Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences

by Pip Ballantine

  “Well,” Barry called over the rain hammering against his oilskin coat and soaking his hair, “see that smoke there?”

  Lachlan squinted. “What about it?”

  “That’s meant to be steam.”

  “That’s bad, I trust.”

  “I’d say so, sir, yes.”

  “Not a good place to break down, lad.” He cast his eye over the ranges, shrouded in mists that were older than the hills, older than time. The primordial long white cloud.

  “Leave it with me.” Barry threw Lachlan what could, under the circumstances, only be described as a jaunty wave. “You know where the lever is if you need it.”

  As the clankerton trudged around the tractor with his toolbox in hand, Lachlan tugged the hatch shut, comforted only slightly by its hollow metal clang. He might have been encased in iron, but that didn’t mean to say the warriors of Ngai Tohai couldn’t drag him out into the mud and carve out his heart, or whatever it was they did to their prisoners.

  But he needed the Ngai Tohai, however absurd an idea that was, to help him track down Frances Ascot and bring back what he had stolen. It would not serve him well to continue thinking of them as the enemy.

  He listened to Barry, clanging and whistling away in the mud, a colonial farm boy as happy as a pig in muck. Lachlan could think of nowhere worse to be.

  Other than his father’s house, he groused silently. But how long before the old man was no longer around?

  Unconsciously, he patted his breast pocket. He had read the letter from London so many times he knew every word by heart, yet still he wondered if it could be real. So the old man’s sickness had finally caught up with him, and he probably wouldn’t last out the London winter. Meanwhile, the Ministry had a position free for Lachlan King in the office when he was ready to return. England, her cool rains in the summer and the comfort of soft snows blanketing the hedgerows in winter. How he missed her white cliffs, her lilting songs. England, a world away, where he belonged.

  Nevertheless, it was somewhat disturbing to have people in high places keen on your every dark blasted secret. If the Ministry knew of the schism within the King family, what else did they know? Maybe, he thought ruefully, it’s not that I belong in England. Maybe it’s that I belong to England, or to her eyes and ears, at the very least.

  A sudden rapping on the hansom startled Lachlan, and he cranked open the hatch. “All done, Ferguson?”

  “Ah, that might have to wait,” Barry said. “If you’d be so good as to pull the lever, sir...”

  Dark indistinct figures were emerging from the punga trees, weapons of carved wood and stone held low. “Oh,” Lachlan said. “I see.” He wrenched the lever.

  “There’s a good chap,” Barry quipped as he hauled himself up and began tugging on handles and dials.

  Metal slid and slammed around them as air lines hissed. The hansom walls shifted, opening slits wide enough for a pistol, while a set of gears on the back of the hansom cranked and a telescopic handle-set and eyepiece dropped in front of Lachlan. Polished brass grips and guards fitted smoothly into his palms, his fingertips resting lightly on triggers. He peered into the periscope as his chair craned up, allowing him to swing the entire contraption and look, as it were, down the barrels of the twin machine-cannons now bristling from the top of their battle-tractor.

  However, he was not here to start a war. There was plenty of that going on already. He was a gentleman, and would not fire the first shot. He would not use the Empire’s hot lead to cut down men armed only with sticks and stones unless he had absolutely no other choice. His family had been knights, not so very long ago. Lachlan King knew a thing or two about honour. He swung left and right, searching. Bodies slipped between the trees, coming ever closer.

  “Dammit! Stupid army clankerton hardware!”

  Barry’s words were followed by the sudden heavy squelching of his boots slurping through mud.

  “Ferguson? Get back in the tractor, lad! They’ll tear you to shreds!”

  Lachlan swung the cannon mechanism in wild arcs, trying to get a view of the track, but the machine did not swing that low. It would be folly to think he could wait for the enemy to come to him. By the time they reached the tractor, the guns wouldn’t be able to turn to face them.

  Then he saw Barry. Like a farm boy who has never seen war, the lad was trudging out through the mud towards the enemy, nary a weapon upon his person, waving his hands over his head, and shouting.

  “Ferguson?” Lachlan muttered. “What the blazes are you doing?”

  This became clear moments later, as Ngai Tohai warriors flowed from the trees and pushed the boy to the ground.

  Barry Ferguson was surrendering.

  With his hands over his head, and with consequent awkwardness, Lachlan pushed open the hansom door and climbed down. His feet sank into the muck, sucking at his boots as he stepped away from the battle-tractor.

  Around him, several wide-eyed Maori warriors stalked closer, knees extended, tongues tasting the air, weapons shivering in their hands—long heartwood taiaha and carved stone patu. More men knelt among the trees, black iron muskets poised. Barry was being hustled back towards him, the lad’s grimy hands held above his head, that indefatigable grin plastering his muddy features.

  “Surrendering to the enemy isn’t exactly Ministry protocol, lad.”

  “Better this way, sir. It’s not the Maori way to kill non-combatants out of hand. Mind you, if we’d tried fighting them we might be dead by now.”

  “So, you just saved my life?”

  Barry shrugged. “Sorry, sir. I’ll try not to make a habit of it.”

  “Never mind.” He sighed, his attention turning from the circling warriors to a figure approaching from the treeline. “Good day!” Lachlan called, trying to coax some good humour to his voice. If they were to be prisoners, they may as well try to get off to a friendly start with their captors.

  The approaching man paused, inspecting the pakeha. White hair sprang from beneath his battered bowler hat, his face a pitted landscape lined with the dark tracing of many moko. He might be fifty years old or ninety, for all Lachlan could tell. He walked with care, as if he fancied the preponderance of making the prisoners wait. Only a mischievous twitching at the edges of his thin lips hinted that the old man might be making a game of what was, in Lachlan’s view, a most serious business.

  However, Lachlan was not here to dally. He was on the trail of a dangerous criminal. In all the flurry of failing engines and enemy advances, he had not lost sight of his mission. Stopping short of the muddy track the old man looked them over, his eyes twinkling. The rain streamed in small, shifting cascades off the rim of his hat, and rolled away down his feather cloak. Lachlan resisted the urge to wipe streaming rivulets from his own face.

  “Aue,” said the old man, eyes roving over the battle tractor, its twin machine-cannons hanging limp over the hansom. “What do you call this, then?”

  “It’s a Massey York-Class tractor, modified by the British Army for all-terrain field operations,” Barry jumped in, complete with predictable enthusiasm, an equally predictable lack of tact, and a complete absence of understanding over the imminent danger. “But put me in a room with the guy who designed this piece of junk and I’ll teach him a thing or two about how to build a tractor. Needs a secondary low torque gearset for starters, and maybe a cooler fuel source, or else the propane regulator overheats when you lose traction. Especially with all that extra weight on the back.” Ferguson jerked a thumb at the cannons and their steel-plated armatures while the old man stared at him intently. “Mind you, firing the boiler with propane has its advantages—saves us hauling a trailer of coal around, you know.”

  “Thank, you Mister Ferguson,” Lachlan forced through gritted teeth. “‘It’s a tractor’ would have sufficed.”

  The elder glanced to Lachlan, then back to Barry. “So you can make it go?”

  “I’ve got some ideas,” returned Barry.

  Lachlan huffed. “But wi
thout tools and a workshop—”

  “Actually sir—”

  The elder held up a hand for silence. “You, your name?”

  Lachlan straightened. “I am Lachlan King, here on the Queen’s business—”

  “You are a king?”

  “What?” Lachlan shook his head. “No, you misunderstand.”

  The elder grinned, showing that he did not in the least bit misunderstand. “Then you must come meet our rangatira, our king, certainly? Whoever thought a king of the pakeha would come to our humble forests, riding a tractor?”

  “No, no I—”

  “He will stay here and fix the machine. It is a suitable gift, from one king to another.” Without another word, the tohunga turned towards the trees. Before Lachlan could protest, two men grappled his arms and propelled him after the elder.

  “Ferguson!”

  “Don’t mind me, sir,” Barry replied, “I’ve got this covered!”

  Lachlan twisted around, trying his best to express to the boy by eye contact alone that he needed to escape and get help, even though he knew that help would never arrive in time to save him from the Ngai Tohai.

  But just before he was spun about and forced into the bush, Lachlan was most certain that the lad winked.

  “You ought to know that this will not be viewed well by the Governor,” Lachlan said over the old man’s shoulder as bristly punga trunks gave way to lean rimu and mighty totara. Somewhere ahead, Lachlan could hear a dull roar, as of a waterfall. “I am the Queen’s servant, and your people have signed a treaty.”

  The elder chortled. “Not all of us signed that treaty of yours. We are not all like fish to the hook. We read both papers, the English and the Maori. We saw that they don’t say the same thing. I think there’s a word for that.”

  Lachlan bit his lip. “We have not come here to dispute treaties. We are on the trail of a dangerous criminal, a thief, who has stolen something very important and valuable from the government. He fled this way. We have come to Ngai Tohai not as enemies but seeking your aid, as you are most certainly the ones who will know the area, and can maybe help us locate where he is hiding.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but it would serve well enough. “He ought not be hard to find. He is pakeha, like me, only younger and his hair is different, red with grey through it. So he will certainly have been noticed if he came this way.”

  “His name, e hoa, what’s his name?”

  “Frances Ascot, but he is known as Frankie, the rare times he is seen in the city.”

  The old man stopped and turned back to Lachlan. “Frankie?” He grinned, a grin of secrets. “Kapai.” For the first time, he seemed to study Lachlan, up and down. “This is no way for a king to dress. Here, we make a trade, ae?” He gestured at the agent’s oilskin coat as he untied the feather cloak from his shoulders.

  Lachlan wasn’t holding any cards, so if playing up to the old man’s eccentricity was what it was going to take to survive, then he’d go along with it. He shed his coat and assented to one of the warriors tying the feather cloak at his neck.

  The old man slipped Lachlan’s coat on and held out his arms, apparently amused by how it felt on his thin shoulders. He caught Lachlan’s eye and nodded at the cloak. “This is a great honour, you know. Worthy of a king.”

  “Can you help me find Frank?”

  The elder turned and continued into the bush.

  “This Frank must have stolen something very precious that the Queen would send two white men in a tractor after him. What was it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It was to be sent to London, and the Queen will be most displeased if it is not delivered to her.”

  “Mister King, I think you think you know a lot about people, about our people, but I think you actually know very little. Do you know our legends? What do you know of Maui?”

  “Maui was a hero, one of the greatest—”

  “Maui was a thief, Mister King. And a hero, but first a thief. Maui stole fire from the underworld, among other things. Do you understand?”

  “I—” Lachlan was finding himself at a loss for words far too often today. Why could they not have sent an Æthnographer with him on this mission? “You may need to explain.”

  His pride when he swallowed it was rather more bitter than expected.

  The old man shrugged. “Maui wove ropes of flax to slow the sun as it raced across the sky. He carved a hook and with it he pulled this land from the sea. It was a fish, Te Ika a Maui. He and his brothers roamed across its mighty sides and cut it with their patu, carving rivers and lakes.”

  “No man could bring in a fish as vast as this entire island,” Lachlan scoffed. “Even for a creation myth, that’s simply not logical. There wouldn’t be line enough, or strength enough, or a fishhook big enough...”

  Then the bush opened up, revealing a lush river valley wreathed in mist. Lachlan forgot the conversation as his eyes turned up towards the bright lance of water that streamed from a hole in the cliff-face far above. It was high, higher than the cloud and the clinging mists, a wound in the ramparts of the mountain, upon slopes where the sun yet burned, up above the mist that rolled around them and the shadows between the trees, in a place where the river shone in the sky.

  “In some places,” the elder said softly, “we can still see the fish bleed.”

  Lachlan King was a practical man, but for a moment the sight of the mighty cataract overawed his habitual urge to scorn the myths of savages.

  “Things are what they need to be,” the elder said. “Sometimes, men must be bigger than they know, to do what must be done. It is only the world’s rules which try to tell us otherwise. Maui had no care for such rules. Maui did not belong to this world.”

  Then the old man stepped down into the mist, and was gone.

  Barry Ferguson had long since given up on the prospect of making small talk with the Maori warriors guarding over him. He worked quickly and carefully, resting tools and pipes and valves and bolts and gaskets on the metal wheels and running boards as he went, careful not to let his equipment get too dirty. The rain had eased but the mud would be an issue for days.

  Too much weight and not enough torque was the problem. Barry didn’t have the machinery on hand to rebuild the burnt-out gearbox, but he hoped he knew enough about basic physics to get around the pesky mechanics of gravity and friction. It was, he reflected, rather fortunate that those army boys insisted on hauling so much useless junk about the place with them in the lockers at the back of the tractor.

  Redistributing the gas lines would be easy enough, but he was not looking forward to stitching all that tent canvas together. He hated sewing.

  Lachlan edged forward, finding in the fog a surface of timber beneath his feet, and taut ropes in his hands, stretching out to either side of the narrow swing-bridge hidden in the waterfall’s spray. Lachlan stepped onto the bridge as it swayed slick beneath him, the flax ropes’ smooth weave slippery in his grasp.

  He considered what he had established so far which was, he deduced, that the old man knew Frank Ascot—knew him well indeed—and that the elder had either guessed or already knew exactly what the navy deserter had taken from the safety of Auckland’s Bankhouse, and that he was quite pleased with how things were developing. Ascot was a bushman, a British Navy deserter who had fled his vessel for the forests and kainga of the Maori, adopting the culture of any tribe willing to take him in. In return for this sanctuary, a pakeha among the Maori might sometimes return to the city streets where he could blend in, do things and go places that the Maori could not; though why anyone would want to live like this, in the cold and the damp and the mud, not a teapot in sight, was quite beyond Lachlan King.

  It stood to reason, then, that the tohunga would be Ascot’s ally in the Bankhouse theft, and would be unwilling to give him up. Lachlan’s options were running thin, and demanded another tactic. If the old man wished to play games, then Lachlan could play games too. He had been playing them for a long time.

  Yet, despit
e himself, Lachlan could not help but feel a grudging and somewhat ironic respect for his quarry. Ascot had found a place where he could fit in. A place where he was respected. Lachlan had run too, long ago, but had never found that place where he could simply be, could just belong. He may have fled his father’s rod, but Lachlan was a man like any other, made of little more than blood and fog, and was not so difficult to bend with words, be they threats or orders. Frances Ascot was a free man, in ways Lachlan King had never been, could never be.

  Across the river and its mists the tohunga waited, an unfathomable, secret smile on his lips. “Haere mai. Best we don’t keep the rangatira waiting all day.”

  The track began to climb steeply up the side of the cliff and they ascended, up and up, as the waterfall came down, the mists embracing them as Papatuanuku would take her powerful children into her arms.

  Dusk was settling over the riverbank by the time Barry had everything in place. It was by no means perfect; in fact it was downright rough, but with any luck it ought to work. Maybe not well, but hopefully well enough.

  The warriors milled about, keeping a safe distance from “te pakeha porangi” —the crazy pakeha—as he had heard some of them mutter. Clambering over discarded metal plates and pipes, he pulled himself into the gunner’s seat, which now hung over the control gears, the driver’s seat tossed aside. The machine-cannons swung behind him on the denuded platform that had once been their hansom. To either side pipes bent upwards past his shoulders from the air-and gas-tanks bolted underneath, thrusting into the mouth of a huge canvas bladder which looked suspiciously like several army-issue field tents all sewn together with thick hemp. Four tent-poles held the bladder’s mouth aloft while its remaining bulk lay spread out across the mud, draped up on the scrubby manuka bushes alongside the track.

  “Righto,” Barry muttered. “Time to kick it in the guts.”