The functionary looked really uncomfortable… and not just because of my presence, suddenly. "The kahunas think not, e ku'u lani."

"Think not?" Ho sounded surprised.

"That's what they told me, e ku'u lani."

"Interesting. Na Maka'i are continuing their investigation, of course?"

"Yes, e ku'u lani, they have the area sealed off."

"Good." The Ali'i nodded approval. "Do you have anything more to report?"

"Not at this time, e ku'u lani."

Thank you, then." Ho dismissed him with a nod.

Once the functionary had shut the door behind him, me Ali'i leaned back in his seat and shook his head.

"What was that about?" I asked.

Ho sighed. "Puowaina," he said, then waited.

"Punchbowl," I said after a moment.

"That's right," he confirmed. He turned in his chair and pointed to an area of the holo "mountains" behind him. "There. Puowaina, just north of the city. Its name means 'Hill of Sacrifices,' referring to the old religions. It seems as though someone is taking that name a little more seriously than they might."

"Sacrifices?" I asked.

The Ali'i nodded. "It's not unheard of, unfortunately," he admitted. "Hawai'i has its fringe cults, just as the UCAS does. In the first eight years after I assumed the throne, there were half a dozen… incidents of that kind. Animal sacrifices-dogs and pigs, mainly, the sacrificial animals most commonly used in the old faiths. Usually, the sacrifices would be just that and nothing more: some unfortunate animal with its throat slit, then burned. Once or twice, there were hints that someone was trying to link magical activity with the sacrifices-incomplete hermetic circles and things of that sort." He shrugged. "My kahunas assured me that the people conducting the rituals were totally deluded. The magical trappings would never have worked.

'Things change, though," he went on quietly. "Have you ever given any thought to the fact that fringe religions- crank religions, you could say-become more pervasive when a people is troubled? It's true," he confirmed with a nod, "check it out yourself. UFO fever a century ago, during the height of the cold war. The proliferation of psychics and spoon-benders in Russia after the collapse of the USSR. The 'Church of Christ, Geneticist', during the throes of the VITAS epidemic. The fascination with reincarnation during the 'teens…"

I nodded at that one. I remembered reading once that two-count 'em, two-scam artists had built careers on their claims that they were the reincarnation of proto-angst rocker, Kurt Cobain.

"The Brotherhood of the Eternal Now," the Ali 'i was going on, "in the years before the Treaty of Denver. The Universal Brotherhood-that perversion-when 'future shock' really hit the UCAS. And here? Here, we've got the people sacrificing dogs and pigs and goats up on Punchbowl." He smiled wryly. "I suppose I might take it as a criticism of my rule."

"It's becoming more common, then?" I suggested.

"Precisely. Six or seven times in the first eight years of my rule. Then, in the past two years… would you care to guess?" I shook my head. "Seventeen incidents. No," he corrected himself quickly, "eighteen now." He sighed. "Crackpots."

For some reason I suddenly didn't feel so sure about that. "Your chief of police seems to be taking it more seriously." I pointed out.

"It's his job to take it seriously… if only because the people behind the sacrifices might decide to… to graduate… from dogs and pigs."

I waited, but the Ali'i didn't continue. Well, if a king chooses not to share all his thoughts with you, what the frag can you do? After a few moments Ho smiled. 'Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Montgomery," he said warmly. "I've enjoyed our discussion. Please, make what efforts you can to communicate with Mr. Barnard. And please stay in touch, to inform me of anything you should learn. Agreed?"

"What about contact procedures?"

"Here." He handed me a mylar business card-no name or address, just an LTG number. "This node will transfer you to my private line, wherever I happen to be. If for some reason I'm unavailable, no one else will answer." He hesitated. "Be aware that I can't vouch for the complete security of the relay." He grinned wryly. "My military intelligence traffic-analysis teams have been a little zealous of late."

"Agreed," I told him.

King Kamehameha V pressed a concealed button on his desk, and seconds later a functionary arrived to escort me out. I traded in my jacket and tie to Ortega for my Man-hunter, and then I jandered out of the Iolani Palace. The Ali'i's deputy badge was a comforting weight in my shirt pocket I figured that wearing it openly might attract too much attention, but I certainly wanted it close to hand.

What the frag was I supposed to do now? Contact Barnard-that's what Ho wanted… but for the moment, at least, I felt like keeping a nice, safe distance from Yamatetsu and all the other megacorporations.

As if by magic, my eyes were drawn to the hills overlooking the Honolulu sprawl. There was Punchbowl- Puowaina. What the frag, I didn't have anything I really needed to do at the moment, did I?

I turned my back on the palace and went looking for a bus stop.

15

I remembered a little bit about Punchbowl-Puowaina- from my data search on the suborbital. Apparently, as the Ali'i had implied-it used to hold one mega-important place in the ancient Hawai'ian religion. It was up on Puowaina- Hill of Sacrifices-mat the old Hawai'ians used to cack their human sacrifices to placate their gods. Who were those sacrifices? Volunteers? Criminals? Virgins bred specially for the task (what a fragging waste)? "Prisoners of war" from other islands? Search me, chummer. All I knew was that it came to an end with the haoles-the priests and missionaries and pineapple plutocrats-who moved in and "civilized" the place, of course.

I guess Pele, goddess of the earth and of volcanoes, got a mite ticked that nobody was placating her with blood anymore, but it took her a while to do something about it. (You know how it is with goddesses: never a free moment…) In 2018, Haleakala, a huge volcano on the island of Maui, blew its top. Well, not its top, really, more like its side. A ridge on the volcano's west side collapsed, and a massive lava flow obliterated the luxury hotels and tourist traps of Wailea and Keokea. (Tourist fluff still refers to the area-a lava rock wasteland-as "Pompeii of the Pacific")

In any case, in the twentieth century Puowaina had become a military cemetery for the United States-the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, a kind of "Arlington West." Predictably, it didn't stay that way after Secession. The government, under Gordon Ho's dad, exhumed all the bodies-more than 26,000 of them-and shipped them all back to the mainland, with appropriate honors. (That slotted off more than a few Americans, of course, but after the Thor shots at the Pearl Harbor task force, nobody really dared push the point too hard.)

And that's where The Bus dropped me off in the middle of a baking-hot Hawai'i afternoon, Puowaina, now a public park. A pretty place, an ancient, eroded volcanic crater shaped something like a big bowl. Grassy and green-did that mean artificial irrigation? not necessarily, I supposed- with trees and flowers-forty or so hectares of peace just twenty minutes from the pressure of downtown. From the rim of the crater I imagined you'd get a spectacular view of Honolulu, in all its finery, but I didn't bother looking. More immediate things were attracting my attention.

The Hawai'i National Police Force copmobiles-two of them-were crisp tropical white with rainbow logos on the doors, not the blue and gold of Lone Star Seattle. But it takes more than a flashy paint job to make a Chrysler-Nissan Patrol One look anything other than brutal and threatening. Only half the strobes on the two vehicles' light-bars were operating, but I still had to shield my eyes from the glare. A couple of cops-what had Scott called them? Na Maka'i, that's right-were squatting down, doing something vaguely forensic, near a little copse of flowering trees. Another uniformed officer was sitting on the ground, back up against a tree. He looked drugged or chipped out of his pointy little skull, but I knew better. I recognized that vacant expression; I'd seen it all too often on the faces of Department of Paranormal Investigations officers-"Dips," to street grunts like myself-who'd butted into some of my cases while I was with the Star. Okay, I thought, so at least one cop-kahuna was doing the old "ghost-walk" around the area, looking for astral evidence. There was only one more cop there, bringing the total up to four. He was one big boy-a human, but with a gut worthy of a sumo wrestler-and he was talking to a couple of shorts-clad local kids. Witnesses, maybe?