at the farthest edge of Empire. The drawings in Batman, while bleak and sinister, detailed an array of hillside statues similar to their cheerfully pastel representation in Uncle Scrooge’s realm. The genre was different, the artwork was different, the setting in Batman was grim and austere while in Scrooge McDuck it was opulently tropical, and yet the moai gazing with sightless eyes from the volcanic quarry on the side of Rano Raraku were uncannily alike.
Miranda thumbed through the April 1954 issue of Wonder Woman — it was a prize, a decade older than she was. She then skimmed the April 1982 issue of The Mighty Thor and several other comics Morgan had tracked down for her during his exploratory forays on eBay. Each one delivered, in the midst of mayhem and fantasy, a brief homily about the horrors of a remote Eden corrupted by outsiders, all subversively inviting the reader to identify with the people of the moai rather than with the degenerate interlopers from the reader’s own world.
She recognized the Rano Raraku site in its various colourfully hued manifestations from photographs in Hyerdahl and other books, the same sources undoubtedly used by the comic-book artists. She had taken the trouble to memorize a few of the key names on the island. She knew the solitary town was called Hanga Roa and that the only beach, which was eight miles away on the other side, was called Anakena. She knew that the people of Rapa Nui speak Rapanui, and that moai rest upright on stone platforms called ahu, or at least that was their intended destination and the place where they received eyes carved from pale coral with red stone pupils, and where many, but not all, were given top hats of the same red scoria.
Deciding a cartoonist conspiracy to undermine established American values was in her own mind, Miranda pulled out Aku-Aku and began to read, but it seemed tiresomely indulgent, a kind of comic-book anthropology. Setting the book down on the glass table beside her, it bumped against her coffee cup and, in an attempt to avert catastrophe, she wrenched the book back and it tumbled onto the floor.
As she bent to retrieve the splayed book, Miranda noticed the scrawl in the margin beside a page of photographs. The Englishman! He must have exchanged books. How? While she was asleep. Why? She was wary. Why would he do that? She examined the book more closely. He had. And then he had disappeared.
She opened the book to the flyleaf and was surprised to find an autograph that was difficult to decipher, but might have been the author’s signature. There was no accompanying message or salutation, but low on the same page was a curiously enigmatic equation written in a clear script: 4/5 = 00. Four over five equals zero-zero. Linked zeroes equal infinity. Nothing more.
She thumbed through the pages, knowing intuitively that there would be a further revelation among them, but not expecting something so obvious as the neatly folded note she found near the back. She opened the note slowly and held it to the light to decipher penmanship that was sufficiently elegant to appear incongruous in ballpoint.
The missive started casually enough: “I regret we did not have the opportunity to pursue our conversation about Mr. Heyerdahl’s island.” It quickly shifted in tone: “You are with the police, I am quite sure of that. We are kindred, Miss Quin. (Your name is on your hand luggage, Miranda Quin).” The tone shifted again, from invasive to casually plaintive: “I seem to be in a spot of trouble. Perhaps as a fellow in the constabulary, you could help me out. Would you mind terribly if we leave the plane together? They will not risk making a fuss if there are two of us. Thank you. T.E.”
She read the note through again, carefully, trying not to be distracted by his precise and flowing hand. His message seemed almost nonchalant, yet it candidly implied distress. He was a cop, then, or a government agent. “A fellow in the constabulary.” How charmingly pretentious, she thought. She looked around the lounge, but of course he was nowhere to be seen. If he was not flying through, there would have been no reason to remain at the airport. If he did not get off the plane … well, he must have, dead or alive. She shuddered, and for a moment was ashamed because she had thought what a pity, if such an attractive man was now dead.
At the service desk she had trouble making herself understood. The young woman spoke fluent school-English, but seemed to find Miranda’s request for a passenger manifest of the flight she had come in on to be an inordinately complex one. Finally, politely, she declared she could be of no help in Miranda’s quest for the handsome stranger.
Miranda sat down again, feeling oddly vulnerable.
In spite of his note, the man was little more than a face in the crowd. They had exchanged a few words, then he had passed on, leaving only a hazy feeling of erotic regret for a connection unmade, an opportunity missed. There was nothing she could do. She was a detective sergeant in homicide with the Toronto Police Service, a former RCMP officer, and far outside her jurisdiction. She tucked the note back among the pages of Aku-Aku, found some old copies of People magazine, and tried to read the captions.
She looked up occasionally and surveyed the bland, good quality furnishings in the business-class lounge and she felt a brief surge of claustrophobia, as if the walls had closed in while the world outside had fallen away. Miranda was not a world traveller. She had flown south to the Cayman Islands to scuba dive, had been around Canada and the States a few times as a Mountie during her training period in Saskatchewan and then with the prime minister’s office, where her police function had been to appear in scarlet uniform for photo ops. She had felt like a stuffed moose and left the force after three years for Toronto. This probably meant missing theopportunity for advancement to become a static Canadian icon on international missions.
After an interminable wait through undifferentiated minutes and hours, she boarded her plane for Chile and landed at dusk in Santiago, only a little apprehensive that she was in the country notorious for its thousands of disparu. She had to wait overnight for her flight to Rapa Nui — she was trying hard to think of her destination by the Polynesian name, not as Easter Island or Isla de Pasqua.
She settled back in the taxi driving in from the airport as they passed by a parade of decrepit buildings covered with graffiti and scruffy tropical vegetation. South America had always seemed unreal; it was only now, away from airports, that it was coming alive. She felt dread and a strange elation, driving into the centre of a city haunted with ghosts of political dissidents, but also with the ghosts of Incan emperors and the righteous conquistadors who destroyed them. She gazed out the window of the taxi at the people milling about in the evening light, trying to pick out individual faces. The driver, in whom she had put her trust to deliver her unscathed to her hotel, spoke occasionally in Spanish and shrugged amiably at her confused responses.
The Best Western was above expectations evoked by her travel agent, who had little sympathy with anything Latin. It was late, she skipped dinner, she would be on the move again at dawn.
She tried to read the Heyerdahl book, but ended up thumbing through, gazing at the photographs. They seemed to have no relationship to her destination. Everything was reduced to archaeological sites and artifacts. Here and there she found handwritten snippets of potted wisdom like the one about the importance of enemies she had discussed with the Englishman. They were inscribed in ink, the letters formed with a rigid evenness that suggested careful deliberation, not the zealous spontaneity their sentiments implied. Several more were about the ambiguity of enemies:
“It is not our foes we must fear but our friends.”
“Forgive friends, they will hate you. Forgive enemies, they are in your debt forever.”
And there were as many whose positive sentiments in such an arbitrary context seemed almost as chilling.
Miranda shuddered at the incipient paranoia of the writer, which eerily conveyed an anonymous, but distinct personality. She set the book aside and fell immediately into a deep sleep, surrounded by wailing throngs of the disparu, with ominous moai looming in the background. She had no idea of the time when she was awakened by the
