Kris Longknife: Defiant: Defiant Page 8

  “Where’d you get the tattoos?” Kris whispered to Jack.

  “Paint job,” Jack whispered back. “Afa suggested the place. Said I couldn’t accompany you into the Long House unless I did something about all this pale skin.”

  “I like the gourd.”

  “Thought you might. I like the flowers.”

  Their arrival at the Long House cut off Kris’s answer. It was made of whole logs elaborately carved in baffling figures and patterns. As Kris followed Aholo forward to where a fire pit burned low, sending sweet-smelling smoke upward through a hole in the palm-fronds roof, Jack was politely, but firmly, edged over to the side of the door with several other young men. The people around the walls of the long house, singing to a softly beaten drum, were equally men and women but uniformly old. Two old women in short grass skirts stepped forward.

  Kris had been coached in the questions. Though they came in an almost dead language, she knew how to answer. “Will you dance up the full moon?” “Will you light the way for the sailor to find his way home to his island?” “Will you call the fish up from the depths?” At each pause, Kris answered “Hā” with Aholo. At the third yes, the women placed a flowered crown of orchids on each of their heads, kissed them, gave them a pat, and said, “Now, go dance and have fun,” in English.

  “Yes, Auntie Kalama,” Aholo said with an answering hug of her own, then she grabbed Kris’s elbow and, business over, skipped from the Long House.

  Kris skipped along, blinking at what she thought she saw up in the rafters of the house. “Are those heads?”

  “Yes, shrunken heads of the queens and their consorts. Great-grandmother’s head will be there someday. And mine. They watch over the affairs of the People.”

  “Tradition,” Jack said, falling in step with Kris. And Kris decided maybe the Longknifes weren’t the only strange ones in human space.

  But there wasn’t a lot of time to think, because Aholo led them into a wide circle of thousands of people, maybe everyone on the island. There were several fires casting light, and the smells of dinner cooking. The sun was setting behind them, painting the tropical sky crimson, silver, and gold. Before them lay the rumbling lagoon and the growing dark of the ocean.

  The drums began to pound a rapid beat. The steps were fast, not all that different from ones Kris has learned for a middle school sock hop, leaving her to wonder who had stolen from whom. The arm and hand motions were much more complicated, and Kris let Aholo take a few extra steps toward the ink-jet sea and then did her best to stay only a quarter heartbeat behind her.

  It must have worked. No one interrupted the dance to name her imposter . . . and a huge full moon began to inch its way out of the ocean, setting the waves to shimmering with its light.

  With the intense look on Aholo’s face as her guide, Kris danced as if the moon did look to her for instructions. She danced as if the fish and navigators this month would depend upon her for the light to find their way home. A gal who’d navigated jump points found herself so taken by the drumming and the night that when the music pounded to a halt, and she and Aholo turned to present the moon to the people, Kris felt rather proud of what she’d danced birth to.

  “Wasn’t that fun?” Aholo said, out of breath, but her hands held out wide at her side, as if presenting the moon . . . and viewed from a certain perspective, she was.

  Kris, her hands in mirror reflection, got a “Hā” past out-of-breath lungs. “I hope we don’t have to lead the next one.”

  “Oh no. The little ones are next,” and with that, a small tidal wave of people under four feet tall flooded the sand around them and began their own offering to a slower drum. They sang in high-pitched voices something that might have been a thank-you for the moon coming out. But then, they were often unsure of the words and the key, but never unsure of their enthusiasm. Anyway, they did dimples very well and gave Kris a chance to catch her breath, locate a drink that wasn’t fermented, and follow Aholo around a circle of proud parents who were nevertheless happy to congratulate Kris on her own dance.

  “It’s good luck to have two princesses Dance up the Moon. It’s been too long we’ve had just one Dancer on the island,” one grandmother type muttered as they passed.

  Aholo winced, and Kris made a mental note to look into some family trees, but not in a fashion that hurt her hostess.

  The children finished their dance and galloped to be first in line for food. Now dancers Kris’s age took their place. The women in one line, the men facing them in another, and Kris saw what twenty years of practice could do.

  It also clarified any questions Kris had about the dress code. There wasn’t one. The large size of Jack’s gourd and amount of her flowers made them overdressed. Several of the women and men had tattoos over all of their bodies . . . well, almost all . . . and nothing to interrupt the view. One particularly wild dancer had crossed clubs on his chest dripping blood. “Even his face is covered with tattoos,” Kris said.

  “Yes.” Aholo nodded. “Those are warrior tats.”

  “Do you have warriors?” They had shrunken heads in their Long House. What other traditions had they dredged up?

  “Kailahi’s the center on our football team. Tries to scare the other team something horrible with a before-game show.”

  “Does it work?” Jack asked.

  “They’re in last place. Couple of the fans are threatening to redo his tats with hearts and flowers.”

  “That . . . could be painful.”

  “Well, the tats are biodegradable,” Aholo said. “Mine are starting to fade. When I choose a consort, have a kid, take on the queenship from Grandmama, I’ll need a whole new face to the world. I can’t be pretty flowers and fish all my life.”

  Kris nodded; not a bad way to tell the world where you were coming from when you hit the ground running.

  As the dance went on, Aholo circulated. Kris found herself being asked many of the same questions she encountered on other planets. “Does King Ray intend to tax us to support his sending folks out exploring for more islands in the stars?” “Won’t we be better off just fishing in our own lagoon rather than getting all involved in your big ocean?” The questions were phrased different on Hikila, but the fears were the same.

  Kris tried to reformat her usual answers into something comfortable for the locals. “Those who hunger to see new islands will have to build their own canoes, and those who will profit from new lands should be the ones to pay for their paddles,” got a wide smile both from Aholo and the small group Kris first tried it on. A simple “No single planet beat the Iteeche,” spoken to a group including some old enough to remember those wars seemed the perfect answer to those who wanted to hide on their own little islands. Then again, people who built wooden canoes and fished for a living weren’t going to fund all that many starships.

  But the electric cart, the hardened sand? There was technology underpinning this paradise. Something didn’t add up.

  At the edge of the beach, in a small clump, stood several dozen men and women dressed formally for a cocktail party.

  Kris very suddenly felt very naked.

  “You trade your uniform for this, and I might come around more often,” came in an all-too-familiar voice. Kris searched among the well-dressed for the source and found the all-too-well-sculptured features of Henry Smythe-Peterwald XIII . . . or Hank to her. With an effort, she suppressed the urge to cross her arms over her breasts and cup a hand at her crotch. Aholo kept her hands at her sides; Kris did, too. These folks were the foreigners; Kris wore a crown given her by the locals.

  “What brings you here, Hank?” she said as those around him opened up and he stepped forward.

  “We’re opening up several new sales and distribution centers on the mainland. I think the Islanders call it the Big Island. Our local woman thought I ought to see how the other ten percent lives, the ones that soak up all the taxes, so I flew out here for the party. Didn’t expect to see you here. Certainly not so much of you,” he sai
d, doing a slow scan from her toes to her upper set of flowers.

  “Some of us adjust to the local culture,” Kris said, fluffing her hair.

  “Some of us adjust to the dominant culture,” Hank shot back.

  “The Islands are the navel of Hikila,” Aholo snapped.

  “Four in five live on the mainland. Four in five pay taxes to support your fantasy island existence. Don’t you think it’s time you change that? What’s the matter, Longknife? I thought you’d be all up in arms about taxation without representation, or doesn’t that apply when your old war buddies get the taxes?”

  “I’m sorry, Your Highness.” A tall, thin woman with silver hair and a wraparound dress stepped forward. “I’m afraid my associate has had a bit too much of your island drink and a tad too much talk with some of our mainland hotheads. I apologize for his behavior,” she said and pulled Hank back into the crowd of mainland partygoers. Several men and women promptly took him in hand and headed him for a table of hors d’oeuvres and wines.

  Aholo turned away. “You know the young man?”

  “Hank Peterwald. I once thought he might make a nice boyfriend. I asked him one too many questions the last time I saved his life. Bad form on my part.”

  “I’ve never saved anyone’s life. I will try to remember not to ask them any questions if I do.”

  “Are there problems with the Big Islanders?” Penny and Nelly had briefed Kris on the general situation here. They’d passed over the population imbalance without comment. Taxation had not come up. What had they missed?

  Aholo headed for one of the roasted pigs and dinner. “It should have been resolved years ago, but it didn’t seem to be a problem. The People came to Hikila almost two hundred years ago, trying to rebuild a way of life that had vanished almost that many years ago on Earth when the Pacific Islands sank. We didn’t have any use for the Big Island, so when refugees from blasted planets in the Iteeche Wars needed a place for a while, we gladly loaned them that land. Same for when your Grampa Ray pushed through the Treaty of Wardhaven and pulled back some of the more scattered colonies to slow humanity’s spread.”

  Several of those last planets had been started with Peterwald money. Losing those colonies had cost them and created more bad blood between the Longknifes and Peterwalds. Kris wondered how many of the refugees on the Big Island still thought of themselves as Peterwald men. Oops.

  They each drew a wooden platter and pronged fork from stacks. A round, black-toothed cook in roast pig tattoos sliced them off a big slab of pork. Others piled Kris’s plate with roasted banana, several kinds of baked taro, and other items that defied recognition. Aholo led Kris to a quiet palm tree that the wind had blown almost level to the sand before it recovered and grew up. Jack and Afa followed.

  “We have lost one home. We will not have that happen again, so when we took in the refugees, all we asked was that they agree that to gain a right to vote, they’d have to take up the Island ways,” Aholo said, taking a bite. “Some did. Came here. Married. Look around our fire tonight, and you’ll see people as blond as you. Redheads, too. If you want a vote, just stop being a foreigner.”

  “Most didn’t,” Afa put in. “Some went back to the stars or other colonies. Most just settled on the Big Island and raised their kids in their own ways and watched their grandkids and great grandkids grow up the way they wanted them to.”

  “With no vote,” Kris said after she swallowed a delicious bit of pork.

  “How many people bother to vote on your planet?” Afa asked.

  “About half.” Jack nodded as he chewed.

  “But taxes?” Kris asked, trying some of the banana.

  “It’s a standard income tax package, passed about the time of the Iteeche Wars. Probably the same as the one on your planet,” Aholo said.

  “That depends on income,” Kris said slowly.

  “I fish to feed my family,” Afa said. “We will not have net-dragging trawlers rape our ocean to feed canneries. Our Marine Fisheries Conservation Plan lets them do what they want within their one hundred and fifty-kilometer coastal zone but not in my deep ocean.”

  The words sounded well-worn, frequently spoken. “So the Big Island’s cash economy pays taxes, and the Islands’ subsistence economy can’t really be taxed,” Kris said.

  “We bled plenty during the wars,” Aholo said. “No one questioned our sacrifice. After the wars, there wasn’t all that much left over to tax. I guess it was about forty years ago that the Big Islanders noticed they were paying most of our off-planet contributions to the Society.”

  “What about extra ships to patrol the Rim?” Kris asked.

  “We don’t have any colonies, at least not any the Council of Elders officially name. I guess some of the banks on the Big Island may have bought into some. I think they may have donated a ship to Wardhaven or Pitts Hope’s Navy once in a while, but that was local subscription, not something that came before the Council of Elders out here.”

  “Local subscription?” Jack said before filling his mouth.

  “It’s not like we’re stupid. We may run around in tats, but that doesn’t make us dumb,” Afa snapped. “Each of the towns on the Big Island has its own elected mayor and city council. Once in a while they have a council of councils, if they want to talk about something that’s really big to them. And they do send petitioners to stand before our own Council of Elders and state their case on global issues. Grandmama listens to all sides and then hands down a boon that usually makes everyone happy.”

  “Or has. Or usually does,” Aholo said.

  They ate in silence for a while. The moon was well up. The dancing continued. Different drummers. Different cadences. Different steps.

  “You need to change, don’t you?” Kris said.

  “Mama knew that. Great-grandmama, too. I think if Mama had lived, Grandmama and she would have worked this out years ago. But then Mama’s and Papa’s canoe was swamped ten years ago, and the stroke took Great-grandmama. We’ve kind of been treading water, waiting until I could get older. I don’t think Grandmama can float much longer. The old woman was right. We do need two Dancers to Dance up the Moon.”

  “Can’t your grandmother help?”

  “Grandmama never got along with Great-grandmama. Her second husband was from the Big Island, and she moved there and let her skin go pale. Her third husband was a trader among the stars, and she left Hikila, and we don’t know where she is and don’t care. No.” The young girl squared her shoulders. “This is the challenge that I will have to decide when I come to sit on the judgment stone, if Grandmama does not find a way to decide it before she goes to join all the other queens and consorts.”

  So, Grampa, there are a few things you didn’t mention when you asked me to make this little trip, Kris thought. Why wasn’t she surprised? Aholo and Afa left for a dance that seemed to involve about half of the islanders, but she didn’t ask Kris to join her, and once it got going . . . with everyone seeming to do something different as they went along . . . Kris was glad to just watch.

  “So, now that you’ve met the snake,” Jack said, “You willing to let me have your gun?”

  “Abby talks too much.” Kris gave Jack a sly, sideways look. “Where’s your gun?”

  “That’s no question for a young lady to ask. And you know I don’t like my primary to go armed.”

  “I thought you were on terminal leave.”

  “Terminal for me. Not you.”

  “Kris, do you know that this whole area is covered by a security system?” Nelly asked.

  “No.” Beside Kris, Jack was eyeing her leis seriously.

  “Very high-tech. There’s a secured vault under the Long House. I calculate the odds are 95 percent that the video camera there is showing a loop of the last hour. The security service has not taken note of it yet.”

  Kris looked down at her lovely yellow, pink, and turquoise paint scheme. “Not exactly the camouflage for going covert.”

  “Good.” Jack stood. “I’
ll handle this.”

  “I can darken your colors, Kris,” Nelly said, and suddenly Kris was as dark as the night.

  “How’d you do that?” Kris and Jack both said as Kris’s paint went back to flowers.

  “The paint is in contact with my lead-ins and controllable. If we hadn’t been so rushed, I had meant to tell Abby I could touch up some of her over-paints, but there was little time, and I was not sure she’d appreciate the offer.”

  “She is learning tact,” Jack said as the two of them headed back to the Long House, keeping available bushes between them and the dancers. Kris was busy checking their path and didn’t notice when Jack’s automatic appeared in his hand.

  “Where was it?”

  “I’m not telling. Where’s yours?”

  Kris pulled it out from the hair at the back of her neck.

  “Figured it. You’re going to have to ditch the flowers.”

  “At the Long House. Nelly, make me black again.” In a moment, Kris was in black . . . except her face.

  “Here, put this on,” Jack said, producing a small vial.

  Kris smeared her face black. She’d worry about later, later. I CAN CHANGE THAT, and in a moment, Kris’s face was flowers, then black again.

  “Thanks Nelly. Now, is there a way down?” Jack said.

  “One on this side, one on the other. Go past this azalea bush.” Jack did. There were steps leading down to a concrete basement wall with a thick steel door. Clearly, not all of the Big Island tax money had gone off world, something Aholo had skipped over.

  “Can you open the door?” Kris asked.

  “Don’t need to,” Jack said. “It’s already jimmied. Now, you stay back, damnit.”

  “Yeah, right.” Kris muttered, and slipped out of her flowers, leaving them beside the steps.

  The door opened on well-oiled hinges; the room beyond was dimly lit. Row upon row of tables were covered with what Kris could only describe as the makings for the weirdest rummage sale she’d ever seen at any political fund-raiser. Wooden masks, statues with very prominent sexual features . . . male and female, stone and wicker doodads were heaped on the tables and lay beside them. And this was under lock and security camera!