Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

Jim had been so right it was scary, she thought.

Underwater everything was exaggerated, the five senses heightened, underscored. Colors were indescribably bright and blinding, shapes monstrous and large, and it took more effort to stare into death here like this than in her lab. Every effort made when working underwater, too, was more difficult; maneuvering the bone cache, like two spacemen lifting moon rocks in a zero- gravity environment, took its toll. Still, they worked to dig at the find with deliberate patience.

She had just begun to wonder how they were ever possibly going to get the bones to the surface when, like a magician's trick. Parry extended her a large net-from out of thin water, she mentally quipped-a net used for shelling or lobstering which he'd obviously brought along. Together they began filling the net with an array of bones, from ribs to femurs to skulls, some of which seemed too ponderous to be those of women-but this was no place to make such judgments. In fact, it was far too soon to tell for certain if all the bones were human, she conceded while Parry finished filling the net.

Now, the net filled to capacity, making it impossible for them to collect any more of the skeletal remains, they saw they had hardly scratched the surface of the underwater tomb. Still, it appeared that the top layer of bones was of more interest to them, since they appeared newer than most they'd found here.

Unlike the Navy divers at the Blow Hole, who'd not used satellite photo reconnaissance and had not located such a find, she and Parry had been extremely fortunate. Parry had made things happen here. She respected him for that. Forensically speaking, it appeared that they had Lopaka Kowona cornered in every sense of the word now. Just too bloody bad they didn't have the killer himself cornered.

Still, at least now they had more than the handful of bone fragments found at the Blow Hole, so skimpy as to be not enough for the usual jury, no matter how much Linda Kahala's minuscule remains might tell Jessica Coran.

Jim gave the signal that they should now find the tow rope and ascend the way they had come. She dreaded the return trip, but realized that the danger was only in one area, and when they reached that current belt, they'd have to move quickly and determinedly on. She worried about Jim and the extra weight the bone net represented, but then she saw that he had thought of everything, for he was attaching the net to the lifeline and tightly securing it there. He meant to bring it up with the anchor once on the surface, hand-over-hand.

Their little salvage operation looked to be a success when they were both successfully past the dangerous current zone and beyond any threat from the sea. The ocean was both benefactor and punisher here, depending on its whim and the foolishness of mortals like them who dared taunt the enormity of this god. Arising to meet the radiance of the upper world, Jessica was anxious to return to safety there amid the black stone beach, the sun and the silence of their private world above. She knew she'd been badly battered against the coral and lava rocks, and that her bruises would not soon heal, but they'd also be a friendly reminder of her exhilarating time here in this raw world with Jim Parry.

Even before he surfaced, Jim was looking at his watch, anticipating the arrival of the chopper and their departure. The bittersweet thought of leaving here was so strong that each of them felt it in the other's mind as they made their way out of the pounding surf to the safety of the protected bay and shore. They had yet to haul the bones from the sea. It was nearing mid- moming.

All the bones were fleshless and from the creamy surfaces and the growths and green, easily smudged life that clung to them, it appeared they were old. When Jessica mentioned this, Jim immediately wanted to know, “How old?”

“ I couldn't say. I'm not a forensic anthropologist, but suffice it to say they're a hell of a lot older than Linda Kahala's was.”

'Two, maybe three years old? What?”

“ If I had to hazard a guess, yes… if not older.”

“ Older?”

“ Yes, older, maybe a great deal older, and Jim, some of them…” She paused.

“ What? Some of them what?” They'd spread out some of the bones along a ledge, staring down at them, while most remained in the net.

“ Some look to be male.”

“ Male?”

“ Either that or quite large women, and Kowona doesn't do large women. He does-”

“ Small women,” he finished for her.

“ Petite women, yes.”

“ Then this has been just another wild-goose chase, all for nothing?” He cursed under his breath and glared at one of the bones he held in his hand, making her believe he was about to hurl it back into the depths from which it had come.

“ Don't jump the gun. We need to study them all. Maybe we've got a real mixed bag here. Maybe some of the pieces'll fit our puzzle, some not. It'll take some lab time.”

“ Yeah, sure…” he finally agreed, dropping the femur he held in his hand back into the net. “Come on, let's pack up and be ready for the chopper. We've got to get back up the trail with the tanks and our cache.”

“ If it helps, two of the skulls are definitely female, and they look relatively new, in comparison to the others, I mean, and I think they came from the top of the mound.”

'That's something, but how do you explain the others?”

“ Well, there once was a community here, you said.”

“ But they buried their dead in the earth. You saw the graveyard, the stones.”

She considered this, turning one of the skulls in her hand as she did so. “What if they had some members of the village who weren't exactly fit for what they considered a proper burial? Do you know anything about Hawaiian religious practices and rites? Suppose they did sacrifices at one time…”

“ To the sea? I haven't ever heard of it, no.”

'To the sea… to the Spout?” she suggested.

He pondered this possibility. “Of course, makes good sense… more 'n' likely, you're right.”

“ And if Kowona grew up in a primal culture like they say, he'd have seen the ceremony performed, perhaps more than once. Perhaps it's the way the bones of his brother went, if the old great-granduncle of Kaniola can be believed. Maybe it's what led Lopaka to the Blow Hole, and maybe here before that?”

“ Now I feel strange about taking these bones from their eternal resting place,” lamented Parry. “I mean, for all intents and purposes, it's rather ghoulish, seeing as how it was their burial ground.”

“ We can always return the bones that belong here, but we need to know the truth about those that may not.”

“ Can you make good enough distinctions now, so we can return the older bones?”

“ I think so, but there's no time for another dive.”

“ Hell, we can shoot them back through the Spout.”

“ And they'll likely return to within feet of where we found them,” she agreed.

Just hurry. I don't want anyone seeing us. Some tourists come poking about here and see us, and God knows the consequences.”

She began to cull the bones, soon finding it easy to discriminate between the newer and older, particularly the skulls. Above ground, under the illumination of the sun, she found no difficulty in distinguishing a male jawbone from a woman's, a male hipbone from a female's, and so it went. She placed all the bone parts they would keep to one side, refilling the net with the others. The amount of new bones was considerably less than the old, and as she worked with the aged bones, finding them so brittle to the touch, worn paper-thin by time and water, they flaked easily in their new, arid environment. She realized just how ancient some of the bones were; certain they must date at least to the early 1900s and perhaps the late 1800s.