As they hear the others approach, Tori gets to his feet. The cool air fills the warm void he has left behind. She watches him as he walks away, feeling a lightness of being that she has almost forgotten.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
As winter approaches, the days are noticeably shorter and the sun has barely risen when Frances arrives at the office. Theo has asked her to come in early as time is running out to finish testing the mountain’s warning system in time for the skiing season.
He has beaten her there by half an hour and is sitting at his desk playing with some new equipment, a look of annoyance creeping across his face.
‘Here’s that gear we’ve been waiting for. It’s supposed to help us detect any seepage in the tephra dam. When you’re up there today you and Sam can try and make some more measurements so we can feed it back to the IT people for a computer modelling system.’
She notices he seemed tired and lacking his usual energy.
‘Is everything OK?’
‘Sure, just feeling the political pressure at the moment.’ Looking up at her he adds, ‘Not your worry. How are things with you? I’m sorry I’ve been a bit preoccupied and have probably neglected you. Are you settling in all right?’
Frances tells Theo about her visit to the sacred springs with Tori. ‘I understand the Maori philosophy better now. They seem to have much more trust in the future than we do. It’s hard to reconcile sometimes when I’m used to wanting control. I want to use science to prevent more disasters but I have to respect their point of view.’
Theo looks at her thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I had to struggle with a lot of those conflicts too. I’m still getting leaned on to ignore Maori wishes and blast the dam, but I’m trying to keep them at bay. That’s why it’s so important to have the warning system working as well as possible.’
She is just about to mention seeing Sam with Carmody when Sam emerges from a back office, where he has been packing the gear for that day’s trip up the mountain. Sam glances at her in a half-hearted greeting. Frances isn’t relishing the hours ahead. Things have been a little tense between them and she wishes Theo was coming.
As a safety measure, they check the signals beaming back from the summit and two other spots on the slopes where they have placed the microphones, seismometers and barometers. Frances points to the steadily moving graph on the computer screen and the printout from the previous twelve hours.
‘Look, there have been some small tremors around the mountain. But I don’t think they’re anything to worry about.’ She checks the second monitor with the printout of the sound waves from deep inside the volcano. ‘It’s like listening to it belching,’ she says. ‘Sounds pretty steady.’
The temperature on the mountain is registering zero degrees with a wind factor of minus ten. They add snow jackets and trousers, hats, gloves and balaclavas to the pile of essential equipment.
By the time they reach the chopper pad alongside the lake, Luke Gallagher is ready for take-off. Double-checking that Sam and Frances are properly strapped in, he tests their headphones are operating so they can communicate through the intercom, talking to each of them in turn. After clearing their flight path over the radio with air-traffic control, he lifts the chopper slowly up, the wind-stream blowing up a splintered fan of water below them. Within minutes they are skirting over the lake towards the summit. Frances loves the thrill of low flying and the bird’s-eye view of the shining water. She cranes over for a closer look when they fly over a mysterious island in the lake’s centre. Tiny and heavily treed with dark, primeval-looking species, the island looks bleak and forbidding and Frances can see why the locals believe it is haunted by ghosts.
‘Have you been to the island?’ Frances asks Luke, taken aback by the reverberating sound of her own voice.
‘No, don’t want to either,’ he says, raising an eyebrow at her.
‘I have,’ Sam tells them over the vibrations in the cabin. ‘I went out there in a kayak but I wouldn’t go back. Not after what I saw.’
‘What was that?’
‘There were two of us there—or should I say three. My friend and I went ashore and found a cave. Inside there was this dead Maori guy. He was sitting up wearing a feather cloak and looking straight at us. We nearly died of fright and got the hell out of there as quickly as we could.’
Luke laughs. ‘Was he pointing a bone at you?’
‘We didn’t stick around long enough to find out. I just know I wouldn’t go back.’
Tori had told Frances the island used to be a burial ground and only certain Maori elders were allowed to go there.
‘Serves you right for trespassing,’ she scolds Sam. ‘How would you like it if strangers were going around looking at your dead relatives?’
Sam doesn’t reply. He looks away from the others sulkily and Frances regrets talking to him so sharply. She sighs: it’s going to be a long day.
Soon they leave the water behind and are flying over the densely wooded areas leading to the mountains. The day is clear and the clouds high enough so they can land safely. Luke ascends rapidly, then slows as they approach the summit of Ruapehu, already dusted with the first snowfalls of winter.
‘Hold on, everyone, we’re going down. It looks pretty icy down there. We’ll be on the ground soon.’
He lands expertly on a snow-covered plateau a short distance from the Crater Lake, lets the motor idle and then switches it off.
‘Try to be back in ninety minutes,’ he urges them as they unload their equipment from the storage hatch. ‘The weather’s unpredictable and we don’t want to be caught up here.’
They’d brought along ice picks and crampons for their boots and this time, in deference to the cold, even Sam has traded his shorts for waterproof trousers.
A freezing wind bites Frances’ face as she climbs through the snow towards the Dome Shelter, reminding her of the cold treks she has made up Mount St Helens. She muses that, for someone who prefers warm weather to cold, she has chosen the wrong job. But she pushes her body along, cursing the weight of the backpack, which makes the slipperiness of the icy rocks much harder to negotiate.
Fresh snow covers the shelter and they clear away some banked up against the door so they can check the equipment inside.
‘It’s all working perfectly,’ Frances says with satisfaction as she tests the machinery. ‘I’ll check the pagers are working and then I’ll lock up here and see you at the lake, Sam.’
She punches in the first of a list of ten numbers on her cellphone and sends the message. ‘Testing reception from summit. Please respond.’ She sends the same message to the other nine numbers, each part of the network of monitors for the early warning system. In spite of the sophisticated technology behind the system, it is the human link that will evacuate the area. This is the part that always makes Frances anxious, but her mobile registers the first reply and the others follow in quick succession. She breathes a sigh of relief as she locks the shelter and heads for the crater.
With the first falls of snow, the summit is quite different from the moonscape that greeted Frances on her first visit. Some lower craggy peaks still protrude brown through the whiteness and the rock periphery of the lake is exposed where the heat of the volcanic water has already melted it.
As she climbs down towards the lake she can see Sam trying to retrieve something from the steaming water with a probe. He suddenly reaches down and picks up some sort of white object, which he is obviously trying to hide.
‘What have you found?’ Frances confronts him.
Slowly and reluctantly, like a schoolboy caught out, Sam holds out one hand. It is empty. Then from behind his back he produces a skull.
‘Gotcha!’ he yells.
‘My God, where do you think that’s come from?’ Frances recoils, shocked by the unexpected sight of the small, parchment-white relic of death. ‘Who do you think it was?’
‘How the hell would I know,’ he says, clearly annoyed she has spotted his discovery. ‘Could be
a lost hiker or skier. Lots of people have gone missing up here over the years.’
‘More likely to be Maori remains, don’t you think? Isn’t this supposed to be a burial place?’
‘We could just pretend we never saw it,’ Sam says matter-of-factly. ‘I could just throw it back or tuck it under a rock. No one would ever know.’
‘But of course you couldn’t do that, could you, Sam? You know we’ll have to take it back and report it.’
‘How predictable you are.’ He rounds on her. ‘You realise this is going to complicate things up here. If you think the Maoris were difficult before, this will really up the ante.’
‘I hardly think it’s your prerogative to make those judgements.’
‘No, you wouldn’t, would you? But quite frankly I think you’re losing your own judgement. You seemed to have forgotten you’re a scientist, not a do-gooder for the Maori cause. Or maybe that Mr Maddison has got to you.’ He goes to walk away, then turns swiftly and calls out, ‘Here, catch!’
Sam tosses the skull in the air. Frances leaps forward to grab it before it hits the rocks, catches it and slips to the ground.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ she yells at Sam. ‘You’re crazy!’
‘Well, one of us is and I don’t think it’s me.’ He picks up his pack and walks to the end of the lake where he starts taking water samples.
Frances is bursting with rage but she stays where she has landed and stares at the small skull nestled in her gloved hands. It looks so vulnerable. A man or a woman? Young or old? Who was left behind to mourn when this person died? How long has the skull rested at the top of the mountain? She touched skeletons during her university years but only in laboratories and felt little emotion about them. But to hold this now fills her with sadness. She traces her finger around the eye sockets and wonders whether the volcano had caused the death.
Standing up, she finds in her pack a pretty blue-and-white silk scarf Olivia gave her as a gift when she left Seattle. She carefully wraps the skull in it and places it in a plastic bag back inside the pack, making a mental note not to let her friend know what head the scarf ended up on.
As she turns and looks over the slopes towards Tangiwai she is filled with a new longing to know who found her sister and how they had felt. She knows she must contact Cedric again and see if she can discover more so she can lay some of her own ghosts to rest.
She sees that Sam has finished sampling the water and reluctantly joins him so they can take their survey measurements of the dam and probe it to provide new data for the computer model.
‘Fortunately the snow hasn’t built up too much around the dam. We can still measure it quite easily,’ Sam says, refusing to meet her eye. ‘Here, you take the reflector and I’ll go across the other side with the survey gear.’
Frances was hoping he might apologise but she is learning that Sam Hawks never says sorry about anything.
‘OK. Then I’ll let Theo know about your find.’
Sam glares at her over his shoulder as he shuffles through the snow. Frances knows he’s particularly narked because she could pull rank on him if she chose: her qualifications had put her above him in seniority.
The water level has risen another 15 centimetres and they insert new markers higher up the crater rim. When they finish and pack away their equipment, Frances dials Theo’s cellphone.
‘Hi, Frances, you’re clear as a bell. How is it up there in the land of the gods today?’
‘Funny you should say that, Theo. Maybe the gods are angry. Sam found a skull up here in the lake. I’m bringing it back.’
‘Damn, that’s not going to make life any easier,’ he mutters. ‘What’s it look like?’
‘I’m no expert but it looks pretty old. No idea where it has come from either. I’ve wrapped it carefully and have it in my backpack.’
‘I’ll have to alert the police. Not likely to be a crime but could be a missing person.’
Almost as an afterthought Frances adds, ‘By the way, Theo, the water’s a little higher today too.’
‘You’re full of good news, aren’t you? See you when you get back.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The three of them have little to say as they flash down the Desert Road winding south from Taupo through the inhospitable Rangipo Desert. Sam is driving with Frances up front and Tori in the back seat. In spite of her objections, Theo has insisted Sam should be part of the visit to inspect the site recommended by the seismologists for the stopbank. ‘We have to protect ourselves and it is important we have two people from our department there,’ he told her.
Knowing Theo was busy with a media briefing about mountain safety for the ski season, Frances said nothing more. Since the dispute over the discovery of the skull, she felt there was little hope of friendship with Sam and the hostility between them was growing.
It is grey and overcast and the spindly sage-green vegetation looks menacing, poking up on both sides of the road like jagged weapons. Only the hardiest plants can grow here in the volcanic debris left over from the massive Taupo eruption which splintered once-mighty stands of ancient forests.
Sam accelerates the office’s white four-wheel-drive to overtake a slow-moving tourist caravan, one of dozens plying up and down the main road between Auckland and Wellington.
‘Looks like we’ll cop some rain today,’ Tori remarks, pointing to the dark nimbus clouds settling on the eastern slopes of the volcanoes.
Twenty minutes later, they swerve off the main road onto a gravel track and Sam belts along the narrow access way climbing to the edge of the national park. A cloud of dust rises around them and small battalions of tiny sandflies suicide against the windscreen. Soon the track disappears and they bump their way over piles of pumice, rocks and tussock. As if to make a point, Sam screeches the brakes as he stops near a wooden post festooned with red reflectors.
‘Since the ‘95 eruption, the point where a lahar could spill over has changed dramatically,’ he says, retrieving his professional role and breaking the tension. As they walk to the top of a low-lying slope of Ruapehu, Sam points to a series of markers and templates already placed there.
‘They show the size of the stopbank. You can see it will be very big, about three hundred metres long and three to four metres high, and if a lahar forces its way down the valley, it should stop it spilling into the Tongariro River system, where it would do a lot of damage.’
‘It’s a lot bloody bigger than I expected,’ Tori says, kicking some loose stones. ‘What will it be made of?’
‘Gravel mainly, held together by cement. It has to be very strong because the force of a lahar is massive.’
‘I think the iwi will have trouble with this. I can see the benefit to save the fishing and the flora and fauna, but a lot of the others don’t agree with me. Does it have to be so large?’
‘Well, it would if you want to save your own fishing,’ Sam says, his voice laced with sarcasm.
Relieved Sam and Tori are at least being civil to each other, Frances decides to stay out of the conversation. She shelters near the vehicle, instinctively keeping her distance as the two men pace around the remote outpost. A strong wind blows through her and she tries to block it out by zipping her jacket up to the neck. She watches them kicking pieces of ash and pumice out of their way as they immerse themselves in conversation. Soon they stop walking and are facing each other, still deep in discussion. The wind is whistling through her hair yet it picks up the crescendo in their voices.
‘You arsehole!’
She thinks it is Tori’s voice. She sees Sam strike him, his fist hitting Tori’s head.
As she runs towards them a sudden roar of thunder booms directly overhead. A fork of lightning rips through the leaden sky. They are the swift overture for a heavy downpour.
‘Stop,’ Frances cries out, suddenly frightened by the raw-knuckled violence before her. But neither her pleas nor the cold drenching rain do anything to extinguish their red-hot anger.
‘You bastard,’ she screams at him.
He backs away. ‘You bitch. Of course you would side with him!’
Sam, rain mingling with a trickle of rich crimson blood dribbling from his nose, retreats down the hill.
‘I’m sorry, Frances,’ Tori says as she surveys his face for damage. ‘He threw the first punch. But I should have walked away.’
‘I saw that. What did he say?’
‘We were talking about bulldozing the Crater Lake again. He called me a fucking hypocrite for opposing it but supporting building the dam to protect the fishing. Then he started talking about you. I’m afraid it got very personal and I guess I lost it.’
‘What a bloody mess,’ she says. ‘At least you don’t look too bad. Probably a few bruises, though. Let’s get out of this damn rain,’ Frances says, taking his arm and leading him downhill.
Sam is in the vehicle, dabbing his face with a tissue. He starts the engine and accelerates as she runs over to open the passenger door.
‘Don’t even think about leaving us here!’ she shouts.
He glares at her. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ he says, his words dripping venom.
Tori climbs heavily into the back. ‘Are you OK?’ He taps Sam on the shoulder.
Sam shrugs him off. ‘Yeah, really great.’
Frances radios the office and is relieved to hear Theo’s voice. Ignoring Sam’s anxious glances, she tells him just that they are returning.
‘You might be interested to know we’ve got the results of the skull you guys found,’ she hears him say in reply. ‘Tell you about it when you get back.’
As they exchange the bumpy track for the highway, Tori breaks the silence.
‘What skull?’ he asks.
‘Ah, we still have secrets, do we?’ Sam’s voice is full of bitterness as he sneers at Frances and catches Tori’s puzzled look in the rear-vision mirror.
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