He frowned, then snorted in disgust, but didn't translate.

"What's it mean?" I pressed.

"It means, 'Die, Anglo,' " he admitted after a moment. "Like I said, hotheads."

I gestured toward the crowd. "Are these people ALOHA?"

Scott laughed. "Are you lolo, bruddah? You stupid? You think I'd get this close to a pack of ALOHA goons with a fragging haole in the car?" He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was more serious. "ALOHA doesn't go for this kind of kanike. Mr. Dirk. Peaceful demonstrations? Not their style. They blow drek up, that's how they get their ideas across."

"Na Kama'aina, then?"

He shrugged. 'The leaders, sure-one or two of them, the slags who arranged for the newsvid boys to be here. The rest? They're just twinkies come along 'cause they've got nothing better to do with their time."

A couple of the demonstrators at the back of the pack had turned to watch the limo as we rolled by. One of them had the same kind of facial tattoos as the Maori in the bar. Instead of black leather, though, she wore only a loincloth and a kind of skirt made from dried reeds "or some drek. "I can't complain about the costume choice," I remarked, and Scott chortled appreciatively.

"Some people get an idea in their heads, and they just run with it," he said. 'The costumes. Trying to speak the old languages… or what they think are the old languages- some died out, but that doesn't stop the hotheads from pretending." He snorted again. "Look at them. Refugees from the luau shows put on for the tourists… except these ule don't know the show's over."

I blinked in mild surprise at the vehemence in his voice. "Is that what you think of what's-his-name?" I asked quietly after a moment.

'Te Purewa?" He paused. Then, "More or less," he admitted. "I don't think he's taken to waving placards at the government yet, but…" He shrugged.

'Te Purewa's not his real name, is it?" I guessed.

Scott gave a bark of laughter. "You got that," he agreed. "Mark Harrop, that's his real name, can you beat that? Mark fragging Harrop. Couple years back he decided he had Maori blood in his veins-like, a couple drops, maybe-and picked the name out of some book."

I was silent for almost a minute as Scott swung the limo around a corner and headed back toward Waikiki and Diamond Head. At last I asked gently, "What about you, Scott? You don't have any sympathy for Na Kama'aina? You're Polynesian by descent, aren't you?"

He didn't answer right away, and I wondered if I'd offended him. Then he smiled, a little shamefacedly. "I'm a kama'aina," he agreed. "I'm a 'land child'-quarter-blood, but I get it from both sides of my family. My mother, she was a Nene kahuna."

"Nay-nay?" I asked.

"Nene, Hawai'ian goose," he explained. "Looks kind of like a Canada goose-except it's not extinct, it's got claws on its feet, and it likes volcanic rock. One of the local Totems.

"Anyway," he went on, "you can be a kama'aina, a local, without being part of Na Kama 'aina, if you get my drift."

"And you've got no desire to take a Hawai'ian name and run around in grass skirts?"

"Grass makes me itch." He paused. "I've already got the Hawai'ian name," he added quietly after a moment, "I don't have to take one. My mother, she gave me one."

I waited, but he didn't go on. "Well?" I pressed at last.

He sighed. "My given name is Ka wean ula a Hi'iaka I ka poli o Pele ka wahine 'ai ho nua." The polysyllables rolled off his tongue like a smooth flowing river.

"Holy frag," I announced when I was sure he was done.

"Yeah, quite the mouthful."

"And it means?"

"'The red glow of the sky made by Hi'iaka in the bosom of Pele the earth eating woman,' if you can believe that."

"You must get writer's cramp signing your name."

He laughed. "That's why my father called me Scott," he explained.

My body clock seemed to have finally adjusted to the time difference and everything. I slept when I went to bed, and I woke up when I wanted to, a couple of minutes before my alarm went off. I rolled out of bed feeling like a new man-or at least a creditable retread-drew open the drapes, and stared for a couple of minutes out the bedroom window. The sun glinted off the azure sea, and the few clouds only served to emphasize the depth and clarity of the sky. Another drekky day in paradise.

As I dressed, I noticed for the first time the two holos on opposite walls of the bedroom. One showed Waikiki as I'd seen it the day before from a vantage point somewhere near the west end of the bay-a view of Diamond Head in me distance, people on the beach, a big auto-rigged trimaran anchored offshore. The other hologram had a sepia tone, like a holo taken of an old black-and-white flatphoto. A dark-skinned native was pushing a dug-out outrigger canoe up onto the beach out of the surf. Something looked familiar about the shot somehow. I compared the two mentally and realized that both holos were from exactly the same camera angle! The sepia one had to date from me nineteenth century. There was Diamond Head… with nothing but jungle all the way down to the beach and only a couple of tiny buildings around the curve of me bay. I turned back to the contemporary shot-yes, the holographer had matched the camera angle and the composition exactly. Fascinating.

It was oh-eight-thirty by the time I finished dressing, and my stomach reminded me not to skip breakfast. So down the elevator I went and breakfasted in the company of those little ring-necked doves on the outdoor patio.

I was savoring my third cup of coffee and debating whether I had room for another waffle when I felt a presence beside me. Glancing up, I saw one of the self-effacing hotel functionaries holding a small cellular phone out to me. "Mr. Tozer?"

I nodded to him, and he vanished from sight as I flipped the phone off standby. "Hello?"

"Good morning, Mr. Dirk." It was Scott, of course. "I hope you're feeling up to a little business today."

I almost asked him the details, but my natural caution- better yet, my paranoia-kicked in at the last moment. "When?" is all I said.

I was waiting outside the hotel when the Rolls pulled up thirty minutes later. Dressed in a finely tailored business suit today, Scott climbed out and held me rear passenger compartment door for me. (No slotting around with sitting up front today…) As I settied myself in the couch, he slid back into the driver's seat, buttoned the car up, and pulled away.

"Okay, Scott," I said once we were out in traffic, "give. Who, what, where, when, and why."

He glanced back at me. (At least he'd left the kevlarplex divider down.) "You've got an appointment with Mr. Ekei Tokudaiji." he told me flatly.

"Who is?"

The ork shrugged his broad shoulders. "An important man around these parts, that's all I can tell you."

Well, frag, I could have maybe guessed that much. "Where are we going?"

"Kaneohe Bay. Mr. Tokudaiji has a… a place there."

I frowned. The friendliness, the volubility, had vanished from Scott's manner. This was more than being businesslike, it was as if the big ork were under some kind of major stress. Was visiting this Tokudaiji so daunting, even for a fragging chauffeur? Just how important was this slag? "Why couldn't we have gotten this over with yesterday?" I asked.

"Like I said, Mr. Tokudaiji had biz on the outer islands yesterday," Scott explained patiently. "He's under no obligation to see you at all, see? He could just dust you off, and nobody could say drek about it."

I digested that as Scott turned the limo onto a northbound highway that soon plunged into a tunnel through a range of hills. Either Scott didn't know on whose behest I was working-this Tokudaiji wouldn't be dusting me off, he'd be dusting off Jacques Barnard, executive vice president of Yamatetsu North America-or Tokudaiji was a very important man indeed.