Wind Raker - Book IV of The Order of the Air (15 page)

“Just a bit of bad luck, that’s all,” Mitch said.

Lewis saw something like panic flicker over Lily’s face, but she controlled herself, nodding. “I suppose so.”

“I think we’re done until the new engines are in,” Alma said. “But I’ll call you if we need you for anything.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Segura,” Lily answered, and clattered down the gangplank. Lewis watched her walk away through the hangar, her back very straight, the tails of her scarf streaming behind her. Something still wasn’t right, but he couldn’t place it yet.

Alma spent another hour with Finch going over the flight and the plans for the installation, while Lewis and Mitch had a cigarette beside their rented car. The breeze was picking up, rustling through the pair of palms that still stood across the street, and Mitch stretched, working his shoulders.

“She doesn’t handle bad for something that size, but — I’m out of shape.”

“She’s big,” Lewis agreed, stubbing out his cigarette half-finished as Alma appeared.

“I’ll drive,” she said, and this time it was Mitch who was relegated to the rear seat. She worked the starter, then backed the car out again. “All right, Lewis. How bad was it really?”

Lewis considered. “She froze,” he said, after a moment. “I think she’s good, but — she froze. Something’s eating her, too.”

“I don’t so much care about that,” Alma said. “What I care about is not crashing the plane. How would you feel about taking over as engineer?”

“She’s got a hundred hours,” Lewis said. “I have fifteen.”

“Yes, but…” Alma closed her mouth over whatever else she might have said, and concentrated on negotiating a particularly tricky turn.

“It takes a while to get used to a new team,” Mitch said.

“I know.” Alma sighed. “You think I should keep her, Lewis?”

Lewis considered, letting himself wait long enough that any premonition should have time to appear. “I think so. I don’t think that’ll happen again.”

“It had better not,” Alma muttered, shifting gears. “All right. We keep working with her.”

C
haritably put, it was raining buckets. All signs suggested it was going to continue raining buckets for the foreseeable future, turning the dig into a quagmire despite the tarps spread over the site itself and of course rendering it completely unnavigable for Jerry. Impatiently, he waited in the workroom at the Bishop Museum while Willi and the graduate students brought back several boxes of sifted material that could at least be examined.

Not that he would be a great deal of use with that, Jerry reflected. His job was to supervise the dig, and the taxonomy of Polynesian stone tools was not his area of expertise. He could no more identify the age of an obsidian blade in Polynesia than… well, than Willi could tell Hittite from Assyrian.

Bea came in the back door, stopping to shake out her umbrella before she closed it. She propped the umbrella against the wall beside the door. "It's still pouring," she said.

"Yes," Jerry replied. "I'm afraid we'll be here in the workroom today as soon as Dr. Radke gets back with the sifted material. It's too wet to be in the field today."

"I won't be here long," Bea said. "I needed speak to Peter for a moment, and then I'm gone." She glanced around to be sure that none of the graduate students were lurking in corners, and dropped her voice as she came closer. "I also wanted to ask you if you'd like to join our gathering on the 22nd. Fortunately the correct night is a Saturday, which is very convenient."

Midsummer's Eve, of course. The actual date of the summer solstice varied by a few days from year to year, and this year it was the 22nd. As Bea said, a Saturday night was very convenient.

"I'd be honored," Jerry said. "But four members of my own group are in town. The friends I told you about." He scrupulously avoided any words like Lodge that might sound odd if overheard by others, as scrupulously as she'd avoided the word Midsummer.

"Ah." Bea smiled. "Well, it's a very large party, so to speak. Your friends would be welcome."

"Truly?"

"It's going to be a lovely luau on the beach," Bea said. "I'm sure no one would mind if you brought your friends."

"That would be very kind," Jerry said. He was a little surprised, but not as much as he would have been if he hadn't already seen the eclectic group that had met on the full moon for the monthly meeting. "I'll ask them if they'd like to come. It's wonderful of you to ask."

"Then I'll let you know more details soon," she said. "Oh, hello, Dr. Radke! So nice to see you. I'll just step down the hall and have a word with Dr. Buck if he's free." She maneuvered past Willi and went down the hall, her heels clicking on the linoleum.

Willi came in dripping, accompanied by Gray and Hanson, each carrying a soggy cardboard box. Willi looked cheerful. "All right, boys," he said. "Let's have a look. Sort by type, then material."

"What can I do to help?" Jerry asked.

Willi put one of the boxes down on the table. "Can you sketch the ones I think are significant? Not that there's anything in this batch that's extraordinary, but there are some that might be moderately nice pieces. I've already photographed everything in situ except for the sifted pieces from the fill, but I think that's mostly fishhooks and blackened shells." He shrugged expressively. "Useful in terms of a picture of daily life, but the Bishop Museum has literally thousands of fishhooks."

"Of course," Jerry said. Though neither of them had said as much yet, it was becoming increasingly obvious that this dig was not going to yield anything of importance. Fishhooks. Stone tools for making kapa cloth. Stone knives. Post holes. A few small carved pieces that might be of interest to collectors of Polynesian antiquities, but nothing extraordinary or indeed very old. Four hundred year old fishing net weights with carvings were the best they'd found so far. This was shaping up to be a coherent picture — an ordinary small village with a dancing floor dating to between four and five hundred years ago. Useful, of course, to the graduate students who could learn how to put the picture together, but hardly worth the time and funds and expertise spent upon it. Whoever the Museum's mystery donor was, he wasn't getting his money's worth.

"Dr. Radke?" Hanson was frowning at a small black stone. "This one might have an interesting carving?"

Willi took it with practiced fingers, flipping open a jeweler's loupe to see it more closely. Jerry watched his face change.

"They look like scratches," Hanson said. "But not representational. Symbolic?"

"Or maybe they're just random scratches," Gray said from down the table. Gray seemed pretty bored with this entire thing. He might have preferred colossi in Asia Minor.

Willi's face was utterly blank.

"What is it?" Jerry asked.

Wordlessly, Willi handed the stone to him. Scratches, yes. But they might have been letters. It might be possible to see two Chinese characters there, carved lightly on the surface of the piece of hard obsidian, barely more than the faintest tracery. They might be letters. They might be scratches. If it was gibberish, obviously it meant nothing. And still Jerry felt his heart race. "What does it say?"

"The Navel of the World," Willi said.

Hanson and Gray crowded in, both trying to look at it.

"It might be scratches," Gray said skeptically.

"Indeed it might." Willi's voice was brisk.

"I think it's lettering," Hanson said. "If it is, what does that mean?"

"It means we have one stone with some ambiguous scratches," Willi said firmly. "That is not a find. That is not proof of anything, or indeed suggestive of anything."

"But the characters do mean something," Hanson said.

"Yes. They are legitimately characters." Willi's face was closed. "If they are intentional, not merely scratches."

"The Navel of the World," Jerry said. The words conjured up images, a dozen meanings in a dozen cultures.

"What does the Navel of the World mean?" Gray asked. "In a Chinese context, I mean."

Willi sighed. He put it down on the table in front of him as though he could read something more from it. "It is a very complicated story, and fanciful of course as these things are."

Jerry put his head to the side, waiting.

"We're not going anywhere," Gray said.

Willi shook his head. "Then we will begin with history. With facts, gentlemen. With the administrative records of the Forbidden City. In the year 1421, the Yung-Lo Emperor of China, Chu Ti, the third ruler of the Ming Dynasty, sent forth a trading fleet comprising of more than a hundred mighty ships. The purpose of this fleet was multifold. Firstly, to show the flag, as it were, in the ports of China's allies from Korea to the coast of East Africa. Secondly, to find new trading partners and conclude alliances beneficial to China." Willi ticked the objectives off on his fingers. "Thirdly, to explore and expand the boundaries of knowledge. And fourthly to bring back to China luxury goods, valuables, and objects of intrinsic or academic value."

"That sounds…really advanced," Hanson said.

Willi snorted. "Ming China was very advanced, far more so than contemporary Europe, where the Renaissance was just taking hold. In any event, his fleet did just that. Two years later the bulk of it returned, its mission accomplished."

"But not all of it," Jerry said.

Willi shot him a quick glance. "No," he said. "Not all of it. There were of course shipwrecks and storms, vessels which were blown off course or damaged and abandoned in a distant port. As happens."

"What does that have to do with the Navel of the World?" Hanson asked.

Willi looked uncomfortable. "There was one vessel, the
Wind Raker
, that had a separate charge. Its mission was to find the Navel of the World, purportedly a mysterious island that was where the world itself began. This site was supposed to possess extraordinary supernatural powers. Commanded by Chou Hsian, one of Chu Ti's most distinguished eunuch captains…."

"Wait," Gray said. "Eunuch captains?"

"Most of Chu Ti's distinguished commanders were eunuchs," Willi said. "This was the result of his grandfather's action against the city of Kunming during the siege of 1382…."

Hanson looked appalled. "They had their balls cut off?"

"This was a common fate of prisoners of war," Willi said. "Particularly of their sons. Some suffered simple castration while others had their male genitalia completely removed."

Hanson looked ill. "Really? And they didn't die?"

"Some prisoners perished from infection, of course…."

Gray blinked. "And the rest didn't kill themselves? I know I sure would."

"They let this eunuch guy captain a ship?" Hanson asked. "How would you let a guy like that do a job like that? I mean, he's messed up and he's not a man…."

"I would shoot myself," Gray said seriously.

Jerry tried not to let his hands shake. "There are quite a few parts you can lose and still be a man," he said, pointedly tapping his wooden foot with his cane. "And the last time I looked, you commanded with your head, not with your balls."

Hanson looked abashed. "Yeah, but Doc, that's your foot. I mean, that's awful and all but…."

"I lost this foot in an artillery barrage in the Great War," Jerry said. "But a lot of men lost other things in the service of their country. And it doesn't make them worth any less. It doesn't now, and it didn't in the fifteenth century. You boys need to get over your preconceptions if you're going to be worth anything as scholars. Or as men." Jerry got up and stomped off before he said something worse, leaving stunned silence behind him.

I
t was still raining hard, a cooling rain that drenched the palm trees and blew against the side of the house. Mitch had moved the boys' beds back from against the screens in the sleeping porch, but both of them had said they didn't want to sleep in the living room instead. Douglas had professed it must be like being on a ship during a typhoon and demonstrated by bouncing around as if on a heaving ship. Jimmy had said that it wasn't too wet and it was fine, which Mitch took at face value. If he decided it was too wet he could always come in the house.

Mitch shook his head, taking off his undershirt to sleep in just thin cotton pajama bottoms. He was fussing over them. It was rain. Rain didn't melt eleven-year-old boys. Sleeping on the porch when it was raining was just a tiny adventure. He'd have gladly slept on the porch during Carolina thunderstorms when he was a boy, if his mother hadn't been convinced the night air would give him pneumonia, which seemed unlikely when it was about eighty degrees.

Stasi came in and closed the door quietly, unzipping her dress at the side and beginning to undress in the dark, a silhouette echoed by her pale twin in the dresser mirror. She caught his eyes in the mirror and there was that long, secret smile.

"Everybody settled?" Mitch asked.

"Finally," Stasi said, pulling the dress over her head. "Douglas required a lengthy chapter of The Further Adventures of Queen Esther before he would quiet down. Did you know there were submarines at the Battle of Salamis, darling? It's why the Persians won."

"Never heard that before," Mitch said.

"It's a secret. I made it up just now," Stasi said, stepping out of her combinations and kicking them under the chair. Which left her completely nude.

"Clothes?" Mitch said.

"It's too hot for clothes."

"It's a tropical island. It's supposed to be hot."

"And that's why on tropical islands people wear very few clothes." She settled onto his shoulder. Stasi plucked at the leg of the pajamas with two fingers. "And you'd be cooler if you wore fewer. It's dark, darling."

"I suppose." He made no move to take the pajamas off, though. Not that she hadn't seen the way things were, in two years and a bit, but casual nudity was never going to be his cup of tea. Her hair was soft against his chest, smelling like Breck shampoo. Mitch closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. Sometimes there was a moment he wished he could just bottle and keep, a moment he knew would become a well-worn memory, taken out and caressed in years to come. And that reminded him of something.