Wind Raker - Book IV of The Order of the Air (41 page)

This was all new land, the result of a volcanic eruption only a bit more than a hundred years ago. He turned back to the chart table to check it, seeing the various lava flows laid out on the map, land that he had to ignore when thinking about a possible landing site for any Chinese explorers. This one was, he thought, from 1823; there had been another in 1920, but that hadn’t reached the shore. Around the island’s south cape, there were even more: 1867 and 1868, 1907, 1919 and 1926. It had been easier to see from the air, the long scars of bare rock cutting through the jungle. He was willing to bet that the Chinese ship hadn’t landed on the Big Island: too much volcanic activity, too many new and transient peoples. They’d land on the other islands, where the chiefs were more established, had more power…

"Dr. Ballard,” Jimmy said, tentatively, and Jerry looked up from the chart.

"Yes?”

“Are those really volcanoes? I mean, you know, working ones?”

“Active,” Jerry corrected, absently. “And, yes, they are active.”

“Are they likely to explode?” Jimmy was starting to look spooked again, and Jerry shook his head.

“These aren’t that sort of volcano. Yes, there are some volcanoes, like Mt. Vesuvius or Krakatoa, that erupt with explosive force, but there are also volcanoes like these, that erupt frequently and simply release streams of lava. It flows downhill until it cools and hardens into new rock. Did you see the bare spots in the jungle when we flew down the eastern coast? That’s all new land, left by lava flows less than a hundred years ago.” He stooped to peer out the window again, at the surf white against the dark stone. “This whole section of the island is new. It wasn’t here even a hundred years ago.” There was a thump from the cockpit, and Mitch ducked through the hatch, but Jerry ignored him. “The Big Island is steadily getting bigger. New land is being created all along this side.” He stopped, an idea forming. New land… “Oh, my God.”

“What?” Jimmy looked wildly out the window, and even Mitch looked nonplused.

Jerry shook his head. “No, no, it’s fine, it’s just — it’s all about the translation. I should have thought. There’s more than one way to translate each word, and then we fit it into our frame of reference, not theirs.”

“What?” Mitch said in turn, tipping his head to the side. “Jer?”

“The Navel of the World,” Jerry said. “Not ‘where the earth was created’ but ‘where land is made.’ Where you can actually see land being made. Right here, the leading edge of the island. Where land is made!”

“I’m not getting it,” Mitch began.

“This whole dig,” Jerry said. “We’re looking for a Chinese ship that was sent to find the Navel of the World, which we assumed meant something esoteric, the place where the world began, but — it’s so much simpler. They were looking for where the land was made. And this is it. This, right here, this is the Navel of the World.” He stopped, trying to order his thoughts. “Well, not right here, this would have been well offshore in the fifteenth century, but on this side of the Big Island, on Hawai’i proper. They must have heard about it, stories passed along by sailors all across the Pacific, and come looking for this, one of the few places in the world where you can see land being made. This is what the
Wind Raker
was looking for.”

A slow smile spread across Mitch’s face. “That makes sense. That’s got to be it.”

Jimmy looked from one to the other. “Does that mean we’re going home?”

Mitch grimaced. “Well, not just this minute. One of the gaskets is leaking. Lily and Lewis are trying to figure out if it will hold long enough to get us back to Hilo, and Al sent me to radio Hilo Tower to see if anyone can run us out a spare.”

“Lovely.” Jerry lowered himself into the navigator’s chair as Mitch settled himself at the radio, fiddling with the dials until he raised Hilo. If they needed a spare — well, all things considered, an overnight in Hilo might not be that bad. It would spare him another awkward night with Willi. Though perhaps this new idea might distract him? It was painful to realize how much he wanted things to be back to normal.

“Hey, Dr. Ballard,” Jimmy said. “I think I see a ship. Maybe they can help.”

Jerry craned his neck to see where the boy was pointing. There was a smudge on the horizon, all right, smeared by haze, but it looked more like a rising cloud than smoke. Still, there was no point in discouraging him. “Maybe so. If it is, Hilo should know who’s there.”

Mitch fiddled with the knobs again, frowning, and there was a howl of static from the speaker above him. It resolved to a firm, lightly accented voice.

“— we have you in sight. Can we be of assistance?”

“Say again,” Mitch requested.

“Hilo Tower, Catalina, Kriegsmarine cruiser
Emden
here. We have you in sight and are twenty minutes from your position. Can we be of assistance?”

Mitch whistled soundlessly, and Jerry caught Jimmy’s sleeve. “Run and tell Mrs. Segura we need her.”

“Yes, sir.” Jimmy ducked through into the cockpit, and Jerry looked at Mitch.

“Will they have the part?”

“Probably. But this is going to be a government bomber —“

“Catalina, this is
Emden
. Can you hear us?”

Mitch pressed the transmit button reluctantly. “
Emden
, this is the Catalina. I hear you, thanks. We’re in need of an engine gasket, but otherwise fine.”

“Catalina, this is
Emden
. We may have spare parts, otherwise we will stand by until help arrives.”

“No arguing with that,” Alma said, ducking through the hatch. “Tell them yes, and thank you, Mitch. If they’re going to check us out, we might as well get the repairs out of it.”

“I reckon,” Mitch agreed, and turned his attention back to the radio.

T
he
Emden
came slowly into view in the promised time, and hove to further offshore, neatly trapping the Catalina between her and the shore. But there was no reason to think she was hostile, Lewis reminded himself. Lily and Alma had consulted with
Emden’s
radio operator, and the captain had promised to send over a selection of spare gaskets. Surely one of them would fit, the radio operator had said, and if it didn’t, they would take the Cat under tow.

He shaded his eyes, watching as
Emden
lowered a boat with brisk efficiency, and climbed down onto the chine rail that surrounded the Cat’s nose as they motored across. One of the neatly-dressed cadets tossed a rope; he caught it, looping it twice around the anchor post, and pulled them carefully alongside.

“Permission to come aboard?” Presumably that was the senior cadet, a tall, fair-haired boy with a tanned face, and Alma spoke from the top of the fuselage.

“Come on up.”

The boy clambered aboard, moving easily against the swells, and a darker boy handed up a toolkit before climbing after him. The fair boy looked familiar, Lewis thought, and then remembered: he was the cadet who’d showed them around the
Emden
. Presumably he’d been picked for both jobs because he spoke decent English. One of the cadets still in the boat had put out fenders, and Lewis tied off the rope, then climbed back to the top of the fuselage, where the two cadets were balancing with negligent ease.

“Midshipman Lorenz, ma’am,” the fair boy was saying, “and Engineer-Cadet Sommer. Captain Dönitz sends his compliments, and has ordered us to provide whatever help we can.”

“I’m Alma Segura,” Alma said. “We had an overheating problem and burned through a gasket. We could probably make it back to Hilo on what we have, but I’d just as soon not chance it.”

“We have brought many choices,” Sommer said, his English less assured than Lorenz’s, and Alma waved him toward the wing.

“Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Lewis watched them climb up to join Lily, who was still prodding morosely at the starboard engine, and then realized that the other cadet was staring at him. The boy seemed to realize it in the same moment, and offered an embarrassed smile.

“I’m sorry, you look familiar somehow…”

“So do you,” Lewis answered frankly. “We took a tour of the
Emden
a few days back, my friend and his two boys. I think you might have been the cadet who took us around.”

“Ah.” Lorenz’s face relaxed. “Yes, I think so?”

“It was very interesting,” Lewis said. “The boys enjoyed it very much.”

“The little boy who wanted to see the engines,” Lorenz said. “And that means — you are friends of Professor Radke.”

“A friend of ours is working with him on his dig,” Lewis answered. There was something not right about this conversation, some touch of something that sent cold fingers trailing down his spine in spite of the Hawaiian sun. Maybe it was just that he wasn’t used to talking to Germans like this, not after he’d spent the War trying to kill young men just as blond and pleasant as this one, but he pushed the doubt aside. He would trust the warning, trust his instincts, and say as little as possible. “I don’t know much about it.”

“Professor Radke was my teacher in — high school, I think is the equivalent? Before I went to the Marineschule.” Lorenz glanced around the Catalina, his gaze assessing, and Lewis hid a grimace. That couldn’t be good, either, considering that the Cat was intended to be a Navy bomber. For just an instant, he saw the
Emden
as he had seen her in the Kaiwi Channel, the Cat coming up her stern. Low and slow, the anti-aircraft would have too much chance to take them out, but as far as he could see, the Cat didn’t have any speed other than slow, and low would get the best angle… Lewis shook the thought away.

“He seems like a nice guy.” He glanced over his shoulder at the
Emden
, still standing patiently out to sea, smoke curling from her funnels. “So you boys are traveling around the world?”

“Yes.” Lorenz was still examining Cat’s fuselage, his eyes bright and curious. “It’s a training cruise.”

Mitch hauled himself up out of the cockpit, blinked and smiled as he recognized Lorenz. “Aren’t you —?”

“You are the father of the boy who wanted to see the engines,” Lorenz said, in the same moment. “Or — stepfather?”

“That’s right,” Mitch said, sounding surprised, and Lorenz gave a little shrug.

“I met your older son again at Professor Radke’s dig. He was my teacher before.”

“I get it,” Mitch said, with a quick glance at Lewis.

“He said you were testing this seaplane?” Lorenz looked back at the wing, where Sommer was rummaging in the toolkit while Lily did something with the engine’s interior.

“That’s right,” Mitch said again, with an easy smile.

“She looks impressive,” Lorenz said. “A proper flying boat.”

“We’re just running some tests for civilian pilots,” Mitch said. “She’d make a nice air taxi.”

Lorenz blinked, visibly translating, then nodded. “Can she carry many passengers?”

“We’re figuring that out,” Mitch answered. “Today we were just doing a friend a favor — Dr. Radke’s partner came up with us to survey the coastline along here.”

“Interesting,” Lorenz said.

Lewis felt the same cold finger trace his backbone. He fixed Mitch with a stare, willing him not to go on talking, Lorenz right in his line of sight so that he couldn’t shake his head in warning.

“Yeah. I guess they weren’t finding as much as they’d hoped up at the dig site, so Jerry thought he’d see if there might be anything visible from the air —“ Mitch stopped, finally feeling Lewis’s look.

“It all seemed very interesting,” Lorenz said again.

“You’d have to talk to the professors about it,” Mitch said. “That’s pretty much all I know.”

For a second, it hung in the balance, Lorenz ready to ask more questions that Lewis knew they shouldn’t answer, and then there was a pleased exclamation from the wing. Lorenz turned, and Sommer said something in German, sounding happy.

“Got it!” Alma called. “Third one fit like a charm.” She dropped down to the fuselage, smiling. “Midshipman, you’ve been an enormous help. Please tell Captain Dönitz that we’re very grateful.”

“I will do that,” Lorenz said, and moved to take the toolkit from his fellow. “It was our honor to be of service.”

They got themselves back into the boat with a further exchange of what Lewis could only think of as very Teutonic compliments, and then cast off, motoring back toward the
Emden
.

“I’ll let Hilo know we’re taken care of,” Alma said, and slithered down into the cockpit.

Mitch looked at Lewis. “What was that about?”

Lewis shrugged, feeling faintly embarrassed again. “I had a feeling. We shouldn’t talk too much about the dig to those kids.”

Mitch’s eyebrows rose, but he nodded. “Bea Patton said she wondered if the Germans wouldn’t find a way to check up on the dig. Dönitz — well, he’s here and he’ll do what he’s told. But what I don’t get is why they care.”

Lewis shook his head, watching the boat pull alongside the
Emden
, the cadets handling it with panache as well as skill. If there was another war, they were likely to be the enemy, the Germans and the Italians who were now allied with them — but surely no one was ready for another war. It had only been seventeen years since the Great War ended — not even seventeen years, sixteen and a few months — and nobody was going to risk that happening again, no matter how much saber-rattling they were doing. The breeze was chill on his skin, and he suppressed a shiver. “I don’t know either,” he said. “But if they care this much…”

Mitch nodded again. “I trust your judgment.”

Lily slid down off the wing, wiping greasy hands on her pants. “That’s taken care of it,” she said happily. “Good thing those boys were nearby.”

“Yeah,” Lewis said, and followed her down into the body of the plane. He settled himself at the radio operator’s station while Alma and Mitch went through the take-off checklists, the
Emden
still visible through the side window. She had steam up, but wasn’t planning on going anywhere in a hurry — making sure they got off all right, he guessed, and glanced at Jerry as he fastened himself into the navigator’s seat.