Maori

by Alan Dean Foster

  They were in the vanguard as the first vehicles pulled out onto the muddy road. Wagons and coaches strung out behind them while individual riders pushed on ahead.

  They expected to pass scenes of devastation, but the enormity of the destruction far exceeded the worst anyone could imagine.

  Within six miles of the lake everything had been destroyed. Herds of dust and mud-covered cattle wandered aimlessly through muddy fields searching for something to eat. Carcasses had already begun to litter the landscape. Of the native wildlife there was nothing to be seen: not a lizard, not a bird, not even insects.

  Closer to Tarawera even the forests had been blasted from their hillsides. Every bush, every tree had been flattened by mud or ripped from the earth by the hurricane-force wind. They rode past clumps of earth clinging to upturned tree roots ten feet and more across.

  “The world has died here,” Valerie whispered. “There is nothing left.”

  “There has to be.” Coffin grimly urged the horses to greater speed. “People aren’t animals. They wouldn’t be caught out in the open.”

  “It does not matter, Andrew. Even the forest is dead. The land has been stripped bare.”

  She was wrong. There were survivors. Not as many as had been hoped for, nor as few as had been feared.

  A number had taken shelter in guide Sophia’s house, whose sharply angled walls shed mud and ash much better than the European buildings. She had kept her charges together during the ashfall when many had wished to flee. Thanks to her obstinacy they had survived, for if they had run outside the mud and dust would surely have overwhelmed them.

  In some places the mud was so deep only the tops of fences remained visible. Rats and mice could be seen skittering around the ruins. Birds hopped blindly, their eyelids glued shut by drying mud.

  The Terraces Hotel still stood, battered and crushed as if by a tsunami. McRae’s had been completely obliterated. They were focal points for the rescue work which was already under way. Survivors were being given food and drink, clean clothes, and blankets.

  As soon as the carriage had been unloaded, Andrew headed west along the altered lakeshore. “We’ve got to get up to the house.” Valerie said nothing, watching him silently.

  Road signs barely peeped above the mud. Remnants of the great dust cloud continued to sift down around them.

  As they topped the last rise Andrew had to force down the lump rising in his throat. The vast, magical house in which he’d spent most of his life was completely gone. Nothing remained but a pile of broken, muddy lumber and a mass of rock where the main fireplace had stood. The neat picket fence which his mother had tended as zealously as any Crusader’s fortress wall lay buried beneath six feet of mud and ash.

  “I am sorry, Andrew.” He felt Valerie’s hand on his arm as he stared at the ruins.

  “It’s all right, Val. It’s just, I expected something to be left.”

  As he stepped down from the carriage his feet sank several inches into the still cooling mud. The deep ruts left by the vehicle formed a pair of parallel lines leading back toward town, a trail other rescuers could follow. Not that there was anyone left here to rescue.

  That didn’t stop him from removing a shovel from the back of the carriage and fighting through the muck toward the site of the house.

  Valerie watched him dig until both the sunlight and his strength gave out. Then she tenderly wiped his face clean and drove the carriage back to Te Wairoa. In the fading light of evening they noticed that Tarawera itself had been changed by the eruption. A giant had taken his own shovel and scooped out a great gap in the side of the mountain.

  By morning rescue efforts were in high gear. They were finishing a simple but satisfying breakfast when Andrew spotted Alfred Warbrick. He and Andrew had been casual friends for several years, not only because they were about the same age but because Warbrick too was half Maori and half European.

  “Took a boat across the lake,” Warbrick told them.

  “That took courage,” Valerie said admiringly.

  Warbrick shrugged. “Had no choice. I had relatives at Moura.”

  “Any luck?” Andrew asked hopefully.

  Warbrick wasn’t smiling beneath his huge, curly mustache. “The whole town’s gone. Must be five feet of mud over everything. You remember the karaka forest?” Andrew nodded. “It’s floating in the lake, every last tree.”

  “What about Te Ariki?”

  Warbrick laughed bitterly. “The mud there must be hundreds of feet thick. You wouldn’t believe it unless you saw it.”

  “Oh, I’d believe it, all right.”

  “We tried to make it over to Rotomahana. It isn’t there anymore.”

  Rotomahana was a good-sized lake, not as large as Tarawera but a mile across in places. The image of it Andrew had carried with him most of his life didn’t square with Warbrick’s comment.

  “What do you mean, it ‘isn’t there’?”

  “It’s gone. Blown dry,” said Warbrick tiredly. “The bottom’s just mud and steaming craters. All the water’s gone. We couldn’t get any farther. No telling what it’s like on the other side. If you’ll excuse me.” He tipped his hat toward Valerie. “I’ve got work to do.”

  Andrew nodded, turned back to her. “I knew some people at. Te Ariki. It wasn’t a big village. Maybe fifty people. All dead now.”

  “Come, Andrew. Our help is needed.”

  While they worked word came trickling in from other rescue parties. The Pink and White Terraces, the loudly proclaimed eighth wonder of the world, had vanished. Whether buried or blown to bits no one knew for sure. Of the one hundred and fifty houses at Te Wairoa, only two remained standing.

  “What are we going to do now, Andrew?” Valerie asked him as they ate lunch.

  “We’ll stay here and help until we aren’t needed anymore,” he decided. “Then we’ll go to Tauranga and take ship to Auckland. Elias Goldman must be told what’s happened here. He’s going to need my help, and we’ll surely need his.” He took a bite of an apple, chewed reflectively. “It’s funny.”

  “What is?”

  “I never thought I’d have to work at the business. Now it seems I’ve no choice. With Father gone I’m the only one who can make certain decisions, sign certain papers. He would’ve been pleased.”

  “I know he would,” she said comfortingly.

  Other rescue workers and survivors ate around them. The despair of the previous day had given way to animated discussion, to purpose and activity. Life of a sort had returned to the shores of Lake Tarawera.

  “I want to go back to the house tomorrow,” Andrew murmured. “Maybe with some help. I want them to have,” he surprised himself by choking on the words, “a proper burial.”

  “Of course.” She hesitated a moment, then added, “You will not mind if I engage a tohunga to say the right Maori words?”

  He smiled. “That would only be right.”

  As no one had yet claimed the hotel carriage he felt comfortable using it to transport a group of men to the site. They set to work with picks and shovels, the work going much faster now that he had help.

  They found Merita first. At the digger’s cry Andrew came running, but when he was close enough to see the condition of the body he pivoted and walked away to resume digging elsewhere. Others gently removed the broken form and slipped it into the large sack that had been brought for that purpose. Andrew preferred to remember his mother as she had been: regal, full of life, laughing and supremely beautiful. Not crushed and battered by falling debris and the collapsing house.

  He was beginning to despair of ever finding his father when the diggers let out their third shout of the afternoon. This time Valerie joined them.

  Andrew bent to help remove the heavy timber and shattered chunks of plaster which had once formed part of the ground floor ceiling. It was only then that the burly digger close to the body cried out.

  “Good God! It’s still warm.”

  “Here, let me!” Andrew fell on
his knees to put an ear against the massive chest. He looked up in astonishment. “His heart’s still beating! Let’s get him out of here.”

  The men worked frenziedly, shards of wood and plaster flying in all directions. When they had the body freed they lifted it carefully and carried it to the waiting carriage. It was all Andrew could do to maintain a steady pace and not spur the horses to a wild gallop as he drove back to the refugee camp.

  One of the doctors, who’d ridden out from Rotorua to help, examined his new patient and hastily ordered the comatose elder Coffin transferred immediately to the hospital. Andrew would have accompanied the makeshift ambulance except that much remained to be done at Te Wairoa. Every available hand was needed to’ assist the living. The doctor assured him there was nothing he could do and warned him it was quite possible that even should his father survive his injuries, he might never regain consciousness. Andrew struggled with himself, finally went to Valerie for advice.

  “Stay awhile longer here,” she urged him. “I have relatives missing also. We can go back in a few days, when things here are under control. Perhaps at that time the doctors at the hospital will have better news.”

  He considered. “You’re right. There are others here who need our help.” He turned to follow the hospital wagon as it crawled out of town up the muddy road leading to Rotorua. “I can’t do anything for him now. He’ll make it without me, I think. The old man’s too tough to die.”

  11

  They were digging in another part of the village on the fourth day after the eruption when a series of piercing screams drew the attention of everyone working in the vicinity. Andrew put up his shovel and Valerie moved to his side.

  As they stared, four Maori workmen came running madly from the buried outskirts of the town. Andrew intercepted the last of them. The man was breathing erratically and his eyes were wild.

  “What’s going on over there?” Andrew nodded in the direction the men had been working. “Get ahold of yourself, man!”

  “He—he’s still alive,” the terrified man gasped. “The old devil is still alive. Let me go, let me go!” He was looking over his shoulder as if all the hounds of Hell were close on his heels.

  Andrew held on. “What are you mumbling about? Who’s still alive?”

  “Let me go!” The man tore his shirt as he stumbled off after his friends.

  Andrew watched him run, then picked up his own shovel. “Stay here,” he ordered Valerie.

  She shook her head. “You have tried that before. It will not work with me now either.” She hefted her own, smaller spade.

  Several other men had been drawn by the shouting. As they marched toward the site Doctor Chambers joined them. All Europeans, Andrew noted. By this time there wasn’t a Maori to be seen—not counting Valerie and himself, of course.

  They found another man leaning over the recently excavated pit. He was talking in a concerned voice, directing his words into the hole. “Come now, sir. You must climb out of there. We only want to help you.”

  “Go away and leave me alone.” The sepulchral response did not seem to come from a human throat. “The world has died here. I do not want to have to see it.”

  “You must come out.” The workman looked pained. “You can’t stay down there.”

  “I will not come out.”

  The man stood, shaking his head as Chambers, Andrew, Valerie and two other men gathered around him.

  “Has he been down there all this time?” Andrew inquired incredulously.

  “I expect so.” The digger nodded in the direction taken by the now departed Maori workers. “A couple of the fellows were digging this hole when they heard a voice and realized there was somebody alive down there. When they figured out who it was they just took off.”

  A disbelieving Chambers was staring at the excavation. “This place has been buried for four days. No food, no water—no air. Nobody could live through that.”

  The digger was not put off. “It seems somebody has, sir.”

  Chambers knelt and cupped his hands to his mouth as he shouted into the pit. “Look here, friend. If you’ll come out of there we’ll get some hot food into you, give you a drink and fix you up so that you’ll be all right. We can’t do anything for you if you stay where you are.”

  “I will be all right.” The voice was insistent.

  “Let me try.” Chambers stepped aside so Andrew could take his place. “You must come out, sir!” he said in Maori. “It’s not right to live in a hole like a rat. You’re a man, not a rat.”

  This time there was only silence from below. Rising, Andrew saw that Chambers and the others were looking at him expectantly. Instead of speaking, he hefted his shovel and began to dig. They fell to with him, the dirt flying silently, Valerie helping where she was able.

  They soon uncovered the front wall and door of a buried whare. The house had lain sealed under ten feet of mud. As the open entryway was cleared Andrew could see far enough inside to make out a hunched-over, motionless figure. Long bony arms were crossed in front of folded legs. At first he thought he was looking at a dead man. Then the head lifted to peer at him.

  “I know you,” an aged but strong voice declared calmly.

  “And I know you.” Andrew leaned in. “I’m sure of it. Yes! Valerie and I were bathing in a hot pool when you surprised us. You told us,” his voice momentarily failed him as he remembered, “you told us that this whole country was going to be overturned. That was the word you used. Overturned.”

  The man who’d been buried alive did not smile. “What the gods willed.”

  “Please, come out. You can’t stay here.” Andrew glanced back, then leaned in as far as he could and whispered. “The pakehas won’t let you stay. They’ll come down and drag you out.”

  The oldster looked away from him. He sighed deeply, then unfolded himself. On hands and knees he crawled from his house, putting an end to his four-day entombment. He needed help to climb out of the hole, but once on the surface he stood without assistance, blinking at the sky he had not seen for a hundred and four hours.

  He was an impressive sight as he turned a slow circle, surveying his land. Andrew was the tallest of his rescuers, and the old man overtopped him by four inches. Silently he examined the devastated terrain, the ruined hillsides, the annihilated town.

  “As I foretold,” he murmured.

  Valerie had recognized him immediately. Now she moved close. “There has been talk in the village. Some blame you for the disaster.”

  Tuhoto looked down at her, shaking his head sadly. “I tried to warn them. I tried to warn them all. But they would not listen. Naturally some would blame me. In their own way the Maori are as ignorant as the pakeha.”

  Chambers had produced the thermos he carried with him. He offered the old man a cup of warm milk. “Here you are, friend. This’ll make you feel better.”

  Tuhoto shook his head imperiously. “I eat nothing but potatoes and water.”

  “But you must have some real food! You’ve had nothing to eat for four days down there.” Chambers was about to add that the old man had also had nothing to breathe, but could not make himself say the words. He was trying to cope with a living impossibility.

  “I have six gods. I am one hundred and four years old. I will not die.”

  Chambers poured the milk back into his thermos. “Very well. But you must go to the hospital at Rotorua for a checkup. All the survivors are going. As a doctor I must insist upon that much.”

  “I will not go,” said Tuhoto obstinately. “I do not need pakeha medicines. They would be bad for me.”

  Chambers sighed. “Look here, old fellow. You must go. If not for your own good then for mine. Don’t you see? If word got about that I’d let someone in your condition go wandering off as he pleased without at least having him examined, it would be professionally embarrassing for me.”

  Tuhoto was not impressed. “I have six gods.” He looked down at Andrew. “What of your father and mother?”


  “My mother’s dead. I think she was killed when the house collapsed on her. My father is, well, he’s still alive, but barely.”

  There was a flicker of interest in the old tohunga’s eyes. “I have known your father for a long time. I would see him.”

  “They took him to Rotorua in the hospital wagon.”

  Tuhoto considered, then turned back to Chambers. “I will do as you ask. I will go to the white man’s hospital. But not for the white man’s medicine. I will go to see my friend.”

  “Fine,” said a relieved Chambers, “so long as you go. You can come along with me if you wish. I’ll be heading back that way myself shortly.”

  Tuhoto nodded, then turned back to Andrew and Valerie. “How is it with you?”

  “We’ll be all right, sir.” Andrew put his arm around Val’s shoulders, hugging her close.

  “That is good.” Exhibiting no ill effects from his four-day interment, he turned and strode off in the direction of the refugee camp.

  “Wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with me own eyes,” muttered one of the other men.

  “The human body is capable of extraordinary accomplishments when under extreme stress,” said Chambers.

  Andrew and Valerie did not comment. They knew that the old man had survived because he was a tohunga, maybe the greatest of all the tohungas. Certainly he was the most remarkable person either of them had ever encountered. Modern medicine had accomplished much, Andrew knew, but the wise pakehas did not know everything. Not yet.

  Valerie was looking up at him. “What did he mean, that he was a friend of your father? I never saw him around here before that night at the pool.”

  “Nor did I, not even when I was a boy.” He shrugged. “My father had friends scattered all over the country. He traveled many places without mother and myself. It doesn’t surprise me that he had an old tohunga for a friend, along with captains of industry and princes of commerce.”