"Why not?" I said.
"I don't know. All I did was post my theories on the Internet, and lo and behold I got the invitation. Jasper himself invited me. Well, not exactly Jasper, I suppose. Brenda Butters, the registrar. But she said Jasper had asked her to get in touch with me. I was pretty excited, as you can probably imagine."
"You'll be great," I said. I had no idea whether he would be or not, but he looked kind of pathetic. For all his bombast, he was just a regular guy. "There'd be something the matter with you if you weren't a bit nervous ahead of time."
"I suppose," he said. "But there are all these people with so much more experience than me. I've always been interested in these moai, and I was watching a documentary on television that showed a bunch of guys trying to raise one. I thought they were going about it all wrong. I suddenly had an idea about how it could have been done, using poles and rope, both of which would have been available at the time, and a system of wooden levers. It was a theoretical model only, you understand, untested. Since then, though, I have read about all the people who actually came here and tried o move them out of the quarry and then raise them on the ahu—people like Heyerdahl, Mulloy, Jo Anne Van Tilberg and Charles Love, and that Czech engineer, Pavel Pavel, I think his name is. These people are huge! I mean what am I, Dave Maddox, a small developer from Orlando, doing here?"
"Perhaps you're here because you have an idea that Jasper thinks is different and will work," I said. "Jasper, after all, is hardly one to insist upon academic credentials, is he? Why don't you go and talk to him? I'll bet you'll feel a lot better after you do."
"Maybe," he said. "You will come tomorrow, won't you?"
"Of course I will," I said, patting his arm. "Moira will, too."
"You girls are terrific," he said, smiling rather wanly.
The team from Kent Clarke Films was there, too—Kent Clarke herself and Mike and Danny Boy. Kent ignored all of us, but the other two were definitely more accessible. When I inadvertently interrupted them, they told me not to worry. They were just scouting out the location.
"Speaking of interruptions," I said. "That was one big one yesterday at Rano Raraku."
"It was deadly," Danny Boy said.
"In case you can't understand the lingo," Mike said. "Deadly is good. Danny Boy has a touch of the Irish in him."
"I prefer Daniel," the younger man said. "I'm Daniel Striker, and my pal here is the director, Mike Sheppard. It is the great J. R. who started this Danny Boy business."
"I got the distinct impression that you filmed the interruption, Daniel," I said.
"That could be true," he said.
"Might add a little drama to an otherwise profoundly boring documentary," Mike said.
"Is it boring? The people attending the congress seem to think it's the most exciting event in decades."
"No accounting for tastes," Mike said. "Hard to make speeches look interesting. But we're waiting for the great man himself to make some pronouncement at the end."
"Did you come out just for this?" I asked.
"I did," Mike said. "I do work for Kent Clarke Films from time to time. I flew in from Australia where I just finished another gig. Danny, that is Daniel, lives here."
"Half the year. I came out originally to be the assistant to the assistant to the assistant camera guy when they filmed Rapa Nui here," Daniel said. "The one produced by Kevin Costner."
"You shouldn't be telling people that," Mike intervened. "That was one dog of a film."
Daniel laughed. "It was a job, which I needed given I'd dropped out of school and had been thrown out of my home, and it got me into the film business. It also brought me here, for which I'm grateful. Met my wife here. She's a Rapa. We're working on our third kid. Two girls already and maybe a boy on the way."
"He's hoping one of his girls will be Tapati queen in a few years," Mike said. "Take a little pressure off her dad with the prize."
Vying to be Tapati queen was not necessarily a wonderful experience, as we found out when we got back to the hotel. A tearful Gabriela was sitting with the woman who'd talked to us at the Tapati rehearsal, and when she saw us coming, she got up and ran away.
"Iorana," the woman said, rather wanly. I had decided that iorana was hello in rapanui.
"What's wrong?" Moira said.
"I'm not sure," the woman said. "Are you staying here?"
"We are," Moira said, introducing us both. "We talked at the rehearsal in town."
"Yes, I remember. I'm Victoria Pakarati," the woman said. "Are you at this Moai Congress by any chance?"
"We are, but only by chance," I said. "It was on when we got here, so we signed up."
"So you're not presenting or anything?"
"Hardly," Moira said. "Everything we know about RapaNui we've learned since we got here. But what is wrong with Gabriela?"
"I don't know, but she has told her mother that she is withdrawing from the competition for queen of Tapati. The family is terribly disappointed and asked me to talk to her. They think it's just a case of jitters. I think it's worse than that, that something has happened, but I don't know what it is, and I can't deal with it if she won't tell me. She is such a lovely young person, a good student, a devoted daughter. She is one of ten children and a tremendous help with the younger ones. She works in her spare time at the hotel to make some money to help out the family. I just don't know what this can be about."
"I may have some idea," I said and related what I had overheard the previous evening.
"That awful woman hit her!" Moira exclaimed.
"I'm afraid so," I said.
"Who is this woman?" Victoria said. "Is she the one that goes on about the Lemurians?"
"Yes, indeed," Moira said.
"But who is she really?" Victoria asked. "Cassandra de Santiago can't be her real name, can it?"
"I have no idea. In fact, I have no idea who any of these people are," I said. "This is the oddest conference I've ever attended."
"Gordon says it's a complete sham, that it's all a big publicity stunt for Jasper Robinson, that none of the experts one would normally associate with the study of Rapa Nui, the people with established reputations in the field, are here, nor were they invited. Instead we have the Cassandra de Santiagos of the world. I know Gordon is biased, but he may have a point. What I don't understand is why anyone would bother setting this whole thing up, sham or otherwise. Just do the documentary and be done with it."
"Gordon?" Moira said.
"Sorry. Gordon is my husband, Gordon Fairweather."
"Dr. Fairweather," Moira said.
"Yes. Do you know him?"
"Not exactly," Moira said. "We saw him up at the quarry yesterday."
"Oh, dear," she said. "Gordon says he made a complete ass of himself up there."
"He expressed strong opinions," I said. "I had a fair amount of sympathy for him. Robinson did use the opportunity that presented itself to make fun of the Rapa Nui workmen."
"That's what Gordon said. His language was considerably stronger than that. Look, I know I'm biased, and Gordon does have a temper, but he is a lovely man."
"What are we going to do about Gabriela?" I said. "If it would help, I'll tell her I saw that odious woman attacking her and how inappropriate I thought it was. Maybe if she knows I was a witness, she will talk about it. Did I mention that before she hit her, Cassandra actually had Gabriela by the shoulders and was shaking her?"
"Good grief!" Moira said. "I vote we leave Gabriela out of it and just confront Cassandra, three to one. That's what you do to bullies. You bully them back."
Victoria smiled. "I knew you were good people the minute I saw you in town. Why don't we start with Gabriela and take it from there. I'd appreciate it, Lara, if you would tell her what you saw and how awful you think it was."