“It’s like wondering where the rain comes from when it’s already raining.”
“Exactly. If you’re all wet, why do you care how you got wet? Just find a way to get dry.”
Spike smiled affectionately. “You’re stalling, aren’t you?”
“Is it that obvious? I don’t know what it is, but the birds bother me. It’s like a... foreboding, I think is the word.”
“You always have those words. We never talk much in my family.”
“Maybe because you spend so much time underwater.”
She smiled sadly. “Yeah. That’s probably the reason.” Kavika stepped past the red line and was immediately met by an old Korean woman. She was whispering something to the wind. Occasionally she’d jab a misshapen finger at something in the sky. Her back was hunched painfully beneath material made from an old tarp.
Kavika and Spike followed her crooked finger to where two orange-robed Mga Taos stood in the shadow of a ship. They faced the Korean ship and stood like statues. A monkey-backed was somewhere near. They were unwilling, or unable, to cast the sort of vigil they were used to. They were forced to stand outside the line, but still vigilant.
Kavika interrupted the old woman.
“I’m looking for Mr. Pak.”
The deep wrinkles in the woman’s cheeks pushed her eyes to the center of her face, dark seeds above a small nose. Instead of answering, she leaned in close and sniffed him.
Kavika stepped back.
“What is she, a watch dog?” Spike whispered. When the old woman started to step close to Spike, the Water Dog held out a long-nailed finger and waggled it. “No, you do not sniff at me.”
The old woman paused, then stood straight. She grinned, the effort to push past her wrinkles barely won, and only for a moment.
Kavika cleared his throat. “Mr. Pak?”
The old woman nodded, turned and shuffled across the deck. Kavika and Spike exchanged glances then followed. They meandered across two more decks. They passed kids playing in the shadows, who seemed to be beating a stuffed animal with lengths of wood. As Kavika and Spike got closer, they saw it wasn’t stuffed at all, but a dead bird. Here and there older Koreans sanded peeling paint and swept the decks. The People of the Sun had always been known for their industriousness and cleanliness. Kavika wished that some of the other groups could emulate this; even his own. Hawaiians were pack rats, and there seemed to be nothing that could dissuade them from keeping, stacking, and piling everything they’ve ever had, leaving the ships looking like the aftermath of a cyclone.
They climbed from a yacht to a cargo ship whose deck was much the same as the oil tanker Kavika called home, albeit about half the size with only single-story cargo containers. Tall cranes, which had once been used to offload containers, had rusted in place. Their way twisted and turned, like a deliberate maze. At length, they arrived at a container with a tattered green cloth draped over the entrance. The old woman rattled off something in Korean, then turned and left, leaning in and quickly sniffing at Spike as she did. Spike went to kick the woman, but the spry old Korean crabbed out of the way, cackling and smacking her lips together audibly.
A man’s voice came from inside.
“Mr. Pak? I’m Kavika Kamilani. Ivanov sent me.”
The man murmured something, then ducked out of the container, letting the cloth fall back to block any view of the interior.
Pak was a small, lean man. Wiry muscles told of hard labor. His lips were the kind that seemed quick to smile, but by the dull, worn look in his eyes, he perhaps hadn’t worn a smile in a while.
“Ivanov... he’s been helpful.” Mr. Pak’s voice was soft and tired and barely held the hint of an accent.
“How do you know him?” Spike asked.
“We work together. We have... enterprises... together.” Pak looked at Spike for a moment, then his eyes narrowed as he noticed the truth of her. “This is a man,” he said, matter-of-factly.
Kavika put his hands on Spike’s shoulder. “This is a friend of mine and helping me,” Kavika said. “She might be a man by birth, but she’s a woman under the sun.”
Pak screwed his eyes together. By his expression, he was clearly having a hard time trying to figure it out, only there was nothing to figure out. Kavika decided to just come out with it. “One of our Pali Boys was blood raped. He died because of it.”
At the words
blood rape
Pak glanced back at the door covering, which had begun to flutter slightly in a breeze that had wound its way through the maze. “I’m sorry for your Pali friend. We see them sometimes flying over the ships. They look so happy.” Pak looked down at his hands. They were gnarled. Two fingers were missing on his left hand. “I grow things. Tobacco for Ivanov. He helps me sometimes.” A child’s voice called out from inside the container. Pak called back. When next he spoke, his gaze was aimed at the floor. “What is it you think I can do?”
Kavika kept trying to glimpse what was inside the container whenever the wind shifted the cloth, but he could only get brief flashes of movement.
“Boxers are the ones who did this to my friend. Do you know which ones they could have been? Names maybe?” As he said it, Kavika felt the doltishness of his words. Embarrassed, he wished he’d practiced what he was going to say.
“I don’t know any Boxers. Truly, I do not know why you are here.”
“I’m aware that the same... the same thing happened to your daughters. I... I’m happy they didn’t die.”
“I am not so sure,” Pak said, his voice barely audible. For a moment he seemed to wear the tragedy of the blood rapes like a second skin. “Listen, I am sorry for your friend. This blood raping”—he choked out the word—“is a terrible thing. But I cannot help you.”
Then he turned and slipped back inside his home.
Kavika felt a growing sense of frustration. He glanced at Spike, who motioned for him to keep at it. But it was clear Kavika didn’t know what he was doing. As it was, he was grabbing at cuttlefish in a desperate attempt to try and explain what happened to Akamu. Not that it mattered. The Pali Boy was still dead. Even if he was able to find the Boxers who killed him, then what? Boxers weren’t like regular people. They were beyond any law.
Spike cursed and stepped in front of him, whipping the cloth aside. For the next ten seconds, it was as though the universe had stopped.
The interior was larger than they expected. A table and a stove took up the left corner, while a water closet with a fabric door was built in to the right corner. Chests ran the lengths of the side walls, doubling as benches and storage. Pak sat on the left side, and an older woman, who must have been his wife, sat on the right side. Each of them were spooning food into limp mouths. Twin girls sat back-to-back. Dull, sightless eyes, listless expressions and spittle-laced frowns owned each of their faces as their parents fed them.
This wasn’t what ensnared Kavika’s gaze. It was the monkeys attached to their backs. Beyond the horror of having another being attached to one’s body by tubes and wires was the terrible recognition of its sentience. The monkeys’ faces were less than a hand’s-width apart; their eyes were open and their mouths moved as if they were whispering. By Pele herself, what did they have to say to each other?
It was the whispering that bothered Kavika the most, he realized. To whisper meant that they had something to hide. To whisper spoke of intent that no animal should rightly have, as if the tubes that ran from the back of the animal heads to the top of the girls’ spines, along with all the others transferring blood and additional fluids, also carried consciousness.
“I see that you’ve discovered our tragedy,” Pak said.
“I didn’t know. I just thought—” Kavika became aware of a smell; animal musk combined with the acrid taint of antiseptic.
“Yes. First the blood rape, then this.” Mr. Pak spooned another bite into his daughter’s mouth. It looked like fish-paste and rice, but it smelled like meat.
The woman feeding the other twin said something that made Pak smile weakly. “My wife asked if there will ever be a cure for Minimata. I told her that with our daughters working on it, there just has to be.” His eyes searched Kavika’s and Spike’s for some sort of agreement. “Don’t you think so?”
Spike and Kavika nodded, but neither could find anything to say. Finally it was Kavika who spoke, uneasiness and embarrassment creeping through his curiosity and need to solve the puzzle of Akamu’s death. “We’re so very sorry to bother you and your family. Come on, Spike. Let’s leave them alone.”
They backed out of the doorway and let the fabric fall into place. They hadn’t gone ten feet when Pak stuck his head out of his home. “Listen,” Pak began, glancing back inside for a moment before stepping outside. “Abe knows. Abe wants to help. He’s one of the Real People.”
“I wasn’t aware Real People wanted to help anyone,” Spike said.
Kavika had to agree. He’d never interacted with them. He’d hardly ever seen them. They kept to themselves and didn’t allow transit on or above any of their ships. And because skying above their boats was forbidden, the Pali Boys couldn’t help but believe that the Real People were hiding something. And aboard a floating city, that couldn’t be good.
“This one is different,” Pak said, seeing the suspicion in Kavika’s face. “Like your friend, the Boxers killed his son.”
“Damn.”
“He knows who the Boxers are who did this.”
“If he knows, then why hasn’t he done something?”
Pak stood with his hands out at his sides. “Look at me. Who am I to do anything? Who is he?” He gestured towards the Freedom Ship, which was a part of everyone’s horizon, like it or not. “They are too powerful. They are too much for us.”
“What about the rest of your people?” Kavika asked.
“They are too afraid. They don’t want the Boxers coming to them, so they don’t do anything.”
“So who is going to stop them?”
A hopeful grin flashed across Pak’s face. “Maybe you.” Then he ducked back inside the container, hollow laughter chasing him behind the curtain.
After a moment Spike turned to Kavika and shuddered dramatically. “Ugh. I know I should be sympathetic,” she whispered, “But God... ugh.”
They began making their way back out.
“Why this maze, I wonder?” Spike asked suddenly.
The question got Kavika thinking. It fit his mood perfectly. Not knowing where he was going, not knowing the next step—it all gave him a feeling of powerlessness. He was led to Pak, and now a Real Person named Abe. What next? Why couldn’t he see more of the solution rather than being led like a child through the process of discovery? He supposed that the thing about mazes was that one was never able to see the whole thing. If he could only see it, he could trace his route to the center. This was why he liked being a Pali Boy and living in the rigging. Up there, he was free. He could choose where to go and how to get there. Very much unlike living on the ground, where he could only see what was directly in front of him.
“Pssst—look,” Spike whispered and poked him in the ribs.
He glanced left but saw nothing.
“Other way, stupid Pali Boy.”
Kavika glanced right and saw a figure clambering over a cabin on a ship two away from the area demarked by the People of the Sun.
“Who is it?”
“Who do you think?”
“
Tiburón
?”
“Yeah.”
“The living dead girl.” He wanted to give chase, but she was too far away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
T
HE
R
EAL
P
EOPLE
was a confederation of white-skinned people comprising a large tanker, several dozen smaller boats and two perpendicular ships that had been fixed in place. Old Donnie Wu hated them, especially for the arrogance at selecting their name.
Real People
. As if everyone else wasn’t real. But it was Kavika’s mother who had taught him how the name came from a bad translation. Originally the ship’s captains, they were referred to as the
Officials
in the early days of The Great Lash-up, when the city was forming. The Chinese word for
real
and
official
were the same. Once the People of the Sun, the Water Dogs, and the Mga Taos began to separate into their groups, the Officials were called the
Official People
. Somehow, whether it was self-generated or some sort of irony, that term changed to
Real People,
which found its way into the popular lexicon. Wu called them White People, because not a single one had skin darker than a tan.
Regardless of where they came from, if Mr. Pak was to be believed, the Real People had expressed their desire to help Pak deal with the Boxers. But there was a logic problem with that, one which Kavika couldn’t work his brain around.
“What is it?” Spike asked. “Stomach ache?”
“No. Just thinking.” He glanced at Spike and saw her smiling. “Oh—you knew that.”
“You always get that look on your face when you’re thinking hard on something.”
“Okay, then. Why would the Real People want to help Pak? They don’t know him. They don’t owe him anything.”
Spike shook her head. “We don’t know that. We don’t know what their relationship really is. Look at me—what’s on the surface isn’t always what it is.”
“Sure. I get that. But as much as we hate the Boxers, we can’t argue their reasoning. After all, without them we’d be no closer to a cure for Minimata disease.”
“Them? Do you think
they’re
actually working for a cure?”
“No,” Kavika acknowledged. “Not them. But the Corpers for sure. I mean”—he stopped to talk with his hands—“as bad as we hate blood rape, it’s meant to help us find a cure. I mean, everyone who is blood raped has the possibility of curing my sister’s disease... everyone’s disease.”
“Not that I’d want to be blood raped and then monkey-backed—no offense to you or your sister—but then I don’t see the problem.”
“You don’t? If being monkey-backed is the way to find a cure for Minimata, then why is it the Real People want to help Pak?”
“You’re right. Everyone should be looking forward to a cure. We’ve seen more and more deaths from the disease—the numbers are rising. But like I said, we don’t know what their relationship is. Maybe Pak grows tobacco for them as well. Who knows?”