Ocean: The Sea Warriors (16 page)

“The planet Ocean, you mean? Shouldn’t this world be called Ocean instead, because the seas are so much more extensive than the lands?”

“You’re right,” Kimo said.

“I have been waiting to see how you would develop, my child. I like what I see, and besides, I do not have the strength or the abilities to do everything….”

Now as Kimo stood on the beach he became aware of the warmth of the sun above him, of the nutrients flowing from that distant fireball into his body, and he thought of the miracle of all life on this planet that he would forever call Ocean, and of his part in taking it to another level. He had been feeling renewed determination since seeing Moanna today, a determination to oversee as much as he possibly could.

In Honolulu, Fuji Namoto had the Sea Warrior office up and running, staffed with volunteers who were helping her coordinate an aggressive internet public relations and funding drive. Public opinion had steadied, and the organization had raised more than $17,000,000 in only a few days, with most of it being poured back into promotional efforts. Fuji reported that she had thousands of applications for associate memberships, and that she had set up a screening process to make sure the applicants were worthy, and were not moles who were only seeking to collect inside information for an opponent. It would be impossible to ever be completely certain of the loyalty of every applicant, both Fuji and Kimo realized, so they could only do their best to weed out the bad ones. So far, there had been no known disloyalty problems among the associates, but Fuji and a team of her trusted advisers were remaining wary, and alert.

Because of the government investigation that Governor Heinz Churchill had ordered, the Sea Warriors faced legal challenges, so Fuji had begun to obtain advice from a high-powered attorney. The biggest legal concern, she reported, had to do with the decision one of their members had made to take independent action that had cast the Sea Warriors in a bad light in many circles—the decision to blockade the Hawaiian islands. There was also the matter of the Navy spy who had attempted to become a hybrid Sea Warrior, had been discovered by Moanna, and had died mysteriously underwater. So far the Navy had said nothing publicly about this.

The action to cordon off the Hawaiian islands from the sea, however—and the beach shutdowns that preceded it—had generated a huge amount of sympathy from environmental groups around the world, and it was from their ranks that most of the applications for associate membership were coming, along with financial support. When Fuji added this to the many demonstrations by environmentalists in support of the Sea Warriors in cities around the globe, she told Kimo the momentum was good. So far, the backing might be coming from a minority of people on the planet, but they were a fervent bunch, and it was making up for the numbers of people who opposed him, people who thought the Sea Warriors had gone too far even in their attempt to shut down beaches.

All of Fuji’s efforts for the radical ocean-rights organization had strained her relationship with her husband, Governor Churchill, and rumors were swirling that they would soon be divorced. As it was, they were barely on speaking terms.

Though Kimo was from Loa’kai and had established an interim place to gather his Sea Warriors at Crimson Cove, he was beginning to see the benefit of changing his headquarters to Oahu. Fuji had set up their land-based office in Honolulu, where they had better access to big-money donors and volunteers. Besides, Kimo realized, Oahu was not that much farther from Moanna’s deep ocean locker than Loa’kai, making the travel times manageable.

Late that afternoon, Kimo met with his hybrid warriors at a beach on the eastern shore of Oahu. For the first time, the organization had their own security force, half a dozen burly male guards that Fuji had organized among the volunteer associates. Dressed in casual shorts, they wore dark blue tee-shirts identifying them as “SECURITY,” and kept reporters, photographers, and members of the public away from the meeting area.

As Kimo waited for everyone to arrive by sea, he received a report from Dirk Avondale on the progress of the newest one hundred ninety-seven recruits—all of whom had swum here with Dirk, after their deep-ocean transformations. They sat on the white sand below Kimo, who stood on a high point where he could see the sparkling aquamarine waters of the ocean. As Dirk gave Kimo the report orally, the other ocean warriors began filtering in, more slowly than Kimo wanted. He’d transmitted all of them a message underwater, and was feeling increasingly concerned about the delay. By the time Dirk finished his report a few minutes later, only around half of the original members had arrived, and Kimo was worried about the others.

Then he saw a group of them swimming toward him, with Gwyneth in the front, reaching the shore first. She looked different, and so did many of the others.
Startlingly different.
Previously, Kimo had thought he’d noticed changes in Gwyneth’s face, a flattening of the features, but he had not been sure. Now, he was absolutely certain. The teenager was almost unrecognizable, a strange swimming creature with an oddly familiar elfin face and short, curly brown hair. The eyes were still bright blue but larger, and the mouth was smaller. Her ears and nose had gone flat, and only small orifices remained visible. As before she was quite proficient at swimming in the sea, but her body was wider and heavier now (too large for her Sea Warrior swimsuit, which was gone) and she was swimming differently, making undulating motions with her body instead of relying on her arms and legs for propulsion.

As she stepped out of the water, Kimo saw that her torso was flat in front, and he realized that her arms were shorter, seemingly having drawn back into her body. Her legs were considerably shorter as well, and she had trouble walking on them. Any previous physical indications of her gender were missing, or at least he could not identify anything in that regard. Her skin looked rough-textured, and had a gray cast to it.

“I’m becoming more a creature of the ocean than of the land,” she said to Kimo when he greeted her at water’s edge.

Then his attention shifted to others who were wading ashore. Jacqueline Rado still had a normal appearance to her body, but her face had lost some of its human qualities. In a way it still looked like her, but it was a blending of human and fish features, as if a distorted version of her countenance had been superimposed over the snout and wide mouth of a shark.

Some of the warriors were unchanged in facial or bodily appearance, but a small number had morphed into something different, almost frighteningly so—and he recognized a pattern. Except for Gwyneth, the ones who had changed resembled at least one of the species of sea life that they commanded. This was true of Jacqueline. It was also true of Fred Earhart, but he had become completely unrecognizable, and had to be identified for Kimo by someone else. Earhart still had a human body, but his ruddy Irish face had vanished into the countenance of a swordfish, with a long, sharp protrusion that appeared capable of causing a lot of damage to the unwary. He was perfectly content with the alteration, and could still speak reasonably well. He could also smile, which looked really odd to Kimo. In staring at him, Kimo noticed one of his former features remained—a patch of red hair on top of the fish head, clinging there like a wig with strong adhesive.

Another change involved Phil Austin, who had metamorphosed into a large, rotund seahorse, and demonstrated an ability to make hundreds of tiny seahorses perform tricks underwater, as if choreographed by Busby Berkley—with the small leafy sea dragons gathering around and watching, as if they were an attentive audience. Some of the Sea Warriors were amused by the antics, but Kimo had no time to think of entertainment. He catalogued the various changes in his mind, deciding for each whether it was something that could help the cause, or not. Austin, while not appearing to be capable of any aggression, might still provide amusement for his comrades. That was something, anyway.

By far the most strikingly beautiful of all the hybrids who underwent further change was Pauline Deveaux, whose interest in reef fish turned her into a human-sized, rainbow-hued fish with a countenance that had some of her original attractive features, especially her pretty blue eyes and gentle facial expressions. Resembling a mermaid more than any of her companions, she swam as far as she could toward the beach in the shallow water, and then remained partially immersed for her comrades to examine. “I guess I can’t go on the land anymore,” she said, because she no longer had a human body at all. “But that’s all right. I actually remember being a little girl and looking into a tank of tropical fish, wishing I could be like them.”

“Well your wish came true,” Alicia said.

Foley Johnson had a thick, checkered green tortoise shell on his back and torso now (like that of a green turtle), and he demonstrated an ability to withdraw his black humanoid body into it. Many of the warriors seemed delighted by this, but Kimo had an unsettled feeling about everything he was seeing, wondering why it had all occurred, and what might happen next.

While the ones who had already metamorphosed in this manner seemed content with their new bodies, some of those who had not shown any such changes were visibly upset and nervous, fearful of what might happen to them. The brunette actress Monique Gatsby was expressing considerable concern about this. Then Kimo noticed two more warriors coming ashore, with each of them having partial crustacean features. Both of them were visibly upset and angry, and as they approached, the other warriors grew more silent, except for one who whispered near Kimo, “It’s Vinson Chi’ang and Emily Talbot!”

Just then, Kimo heard a shout from security, and he saw a woman on a hang-glider flying toward them, from the direction of the water. As she drew closer, he noticed that she had a camera, and she was shooting pictures of the Sea Warriors. Two security men rushed toward her, and one of them shot a volley of airborne smoke bombs that prevented her from taking any more good photos. But as she swooped away and out of the yellow haze, Kimo knew she had what she wanted. Her paparazzi photos would be worth a lot of money.

With the smoke clearing, Kimo saw that Chi’ang’s hands had become blue and white claws, though his face and the rest of his body appeared unchanged. Emily Talbot, whose dominion over crustaceans overlapped with his, was much more altered, with green and orange claws and pincers for hands, small red eyes, and twin antennae sprouting from her bright green, humanoid forehead.

Emily was crying, and shouted, “When I signed up to be a Sea Warrior, nothing was said to me about any external alterations to my body! It just so happens that I liked the way I looked, and I didn’t want it changed!”

“I’m afraid that’s out of our hands now,” Dirk Avondale said. “Any of us could be changed at any moment, but we can’t worry about it. You should not be thinking about yourself; you should instead be thinking about the welfare of the ocean, and what you can do for it.”

“We should have been told,” she insisted, and Chi’ang agreed.

“Maybe you should have asked the right questions,” another man suggested.

“The right questions?” Chi’ang shouted, scuttling awkwardly toward the warrior who had spoken. “How could any of us have known what questions to ask?”

“You’ll get over this,” Kimo said. “We all must accept our fates, whatever they might be, whenever they might become apparent. None of us really know what will happen next, but we must put our complete faith in Moanna. We must put our complete faith in the ocean.”