Irregular Verbs (37 page)

She nodded slowly—trying, he could tell, to stay cool. “All right,” she said, and smiled.

There was a
fatele
that night, just a small one, in Donald Tuatu’s backyard. Saufatu went over after supper, filled a plastic coconut-half from the bowl of toddy and inched around the periphery of the party. There were no singers, just an old boom box, but a few teenage boys were dancing out the lyrics, two from one side of their “village” squaring off against three from the other.

Saufatu spotted Apisai Lotoala sitting nearby, filled up another coconut half and headed towards him. He was a big man, still powerfully built despite his age, and the old folding chair he was sitting on buckled beneath him. He was wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt and the scars on his leg shone white in the moonlight.

“Here,” Saufatu said, carefully handing him the coconut shell. “You looked dry.”

Apisai drained the shell he was holding, set it on the ground and took Saufatu’s. “
Ta
,” he said, and tipped it back.

“Fella ran into your shark last night.”

“Oh? What’d he do that for?”

Saufatu shook his head. “Didn’t know it was there. He’s not an Islander—American, I think.”

“He get out all right?”

“Sure. I told him to bop it on the nose, just like you did.” Saufatu took a drink of his toddy. “Look, I may be getting a chance to upgrade the Islands some. I’m going to need you to help me fill in Niulakiti.”

Apisai shook his head. “I told you everything I can remember. I wasn’t there long, you know—off on a freighter at sixteen, like all my mates. Ask me about that, I could talk all day.”

“Saufatu!” Apisai’s wife Margaret had spotted them talking and now came over. She was almost as tall as he was and wore a flower-print dress that fell in straight lines from her shoulders to her ankles. “Saufatu, where is that niece of yours? I haven’t seen her in years, it feels like.”

“She turned in early,” Saufatu said. He tapped the back of his neck. “She surfs—records how it feels, they sell it to the dreamcasters. A whole day of it tires her out.”

“But how is she going to meet a boy?” Margaret asked. “You know the ones her age, they’re all getting jobs, in the city or on the ships.” She turned to her husband. “She’s so busy, we’re going to have to find her someone nice. Can you think of anyone?”

“Leave me out of this,” Apisai said.

“She’s coming with me to the Islands tomorrow night,” Saufatu said. “You can come too, if you like. I mean, you can come anytime—it’s all for you.”

“Oh, Saufatu, I don’t know how you have the energy for those dreams,” Margaret said. “You must have it very easy at the airport. I have to be up at five to go and clean my houses.”

Saufatu turned to Apisai, who had been retired for nearly a decade now. “Well?”

Apisai shrugged and took another drink of his toddy.

Before going to bed Saufatu sent Kettner a text, suggesting they meet again the next night. He disabled the realtime lock and then went from island to island, planning the tour he would give to Kettner and Losi.

To his surprise, Losi was still there when he got up: even more surprising she was in the kitchen, boiling a bag of kippers and heating a bowl of
pulaka
in the microwave. “Good morning,” she said, putting a plate and fork down as he sat at the table.

“Good morning.”

If Losi noticed his bemusement, she showed no sign of it; instead she pulled the bag out of the boiling water with tongs, cut it open and slid the reddish fish onto his plate, getting to the microwave just as it began to beep. “How was your night?” she asked.

“Fine,” Saufatu said. He flaked off a piece of kipper with his fork and chewed it slowly. “Fine. Thank you.”

She spooned a pile of hot
pulaka
onto his plate. “Have you heard from Craig Kettner?”

Saufatu shook his head. “Not in the night. I haven’t checked my texts this morning, though.” He took another bite of the salty fish, chewed it thoughtfully. “Do you need a ride this morning?”

“Are you sure you have time?”

He nodded. “Sure. Just let me finish up and let’s go.”

“Sure.” She smiled, then turned to put the empty bowl of
pulaka
in the sink. “Do you have time to check your texts first?”

Luckily she was recording at Karekare Beach that day, a bit nearer to home than where he had picked her up the day before; luckier still the regular security guard was back on duty and waved him right through, so that he was only twenty minutes late and short an hour’s pay. He checked his texts before starting work and found one from Kettner, agreeing to meet him on the Islands that night (though of course it would be morning for Kettner, if he lived in America). After that the day went quickly, his mind barely registering the bags he moved from plane to carousel as he rehearsed the tour he had planned.

When his shift was done he picked Losi up from the beach, smiled at the way her eyes lit up when he told her about the text from Kettner; she was nearly bouncing in her seat the whole ride home, and throughout supper she pressed him for details on his first meeting with Kettner. Finally it was time to hook up their dreamlinks and go to sleep; after the usual moment of wild dreaming the REM regulator kicked in and they both found themselves on the pink sand at the tip of Funafala, the narrowest inhabited island in the Funafuti group, where they could see both the lagoon and the western islands and east to the open sea. It was also home to the village where he had grown up, and most of the landscape was drawn from his own childhood memories: thick stands of coconut trees, huts with thatched or sheet-metal roofs; and the wrecks of small boats that he and his friends had used as forts and playhouses. Kettner was already there, looking at a pair of small wooden boats, with outboard motors and canvas soft tops, that had been pulled up onto the beach.

Saufatu waved to him, took Losi by the hand and led her over to the boats. “Craig, thank you for coming. This is my sister-niece Losi—she does dream work, too.”

“Really?” Kettner said. “What do you do?”

Losi shrugged dismissively. “I’m a recorder—we just do B-roll, you know, generic surfing stuff, but Brian—that’s the guy I work with—he’s an indie dreamcaster. Whenever we have enough time and money we record some more.”

Kettner nodded appraisingly. “That’s great. Why don’t you give me your demo reel, I’ll check it out.”

“Cool,” Losi said, smiling. “Yeah, I will, cool.” She held out a hand, and after a moment Kettner reached out to shake it.

“Do you mind if I take some recordings?” Kettner asked. “Just samples, to show people what I’m talking about.”

“I can do it,” Losi said. “If that’s all right with you, Uncle.”

Saufatu nodded quickly. “Yes, all right.”

Before he had finished speaking she was in the water, making a long and shallow dive out towards the wrecks in the distance. Kettner watched for a few moments as she crested the low waves, then turned to Saufatu. “So what am I seeing here?”

“This is where I grew up,” Saufatu said. “It’s the southernmost island of the biggest atoll. All the islands in this group ring around Te Namo—that’s the lagoon, there—the swimming’s good here, on both sides, and there’s reef snorkelling too.”

“Your niece mentioned surfing?”

Saufatu shook his head. “We never did that here. Losi, she grew up in Auckland—her dad worked for the consulate there—and those Kiwis are mad for it. You get bigger waves on the sea side of the western islands, but we always stayed in the lagoon where it’s safe.”

“Safe?”

“Well, except for the sharks.”

For the rest of the night Saufatu led Losi and Kettner around the islands—carefully avoiding Fogafale, where paved roads and cement houses spread out from the airstrip to fill every inch of the island in a thick sprawl; though he had recorded it accurately, he suspected it was not the side of the Islands that Kettner thought his followers would want to see. Instead he took them up to the five small islands in the Conservation Area on the western side of Te Namo, where there were good-quality instanced interactions with green turtles and fairy terns. The World Wildlife Fund had financed the recording of these atolls, which was why they had more detail and interactive features than the inhabited islands. Only Tepuka Savilivi, the sixth and smallest island, had had to be reconstructed from tourist photos and satellite maps; it had been swamped before the recording began, the first of the islands to sink entirely.

Everywhere they went Losi recorded samples—diving in the warm, shallow water of the lagoon, climbing trees to cut down coconuts and peering close at terns that hovered curiously in front of her, hanging in the air just inches from her face before flitting away into the trees. Saufatu ended the tour in Nanumea, where they could see the wrecks of small ships just offshore from the village and, out towards the horizon, the rusting hull of the John Williams.

“That’s a U.S. Navy cargo ship—the Japanese sank it in the war,” Saufatu said.

“Can we go out there?” Kettner asked.

“To the ones near shore, yes, but not the big one,” Saufatu said. He threw a look at Losi. “It’s still there, though, just a little bit further under water. Someone could go out there and record it, if we had the money.”

“This is really remarkable,” Kettner said. “I can’t believe nobody knows about it.”

“Nobody knew about the Islands before they sank,” Losi snorted.

“I never tried to publicize it,” Saufatu said. “It’s really just meant—for our people, you know. But if you think that this can bring some money in—make it so more of us can be involved in upgrading it . . .”

Kettner shrugged. “I can’t promise that, but I do think a lot of people will be interested in seeing this. So much of what’s out there is so fake, you know? But this really lets you feel what it was like to live here.” He held up a hand. “I won’t do anything unless you’re sure you’re okay with it, though. This is your baby.”

Saufatu looked over at Losi, then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“Great—I can do a preview reel from the stuff Losi captured, and I’ll let you know when the piece is going to run,” Kettner said. “You might want to rent more server space.”

Losi spent most of the next day locked in her room, carefully culling the footage she had recorded—Saufatu told her that Kettner would surely edit it himself, but she said she wanted him to be picking between good, better and best—only emerging more than an hour after he came home from the airport to eat a reheated bowl of mackerel and breadfruit and then crash in dreamless sleep.

Saufatu had hesitated to tell other Islanders about this business with Kettner, unsure what they would think about a bunch of foreigners coming to the Islands, but when he saw Kettner’s “preview reel” he knew he had to share it—proud of the work he had done in conserving the Islands, of course, but also of Losi’s work in capturing it. The footage had not been stripped and sliced, unlike her usual work, so that it captured not just what she had experienced but how she had felt about it as well. It had all been as new for her as it had been for Kettner, and her joy in swimming, climbing and exploring was clear—not to mention her evident pleasure at showing off. He forwarded the preview to everyone on his mailing list, along with an invitation to join them when Kettner did his show two nights later.

The next day was Saturday, Saufatu’s day off, and he suggested to Losi that they go out to the beach together. They had not done this in a long time, not since she tired of the calm and shallow water he preferred, but she gathered up the towels and picnic gear and brought them to the truck—stopping, he noticed, every few minutes to check her texts.

She was silent most of the way out, distracted, and he didn’t push her to talk; the truth was that he felt much the same way, thinking about how things might change for the Islands. They spent all morning in the water, swimming and bodysurfing on the gentle waves, then lay out their lunch and tucked into their sandwiches.

“I’m glad your friends could spare you,” he said, looking out at the clear sky and whitecapped sea.

Losi shrugged. “They’re going to have to get used to it,” she said. “All the stuff I do for Brian is stripped and sliced, so he can replace me easily enough if he has to.”

“Would it be nice, doing work that has a bit more meaning to it?” Saufatu asked. “More of you in it?”

She shrugged, then nodded, and looked away; they finished their lunch in silence and then went back into the water, swimming against the waves until they were tired enough to be sure they would sleep.

Losi spent the whole trip back leaning out the window, her right knee bouncing and her left hand tapping the seat. Before he had even turned off the engine she was out of the truck and running to the door of the house.

Saufatu set the parking brake and drew the keys out of the ignition. He was just climbing out of the truck when he heard her shouting from inside; he ran to the house, not bothering to lock the truck, and met her at the door. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“It’s Craig,” she said. “He just texted me. He wants me to be one of his scouts.”

“What?”

“I mean, I knew he liked my footage when he didn’t strip it, but I wasn’t sure—you know, I mean, everybody wants to scout for him—”

“But—” Saufatu frowned. “What about the Islands?”

Losi frowned too, cocking her head. “What about them?”

“I thought—Kettner said he thought we could get funding to finish the Islands, upgrade them. I thought you could help me with that.”

“I’m—I’m sorry, Uncle,” she said. “I just can’t pass this up. This is—I’ll never get a better chance. And it’s work I can do from here, I won’t be moving—not right away, anyway.”

“And what will I tell your father? What will he say when he hears you’re just giving up on your duty?”

“He’ll probably be glad I won’t waste my life building some crazy fantasyland nobody but you cares about,” Losi said. She glared at him for another second, her jaw set, then turned and ran back into the house.

Saufatu stood for a long moment, shaking his head slowly, then turned at a noise behind him. Apisai Lotoala was standing in front of his house, looking uncomfortable. “Everything all right?” he asked.