Ministry Protocol: Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Page 27

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  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 without 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. “E
ven 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.