Above World - By Jenn Reese Page 0,5

Hoku said.

Aluna drifted over and held her short hair out of the way. Hoku pressed the artifact against the inside of her ear, then wrapped the wire around the outside to secure it in place.

“By the tides!” Aluna said.

“What? What do you hear?”

“A mumble-jumble mostly, but I can hear that little squid Jessia gossiping to someone about the boy she likes — oh!” Aluna looked at him and giggled.

“What? Who is she talking about? Tell me!” he begged. Jessia had smiled at him that very morning. She had nice teeth. He grabbed the other hearing artifact and scrambled to affix it to his ear with none of the delicacy he’d used with the first one.

“Oh, she’s moved off. I can’t hear her anymore. Too bad!” Aluna said. “Are freckles really that cute? I hadn’t noticed. But now that old fish Moke is going on and on about what he wants for dinner.”

“Shhh!” Hoku said, but she was right. All he could hear was Moke talking about fish. He couldn’t hear Jessia at all. Had Aluna made the whole thing up? This wouldn’t be the first time she’d teased him about one of his crushes. He put a hand to his cheek. He had a lot of freckles.

“Hoku, these Extra Ears are amazing. You’re a genius,” Aluna said, and he instantly forgave her.

“Let’s get to the council dome,” he said. And see how much trouble we can find.

THE ELDERS’ VOICES were faint, but when Hoku clung to the council dome and pressed his Extra Ear against the slick, opaque surface, he could make out the words. Aluna followed his example.

“. . . simply ridiculous,” Elder Maylea said. “It’s already dangerous enough sending our trade team to the Human settlement. Who knows what horrors have overtaken the rest of the Above World. The ancients came to the City of Shifting Tides for a reason, and that reason has not changed.”

“The surviving Humans have reverted to barbarism and worse,” said Elder Peleke. “Our scouts have seen Humans with fingers made of knives, with artificial eyes that burn like fires! And the Humans that do not reshape themselves with tech simply cower in their villages or wage senseless, bloody wars with their neighbors.” He grunted. “Theirs has always been a savage heritage.”

“Their heritage is the same as ours, Peleke,” Aluna’s father said. His voice, even through the sound shield, resonated stronger than the rest. “A few hundred years of separation does not erase the thousands of years that came before. We were all Humans once.”

“But our security is based on the fact that none of the Above Worlders know where we are,” Elder Maylea said. “Sarah Jennings went to great lengths to keep our location a secret. Not even the other Kampii tribes know where to find us, and we are still three dozen years away from the next Exchange. The more contact we have with others, the greater the risk.”

“Yes, there is safety in isolation,” Kapono said. “But are we afraid of contact for the right reasons? Are we jumping at sharks, or just at their shadows? We could use the outpost at Seahorse Alpha to communicate with other colonies, to learn about our past, to plan for our future! And yet, Seahorse Alpha has never even been opened in my lifetime. We have imprisoned it in a glowfield, as if knowledge itself were dangerous.” Kapono lowered his voice and spoke slowly. “As long as our gaze remains inward, we will never truly know what is happening in the Above World.”

The Elders fell silent. Aluna and her father were so alike, Hoku thought. More alike than either of them realized.

Elder Inoa’s voice broke the quiet. “Are you suggesting that we reject the ways of our ancestors, reject the very will of Sarah Jennings herself? That we rejoin the Above World while we are at our most vulnerable?”

Rejoin the Above World!

Hoku couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The Above World had always seemed like a dream to him, a world filled with endless artifacts and machines and people who knew how to use them. Sometimes he wished he’d been born in ancient times, before the Kampii gave up that wondrous, mechanical life.

But he’d heard other stories, too. Tales of Humans with poisonous weapons for arms and with hearts of cold metal, who roamed the Above World killing whomever they wanted. With the Deepfell hunting the oceans and those Humans on dry land, the only safe place in all the wide world was right where