Chapter 7

Kara had never seen the circular well so wet, films of water were flowing into the gravel beneath her feet. Lois called out to her, "All the water just soaks in, doesn't it? None of it leaks outside to Earth."

"That's right. It's fortunate that it does. It keeps the tunnel entrance more hidden. It's funny in a way. I used to think of this part of the well as Earth, and that the switch to Aina occurred when we passed through the annulus of the blue ring. But Kalea tells me that's not the right way to think about it."

"Yeah," said Kalea. "My model is a much more extended reality bubble. If I'm right, we probably slipped into it as soon as we entered the cave. Actually, my math is telling me we slipped into it in a negative sense. Just don't ask me what that means. I don't know whether I've made an error in the math, or that I should consider this to be a negative bubble. It's very hard to visualize what the math is telling me..."

They all took skateboards from a supply on the floor, and climbed the ladder to the spiral tunnel. It was slow going up the slippery marble, and close to a half hour before they were all standing on the top of Blue Spirit on Aina. There was a thunderous pouring rain about them, a very dull gray light, and a stiff wind.

"Well," shouted Mark, "At least the wind turbines are getting a good workout! It looks like they left the lights on at the transfer station as a guide. There's no rush, let's just take our time going down..."

They were almost off the mountain and only a hundred yards from the transfer station when Leon began crawling on his hands and knees over the last difficult ledge. "Leon," shouted Kara, "Don't put your hands on the rocks like that!"

"Ouch!" cried Leon, as he pulled his hand up with a large black insect hanging off his thumb.

"Oh Shit!" Kara cried. "Mark! Lois! Mayoni! I need some help here! Right now!"

The group quickly walked Leon towards the transfer station. He felt fine most of the way there, but then his legs felt wobbly as they approached the front door, and then he wasn't feeling much of anything.

Leon awoke from a deep sleep feeling very strange. His body felt hot and uncomfortable, but his head and neck felt delightfully cool. He opened his eyes to see Mayoni smiling down at him.

"Hi! I thought you were coming out of it. How are you feeling?"

Leon blinked and considered. He realized Mayoni had two washcloths around his neck wet with very cold water, and she was replacing another one on his forehead. "Not too bad. What was that thing?"

"I need you to sit up and drink something a bit unpleasant, and then you should rest again. The sour taste will quickly fade..."

Leon grimaced as he drank, but noticed with relief that the taste quickly faded. "Thanks, I guess." Leon lay back down.

Mayoni smiled and began to put fresh cloths around his neck. "It's called * Pohaku * Lanalana *, or the stone spider. They're not too dangerous, very shy and only come near the surface in the pouring rain. Their toxin puts you to sleep and causes a brief fever, but does no permanent damage. Get a good rest tonight, and all this will be just a memory tomorrow."

"How'd you get stuck taking care of me? Where is everybody?"

"Stuck? Uncle Leon, it is an honor for me. Your brother and sister-in-law cared for me the first day we met. They saved me from being killed in the Paleo ceremony of the Black Knife, and then fed me and treated a spear wound on my thigh. Later that night they offered to adopt me as their daughter, though I realized later they didn't quite know what they were doing. It's an honor for me to now repay their kindness... The three are out harvesting nuts and some late autumn vegetables. It'll be our meals while we're here. The weather has cleared, it's actually very nice outside, sunny and near 50F with a stiff wind. They should be back by sunset. In a while, your fever should break, and you should try to exercise a bit. If you like, we can walk around then and I'll give you a tour of the transfer station."

"Okay. A tour sounds nice... Wow, just eating nuts for the next month... Ah, what time is it now?"

"A little after 1 PM. You've been asleep for four hours. There are many varieties of nuts, Earth pecans but also many nuts native to Aina. Perhaps I'm using the word nut loosely. Lois did an analysis the last time she was here, and she was very impressed. She said the nuts alone would provide a balanced diet. They even have vitamin C, which surprised her greatly. And remember, it's an Aina month, just 18 days. If my mother Kara stays healthy, we should get back to the village at the start of * makule *, just in time for the New Mahina party."

"Huh?"

"What? Oh! Uncle Leon, forgive me! Can I start teaching you some Hopewell now?"

"Sure!"

Each season has four months, * Hanua * Keiki * Makua * Makule * They mean birth, child, adult, and elder. You have to get the notes right too, not just the sounds. Each month has three weeks, with six days each."

"Okay. What are the seasons?"

"We start the new year with the summer solstice... The names are * kau * for summer, * ha'ole * for autumn, *ho'oilo * for winter, and * ho * for spring. Try singing it back to me..."

And so it went. Leon was amazed at how patient and kind Mayoni was, smiling and encouraging him with the language even though he was sure he was botching the notes, and she was also very attentive in changing the cloths on his neck for fresh cold ones. Leon found himself delighted to be spending the afternoon hours with his niece. After he butchered a particularly beautiful word she had sung him, Mayoni couldn't help but wince, but he was impressed by how diplomatically she ended the lesson.

"Ah, perhaps you should give your singing voice a rest. My father asked me to talk to you about something else anyway, before the Path closes. There's still four hours left on the window."

"Sure. What's up?"

"You are a guest here. There will be fewer demands on you to follow rules than tribal members. My father went through this with Lois before she came here on her vacation, but there wasn't time to go through it with you yesterday..."

"No, of course. I should know what happens if I break a rule. Do I get thrown in jail?"

"No. There are no jails here. Unless you commit a horrible crime, like intentionally harming or killing someone, the outcome will be that you will be asked to apologize, and then be forgiven."

"Huh? That's it?"

"Yes. Once your apology is accepted, the matter is closed."

"No judicial system could work like that! No jail time!? No restitution!? You're kidding, teasing me again, right?" Leon stared at Mayoni as she just looked at him with calm eyes. "No, I guess you're not kidding, are you?"

"Of course not! Uncle Leon, you have accepted me as * kumu *, your teacher. This part of our relationship needs to be based on trust, not playfulness or sarcasm. As * kumu *, I will never tease you."

"Okay."

"And to explain our justice, jails would demean the value of the forgiveness. But to be forgiven, you must sincerely want the gift. Matters brought to the judicial council are very rare, less than once a year. They judge whether the person has broken a law, and if so whether that person will appreciate forgiveness. Often the forgiven person will try to repay the kindness, but such efforts are always voluntary..."

Mayoni shuddered before continuing. "At least, that's the ideal. The older Paleo boys are proving to be a major concern. Love and encouragement should be such powerful tools with children, but recently some of the Paleo boys seem immune to their influence. They've become extremely aggressive, often turning vicious when they're not allowed to dominate the other children. The Hopewell boys and girls don't want to play with them anymore. The younger Paleo boys and all the Paleo girls seem fine..."

Mayoni paused, and then looked very sad. "The last time an adult wasn't forgiven was in 1391. I was so young then I have only the vaguest memories of it. No girl was willing to offer commitment to one of the boys in a * marriage * class *, even after he pleaded in open forum for a mate. A girl was then raped and killed, and then another..."

"My God..."

"The person was not forgiven and lost tribal membership. If a horrendous crime is non- violent, there's an old tradition for a choice of slavery, and a slave can ask to rejoin the tribe every year. But not in this case... The boy was given a choice of banishment or stoning to death. The boy chose banishment, but did not honor it. A girl was chased while working in the orchards. The men in the tribe set a trap, and captured the boy a second time. He was then stoned to death. My only real memory of all this is seeing my first father crying afterwards..."

Leon reached up and took Mayoni's hand. Mayoni reached across with her other hand, holding his hand between hers for a few moments and sighing, and then said, "Good! I think your fever is broken! Feel up for walking around a bit? There's a lot of interesting stuff here to see."

"Sure!" Leon got up and stretched his legs. "Mayoni, you are an excellent nurse!"

"Ha! Thank you Uncle Leon! I've chosen to become a doctor for my adult profession. Lois has taught me so much, and I'm hoping for so much more..." Mayoni walked with Leon over to the power console. "This is the heart of the station, the controls for the power. We have two combination wind turbine / solar array kits from Earth here. Each turbine is rated at 7.5 kW and each solar array at 2.5 kW. We also have 100 kW-hours of power storage in Earth's newest battery technology."

"The staged-ion batteries? You have them here?"

"Yep! They're great! Under charging, their staged grids are self-repairing. They don't lose their ability to charge over time. Peak performance is actually projected to increase in the first fifty years of use. My father has this system tuned even under full 20 kW output, but average power is about 10 kW, and sometimes it dips to zero. We have to run the lights and radio off the batteries then. The winds are pretty steady though, it's a good system. The hardest part was getting it all here! The turbine towers are modular pieces, but the 11-foot blades of the turbines barely fit through the curve of the spiral tunnel."

"I bet! So what do you do with all this power?"

"It's the foundation for Jumpstart. It's a fifty year plan, and everything is dependent on having electric power. Over here is one of the two Earth-type bathrooms on Aina. The other one is in the science lab in the village. They both have a fifty-gallon electric water heater. At full power, the 20 kW here can take the cold well water and bring it up to piping hot in half an hour. A water pump in the well gives us pressure. At the village, we have a sixty-meter pressure head from * Crater * Lake *. There's a 150 liter per second water flow through our water turbine, giving the village a base power of 53 kW, 24/7 if we were on Earth, but here I guess I should say 23.6/6... Uncle Leon, that was supposed to be cute!"

"Huh? Oh... Mayoni, I am just utterly amazed how comfortable you are understanding and talking about all this."

"Well, it's my future, and the future of my tribe. Do you remember all the laptops that Jumpstart bought?"

"Yep. I was running the Jumpstart ledger from Earth. Fifty!"

"Forty-eight of them are in four computer rooms, in the four corners of the science lab, all networked together. We have a ten-megabit wireless connection from that network to the two laptops here. It's a great motivation for the crew that works the transfer station, to have so much computer time for just a few people. The whole tribe is time-sharing hourly slots for the computers in the village. Right now the tribe has over 3500 members. Except for the youngest children, everybody gets two one-hour time slots on the laptops each week. Everybody's learning how to read English. Many, many people are learning about Earth's technology."

"You say Jumpstart will take fifty years?"

"Yeah. Aina years, but it's still a long time. The adults think that bringing our local digital fabrication technology up to these laptops will take that long, even with all the blueprints for how to do it. The first step is reproducible power. It's great that my father and mother Kara have training in geology. My tribe already had bronze when they came, but my parents know so much more. There are rich deposits of copper, tin, manganese, and zinc all within thirty kilomters of the village. My parents are thrilled with the quality grades of the ores. We have everything we need to make all the bronzes and brasses we want, and Earth's metallurgy books are showing us the best recipes for all the different applications. In the year 1420, Jumpstart calls for finishing a dam at * big * river * gorge * near the village. My father thinks the water turbines will generate at least 35 MW of power, and probably over 40 MW. Everything will be built with local technology, even the turbines, completely reproducible..."