Wind Raker - Book IV of The Order of the Air (4 page)

The beach narrowed then, fields of what looked like grass and stubby trees coming closer to the water’s edge. Not far inland, mountains thrust abruptly out of the plain, sharp folds only slightly softened by the dark green of the jungle, untouched, and, by the look of them, mostly untouchable. The sky was impossibly blue, only a few clouds on the western horizon hinting at a change of weather. Jerry felt his heart lift. How many thousands of men had seen these lush islands rise out of the sea, beautiful and welcoming? Sailors from the world over, traders, whalers, before them explorers and scientists and Navy men, pirates and Polynesians in their enormous canoes — and yes, on this morning he was willing to grant the possibility, perhaps even the servants of the Ming emperor — had taken heart from the sight after months at sea. It was only five days from San Francisco, but Jerry lifted his face to the sun and the salt breeze.
Welcome. Welcome to adventure
.

The
Malolo
made her stately way into the harbor, escorted by a pair of tugs and a small flotilla of local boats, their crews waving exuberantly to the tourists lining the rails.

“We’ll dock at the main pier,” young Mr. Chang said. To Jerry’s amusement, he’d worked out that including Jerry in his conversation made it much harder for Miss Carmichael to hint him away. “That’s the Aloha Tower there.”

“The lighthouse?” Maude shaded her eyes beneath her broad-brimmed hat. Her dress was plain, even a little old-fashioned, but the breeze molded it to her trim figure, and both Chang and Stewart were clearly captivated.

“That’s right,” Stewart said. “It says aloha to the ships as they arrive and depart — hello and goodbye, all the same word.”

“There are so many people on the pier,” Maude said.

“This is the college boat,” Chang said. “Most of us who are coming home for the summer come on this sailing. My family should be here, and Stewart’s, too. And I expect Miss Carmichael’s church has sent someone to collect you?”

She gave a grave nod. “So we were told.”

“If there’s ever a problem,” Stewart said, and kept his eyes carefully away from Maude, “I do hope you’ll call on me, and my family. Let me give you my card, Miss Carmichael?”

“And mine,” Chang said quickly. “I have some cousins on Maui who have a boat. They’d be happy to be of service.”

Jerry looked past them, wondering which of the hundred or more people on the dock were from the Bishop Museum. Beyond the low terminals, the buildings of Honolulu’s downtown crowded together, pale stucco and tile and whitewashed concrete, a bit like California even to the palm trees — but there was no mistaking this for San Francisco or even Los Angeles. The green was different, the sky deeper, the smell of the land rich and alien.

The ship’s whistle sounded above them, and the
Malolo
settled against the dock. There was a cheer from the waiting crowd, and a prolonged rattle of metal as the crew ran the gangplank out and secured it on the dock. The band that had been waiting began to play, guitars and ukuleles and voices raised in an unfamiliar tune, and a parade of dark-skinned young women started up the gangplank, all of them in grass skirts and skimpy tops and crowns and necklaces and wristlets of flowers. Jerry glanced at Chang, wondering what he thought, and caught the boy thumbing away a tear.

Chang flushed, and Jerry said, “It must be good to be home. I don’t expect you’re able to spend holidays with your family.”

“No.” Chang recovered himself quickly. “It’s just too far. So it’s doubly sweet to be home now.”

They made their way slowly toward the gangplank, listening to the band as it ran through a medley of popular songs. Jerry had heard most of them on the radio, but there were others he didn’t know, ones with an odd lilt to their rhythm, and he wondered if they were native folk songs or more recent creations. Stewart had said that the native Hawaiians still kept a good deal of their old culture, but there was no telling if it was enough to still write songs in their own language.

As they came closer to the gangway, Jerry could see that several of the girls had separated themselves from the rest of the group. The band struck up an instrumental piece, and the trio began to dance, hips swaying, arms outstretched, hands carving graceful shapes while the grass skirts accentuated every movement of their lower bodies. Miss Carmichael shook her head, but said nothing; Maude stared open-mouthed, and the boys grinned cheerfully. Jerry had seen belly-dancers in Egypt years ago, before the war; this was like and unlike, the same control harnessed to entirely different effect. Stewart was humming the dancers’ tune under his breath, then seemed to realize what he was doing and stopped abruptly.

They had reached the deck by the gangplank, where the rest of the grass-skirted girls were waiting, their arms filled with flower wreaths that they looped over the heads of the disembarking passengers. Jerry accepted his with good grace — a
lei
, he believed it was called, white orchids with purple edges, bright against his pale gray suit — and hooked his cane over his elbow to grip the gangplank’s rails with both hands. He reached the dock without too much difficulty, and stood for a moment trying to get his land legs under him. He remembered this from his trip to Europe in ’34, the twenty hours or so where the ground conspired to unbalance him, and he braced himself firmly with his cane before he risked taking a step.

“Dr. Ballard?” That was a young man in a seersucker suit, his skin tanned dark beneath his panama hat. “I’m Bob Hanson, from the Museum.”

“Mr. Hanson.” Jerry shook his hand, trying not to feel entirely ancient.

“Welcome to Hawaii, sir.”

“Thank you.”

Beyond Hanson, Jerry could see Chang embracing a tiny woman in a black silk coat and trousers — a grandmother, surely, from the near-white hair — then shaking hands with a distinguished-looking man in an impeccable suit. There were other children, too, an older boy in his first nice jacket and a brace of younger girls in pretty print dresses. Their mother was dead, Jerry remembered, from dinner conversation. There was a shout from further down the dock, and Jerry saw Stewart hug a tall man in slacks and a short-sleeved shirt printed with enormous flowers, both of them pounding each other on the back with whoops of glee while a buxom woman in a blue dress held her hat in place with one hand and tried to work a camera with the other. Miss Carmichael and Maude stood together, Miss Carmichael searching the crowd with a frown, but then her expression eased and she started toward a stoop-shouldered man in a rumpled linen suit.

With Hanson’s help, Jerry found a porter and collected both his suitcase and the hefty steamer trunk. Fortunately, Hanson’s elderly Buick was large enough that they could strap it to the back, and Jerry levered himself cautiously into the passenger seat.

“Dr. Buck asked me to bring you straight to the museum,” Hanson said cheerfully, easing the Buick into gear. “He said he thought you’d have questions about the dig, and you could meet Dr. Radke and the rest of us straight away.”

“You’re part of the dig, too?” Jerry asked.

“We all are,” Hanson answered. “There aren’t so many students attached to the museum that any of us can be left out. Even for something as — well, as weird as this.”

It’s damned weird
, Jerry thought, but swallowed the words. It wasn’t time yet to start gossiping with the graduate students; best to hear the official story first, and ask questions after.

Hanson drove sedately inland, first following the curve of the harbor, then heading toward the mountains that towered over the downtown area. Jerry didn’t try to hide his curiosity, craning his neck like any tourist, and Hanson was happy to oblige, reeling off the names of streets and buildings in a mix of sober English and the liquid native language and pointing out things Dr. Ballard had to be sure to see once he was settled.

“Are you from here?” Jerry asked, and Hanson gave an embarrassed laugh.

“No, actually, I’m from Seattle. I came out at the end of April to work at the Museum — and lucky to get the job, at that.”

“Congratulations,” Jerry said politely. “I’m sure they had their pick of candidates.” And that was certainly true. In other years, a promising young professor might have hesitated to maroon himself in the islands, far from the prestige of mainland institutions, but not with the economy the way it was. Roosevelt’s efforts had made a significant difference, no thanks to the Republicans and the Supreme Court, but the universities were still suffering as young men concentrated on finding paying work rather than education, and research was at the bottom of everyone’s list of vital expenditures.

The museum turned out to be a pair of large Romanesque buildings shoehorned into the campus of the Kamehameha School for Boys. Hanson parked his car in a spot of shade behind the towered building that was the Hawaiian Hall, and Jerry levered himself out, wincing as the ground seemed to rise and fall under him. He braced himself on his cane, and followed the younger man into the building. It was cool inside, stone walls and stone floors, the latter a little skittish underfoot, and he took his time, forcing Hanson to slow for him. That was embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as going sprawling in front of everyone. He caught a glimpse of the main exhibit hall, crowded and a bit old-fashioned, but Hanson had already opened a side door, letting them into the office area. Dr. Buck’s office was at the end, clearly the largest, and Hanson knocked briskly on the door, opening it without waiting for an answer.

“Dr. Ballard’s here, sir.”

“Excellent. Thank you, Hanson.” The man rose from behind his desk, and Jerry bit down hard on his surprise, accepting the offered hand with enough alacrity that he could hope he hadn’t betrayed himself. Dr. Peter Buck was not white. Tall, broad-shouldered, with graying hair and an impeccable and expensive suit, but — definitely not white. There had been nothing in the biographies Jerry had looked up when he took the job to suggest that Dr. Buck was anything but as British as his name.

Dr. Buck is a native of New Zealand, a graduate of the University of Otago, and incoming director of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, of which he has been a Fellow since 1925. He is a former member of the New Zealand Parliament and held the rank of major in the Commonwealth New Zealand Pioneer Battalion, in which he saw action in France and Belgium. Dr. Buck is also qualified as a medical doctor. He returns to the Bishop Museum following four years as Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Yale University. He is the author of
The Evolution of Maori Clothing
and
Material Culture of the Cook Islands
as well as more than forty articles
.

“Welcome to Honolulu, Dr. Ballard,” Dr. Buck said. “I hope your trip was pleasant?”

“Ideal,” Jerry answered. He hoped he didn’t look flustered as Dr. Buck waved him toward the guest’s chair set beside the polished teak desk. “It was a very smooth crossing, and of course the weather this morning is perfect.”

“It always is in Hawai’i,” Dr. Buck said with a smile. He gave the word an unfamiliar twist at the end, an oddly lilting shift of the doubled vowel. “Except of course when it isn’t. Have you met Dr. Radke before?”

“Sadly, no,” Jerry answered. “Though I look forward to it.”

“He arrived on Saturday. He’s to be the expert on East Asian material, and you will be our dig director. Of course, the Museum is glad to extend all possible assistance to both of you over the next twelve weeks.”

“I’m very pleased to be here,” Jerry said. That had spelled out their respective roles very neatly, and also the Museum’s part in the business. Of course he’d looked up Dr. Radke, too — Wilhelm Friedrich Radke, distinguished graduate of the University of Heidelberg, currently on the staff of the Neues Museum in Berlin, and a veteran of digs all over Asia, including recent expeditions to Tibet and Chinese Turkestan — and frankly the man’s record was far too good for a job like this. Not to mention that he was surely capable of acting as dig director himself. There were some very odd undercurrents here.

“You met Dr. Hanson,” Dr. Buck continued. “He’ll be working with you and Dr. Radke, and you’ll have a couple of sturdy graduate students as well. But I imagine you have some questions for me before I start introducing you to your colleagues.” He fixed Jerry with a singularly penetrating gaze.

“I do,” Jerry said. Quite a lot of questions, actually, and he’d had ample time on the ship to consider how best to ask them so as both to elicit answers and not to seem supercilious. “I was wondering if you might tell me how exactly this dig came about.”

“Ah.” Dr. Buck leaned back in his chair, not quite smiling, and Jerry had the sense that he’d pleased him. By asking the right question? By asking the wrong one? That was harder to tell. “We’ll start with the facts, then. In 1925, a pineapple farmer named Ed Collins found a ceramic jar in his grove. It was attractive and unusual, and so he dug around in the mud a bit more. A vase came to light and a bowl as well. He thought they were pretty, so he washed them and put them on his mantelpiece. And there they sat for two years until one day the Reverend Mr. Jones came for dinner. Jones is something of an amateur artist, and he recognized them for what they are — Ming Dynasty porcelain from China, in extremely good condition, and probably from the fifteenth century.”

“An extraordinary find,” Jerry said, when it became clear something was expected of him.