Wind Raker - Book IV of The Order of the Air by Melissa Scott, Jo Graham Page A

woke to light through the curtains and the sound of voices in the hall, but by the time he was properly dressed and shaved the house was silent except for the sound of a radio. He stood for a moment in the doorway of his room, feeling the familiar prickle of standing wards — a tradition not quite his own, cast by a sure hand — then followed the radio’s music through the house and out to the shaded lanai where a teak table and chairs looked out over palm trees.
    Mrs. Patton was drinking coffee and reading the paper, the radio playing. She looked up as he stood in the door. "Dr. Ballard! I hope you slept well."
    "Very well, thank you," Jerry said.
    "Join me. I'll have Ito bring a second cup." A silent Japanese houseboy disappeared into the dining room beyond.
    "I'd be glad to," Jerry said. It was just short of eight o'clock, so they had a little time before they were to meet Dr. Buck. Hopefully there would be more than coffee for breakfast. One advantage of staying in a hotel would be room service. He settled down in the other chair, taking deep breaths of the warm air. It was very peaceful.
    She waited until the houseboy had returned with a pristine white porcelain cup and saucer and deftly placed them in front of Jerry before she continued. "I expect you'll want to go out to the dig as soon as possible."
    "I will," Jerry said, helping himself to the sugar. "Mrs. Patton, there are some things about this that baffle me."
    "You too," she said, sipping her coffee with a smile. "There are certainly things that baffle Peter."
    "The identity of the donor?"
    "Yes." She nodded. "Even he doesn't know. Only certain members of the museum's Board of Directors do. Also, why Dr. Radke is here."
    "This dig is far beneath him," Jerry said. "His qualifications exceed anything that one could hope to learn. For that matter, what could one hope to learn?"
    Beatrice took a deep breath. "That's the question, isn't it? There is a sad chapter in these islands' history, the transformation by the missionaries who hoped to 'civilize' the heathens. Perhaps some of the 19th century missionaries had been in China and had acquired the porcelain there."
    Jerry shook his head. "Which is very interesting in terms of local history, but hardly worthy of Dr. Radke’s attention, or frankly of the attention of the Bishop Museum. 19th century missions are not exactly rare. Nor do they require a foremost East Asian scholar."
    "There is the other option," Beatrice said mildly, lifting her coffee cup to her lips. "That Hawai'i was discovered by the Chinese in the fifteenth century, two hundred years or more before Cook claimed the islands for England."
    Jerry frowned. "Is that a serious theory?"
    "No. It's a crackpot theory." Beatrice smiled. "And there has never been anything discovered to lend credence to it."
    "Until now," Jerry said.
    Bea nodded. "If you find some evidence of fifteenth century ruins, or frankly anything before 1800 that is at all suggestive of Asian origins, it will turn every mainstream theory about Polynesia on its ear. It says that the islands were populated very slowly from west to east by peoples moving from one island to another in outrigger canoes, and that those peoples were Polynesian and had no contact with other populations until very late in the game. Contact with mainland China is out of the question and would completely change everything we think we know."
    "But there are people who embrace that theory?" Jerry asked. This was entirely outside his sphere of expertise.
    "There are people who believe that Aryan supermen built the statues on Easter Island," Bea said with an enigmatic smile. "There are people who believe a lot of things. And one of them has enough money to finance a dig in Collins’ pineapple grove."
    "But if it's true…."
    "If it's true that the Chinese had contact with Hawai'i, that changes our understanding." Bea nodded. "You are an outside authority with no dog in the fight, a Classicist who has no professional