Wind Raker - Book IV of The Order of the Air (46 page)

“Guess I’d better take a look at the engines.”

Alma and Lewis shifted their feet to let her reach the step on the cabane strut, and she pulled herself onto the wing. A moment later, Alma could hear the clang of hatches opening, and she sighed again.

“I’m going to miss this when we’re home.”

Not all of it, of course — not Stasi’s awful attempt at goodness, not Jerry and Willi arguing incomprehensibly, not Jimmy’s sulks, though those were getting better, and most of all not Pelley, his power and his darkness and his hate. At least she knew in her bones that they had stopped his first plan.
Scotched the snake, not killed it
: the quotation floated through her mind, and with it came the certainty that nothing was over. They would face him, or someone like him, again and again and again, the world wobbling between poles. But that was all right. She could live with that, on this particular day, the same way that she could live with Lewis’s vows. It would come; it would all come home to roost, but not today.

She squeezed Lewis’s shoulder, eliciting a small, sleepy smile, and climbed onto the wing. “How’s it going?”

“Everything’s jake,” Lily answered, closing the last compartment. “No scorching, no magneto problems, no nothing. I like these Republic engines.”

“Henry builds good machines,” Alma answered. She looked back at Mauna Loa, white-topped against the vivid sky. “What are your plans after this?”

“I don’t know.” Lily wiped her hands on her pants, heedless of the stains. “Go back to the States, I guess. Or — I might stay here, if I can find work, or maybe head further west. Australia, maybe.” She gave Alma a sidelong glance and a wry smile. “I can’t thank you enough, you know that. I never thought I’d be free of him, of the luck he put on me. But now — now I need to figure out what I want, what I am, and I think I need to do it away from him.”

“That’s sensible,” Alma said, and meant it. Pelley wasn’t someone to be toyed with. “If you want a reference, I’d be glad to give you one — Mitch would sign one, too. And I know Floyd would be glad to put in a word.”

“Thank you,” Lily said. “I’ll take you up on that, and gladly.”

“And also —“ Alma hesitated, then decided she could make promises for both sides. “I could ask Dr. Buck if he could give you an introduction to a… congenial circle. If you’d like, of course.”

“I’ve missed it,” Lily said. “Missed it terribly. It’s not all like last night, but — yes, I’d be very grateful.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Alma said. More likely, she’d talk to Bea Patton, but, either way, she’d get it done. She squinted at the sun, dropping down from the zenith, and shook her head. “All right,” she called, raising her voice to include the men below. “Time to get back to work.”

C
ataloging was hardly Jerry's favorite part of the dig, but it was the part that could be done from the office in the Bishop Museum rather than out in the field. And truth be told they were really reaching the end of the fieldwork. Their trenches now encompassed the entire area formerly occupied by a very nondescript village, and there wasn't much else that digging here could tell them. Mostly at this point it was cataloging the finds, and Jerry had volunteered to get started on that while Willi oversaw the completion of the last trenches and the sieving of the dirt. In a week it would be time to fill everything in again, leaving Mr. Collins his pineapple grove more or less as they had found it.

Also, it was the morning after the ritual and Jerry was feeling hung over in a way that had nothing to do with alcohol. That kind of work was very energy intensive, and it had easily been the most encompassing working he'd ever participated in. It had succeeded. Jerry was certain of that. At least one door was closed to Pelley and to his associates, whoever they were. After the things Willi had told him he almost dreaded knowing. No, he dreaded the circumstances that would lead him to know. This wasn't over. They'd won a skirmish, but the great battle still loomed and each day he grew more and more certain that it was coming. To face it as a one-legged middle-aged man was not what he'd hoped, but he couldn't entirely say that he didn't want it. He had always wanted an extraordinary life, and last night's working was as heady as wine. He couldn't say he actually flinched from the challenge, no more than Lewis flinched from the prospect of war in the air. Lewis was Diana's Hunter, and he… Perhaps he was the warrior no more. But he could be the magician. That was no little role in the grand scheme of things.

He slipped his hand into his pocket, feeling the folded sheet of the telegram that had arrived this morning.
Pylon dig approved
, it read.
You to direct. Funding to follow
. Hutcheson had kept his promise, and if —when — the funding was completed, there would be Alexandria. Professionally, too, he had a new role to play, and he hadn’t believed that was possible, either.

The door opened and Bea came in, taking off her hat to put it on the top of the bookcase. She stopped as she saw him. "Good morning."

"Good morning," Jerry said, acutely aware of the receptionist on the other side of the open door.

"Cataloging today?" She looked brisk and well satisfied, like a cat who's been at the cream.

"Yes, indeed," Jerry replied. "Care to give me a hand with these stone tools? You may be more familiar than I."

"Of course." She looked intensely pleased to be asked and sat down across the table from him, letting the door swing shut naturally. "It was quite something, wasn't it?" she asked in a low voice.

"It certainly was." Jerry couldn't help but share her satisfaction. "These, however…" He gestured to the small collection of stone tools spread on the table.

"Aren't much," she said flatly.

"No." Jerry shook his head. "I'm afraid what we have is a picture of an ordinary village. Except for one or two items."

Bea leaned closer. "Which?"

It would do no harm to tell her. Someone should share their surmises, and perhaps Bea Patton was the right person. "This is conjecture," Jerry said, "But Dr. Radke and I have some thoughts." He told her the entire thing, laid it all out, their musings and interpretations, his epiphany off the coast of the Big Island watching the lava flows, all of the things that could be, and she listened with shining eyes.

"That's just how it happened," she said at last. "It has to be."

"We have no proof of anything," Jerry said. "And you understand why it's best if our conjectures don't see the light of day."

"But you give me the story," she said.

He nodded. "It's up to you if you want to tell Dr. Buck, and how much and when. But someone should know."

"You give me the story." She sat back, folding her hands on her lap. "People give me stories a lot. Old people, Hawaiians, others. I'm not the right person. Their children and their grandchildren are the right people, but young people in Hawaii today don't want old stories. They want university degrees and good jobs and cars and dreams of the big world, airplanes their outrigger canoes to cross the ocean to lands unknown. They don't want stories about lizards that speak and floating islands. And so the old people give their stories to me because I want them. I'm not an anthropologist and I'm not a scholar, but I'm here and I'm listening. They put their stories in my hands, and now so do you."

Jerry nodded solemnly. "Someone should know, even if we can't prove anything. Even if this is all there is. The
Wind Raker
came here, and here they found where the land was made. But right now it's better if we don't speculate publicly."

"I understand," Bea said. "The world is full of lost things, and some of them are better off not found."

"Yes," Jerry said.

W
illi’s steps slowed as he came closer to the American Factors building, the fancy facade dominating the street. It was early evening, the end of the working day, and most of the others on the street were headed home, away from the downtown. The banks were long closed, and the wholesale houses were beginning to shut down; as he made his way through the lobby, he was the only person going toward the stairs.

“Dr. Radke!” An American voice, unpleasantly familiar, and Willi forced a smile as Pelley approached, holding out his hand. He took it without — he hoped — visible reluctance, and returned the handshake.

“Mr. Pelley.”

“A pleasure to see you again.” Pelley’s voice was full and cheerful, though Willi thought there was something beneath the facade, leashed annoyance. “Anything new at the dig?”

“Some good tools and a rather nice ki’i, or tiki, figure,” Willi answered cautiously. “And the dancing floor is indeed larger and better than we had expected.”

Was that disappointment on Pelley’s face? Willi maintained his bland smile. Pelley said, “Nothing more about the Chinese, then?”

“I’m afraid not. You must have known it was a very long shot.”

And that was a long shot of his own, implying that Pelley was behind the dig, but to his surprise the American nodded. “And yet there is every reason to believe it is true. Even if there is no so-called scientific evidence.”

There was unexpected venom in his tone. Willi blinked. “I will agree the stories are suggestive, but without archeological finds to back them up, they can only remain that. And if you will excuse me, I am late for a meeting.”

“Of course.” Pelley moderated his stare. Willi gave a little bow and started up the stairs, grateful to have gotten away.

The door of Hackfeld’s office was open, and the secretary smiled at him as she rose from her desk.

“Good afternoon,
Herr
Professor.
Herr
Hackfeld is waiting.” She tapped on the inner door and opened it.

Willi stepped past her into the inner office, the sun and heat heavy in the air in spite of the open window and the whirring fan. There was an ice bucket on a side tray, two bottles of wine buried in it, and three men sitting in the comfortable chairs. He knew Hackfeld and Lange, but not the third man, slim and neat in a well-cut linen suit. His hair was close-cut, his bearing military, and Willi was not surprised when Hackfeld introduced him as Fregattenkapitän Dönitz of the
Emden
.

“I had the pleasure of teaching one of your cadets some years ago,” he said, and wondered if he was making a mistake.

“Oh?” Dönitz sounded genuinely curious, and Willi gave a careful smile.

“Dieter Lorenz,
Herr
Fregattenkapitän. A solid student.”

Dönitz’s tight expression relaxed just a fraction. “A good cadet. Hard-working.”

Lange cleared his throat, and held out a glass of wine. “
Herr
Professor? Are there any new finds we should know about?”

Willi accepted the glass and took a cautious sip. It was better than he’d expected, and he answered with even greater care. “You’ll receive a copy of our final report, of course, but — the short answer is that, while we’ve found a number of quite nice Polynesian artifacts, there has been very little that would be of interest to the sponsor of the dig.”

“
Herr
Pelley was quite insistent that there was a solid traditional connection,” Lange observed.

“I’m not so certain of that,” Willi said. “There is the Chinese documentary evidence that a ship was sent east, yes, and there is a Hawaiian tale of a floating island, crewed by ‘people who were kin to the golden lizard,’ but there is nothing to say whether there is a connection between the two. And — most importantly, from my point of view — there is absolutely no physical evidence that would connect the story with the land. There are so many stories of strangers from the sea, in almost every culture. I just don’t see it as proving anything. At least not yet.”

“But there were those porcelain pieces,” Hackfeld said.

“Yes.” Willi nodded. “I have examined them, and there’s no question that they are genuinely Ming pieces. I think there are three possibilities. First, they were brought to Hawaii by missionaries and lost. Against that, there is no record of a missionary house in the area where Mr. Collins found them, nor did we find any evidence of such. Also, one does not easily lose intact expensive porcelain.”

Both Hackfeld and Dönitz laughed, and even Lange allowed himself a smile.

“Second, it is just barely possible that the pieces belonged to Chinese immigrants, and were hidden in the fields for some reason. It’s unlikely that an immigrant with access to the pineapple fields would own such high quality objects, and also these fields were in cultivation by then, and I would have expected them to be found earlier if this were the case. The final possibility is that indeed there was a Chinese presence, but we were not looking in the right place,” Willi went on. “Perhaps Mr. Collins misremembered the spot, or perhaps the objects were buried away from the Chinese settlement for some reason. Against that — well, there are the remains of a very typical Hawaiian village on the site. I cannot see another settlement placed too close to it. And we found nothing that is identifiably Chinese.” He spread his hands, careful not to spill his wine. “I incline toward the missionary hypothesis myself.”

“And does Professor Ballard agree with you?” Lange asked.

“For the most part, yes,” Willi said. Jerry had promised he would back whatever Willi thought needed to go into the report, and more importantly, what needed not to be said. “There are one or two points where we disagree, but we in accord on the main questions.”

“Is there any possibility he might be holding out on you?” Lange held up his hand. “I know, he is your colleague, but he’s an American, and there’s a chance he might have some government connections.”

Willi put his wine on the edge of the desk, concentrating on placing it precisely so that his fear wouldn’t show. “I really don’t think so,
Herr
Lange. I don’t think he’s that kind of man, and even so — the dig is very small, and there were only a handful of people involved. Even if he had found something, he couldn’t have kept it secret.”

“I’m more concerned with things he deliberately didn’t find,” Lange answered.