THE SPACES BETWEEN
FEDERATED STATES OF MICRONESIA
DECEMBER, 2001
THEY HELD AN empty-casket funeral for the other two girls. But Raef Eisman did not attend, nor did he respond to the offers to share the ceremony from the other mourning, bewildered parents. Because while he grieved over Paige’s disappearance, he was far from ready to surrender her to the past tense. Others bade their goodbyes to those presumed dead and gone. Paige was merely—gone.
It was left to Hills to console the head of Burroughs Labs and coax him from his despair. Depression and obsession is what other members of the Board called it. The junior seats and advisors said nothing, of course. They were too polite to do so. Too understanding. And too terrified of Raef Eisman’s wrath to paint a target on themselves. But Hills . . . if anyone could bring back the perceptive, indomitable, decision-making chairman of the board, it was his closest confident William Hills. He had to do it. For the sake of the company, for his own wellbeing, for the good of the shareholders. The company had a reputation to maintain.
Not to mention its stock price.
Raef Eisman’s Manhattan corner office was large, clean, and functional; one of several maintained in the different countries he frequented. The view outside the two glass walls was sweeping, from the Empire State Building to the Hudson.
Visitors were always understandably distracted. Eisman was not. Like the rest of his office, the work on his desk was laid out with mathematical precision. Or as he had put it more than once, “Function follows form.”
Having been summoned, Hills stood quietly before his boss and friend, waiting for Eisman to finish perusing the short-form contract that represented Burroughs Labs’ latest deal with a foreign military.
Tall and slender, older than Eisman, he could still keep up with the younger man on the racquetball court or in a lap pool. Military service followed by freelance security work in Africa had instilled in Hills the need to maintain strength in body as well as mind.
Eisman trusted him completely, even letting him teach Paige the rudiments of taekwondo. The girl would have been ready to test for the next belt, Hills thought, if . . . if only . . .
“Sir? You wanted to see me?”
Eisman’s tone as he spoke indicated that even though he had not acknowledged Hills’ arrival, he was perfectly aware of the other man’s presence.
“Yes, Bill.” He did not look up from his work. Eisman’s ability to focus and work on multiple tasks simultaneously was a source of unending astonishment to allies and competitors alike. “I’m going to file a class action suit against Ansett over these disappearances. Cut off all their political support from banks and governments. They’ll be out of business by next Easter if I have my way.”2
“Sir,” Hills’ tone was gentle. “Raef, it’s been nearly six months. There’s no sign of the missing and—”
“The families of the others are already on-side, especially those of the two stewards the airline denied were ever on that flight and who disappeared along with the girls. Don’t try to talk me out of this, Bill. The airline is stonewalling, has been from the beginning. Such abrogation of responsibility, such deceit, it’s inexcusable. Worse that that, it’s criminal.”
His voice rose slightly. “They’re not going to get away with this. I’m not going to let them get away with this.”
Hills knew that steely tone. He’d known and worked with it for twenty years, the time he had served Eisman. He had been there for him when Eisman’s wife Jade had died in childbirth—indeed he had been at the hospital for Paige’s early birth and was the last of the two men to speak to Jade alive. He had been there through Raef’s ascent to the post of CEO following his father’s demise, and his decisions as a single parent raising Paige alone.
He was there for him then, and he was present for him now. Unlike others who saw only an abstract of the man through snatches of meetings and conferences, Hills was not intimidated by the gimlet-eyed Raef Eisman; scourge of company competition, canoodling politicians, and conspiring usurpers. But he was worried for him. Instead of fading in the aftermath of Paige’s disappearance, Eisman’s refusal to accept what others had long since dealt with had only intensified with time. And now this . . .
“Sir, action against a major airline, even with your connections, will cost you millions. The Board will object to this as another obsession that’s distracting you from your main role.”
Eisman’s cool stare was unblinking. “My main role? You mean as a father who’s lost his daughter? You think I give a damn about what those drones on the Board think?” Without pausing he leaned forward, “You ever been to Micronesia, Bill?”
“No sir. I know the Indian Ocean a little, but am not too well versed in the Pacific.”
“You’re going to get to know it. Pack a bag.” Eisman leaned forward from behind the huge desk. “We’re leaving tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Hills mentally weighed the task of unthreading any of the strings that bound Eisman’s calendar. “But you have meetings this week in London, then Ramstein with the military, Toulouse with Airbus . . .” He trailed off.
A thin smile crossed Eisman’s face. “Toulouse? You forget, I don’t like to lose, Bill. They’ll manage without me.”
Ever watchful of his friend’s welfare, Hills did not smile back at the quip. “Yes sir. That’s what worries me. If I might ask—why this sudden interest in Micronesia?”
“It’s not sudden.” Whirling in his chair, Eisman let one hand drag across an inbuilt set of controls. A three-dimensional map of the Earth materialized as lenses strobed through hidden grates in his desk. In tandem, electrochromic smartglass turned the wall-sized windows opaque.
The globe expanded as Raef reverse-pinched thumb and forefinger in midair, zooming in on water, water, more water, until he stabbed a finger and the image settled on a small island. Even at high magnification it was an insignificant speck.
“Pohnpei, Bill. We were over it, or nearly so, when that energy flash hit the plane and Paige disappeared. That’s Pohnpei in Micronesia, Bill, not Pompeii in Italy. Easy to get the names mixed up. And yes, I’m calling it an ‘energy flash’ because I believe something man-made caused this to happen, and not simple lightning. Maybe something with a military application. So as a father and as a CEO, you see, I have to investigate further.”
“Sir.” Hills swallowed, snatching at a dozen thoughts. This demanded tact, but firmness. “When your daughter—when Paige was last seen on the plane—it was at thirty thousand feet. Raef, we’ve been over this, old boy. Even if she was somehow knocked outside the aircraft without depressurizing the cabin and setting off every single alarm, the fall alone . . .” He shook his head sadly, not for the first time.
Eisman waved a hand over the controls, the globe vanished and the windows became transparent. He grinned at the prototype projector: “It sure gives Google Earth a run for its money.” With greater focus he turned back to his executive assistant.
“I don’t know what it is, Bill. I’m not crazy. I know it’s against the odds. But I’m looking for closure here. Answers. Do I believe thermal updrafts or an angular fall through the forest canopy could have cushioned her impact? From that height, as you say, it’s doubtful. And nobody can say if the girls would have landed in the water or on the island.
“I am a realist. But I need closure, answers, and that tiny island was directly below us when it happened. So we’re going to go look there, Bill, because even if what I find is unthinkable, at least I can bring her home to be beside her mother. Let me at least do that, Bill. For Jade.”
Hills paused, taken aback by the rare vulnerability. Yet despite his loyalties to the man he also had responsibilities to the company Raef and his forefathers had built.
He tried one more time.
“Your meetings, sir. Let’s plan this with a little more notice. The Board . . .”
“Come on. What can they do?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Stop trying. Go pack.”
ONLY THREE FLIGHTS landed each week at Pohnpei3, bringing tourists and workers bouncing onto the twin strips of mangrove-buttressed, stunted runway that grazed the entire length of tiny Takatik Island. It was the only stop between Majuro and Chuuk and didn’t see many private jets. Especially not any as sleek as the Dassault Falcon 900EX, flagship of Burroughs Labs’ corporate fleet.
Buckled in for landing, Raef Eisman had his face all but pressed to the glass as he studied the green-swathed, reef-haloed island below. William Hills was not studying the scenery. He was watching his boss. Utilizing the company’s premier plane for business was one thing. Commandeering it for what everyone else regarded as a futile exercise in bathos was something else again.
Subordinates had kept Hills reasonably up to date on current Board opinion. The initial outpouring of sympathy at the CEO’s loss had been genuine and heartfelt. It was emotion in the bank. But the longer his boss neglected company business to mourn his daughter’s disappearance, the sooner that account risked being overdrawn. Credit was already dangerously low and disgruntled murmurings were growing louder. If something was not done, if Eisman did not rededicate himself to company business, those murmurings would turn to open revolt on the Board. And that would translate into votes.
Eisman was not helping himself by searching for his daughter on company time, at company expense. Why not, one sympathetic executive had quietly suggested to Hills, gently urge him to hire others to conduct such searching? Surely professionals would do a more thorough job anyway.
Hills regretfully conceded that he had already made the suggestion. He had done so on several occasions in fact, only to meet the famous stare that had earned Eisman the moniker ‘Ice Man’.
“My daughter,” Raef had told him unwaveringly. “My search.”
So Hills had covered for his boss as best he was able, making excuses and formulating rationales. He wondered how he was going to explain away the use of the company jet flying across the Pacific to an isolated blip with no commercial significance.
Receiving final clearance the jet banked to the right, filling the cabin with shafts of light that bounced off walnut burr and refracted through crystal tumblers and decanters. The landing was so smooth that it wasn’t immediately apparent they had struck ground until they were taxiing to a standstill.
As both men stepped out of the plane the heat and humidity hit like a bucket of wet towels in a sauna. Bearded with dense tropical vegetation the single town, if such it could be called, lay nearby. Hills was grateful for the air-conditioned Jeep that was waiting to take them to the island’s best hotel. When he had tracked down the manager hours earlier from the plane, he had been informed the hotel was closed for refurbishment, and been encouraged to book instead for the peak season. So informed, Eisman had responded with a wave that was at once commanding and dismissive.
“Tell him to open it up.”
Hills had tried his best to inject some common sense. “Just for the two of us, sir?”
“No,” Eisman had snapped, irritated by the impediment. “I’m bringing Manchester United on vacation. Pay him whatever he wants.”
That expense, too, had gone down on the company’s books—and would have to be reckoned with. William Hills was facile, he was clever, but he was not a miracle worker. Most if not all of this would be docked from Eisman’s retainer.
They spent several days interviewing locals. Did they remember the storm that had passed over the island on July twenty-first? Many storms passed over Pohnpei, he was told. The position of weatherman being an important job in typhoon-prone tropics, Eisman arranged a private interview with the chief meteorologist, a man named Ohmacai.
Displaying unexpected foresight, the weatherman brought relevant records with him, copies of which he placed on the wicker table between himself and the two visitors in the resort’s open-air restaurant. As Eisman worked his way through the records, the only sounds were the occasional chirping of geckos and the rhythmic crash of waves on a distant reef.
Presently, Eisman tossed the charts onto the table and met the stout Micronesian’s eyes.
“I see a lot of numbers.”
The weatherman smiled apologetically. “That’s what weather is, Mr. Eisman, sir. A lot of numbers.”
Perspiration beaded Eisman’s shaved head and he absently wiped a hand across his dome. “I don’t need numbers. I need opinions. I need facts.” His voice slowed, each word deliberate. “I need explanations.”
Hills had prepped the man on what to expect. The local’s eyes darted plaintively in his direction, but Hills offered no relief.
Looking back at Eisman, the islander nodded sadly. “I was told about what happened to your daughter, sir. I am truly sorry.”
“You were not told what happened to my daughter—” As always, Eisman was utterly certain of his words. “—because no one knows what happened to her. Everything is conjecture.”
The weatherman swallowed. “I was told she was on a plane with you and that during the storm six months ago, she and two other little girls vanished from the plane while it was passing overhead. No open hatches. No sign of them anywhere. Like they were plucked into thin air.”
Mouth set, Eisman nodded wordlessly. “Any ideas?”
The weatherman thumbed his sheaf of papers. “I remember the date because the clouds were so rare. There was a cloudbank that spun up out of nowhere several hours before sunset. What made it memorable was the fallstreak hole in its center. And then the strange lightning.”
Eisman’s face made it plain he wanted a clearer explanation.
“Sorry,” the local told him. “I’m talking like a weather guy. A fallstreak hole is a circular or cigar-shaped gap that sometimes appears in altocumulus clouds when the center of the cloud freezes faster than everything around it4. As the ice grows heavy it drops out, leaving a hole in its wake. At least that’s what we think happens. I remember my grandmother’s tales that these holes were where the Skypeople made their palaces, their castles in the air where they would go to in the old times when they weren’t teaching their secrets to their children on the ground. Our old islanders all have stories for what they don’t understand. But as a scientist I know it’s a process called nucleation that forms ice crystals in clouds the same as quartz forms in the ground.”
Hills interrupted. “What was that about sky people? I’ve never heard that legend.”
“Sure you have, sir”, chortled Ohmacai, “Every culture has these tales by another name. The Gods who look down from the heavens, the Teachers, spirits of Dreamtime ancestors; call them what you will. But the fallstreak hole was only one part of the day’s interest for me. For a meteorologist to have two oddities on the same day, well, it was my equivalent of a jackpot. It was the lightning that I’d never seen before. It was different colors, not accompanied by rain, and concentrated in this single cloudbank with the hole cut out, while the rest of the sky was clear. Then it just evaporated like someone blew out the candles on a cake.”
“I know this.” Eisman pointed upwards. “I was up there. The plane was up there. My daughter was up there. Then she wasn’t up there anymore. No more birthdays, no more candles!”
The air grew thicker in the uncomfortable silence that followed. “Tell me something I don’t know.” To the weatherman’s surprise the billionaire’s eyes glistened as he looked out to sea. “Give me ideas. Anything you’ve got.”
The Micronesian took a long slow breath. “The lightning didn’t ground to the earth. It shot sideways between clouds. As if the gods were fighting. And for the briefest of moments, there was a shape inside the hole, like something solid being struck over and over.”
Raef rolled his eyes and got out of his seat, now openly impatient. “That would be my plane, Mr. Ohmacai.” He turned his back to the man, staring to the blue horizon, and Hills knew it was a sign the islander was dismissed.
Ohmacai saw it too. “We could organize a search, sir. Maybe by landing people by helicopter and working down from the top of the mountain we call Nahna Laud. Pohnpei is not a big island, but the interior is very rugged. There could be many things there that would be easily missed.”
Even the bodies of three young girls, he thought sadly to himself.
Eisman cocked his head with interest. “It’s been months. You really think my daughter and the others could be up there somewhere?”
The weatherman smiled wanly. “I don’t want to give false hope. But there is a bird, the Mountain Starling, thought to have gone extinct in the mid-fifties. It was rediscovered in 1995. Pohnpei holds its secrets well. If you’re prepared for what we might find to get the closure you seek, maybe even your little bird is waiting, somewhere up on the mountain.”
Ohmacai flicked a glance at the silently attentive Hills, and licked his lips quickly. “Of course nothing can be guaranteed. To get men to spend days and nights on the mountain without returning to their families will be expensive.”
Eisman replied before Hills could interject. “The word ‘expensive’ doesn’t apply here.”
Not to you, Raef, thought Hills. But there are those on the Board who view it differently.
While Eisman could have funded both the trip and the search from his own checkbook, he considered it a matter of principle that this was an unclosed debt the company owed him. If the corporate jet hadn’t been in maintenance, or if its fleet sisters weren’t on the other side of the planet, he’d have flown privately that fateful day and Paige would still be with him.
The company owed him. Their mess. Their cost.
There were two helicopters on the island capable of landing men and equipment at the peak of Nahna Laud. Eisman immediately contracted both of them, their crews, and their support teams on a full-time basis. Thirty locals were hired to make the flight to the top of the mountain and hack their way in half a dozen different directions down to sea level. They were provided with food, camping supplies, modern communications, and instructions to go slow and make an intensive search of the vegetation-choked ravines, fast-flowing streams, and dense rainforest.
Time was unimportant. Cost was unimportant.
Every day Eisman joined the men, hacking through the jungle, working shoulder to shoulder, refusing to rest or eat other than to take essential water. His intensity and capacity for long hours of relentless physical work inspired the locals as much as it frightened them: none dared to disappoint and face this man’s ire. They all saw the madness crackling just beneath the veneer of civility he maintained with a wink and a smile, growing less certain with each passing day. By night he pored over reports from each team he hadn’t been with that day, searching for clues (a scrap of cloth would have been gold), hoping for hints, devouring anything that smacked of the slightest hope, and filling journal pages with hand-drawn illustrations and long blocks of personal musings. It was as though he never slept.
Meanwhile the world-spanning enterprises of Burroughs Labs stumbled forward on inertia, the company headless, critical decisions postponed, vital daily directives added to an ever-mounting pile requiring perusal despite armies of underlings in senior management. Hills received them daily via an Iridium sat-fax, collated them according to importance, and passed them to Eisman. The CEO would scan each one vacantly.
In the absence of clear direction from his boss, Hills was forced to deal as best as possible with the real world, a locale from which he feared his friend and mentor was becoming increasingly isolated.
They were seated on the outdoor patio of the resort’s hillside restaurant. As it often did, dinner consisted of fresh reef fish (broiled tonight), a rice dish (nasi goreng tonight), and local vegetables (pretty much the same every night).
Beyond and below the railing fashioned of local wood, green forest trailed away toward the coast and the sea. Further to the west, the sun was flaunting its usual spectacular sunset. Eisman ate quickly and efficiently, as if his dinner was an impediment rather than a comfort. Hills did not even try to keep up. They were the only diners, the flight crew already having left with the jet that afternoon.
Halfway through the meal the taller, older man glanced at his watch, then turned to his boss feeling he could no longer keep quiet. To do so would be to harm Raef instead of protect him.
“They’ve taken the plane away from you. The Board has.”
Eisman did not even look up from his eating. “Bill, how much money do I have? How many billions?”
Hills considered. “Several,” came the reply.”
The other man nodded once, curtly. “We’ll charter a plane privately when we need to leave. Probably should have done it in the first place.” He smiled slightly. “Gives us more flexibility anyway.”
“As you wish, sir.”
Fork halfway to mouth, Eisman paused. “You know what money is, Bill? A means to an end. Not an end in itself. You can acquire a lot with it. Groupies, power, toys. But not love. It’s an old truism, but a valid one. I love my daughter, Bill.”
“I di—,” Hills caught himself quickly, “I do too, sir.”
Turning to his left, Eisman leaned out over the waist-high railing and looked back toward the central peak of Pohnpei.
“She could still be up there somewhere, hurt but alive, with or without her two little friends. Cushioned by updrafts and the tree canopy. Sheltering in the forest. Surviving on berries and leaves. Maybe it is possible.”
He turned back to his food. “I know it’s something of a pipedream, Bill. But we don’t know what happened to them. Only that it was some kind of anomaly. There was no hole in the plane, no seats fell out, no hatches blew open. Paige, those other two girls, and the two cabin crew nobody talks about just disappeared that day. It defies the laws of physics.” He shrugged. “And where normal rules don’t apply, neither do normal conclusions, Bill. Can you say for certain that I’m wrong?”
Hills studied him. Raef Eisman was a master negotiator, at home among the world’s most powerful businessmen and politicians. He always seemed to know which way to jump, the correct decisions to make. Where others wavered, he moved. When they hesitated, he leaped. But it had been months, and even as Hills supported Eisman, he feared his boss and friend was hoping beyond reason. And he wasn’t alone in the conclusion.
Reaching into a shirt pocket Hills pulled out a piece of paper, unfolded it, and set it on the table between them. “Yesterday’s Financial Times. Syndicated, of course.”
Chewing methodically, Eisman leaned forward to study the image on the paper. “I recognize the cartoonist. Always admired his line. Clean.”
The cartoon showed a wide-eyed unshaven man clad in ragged shirt and shorts squatting on an island beach clutching a parasol fashioned from sticks and palm leaves. Behind him in the distance a ship was sinking stern-first. On the ship was the name Burroughs Labs. As the beachcomber was bald, writing in his name would have been superfluous. Everyone in the business world knew who was being depicted.
Hills crumpled the paper, turned slightly, and arced it into a nearby basket. “It’s not funny, sir. When this sort of thing appears in the tabloids it can be ignored. When it starts showing up in The Times, The Economist, and so forth, it ceases to be amusing.”
As always, Eisman was not in the least impressed. “And has it started to show up?”
Hills pushed the remainder of his dinner aside, his appetite gone. “It’s been ‘showing up’ for weeks now, sir. I just haven’t shown any of it to you. I didn’t want to burden you with such nonsense.”
This time Eisman’s smile was wide, and grateful. “That was good of you, William. What other kinds of nonsense?” When his assistant hesitated, Eisman pressed him. “Come on, Bill. I’m not about to fall to the floor in tears.”
It was Hills’ turn to smile. “I know you’re not, sir.” The smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Op-ed pieces that question your competence. Not just your competence to continue with Burroughs; articles that question your competence in general.” Raising his eyes, he met the unblinking gaze of his friend. “That question your . . . sanity.”
Eisman forked in a piece of fish and chewed thoughtfully. For a long moment he was silent. “And what about you, Bill? Do you think I’m insane or competent?”
Hills chose his words carefully as he stood for his customary evening constitutional walk along the beach. “I would say obsessed rather than mad, sir. They are different.”
Eisman nodded. “Madly obsessed or obsessively mad? The Board is entitled to its own perspective.” He sank into thought.
Hills let him be. Whatever response Raef Eisman concocted it was sure to be precisely thought out and to the point.
As indeed it was. But it was not one that Hills would have anticipated.
“Wire my resignation.” The fork dipped only momentarily before Eisman resumed eating as though he had just given instructions on how his laundry should be done.
Hills gaped at him and sat down again with a heavy thud. “Sir? Resignation?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Eisman was utterly composed. “If the boys and girls on the Board are worried about my mental capacity I am happy to relieve them of that concern. They can pick a new CEO. If they think it better for publicity they can promote me to CEO Emeritus. But as of this moment I am stepping down. I’m sure Burroughs Labs will do just fine without me.”
“It won’t.” Hills spoke with conviction.
“That’s very good of you to say so, Bill. I’ll be happy to consult, if they want me. But as of right now my life is my own.” His voice lowered. “Several billion ought to allow me to conclude my searching in a satisfactory fashion.”
A sudden thought made him look up. “What about you? What will you do?”
Hills took a moment to reflect. He had many years invested with Burroughs. There were stock options to consider, a vested retirement plan, the possibility of additional promotion within. There were friends he would miss. He watched the other man finish his meal. Other friends, yes, but he had never met another individual like Raef Eisman. There were times when the billionaire made no sense to anyone but himself. Yet somehow everything always turned out not only right, but interesting. Even exhilarating.
He made his decision.
“You have other things on your mind, sir. You’re going to need someone to manage your affairs. Look after your daily needs, finances, properties. I would like to apply for the job.”
Eisman eyed him without a glimmer of a smile. “Got references?”
“I can . . .” Hills began. Then he stopped. “Your sense of humor, sir, can oft be disconcerting.”
“Yeah, shut up. You’re hired, Bill. Communicate my resignation to Burroughs, fire yourself, and write up your own contract.”
“Is a contract necessary between us, sir?”
Pushing back his chair, Eisman rose. “Probably not, but no deal is final till the paperwork is signed. Remember: without ink, deals sink.”
The sun was going down, it was getting dark, and the resort’s solar-powered lights would not stay on past a certain hour. Eisman turned to leave. “I still have a couple of reports to review from the mountain crews. See you in the morning.”
“Not in the morning, sir. I’ll head into town first thing to handle this admin. Once London reacts it might be like drinking from a fire hose.”
“Oh, right. For my resignation be concise and be firm.” A last smile. “Be competent.”
“Certainly, sir.”
Hills followed his friend’s departure, glanced again at his wristwatch and made hurriedly for the beach.
Eisman’s funk could not last forever, he knew. This clinging to a wish couched in desperation, this reluctance to accept reality and to let go. It might well linger until poor little Paige’s body or that of one of her friends was found.
As a friend Hills was prepared to stick with her father until that moment came, or until Eisman finally surrendered all hope to the realization that his daughter was well and truly gone and that her fate might never be known.
Eventually the distraught billionaire would return to the real world. At that time should he wish to resume his old position Burroughs would welcome him back. There was no question of that. He had made far too much money for them to refuse his return to the board, and in his morning wire he would remind them of that and suggest they both continue to serve in a consultative capacity rather than cut ties completely. Raef might snap out of it next month, it might be next week. It might even be tomorrow.
Except that tomorrow was when Raef Eisman heard about Nan Madol.
THAT HE HAD BEEN on Pohnpei as long as he had without having been told or learning about the ruins only reaffirmed how focused his attention had been on the search inland.
A series of ninety-two artificial islets, the ancient Nan Madol complex5 had been constructed on the southeastern side of the island and was not visible from the resort. Having heard about the ruins in the course of making periodic runs into the single town of Kolonia, Hills innocently thought taking a day off to visit them would do his boss some good.
Neither he nor Eisman anticipated what they found. Expecting a few crumbling structures formed of hand-gathered coral rubble, they were astonished to find themselves motoring softly along canals between walls of carefully worked and laid basalt that in places towered more than twenty-five feet high. Seabirds hunted the coral shallows while bolder frigates patrolled overhead. Sweat poured down their faces as their guide, wearing as little as possible, guided the open shallow-draft craft between the immense edifices.
“Palaces for nobles, homes for priests, even dwellings for commoners. All built out of prismatic basalt. Construction began more than a thousand years ago.” The boatman turned down another artificial canal. “See that stone there? It is a single piece, twenty feet long and weighing more than fifty tons; carved and shaped like it was butter.”
While Hills gaped in wonder at their surroundings, an initially distracted Eisman remembered snippets from having the late night History Channel playing in the background during countless nights working from home.
“I know how the Egyptians moved such stones, including even larger ones than these, but how could people out here transport them? Across water, no less?”
Hills eyed him uncertainly. “You know how the Egyptians moved stones, sir?”
Eisman blinked as he wiped his face and forehead. “Figure of speech, Bill. I meant to say that I know how the archeologists say it was done. With log rollers and pulleys and leverage.” He gestured at their decidedly un-Egyptian surroundings. “There’s no hard ground here to pull these stones across.” He turned back to their guide. “So how did they do it?”
Turning down yet another canal, the guide smiled. “One legend says that a powerful sorcerer’s black magic was responsible. He flew the stones here from the quarries. Another legend says the Skypeople built a palace on Earth here to teach and rule from their ‘reef of heaven’. If you believe such tales, this city was once a gateway to the gods. The origin of such stories has been lost to us today.”
Raef shifted in his seat. “A gateway you say? Here on the ground?”
Their guide smiled wanly as he steered the boat. “On the ground, yes. And straight up through the air. A pillar of light, they said, right into the dark heart of heaven.”
Hills grunted. “It’s the same story one hears for every megalith. Not just Egypt, but India, Africa, Mexico, and of course Britain. These sky people and magicians sure do get around.”
Eisman nodded slowly. “But if we discount the legends and believe that tribal elders commissioned the work, all those sites you refer to, Bill, are located on soil capable of supporting log rollers and the weight of the great stones.” He gestured at their surroundings. “This is all water out here.” Already he was running calculations in his head. “Could local Micronesians of a thousand years ago build rafts capable of floating fifty-ton stones around an island subject to heavy wave action and daily tides?”
“Well they certainly weren’t flown here,” Hills huffed. Immediately after he had voiced the objection he hastened to face the guide. “Meaning no disrespect to your traditions, of course.”
The boatman grinned. “I watch television, I read the news. I am not an ignorant man, visitor William. I can guide tourists in German and Japanese as well as English. You will not catch me talking seriously about giant flying pillars of stone and doorways to heaven. But you must admit it makes a wonderful story.”
Relieved that he had not offended, Hills smiled back. “So this was basically a center for politics and religion. Like most ancient cities. Given how isolated it is, there would have been little commerce with outsiders, I guess. Too far to trade with the next ‘civilization’, at Kosrae.”
The guide nodded. “Some ruins there as well, but not like this.” Using the hand that was not manipulating the tiller he indicated their cyclopean surroundings. “There is nothing in all the world like Nan Madol. Yet few people have heard of it because it lies in Pohnpei, and Pohnpei lies in the middle of nowhere.”
They cruised among the ruins in silence for a while before the guide spoke again. When he did, it was to address Eisman with genuine empathy in his voice.
“I know about the search for your missing daughter, visitor Raef. Everyone on the island does. My brother and two of his cousins are part of your search parties.”
“Thank you for your understanding,” Eisman told him quietly. “And for the hospitality that has been shown to us by your friends and families.”
The guide turned wistful.
“My aunt lost my nephew many years ago. He was fishing beyond the reef with two friends when a storm came around the island. It was a very strange storm, one of those where the clouds seem to hug the ocean instead of the sky and sneak up behind the mountain. It caught them and capsized their boat. The two friends were stronger swimmers and made it back safely, but not my nephew. He was with them until they crossed the reef using the surge; then they never saw him again. They think maybe he hit his head coming over the reef top, but no one knows. They never found his body . . .” He paused before finally adding, “. . . either.”
It took Hills a moment to recognize that the guide was not being presumptuous. Micronesians were open and forthcoming. In his fashion, the man was only trying to show sympathy for Eisman’s position and understanding for his pain.
“What will you do, visitor Raef, when the search teams reach the sea and there is no more island to search?”
The billionaire responded immediately. “I’ve already thought of that. I’m going to hire every man or woman on the island with access to scuba gear and have them comb the reef system. If Paige and the other two girls ended up in the ocean they might have been swept inshore, their clothes pinned among the coral. But only their clothes . . .” Choking up, he broke off before he could finish the thought.
“Very long, very expensive,” the guide murmured. With Eisman unable to reply, Hills filled in.
“Mr. Eisman has hired people to search the land. He will hire people to search the sea.”
“And then?” wondered the guide with disarming directness. He stared at Eisman. So did Hills, who had for many days put off asking exactly that question.
Aware of their eyes on him, Eisman looked back from the front of the small boat. “Then? We’ll start over. Every year there are three hundred and sixty five fresh starts, new opportunities to do what you could not do the day before. The mountain search teams will begin again and take different routes downslope. It’s a big island, Bill. If the primitives of Nan Madol didn’t give up their quest to build a city on water with stone tools, we won’t give up our quest using modern ones.” Though determined as ever, there was a crack in Eisman’s voice. Hills nodded knowingly.
“Of course we will, Raef. Of course we will.” Turning away from the other men, he once more turned his gaze and attention to their impossible, overawing surroundings, feeling their weight somehow pressing down on him as he realized the fleeting visit to this island might turn into fulltime residency.
Forcibly he shifted his mindset. “There’s still plenty of daylight left and the day’s faxes won’t be in yet anyway. We may as well stay out here and finish the tour.” He eyed the guide. “What else can you tell us about Nan Madol?”
Relieved that the conversation had turned back to familiar ground, the guide resumed his well-rehearsed narrative as they prepared to disembark at one of the artificial islands.
“Though construction of Nan Madol probably began in the eighth or ninth century AD, the raising of these great stone walls and platforms is considered to have started around twelve hundred in the time of Columbus and the great Chinese fleets of the day.”
With a muted crunching sound the boat grounded on solid, ancient stone.
“Incidentally, the name Nan Madol means ‘the spaces between’ . . .”
“Spaces between what?” asked Raef, wiping the sheen from his head. But all their guide gave him was a chin thrust to the sky and a knowing smile as he hauled them ashore.
