Echoes of Worlds Past

by Nicholas Read

  “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, M
r. 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.