puff 527 Thurs 23rd

Thursday 23rd
Te Ao Toi
Kaupapa koorero moo te raa

Ngaa kupu o Rangitaane
I moohio koe ko te kupu taweke, e rua ngaa aronga ki teenaa kupu? Ko te aronga tuatahi, kua pau rawa.
Hei tauira; Kua taweketia ngaa kaumatua o teenei rohe? Kao. Ka pai raatou ki a Rangitaane Pa. Kei reira raatou.
Ko te mea tuarua, kua hono.
Hei tauira; Naa wai koe i taweke ai ki koonei?
Rau rangatira maa, he kupu Rangitaane teenei! Taweke!


Subject of the day
Let’s look at a Rangitaane word
Did you know that taweke has two meanings?
One is to be all gone
Have the kaumatua in this district all gone? No. They like Rangitaane Paa. They are there.
The second is ‘connected’;
By whom are you connected to this pace?
Rau rangatira maa, he kupu Rangitaane teenei! Taweke!

http://digitallibrary.pncc.govt.nz/awweb/awarchive?type=file&item=306

Isis: the days of the voles- continued
7
Nets
A lot was happpening in Vegas. The opening of the hospital, a showbiz wedding of some kind. It was all on in Vegas. Paullie could not see anything that struck him as something that the acrobats might be used in though. Maybe Vegas, maybe not, he thought.

Back in Oxford Sam was on the phone to one of her relations in Jamaica. It was time, she thought, to widen the net in the Americas.

Speaking of nets, would the twins use one and where would they buy them? This was a question that Paullie and Simon were looking at.

Juan sat alone in a hotel suite waiting for something to happen, waiting for a call from Bogata.

In Bogata Julio drew up a list of contacts. A pilot, also in Bogata who could fly anything, use any kind of weapon and kill people when required, some low level thugs in a village near the Urals, a few people in America and in the United Kingdom.

He walked to the squirrel cage and talked to them for a while.

And then, with an air of determination he came back to the fountain and began a long series of last calls, Checking that all was ready and everything was in place.

Esme and Bella slid under the boatshed and listened. Simon was on the phone to his Dad. They were talking about America. It all seemed a long way away. Bella thought there were more interesting things happening by the Isis.

Esme wondered who she would call if she had enough credit on her mobile phone to make international calls.

In the Urals it was very quiet. From where she was being held the prisoner could see the odd car passing over a hilltop in the distance. The wind was cold. She hated to think what it must be like in the winter.

The Tramp nodded to the Don who really was quite deeeply into his cups tonight. The Don weaved and muttered to himself.

Hope he doesn't trip and fall into the Isis thought the Tramp. A set of morbid images crowded into his brain and he thought back to times when he had been on medication. The anxiety flooded in but it did not stay.

The Don was thinking about acrobats in America, he mutttered about things you might see from the heights an acrobat reached, he stumbled but did not fall. The luck of drunks and children thought the Tramp.

The Isis, black itself and reflecting the night sky as well, ran on. The voles scuttled on the banks and the Tramp thought about dossing down under a hedge. He was not of a mood to sleep though.

Simon and Samantha were having a nightcap. Sam was going on about just how sombre the river Isis could be. Simon tried to think about the case but quickly ran out of puff.

In Bogota Julio paced repeatedly from the fountain to the panther's cage.There was a stirring in the zoo, a muttering of caws and growls as the animals reacted to this.

In Las Vegas the Senator's people with Giselle somewhere near the helm arrived for a reconnaissance. They worked out where he would stay, where he would stand to give a speech. They tried to work out the lay of the land. A great deal of time was spent on camera shots. Pans, sweeps, closeups, sequences of shots. It was as like the effort involved in a commercial for television or an MTV clip.

The support acts on the ground and on high were considered. Where cameras might be placed. The tone of the announcer's voice. All about grabs. How the television audience was to be grabbed.

Paullie started to think about politics. The points at which local and nationwide politics met. He thought about stunts, people who needed them to shore up flagging support.

Tired at last, Julio stoped at the fishtanks and seemed to become absorbed in the businesss of tropical fish. His eyes were distant and far away.

He returned to the house by the fountain and went to sleep with quiet and peaceful images in his mind.

In Oxford it was hot and Esme and Bella threw sticks listlessly into the Isis. They were bored and angry in an unfocussed way. They suspected lots about a lot of people. Simon, the Don, Sam, the Tramp. But they did not have the wood on anyone. Yet.

Next day though the river was bright and clear and it was a bit cooler. Everything seemed cleaner and easier, except, that is, for Simon's case. There was even a welcome breeze making walking along the path a delight. Punts were to be seen at every turn.

Apart from tidying up his bibs and bobs and restating the case in pins, paper and string and Sam suggesting something interesting which Simon was struggling to recall, nothing great was happening at Isis Investigations. But it was a pleasant enough day to do nothing.

The man with the private zoo in Bogota had firmed up his plans, the scale of the hing was a little bigger than he was used to. This was not some unnoticed hit in a back alley that he was planning.

He went and spent time with the American Black Bear. The scale of the job as planned and the size of he animal in the flesh seemed to go together.

The Job Sheet exercise had yielded little.

Simon walked along the Isis. Why would someone steal two acrobats from North Oxford? Where to look for clues? Why were they needed in America? Turn it around: what would they need in America?

He saw something drawn on a block of wood at the side of the path and he was darned if it did not look like Sam...

With all the planning involved, across two continents and with people apparently disappearing in America this had to go back a fair way. The question was how far and to whom.

Esme found something though. It was on the net. Something called Voles Disease. She wondered if that was what was afflicting the tramp and making him do his jerky dances on the dirt of the path.

They needed diversions in Vegas. The twins were stir crazy. Keeping a low profile was not something they were used to. The minder did his best but he began to see them as spoilt children...

Simon walked along the Isis. He came across another sign on a bit of wood, a kind if stencil. This time it was not a picture of Sam but someone familiar. He realised with a start that he was looking at a picture of himself.

Who would do such a thing and why?

In a dark, leafy room in the private zoo in Bogata the owner sat very still. He was watching a flightless bird from the South Pacific doing what it liked to do at night...

He had woken up and gone outside but he'd found the sun too bright.

The Tramp thought about contacting his family...

Lunch with your Mum declared Sam. Simon blanched. His mother was, of all things, an Oxford philosopher turned novelist. Lunch with Sam and his mother was a mind on mind time which sometimes took days to get over. He began to remonstrate but decided against the effort.

Agnes, Simon's mother was a remarkably attractive forty eight year old. She had a way with words which drew people to her and the physical presence to go with it.

She did not have a partner these days but her son Simon was her family. Sam of course now figured as Simon's partner and in the distance there was Paullie and others.

It was not that Agnes could not find a partner it was more that she'd become a little bored by that sort of thing. Nothing major. Partnering and all just got tedious after a while and if it wasn't fun then why do it?

Agnes liked croquet. It was a cruel, unforgiving game especially the way it was played in the colleges but just the same it was her game and she excelled at it.

Klee was her favorite artist. Agnes could not really say why but then you didn't have to with art. Mostly though Agnes knew why she did not like things.

Agnes found most cars tolerable but had a passion for Peugots. It might have been a French film that she saw or perhaps it was that she liked changing gears on a shift off the steering wheel.

At her age sensible dress was required she supposed but she did her hair in different ways and used her striking looks to advantage. Heads turned when Agnes entered a room and it helped that she was a novelist as well as a philosopher.

Brown and green were her favorite colours and she had tea sets in those shades. And a couple of cardigans that she liked to slough around in. Agnes never tinted her hair.

Agnes liked doves. Sometimes she would go to Magdalen College where one of the porters kept some. She would buy feed in the covered market and take it to them,

Agnes would watch arts programmes on a Sunday afternoon. This was after a long walk through South Parks and then back along the river. Marshmallows on the fire in winter.

Philosophical by nature she had not let that stop her being a philosopher. She would muse deeply and talk and write about things extensively as a matter of habit.

At school she was particularly good at history but good across the board. Agnes had lost touch with people she went to school with and never went to reunions.

She had a great sense of humour. Her schoolmates found her hilarious but likeable at the same time. Agnes had discovered men in her twenties and had always found humour in her dealings with them.

Sam told Simon that lunch with Agnes was the next day. At his mother's college and not at her house which suited Simon. There might be some light relief, porters with whom one could chat mindlessly, so forth. The house started to get him down after about an hour. His mother's voice which got on his nerves at the best of times echoed sharply in the house and his head would begin to ache.

Not feeling up to thinking about lunch with his mother Simon turned back to the case. He thought about what Paullie had said about starting close to where the Twins had left off. It figured that the acrobats knew and trusted the person or persons who took them. Simon asked the Roma family if they knew anyone who went to or lived in America. In an entertainment place. In Vegas perhaps.

Of course they knew people in America. And in Vegas. But there was no background to suggest a connection to the Twins just up and disappearing. No connnection that they knew of anyway.

Or, it figured that some temptation proved too strong. They were acrobats who functioned, by and large, without props. They liked Xtreme sports but motorcycles were outside of their experience. What did they want but could never have? Motorcycles, big ramps, everything in Xtreme sports. And that was about it. Simon could not think of anything else that might tempt them.

Of course they did know people in America. But it was preposterous to suggest that the twins would go willingly with someone they knew without telling them and they did not know anyone in America that well. Roma know Roma but part of this is to do with survival in a world where people generally did not respond well to gypsies. Knowing people did not mean trusting your children with them.