"One dragon kind of looks like another," I acquiesced dryly.

"Quite." Ho paused. "But it might not have been a dragon at all. Oh, I know it certainly looked like one, but many kahunas and hermetic mages could produce an illusion that only another magic-wielder could penetrate."

I blinked at that one. That line of thought hadn't even occurred to me.

"Whether or not Ryumyo is personally involved, however, I think the ALOHA connection is fairly certain," the Ali'i concluded. He studied me speculatively for a few moments. Then he opened one of the desk drawers, extracted a small item and extended it to me."Take this, Mr. Montgomery."

I reached out for the object and studied it in my palm. It was a lapel pin or badge-almost a brooch, judging by its size. Intricately worked into the likeness of the crest I'd seen behind the Ali'i's throne, it massed heavy in my hand. "Gold?"

Ho's dark eyes twinkled. "Electroplated. Sorry." He indicated the badge. "This identifies you as officially under the protection of the Ali'i, Mr. Montgomery. As far as members of the government service are concerned, it marks you as carrying my authority-some of it, at least."

I snorted. "You mean I've been deputized?"

"You might think of it that way," the Ali confirmed with a smile. "When you display the badge, you can expect at least some degree of cooperation from servants of the Crown-government agencies, even Na Maka'i, the police. Not the military, however." He shrugged. "You might even find that Tokudaiji-san's security personnel will think twice before gunning you down if they see that," he added thoughtfully. "After all, Tokudaiji-san was a servant of the Crown, in his own way, and his help did not go unreciprocated."

I looked skeptically down at the badge in my hand. Maybe the Ali'i was right, maybe Tokudaiji's samurai would feel some kind of ... I don't know, patriotic loyalty to the Crown or some drek ... and decide not to pulp me if they saw this. Maybe not. I certainly wasn't going to depend on it. I'd made the mistake of thinking a badge could protect me during an earlier phase of my career, and it hadn't taken me long to realize how fragging wrong I was. Still, it couldn't hurt. I nodded thanks to the Ali'i and pinned it onto the collar of my shirt.

Ho's eyes never left my face. "I wouldn't force you into a situation that you find uncomfortable . .."

I finished the thought for him ". . . But you do want me to get word to Barnard that you're trolling for ideas." I sighed again. "Yeah, okay, I'll see what I can do ... if it doesn't mean too much exposure." Frag, intermediary again. Why oh why don't people ever learn that killing the messenger just isn't a good idea?

"I appreciate that, Mr. Montgomery. Now-" Ho stopped as a knock sounded on the door. "Hele mai. "

The door opened, and a functionary-not Ortega, though he could have been the gray-faced man's Polynesian half brother-stepped into the room. "Kala mai ia'u, e ku'u lani, " he began, then noticed me for the first time and clammed up on the spot. He looked at the Ali'i with a "what the frag do I do?" expression on his face.

Gordon Ho chuckled. "This man is in my confidence," he told the functionary quietly. "You have a report for me?"

" 'Ae, e ku 'u lani, '' the older man said with a bobbing nod. "I luna o ka Puowaina. "

"In English, please," the Ali'i said sharply.

The functionary looked almost as scandalized as Ortega had in the throne room. Just to make sure he got the idea, I pulled back the lapel of the jacket Ortega had loaned me, so he could spot my deputy's badge nice and clearly.

He spotted it, all right, and I could see in his eyes just how little he thought of the whole thing. But at least he managed to control himself. "Ae, e ku'u lani. Yes, O my royal one, of course.

"The"-he shot me a sidelong look, and I could see him mentally editing what he'd been about to say-"the incidents on Puowaina seem to have escalated, e ku'u lani. The most recent one is quite disturbing-that's how the chief of Na Maka'i describes it, 'quite disturbing.' The ... level of activity is more intense."

"But nothing could come of it, correct?" Ho asked.

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, the 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 Manhunter, 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-that 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?

Na Maka'i had cordoned off the crime scene much the same way we were taught in the Star. Where trees, picnic benches, and the like were conveniently placed, the cops had strung up that universal yellow police line tape between them. To cover open ground, they'd used the collapsible lineposts that every cop car on the planet has somewhere in its trunk. I ambled over, and when I reached the police line, I held up the yellow tape and ducked under it. I took another step toward the two cops crouching on the ground ...

And rapped my nose and forehead against an invisible barrier that was as unyielding as a concrete wall. "Frag," I granted. Instinctively, I tried to step back.

No go. There was an invisible wall behind me now, too. And one to the right and to the left when I checked. It was like I was in an invisible and slightly undersized phone booth. For a couple of seconds I did the old street-mime shtick, palms pressing flat against unseen walls. Then I cringed and covered my ears as a high-pitched siren shrieked from somewhere behind my left shoulder. Frag, why not? Invisible walls-why not an invisible burglar alarm, too?

I watched helplessly as the sumo-gutted cop left the kids and strode menacingly across the grass toward me. "Mai ne'e," he barked. "Don't move, haole."

I snorted at that. Like I could.

"What you doing here, huh?"

"Coming to talk to you," I told him calmly. And I pointedly pinned my deputy's badge to the collar of my tropical shirt.

The cop was good, I had to give him that. His look of absolute and total disgust lasted only a fraction of a second before he slapped an expression of polite eagerness on his face. "Aloha, e ku'u haku," he rumbled to me. Then he snapped something else, apparently to the empty air. I almost keeled over, off balance, as the invisible walls surrounding me were suddenly gone.

"Thank you, Officer . ..?"

"Constable Saito, sir. What can I do for you?"

"Show me around," I suggested. "What's been happening here?"

The sumo-stomached cop nodded and led me across the grass to where the two forensics boys were still poking around. One of them looked up at me and drew breath to kvetch, but Constable Saito shut him up with a foul glare. "Sacrifices again, sir," Saito said unnecessarily. He pointed at what looked like a makeshift altar, jury-rigged from flat rocks that had recently formed the border of a flower bed. Something had been burned on that altar-something that had left behind a pile of blackened, crumbling bones.

"What was it?" I asked.

"Pua'a, " one of the forensics types answered, then translated, "Pig, sir. Young pig."

"Something more, too." The voice sounded from empty space, a meter to my right. I jumped, then tried to pretend I hadn't. Mages-they're always finding new ways to give me the fragging willies.

"What do you mean?" I queried.

"Something else was killed here," the mage's disembodied voice elaborated. "Not a pig."

"A metahuman?"

"Not sure," the voice said. I glanced over at the kahuna's meat-body, saw it frown. "Shielded."

"What do you mean, 'shielded'?"

This time the voice came from the kahuna's meat-body as he climbed to his feet. "There was a death here," he explained, "I can feel that much. I can't tell what it was that died . . . and I should be able to."

I nodded as if I actually understood. "Only the pig was burned, though?"

"Only the pua'a," the shaman confirmed impatiently.

The forensics people had finished collecting their samples of ash and bone and now were scanning the rocks of the altar with a low-intensity UV laser to bring out latent prints. Good luck, boys-the heat of the fire would almost certainly have obliterated anything usable.

I turned my back on the altar and looked at the surrounding ground. Some kind of intricate pattern had been cut into the grass-no, not cut, I realized-burned in. The lines were sharply defined and surprisingly narrow. You couldn't do a job like that by pouring lines of gasoline and igniting them, the way I'd figured at first. You needed something that burned much hotter and faster. Hmmm, I thought-someone had gone to some effort here.

I stepped back for a better overall picture of the pattern. Two concentric circles, centered on the altar, one maybe ten meters in diameter, the other maybe eleven. The half-meter-wide annulus between the two circles was divided into quadrants by radial lines. I checked the sun and guesstimated-yes, the radial lines seemed roughly aligned with the cardinal points of the compass. Around the annulus there were an even dozen strange, angular symbols. Not burned, these, but formed from scores of small, white pebbles carefully aligned. I looked around-no, as I'd suspected, there wasn't an obvious source for those pebbles anywhere in the Puowaina park.

Finished with his ghost-walk, the cop-kahuna was now carefully photographing each of the arcane-looking symbols around the circle. I jandered over to him and waited for him to acknowledge me. His frown told me he didn't want to, but I saw his eyes flick down to my deputy's badge. "Yes, sir?" he asked at last. (The "sir" seemed to cause him physical pain.) I indicated the concentric circles with my toe. "What is this? A hermetic circle? A medicine lodge of some kind?"

He wanted to roll his eyes, I could tell, but he managed to control the impulse. He shrugged. "Neither," he said. Then, less certainly, "Not really."

"What, then?" Another shrug. "Is it hermetic or shamanic?"

For a moment he looked really uncomfortable. He shrugged once more.

Which was interesting. Neither hermetic nor shamanic . .. or maybe both hermetic and shamanic, if that made any sense. Hell, at one time or another, everyone's overheard those airy-fairy philosophical discussions about the structure of magic-the hypothesis that magic is magic and that's it. That the distinction between hermetic and shamanic is entirely artificial, one made by (meta)human minds, but not innate to the mana itself. Was that what these symbols represented? Or were they just meaningless-some fraghead mage-wannabe copying something he saw on the trid?

"What would you use something like this for?" I asked the kahuna.

"I wouldn't use it for anything," he snapped.

I sighed. "What would someone else use it for then? What might they use it for?" I corrected quickly, to forestall another case of literal-mindedness.

"Don't know."

I shot the kahuna a penetrating look. He was really uncomfortable now, and it was making him sullen. (Magicians of all stripes hate admitting they don't know everything-I learned that long ago.) "You've got to have some idea," I pressed. "It's got to remind you of something. What might it be?"

For a moment he just glared stink-eye at me. Then I saw his eyes change as he surrendered. "Could be some kind of conjuring circle," he mumbled. "Could be."

"For summoning spirits? You mean the mage or shaman or whatever stands in the circle-"

"No, " he cut in with a look that clearly completed the thought-you fragging twinkie. "Conjurer stands outside the circle, thing that gets conjured inside the circle ... till kahuna lets it out. Okay?"

"So what would you conjure using something like this? Elementals? Spirits? What?"

Some unreadable expression flickered across his face. "Nothing, " he said firmly. "Couldn't conjure nothing with this. Not elementals, not spirits, okay?" And-deputy's badge or not-he turned his back on me and strode away. I watched him climb into one of the Patrol Ones, shut the door, and just sit there in a sulk.

Interesting. What was it the functionary had told the Ali'i? Up until now, the magical mumbo-jumbo surrounding the sacrifices in Puowaina had been meaningless. This time, though, the kahunas hadn't been sure of that. That represented a pretty significant change in things, didn't it? The cop-kahuna's reaction had certainly fit with that analysis.

So this ritual-circle drek was similar to the stuff the mystics use for summoning-similar, but not exactly right. If I'd known more about magic, maybe that would mean something to me. It's unfortunate, in a way. Unlike a lot of people I know, I'm not a magophobe-how the frag can you be magophobic in the Sixth World, tell me that?-but I'm certainly no spellworm. I guess the most time I've ever spent with a real-and-for-true practicing spellworm was when I worked alongside Rodney Greybriar back in Seattle ... before he was geeked, of course.