Nigel Findley - House of the Sun

"So what the frag's happening, then?" I pressed even though I was afraid I knew the answer.

"Something fragged," the pilot responded. "Up ahead."

"Where are we, anyway?"

"Passing over Kihei, altitude twenty-nine-fifty meters. Airspeed two hundred, ground speed closer to fifty."

That little gem of information didn't make my gut feel any better. Airspeed 200, ground speed 50-mat meant the little Merlin was fighting a headwind of 150 kilometers per hour.

I tried a quick glance out through the canopy. Nothing-quite literally squat. Rain was hitting the windscreen faster than the wipers could clear it, almost as if it was being flung from buckets or sprayed from a fire hose. Beyond that was just blackness. No ground, no horizon, no stars. Nothing.

I gestured to the canopy. "Have you got some instrument that can see through this drek?" I asked.

Nobody answered aloud, but the display on one of the console's screens changed. In computer-enhanced false color, I could see the towering slopes of a huge mountain. Haleakala, it had to be, rearing up ahead of us.

The colors on the display were wrong, but the contrast and contours were off, too. It took me a moment to understand. I wasn't looking at the mountain via visible light. This display had to be generated by some kind of FLIR pod- Forward-Looking InfraRed-slung under the Merlin's belly. I was seeing by heat, basically.

Which added a threatening significance to the glow that seemed to be emanating from the top of the mountain. On the FLIR screen, an amorphous plume of pale light sprouted from the top of Haleakala, silhouetted against the blackness of the sky. It shifted and shimmered like Global Geographic trideos of the aurora borealis.

"What the frag's that?' I demanded, stabbing a finger at the display. "I thought Haleakala was a dormant volcano."

"It is, brah," the copilot said shortly, "since twenty eighteen. Don't know what that is." He turned to me, his cybereyes glowing like sullen embers. "Mo' bettah we head back, yah?" he asked hopefully.

Good fragging idea. But, "You've got your orders," I told him.

He turned away, muttering something in Hawai'ian under his breath. I didn't need a translator to get the drift: Mo'bettah the haole have himself a brain aneurysm… right fragging nowl

The Merlin jolted again, seeming to stagger in the air. I grabbed onto the backs of the crew's seats, bracing myself with legs widespread. Either the neoscope in the narco-patch was wearing off, or the fear was really starting to cut through the chemical well-being. I didn't like where I was, chummer, not one little bit.

Again the tilt-wing staggered, left wingtip dipping sickeningly before the pilot could recover. In that instant something slapped against the canopy-a solid sheet of water, it sounded like, not discrete drops anymore. The engines wailed.

And I saw something that shouldn't-couldn't-have been there. A face, chummer. A face, pressed against the transpex canopy. There for an instant, and then gone, staring into the flight-deck with eyes that weren't quite human, grinning with a kind of unholy glee.

"And just what the frag was that?' I yelped.

For an instant I thought-I hoped-the crew hadn't seen anything, that my imagination was running away with me. But then that hope died as the copilot turned to me, his face suddenly ashen in the plasma-light. "Uhane, hoa," he gasped. "Spirit. Storm spirit."

Oh, just fragging peachy. I turned-almost pitching to the deck as the Merlin jolted yet again-and bellowed back through the door into the passenger compartment. "Akaku'akanene! Get your feathered hoop up here, nowl"

It didn't take the goose shaman more than fifteen seconds to join me on the flight deck, but that was still enough time for the Merlin to jolt and jar another couple of dozen times. In the plasma-light of the displays, her eyes glinted coldly like glass beads. She didn't speak, but her body language perfectly communicated the peevish question, "What?"

I grabbed the copilot's shoulder. "Tell her," I instructed.

The man gabbled quickly in Hawai'ian. I picked out a couple of words here and there-uhane, haole, and lolo among them-but that was it. When he was done, the bird-boned kahuna nodded.

"Nene signs of danger," she said to me. "Much power ahead."

Well, no drek, Sherlock, I managed not to say. "What about the spirits?" I demanded.

"I feel their presence." Her voice was calm, fragging near conversational.

"Well, bully for you!" I snapped. "Can you feel a way of getting rid of them?"

She shrugged her scrawny shoulders. "They stand guard," she pointed out

"I'd kinda guessed that," I said dryly. "Can you persuade them to go guard somewhere else?"

'They guard the fabric," the kahuna shot back, her voice suddenly sharp. "They guard the pattern."

I blinked at that. What the frag was she talking about? Unless… "They think we're part of that drek?" I pointed again at the ghostly plume of light on the FLIR display. "Is that it? Christ, then tell 'em we want to stop it, for frag's sake!"

Akaku'akanene shrugged again. "They don't believe me."

I ground my teeth together so hard that pain shot through my jaw muscle. "Then be more persuasive," I grated.

The Nene shaman nodded and closed her eyes. The Merlin still jolted and jostled, but somehow she kept her balance perfectly-almost as if she could anticipate every movement of the small craft and adapt to it.

I didn't know if it was my imagination, or whether the kahuna had somehow gotten her message through, but after a few moments it felt as though the buffeting had diminished. The airframe still vibrated, the engines still complained, but at least the carnival-ride whoop-de-doos seemed to be under control. "Better?" I asked the pilot.

He nodded. "Altitude thirty-one hundred. Airspeed, two-ten. Ground speed one hundred. Ten klicks out." He glanced back at me over his shoulder. "Any instructions for the approach?"

I gave him my best pirate's smile. "Whatever'll get us there in one piece."

"Echo that, bruddah. Nine klicks."

On the FLIR display the volcano was looming large. The periphery of the giant heat plume was still amorphous, fuzzy. But for the first time I thought I could make out some kind of internal structure to it. There seemed to be semicircular wave-fronts propagating through it, like ripples spreading across a smooth pond from a dropped stone. Something bizarre was going on down in the crater, that was for fragging sure.

I turned back to the door into the passenger compartment. "We're about eight klicks out," I told "my" fireteam. For an instant I felt like I was in the middle of some ancient flatfilm about Vietnam. "I think this is going to be what they call a 'hot LZ'," I added dryly.

The plane echoed with metallic castanet-clatter as the squad locked and loaded. I thought about my own weapon, that ever-so-wiz assault rifle, on the floor under my vacant seat. Having something lethal to cling to like a security blanket would have made me feel a touch better about the whole thing, but it would have meant sacrificing one of the two hand-holds that was keeping me from measuring my length on the cabin floor. All in all, on balance, I figured I'd pick up my playtoy later.

When I turned back to the control console, the pilot had killed the FLIR display to replace it with a complex hash-work of approach vectors, wind axes, and all that other pilot drek. I didn't begrudge it to him. On reflection, Fd much rather he knew what was going on than me.

Beside me Akaku'akanene was still doing her balancing act, maintaining her equilibrium better than I was despite me fact she wasn't holding onto anything. Her eyes were still closed, and in the instrument lights I could see a bead of sweat tracing its way down her temple. God, suddenly I wished I knew what she was doing… so I could understand, of course, but also so 1 could help. Judging by the motions of the Merlin, she'd persuaded at least some of the storm spirits-or whatever the frag they were-than we weren't a threat to the "fabric" or "pattern." If the addition of my concentration could help her convince the rest-or stop the ones she'd already convinced from changing their insubstantial minds-then I'd gladly give it my all.