Wind Raker - Book IV of The Order of the Air (47 page)

Willi spread his hands again. “What can I say to that? If he concealed objects, it’s possible I wouldn’t know — but I can’t see how he could have done it. We were at the dig together nearly every day.”

“But not every day.”

“No.” Willi did his best to sound reasonable. “But if I wasn’t there, our assistants were, and they are all young men eager to make a name for themselves. It would have been very hard to hide anything from them. And before you say it, there were bonuses for the workers, if they found anything unusual. We paid out for any number of artifacts.”

“Still,” Lange said. “I wonder if we should have a word with Dr. Ballard.”

Willi froze, the breath caught in his chest, and Dönitz stirred.

“Be reasonable, man. If there’s nothing to find, they won’t find it.”

“But,
Herr
Freggatenkapitän —“

“I was asked to look in on this unofficially,” Dönitz said, with a small, surprisingly pleasant smile in Willi’s direction, “so of course nothing I say can be construed as an order. But it seems to me that both Professor Radke and Professor Ballard have done their best, together and separately. I think I mentioned,
Herr
Lange, that I — well,
Emden
— encountered his aviator friends and was able to give them some assistance? If they are calling in favors to perform aerial surveys, I don’t think you can argue that they aren’t trying. Occam’s Razor: there’s nothing there to find.”

Willi released his held breath and picked up his wine again. Lange sat back, scowling, and Hockfeld looked from one to the other.

“It was always a long shot,” he ventured, and Lange sighed.

“Just so. You will give us copies of the final expedition report,
Herr
Professor?”

“Of course. And copies of all the photographs as well.”

That seemed to mollify Lange, as he had hoped it might. “Very well, and thank you. I am sorry this has not proved more illuminating.”

“On the contrary,” Willi answered. “It has been a good teaching tool, and a pleasant holiday, for which I am grateful. The Chinese expedition was very hard work.”

“Especially compared to this, eh?” Dönitz said, deflecting anything Lange might have said. “Your efforts are appreciated, Professor.”

“Yes, indeed,” Hackfeld said. “You’ll join us for dinner,
Herr
Professor?”

“With pleasure,” Willi lied. It was a small price to pay for freedom.

Epilogue

I
t had been raining all day, first hard enough to sound like drums on the bungalow roof to Douglas, and then steady through the afternoon. The grown-ups’ jobs were just about finished, so Dr. Radke had called all his people and told them to take the day off and then gone back to bed. The rest of them had eaten a long, leisurely breakfast because there wasn’t going to be any flying today either, and Momma had let him have a small bowl of jook when Dr. Radke and Dr. Ballard finally had their breakfasts. After that, though, it had been pretty dull. He’d read for a while, but he’d already finished
The Wizard of Oz
, and all three of his comic books — and Jimmy’s, too — and so he’d tried to get the little girls to play Hawaiian band with him until Momma made him stop.

“It’s giving me a headache, darling. Why don’t you read a book?”

“I read all of them.”

Momma raised an eyebrow, and Jimmy said, “I could drill you on the times tables. Then you’d be ahead of everybody else when you get back to school.”

“It’s summer,” Douglas said, firmly.

“It’s almost over.”

“But not yet.”

“You need to know how to do math if you’re going to be an engineer,” Jimmy said.

Douglas looked at Momma. “Do I really?”

“I’m afraid so, darling,” she said.

“I don’t want to learn the times tables.” Douglas stuck his lip out.

“Well, you’ll have to sometime,” Momma said, “but not right now. I know something else you need if you’re going to go to sea. Languages! You’ll be in all sorts of foreign countries, talking to all sorts of foreign people, and you’ll need to know how to say at least hello.” She smiled like the Dragon Lady, all secrets. “And in this house, there are people who know lots of different languages. Why don’t you ask all the grown-ups how to say ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ and ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ in all the languages they know? You can write them down on the telephone pad, darling, and then you’ll have a list to start learning.”

“That’s a neat idea,” Jimmy said. “Can I make a list, too?”

“Of course, darling!” Momma looked in the kitchen drawers until she found another pad of paper. “There you go. Now, go ask Mrs. Segura how to say all that in Italian.”

The rain was ending now, the clouds breaking to the west, so that the setting sun glowed as red as fire on the horizon.
Red sky at night, sailor’s delight
, Douglas thought. He was going to put that in his notebook, too, just as soon as he finished copying his list from the telephone pad. Dr. Ballard had given him and Jimmy each a notebook of their own, like a real book except it had lined pages like an exercise book, and he was busy copying the list he’d acquired over the course of the day. It was really a surprise how many languages people spoke. Mr. Segura spoke Spanish, and Mrs. Segura spoke Italian and a little of what she called Indian Spanish, and he’d left her and Mr. Segura discussing whether it was really Spanish or Pueblo or something. Dr. Radke spoke German and French and Chinese — Mandarin Chinese, Douglas corrected himself; Dr. Ballard spoke German and French and Latin and Greek and Hebrew and knew how to say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ in Egyptian and Arabic and Turkish too, though Dr. Radke said that Latin and Egyptian didn’t count since there was nobody alive who spoke them anyway, and he wasn’t sure anyone spoke Greek like Dr. Ballard, either. Douglas left them to fight about it — they liked fighting more than anybody he knew — and went back into the kitchen, where Mrs. Fong told him the words in Cantonese Chinese and in Hawaiian, and Momma added Hungarian and Czech. And that made fifteen languages, and he’d bet nobody at school knew there were that many, never mind two different kinds of Chinese.

He closed his notebook carefully, looking around the lanai, the adults’ voices soft counterpoint to the rain. Dora was asleep on Mrs. Segura’s lap, and Merilee was snuggled up with Dad, fist to her mouth, not quite asleep, but not really awake, either. He was full of roast pork and cake and chocolate milk, and even Jimmy looked happy. Dr. Radke lifted a pitcher, and topped up glasses for Momma and Dr. Ballard and Mr. Segura.

“I do wish we had found a connection with
Wind Raker
,” he said, with a glance at Dr. Ballard, and Douglas looked up.

“I know that story.”

“You do?” Dad said. “Where’d you hear that, Doug?” He patted the couch cushion on the other side from where Merilee was curled up.

“On the boat.” Douglas sat beside him, feeling very grown up himself. “Miss Lee’s friend told us that story.”

“I’d like to hear it,” Dr. Ballard said, with a smile, and Dr. Radke nodded.

“Please.”

Dad nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Once upon a time —“ Douglas frowned. No, that wasn’t quite right. “Once when the stories happened! Once when the stories happened, there was a ship as big as an island, and tall as the moon, and it was called
Wind Rake
r because the winds got caught in its sails like grass in the tines of a rake. And there were so many winds caught there that there was a huge storm and the ship was blown all the way through all the islands to Hawaii and it wrecked there on the lava-rock and all the winds got loose and flew away so it couldn’t sail any more. And the captain and his people looked around at the lava rock, where Pele had banked up her hearth fire, and the islanders looked at the wreck, and they came out onto the land together. The captain of the
Wind Raker
said that he’d come looking for the navel of the world, but they were wrecked and now he’d never finish his mission. And the chiefs sat down with him and wept with him, because he was breaking his promise to the great chief back home. But there was nothing they could do about it, so they dried their tears, and they took everything off the ship, and they built houses and planted taro and some of them met girls and got married and had babies. And when A’hia who served Pele heard about it, she came down off her mountain and walked through the jungle and the fields and came to the captain’s house, where he lived all alone.

"Why are you alone? she asked him, and he said, because I couldn’t find the navel of the world. I promised I’d find it, and I can’t. And she said, look about you. And he did, and saw his crew in their houses and their children and grandchildren around them, and he shook his head. Look around you, she said again, and he saw his comfortable house and A’hia who served Pele, and the chief’s daughter who brought him dinner every day and the chief’s son who told him stories. And A’hia who served Pele said, this is the navel of the world. The navel of the world is home.”

It was very quiet on the lanai, just the sound of the rain and a bird calling in the distance. Douglas looked around, worried that he’d gotten it wrong, and Momma sniffed loudly.

“That’s a lovely story, darling.” Her voice was funny, like she was going to cry, and Douglas gave Dad a nervous look. Dad smiled down at him and put his arm around his shoulders.

“That is a good story, Doug.”

“Yes,” Dr. Radke said. “Yes, indeed.”

“And you heard it from one of the boys on the boat?” Dr. Ballard asked, his face intent. “A Chinese boy?”

“Hawaiian,” Jimmy said. “His name’s Rick. He wants to be Miss Lee’s boyfriend.”

“Well, as long as he’s a nice boy, that’s a good thing,” Momma said briskly. “Now. It’s time to get ready for bed, boys.”

Douglas picked himself up, and saw Mrs. Segura smile at her husband.

“The navel of the world is home.”

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