Rory threw back his head and roared with laughter. "You know something?" he said, wiping a tear from his eye. "I'd be willing to bet you know as much as at least half the people here."
"What's so funny?" Moira said, coming over to join us. "I'm Moira, by the way."
"This is Rory," I said. "He's doing an archaeological survey of Poike."
"Fascinating," she said.
"I take it your friend knows more about Rapa Nui than you do," Rory said.
"I've confessed my utter and complete ignorance about this place," I told Moira. "Just my own personal lack of knowledge," I added, just in case she doubted my loyalty.
"Do you have a specific area of interest, Moira?" Rory asked.
"You are such a brat, Lara," Moira said. "My specific area of interest at the moment is aromatherapy, Rory. It's very big in my world, right now. Ditto whatever she said, only more so. Lara owns an antique store, and she knows about old stuff. I have a spa."
"At least she's read the guidebook," I said.
"I am delighted to make both your acquaintances," Rory said. "And lest you feel embarrassed, let me tell you something." He paused for a moment and sipped some wine. "You must have seen the banner outside the hotel, the one that says welcome to the first annual Rapa Nui Moai Congress."
"Hard to miss it," I said.
"Indeed. Let's just say that maybe what it should have said is welcome to the lunatic fringe."
"Perfect," Moira laughed. "As Lara is probably too nice to tell you, I'm feeling just a little mentally unhinged myself."
"Perfect," he agreed.
We spent a pleasant half hour or so with Rory. He was funny, intelligent, and reasonably good looking. I could tell Moira thought so, too. He obviously loved Rapa Nui, the island, the people, the work he was doing. At the end of our conversation, I knew that Poike was a peninsula at one end of the island, the location of one of three volcanoes that had formed the island a very, very long time ago, and a place where legend had it that a great battle between the tribes of Rapa Nui had been fought. I also knew Rory was single.
The party was just breaking up when the most extraordinary thing happened. We'd spread out by this time, past the pool area and onto a grassy area between the hotel and the sea. Several delegates were out on the grass chatting.
There was a pile of earth near the edge of the cliff, by a wood post and wire gated fence whose role, presumably, was to keep people and animals from going over the side. One moment there was no one there. The next, an older man, dark of complexion and attire, stood staring intently at the dirt. Rory went over to talk to him, and we followed. The man said something to Rory in a language I did not recognize, and then as quickly as he had appeared, he walked away. Rory looked bemused.
"What was that about?" Moira said, watching the man's retreating back.
"That was Felipe Tepano," Rory said. "He's something of a legend in the archaeological community. He's been working on projects here for almost forty years. He helps me out sometimes with my excavation work. I stay at his wife's guest house on the other side of Hanga Roa when I'm here.
Felipe does some work on the hotel grounds from time to time as well, I believe."
"And?" Moira said.
"And," Rory said. "He just told me that someone will die here, right where we're standing. He says that someone will die here very soon.
2
RANO RARAKU—In retrospect, I'd come to view my first full day on Rapa Nui, during which an amorphous blob called the Moai Congress slowly became a group of mere names, then gradually, distinct individuals with all the foibles, passions, and temperaments that went with them, with my first glimpse of the quarry. From a distance, Rano Raraku looks like any other hillside on the island, a grassy, windswept surface dotted with large rocks, spewed in some ancient cataclysm from one of the volcanoes that formed the island hundreds of thousands of years ago. As one moves closer, however, the rocks begin to take form. Huge stone faces and torsos come into focus. Some stand erect, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet tall. Others, held in place by the dust of centuries, lean poised as if forever caught on the cusp of toppling.
Closer still, features begin to appear. The moai are similar, all with thin lips and sharp chins, large and upswept noses, elongated earlobes, and, where the torso can be seen, arms flexed, thin fingers pressed against stone bellies. All are sightless, staring vacantly across the landscape toward the sea. Still, they are not identical; each is individually carved, and with some study, the small differences that make them each unique become apparent. There are hundreds of them, a sight so amazing that Moira and I stood motionless for several minutes, transfixed by what we saw.
Then Moira, with a whoop of pleasure, ran down a dusty path and wrapped her arms around one of them. Praying to whatever gods looked after technopeasants like me, I raised the camera and snapped my first photo. The light was so bright I couldn't see the image on the screen and could only hope I had captured the moment. It was not that I thought I would forget Rano Raraku. That place, and the awe it inspired, would be with me forever. But I wanted to be able to share it with Rob, as he'd suggested, and to give Moira a keepsake of what was such a special moment for her.
The quarry will remain burned in my memory for another reason, an episode that, while mildly unpleasant at the time, was to have ramifications far beyond anything I could have imagined. For several minutes, though, Moira and I just wandered companionably among the moai, enjoying the hot sun and the fact that we were there. The first photo under my belt, I began snapping away with abandon.
"Shall we try to climb up to the rim of the volcano and see what's on the other side?" Moira asked.
"Sure," I said, and we took a rocky, dusty path that headed upward. It was an easy enough climb, although the sun by now was hot, tempered only by the wind.
Moira, who had taken the lead, stopped abruptly at the summit. "You will not believe this," she said, turning back to me, as I took the last couple of steps to the top. At first I didn't know what she was talking about, my attention caught by a startlingly blue lake, partially filled with reeds, that lay at the bottom of the crater below us and the inner slopes of the volcano peppered with even more moai, that I immediately began to photograph. I looked at Moira who pointed to our left, where a man stood, feet firmly planted on the summit, in front of a video camera.
"I'm standing on the slopes of the volcano, Rano Raraku, on the island some of us know as Easter Island, or Isla de Pascua, others as Rapa Nui, but one the native peoples used to call Te-Pito-te-Henua, or the navel of the world," Jasper Robinson said, gesturing toward the sea, as the camera panned across the landscape. "You can see why the inhabitants might think so because this is possibly the most isolated inhabited island on the planet. It is here, on the slopes of Rano Raraku, that the magnificent moai, the huge stone statues that have made Rapa Nui famous, were born," Robinson said, now staring straight at the camera, as he opened his arms wide in an encompassing gesture and the wind whipped his carefully coifed hair. A very young woman who had pierced rings almost every place you could think of putting them and a small lizard tattooed on her upper arm watched with a bored expression on her face.
"Call me crazy," Moira murmured. "But I was not expecting a film crew here."
"Doesn't do much for the ambiance, does it?" I said.
"This is a magnificent setting," the man went on, "still charged, I think, with the energy that those who carved the moai brought to the task. These monolithic stone sculptures are absolutely unique. You do not find anything quite like them anywhere else in the world. There are almost three hundred moai here in the quarry, each weighing several tons, and all at different stages of development. About a hundred and sixty of them are unfinished. Some, as you can see, were completed, and now stand upright, buried to their necks in the soil. Others lie partially carved, still attached to the volcanic rock from which they were created. Beyond that, about a hundred more of them line one of two ancient roads that lead from this quarry down toward the sea."