements. The wheelhouse ran from stem to stern, a hundred windowframes lining the walls, but the glass had long since been destroyed, and the windows were now covered by scraps of fabric and recycled trash. It was the morgue ship, the only above-ground enterprise run by the Water Dogs. Akamu’s body was probably down there now. His family would be repaid in shark skin and food for their donation.
When Spike slid next to him, he said, “Akamu was killed.”
“I saw him inside. He was your friend, wasn’t he?”
“Your brother and I used to swim with Akamu. We were kids together.”
“And now that you’re a Pali Boy?”
“He was full time. I’m just part time.”
They remained silent for awhile. A northerly breeze promised rain. He could almost feel the moisture on his skin.
“They blood raped him.”
She nodded. “I saw. My brother said that one of the needles pierced his heart. Sloppy.”
“Who would do something like this?”
“Maybe this can explain it.” She held out her hand. In it was a media stick.
“Where’d you get this?” he asked, snatching it and checking the display.
“It was lodged in the pocket of Akamu’s pants. The area was drenched with blood, so whoever searched him must have missed it.”
“Did you look at it?”
She shook her head. “We don’t have that kind of old tech. Do you?”
“I don’t, but I know who does. Come on.”
The main deck of the tanker was composed of a six-storey bridge all the way aft, and a main deck that ran the other ninety per cent of the ship’s length. The bridge was the home of the ship’s captain, the mates, and Princess Kamala, and also housed all the community areas. The deck was covered in metal cargo containers spaced just far enough apart to allow people to pass between them. The containers were stacked three high. Those lucky enough to live above deck were the families of former ship workers and of full time Pali Boys. Kavika and his family should have lived here as well, but his father’s death had knocked them all the way down the hierarchical ladder. He could still remember the morning after his father’s death, when they were unceremoniously removed from their third floor container and taken down to the bottom of the hold.
“Kavika, Third Mate is looking for you. Says you need to join a maintenance crew.” The speaker was a Pali Boy named Pakelo, sitting at the opening of his container, his feet dangling over the side.