Preparations

by Travis Perry

Burt had always been careful to save as much money as he could. Now he held all that remained of all his decades of hard work and thrift in the bugbristle sack in his right hand, maybe eight or nine blank copper coins left. From his boat at the dock, he looked over to his boys loading cargo on all three of his ships.

He’d been able to get financing on two more Zirconia-made aluminum boats, but he’d had to make down payments. He’d told his fishermen his plan and to a man they’d looked at him wide-eyed astounded. But they’d faced tsunamis with their boss, Burt Jonzn. They knew his instincts and in the end, they trusted him.

He trusted them, too, they were good boys—though they did need to be watched from time to time. Had he and Marta been able to have children, he’da hoped they would have turned out like his boys.

Sam would captain the second boat, Rekay the third. The boys began to load down from the rusted metal fishing dock onto the boats the supplies and provisions they’d just purchased with Burt’s life savings. The boys had chipped in too, even though he’d been against it at first. But his money had simply not been enough.

The boats sank low in the water as biodiesel for the motors got loaded in, along with heavy cases of scythegun rounds, and of course the weapons themselves, along with food and medical supplies. They’d cleaned out the Smit family store and had to go to the Palmer trading station to find all they needed, which Burt disliked. Palmer cost too much—plus the profits wound up on Avenir, instead of in Adagio itself…

The boys aboard, him and two others in his ship and two in each of the others, the three aluminum boats—not fishing craft at the moment, rather miniature cargo ships—cast off from the dock and headed out in loose formation past Adiagio’s open tsunami gate, headed for Funder’s Cove…

Decoder

by Travis Perry

Burt Jonzn shook hands with the man his cousin had brought out to the boat. The handsome younger man spoke, “Mr. Jonzn, I’m Robin Corpsman.”

“Nice ta meet ya. You can read ancient writin’?”

“Ah, I don’t know. Maybe. I need to see it first.”

Without further comment, Burt flipped open the tarp at the back of his boat. He eyed the face of the young man as he caught sight of the large disk, glinting with gold and etched in some bizarre form of hieroglyph. Robin’s eyes lit up in the open wonder of awe, not the attempted-but-failed desire to hide ambition, the covert lust of greed.

“Where did you find this?”

“Ocean bank. I s’ppose it was an island once.”

Robin leaned in and spoke in a near whisper, “I can’t believe it…”

“Can’t believe what, friend?” Burt studied the archeologist. His cousin Edard stood nearby, tapping his foot with the impatience of wanting to make the sale.

Robin stood straight and met his eyes, his face flushed with excitement. “There is a book by one of the old pioneers that claims to contain ‘angel writing.’ The author, a gent named Ernesto Hanks, was regarded as bugscat insane in his own day…but some few wizards have always maintained his book contained real symbols, that somehow the man really had been in communication with the angels. The symbols here look just like the ones from his book.”

“Really,” said Burt, beginning to acquire some of Robin’s excitement. “Can you tell me what it says?”

“You know, I think I might be able to! I’ll have to go get a copy of the book—it’ll take some time to decode. I don’t have the book’s contents memorized.”

“Oh,” said Burt, surprised with himself that he’d been hoping the young man would be able to read the disk now.

“Ahem,” interjected Edard, grinning greedily. “It looks like we’ve just shown you the greatest discovery in your field since the Founding. Surely you realize we’ll want to be compensated for our efforts in bringing this to you.”

“Ah, whoa, uh, I’ve got a grant for two hundred credits to fund my studies, but that’s all the money I have.”

Edard snorted. “This is worth a thousand times that!”

Robin looked down at the bolted metal of the fishing dock. “Mr. Mayor, you’re right. In fact, if this really is a disk made by angels—heck, even if the pioneers made it—it’s worth more than a thousand times what I have…this is literally priceless. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy for me to get the credits to pay you.”

Edard snapped, “If you don’t, I’m sure that someone else will—“

Burt interrupted, “Two hundred credits will be just fine.”

“Burt!” Edard’s eyes blazed.

“It’s my discovery, cousin. I can sell it as I wish. Don’ worry—you’ll get your twenty percent.”

“You’ve got to be joking!”

“I’m not.” Turning to the young man, he said, “Sound reasonable?”

“Ah…sir, that’s to find the whole Founding…the two hundred, I mean.”

“Oh, sorry, son. How about one hundred?”

“BURT!” Edard’s face raged red and his eyes protruded even more than normal.

“Uh, I might be able to make that work…” Robin’s voice trailed off.

“Still too steep? How ‘bout eight?”

“Burt…” sputtered Edard, “a man…does not customarily…barter downhill!”

Robin nodded his head, so Burt extended his right hand, ignoring his cousin. As the younger man took it he said, “It’s a deal then. But one more thing.” He retained Robin Corpsman’s hand in his firm grip.

“What’s that, sir?”

“I want to know what the disk says. Whatever it says. Promise me you’ll tell me.”

“Yes, sir,” said Robin, his eyes widening in surprise. “I will.”

Pot of Gold

by Travis Perry -

Mayor Edard Jonzn looked over to the left and sighed. Toward the left, on the east side of Adagio bay, lay his office, the center of all things he controlled.

His cousin Burt had him out on the old upper fishing pier on the other side of the bay, about as far as you could possibly go within the confines of the city away from his office and his personal sphere of influence. He had friends among the fishermen, of course, but naturally he was the best of friends with the biggest commercial boat captains—none of whom docked at the old pier.

He turned his head back to meet his cousin’s eyes. “What in the whales do you have me out here for, Burt?” He chewed an unlit cigar, unlit, because he knew his cousin’s Holiness background and that he frowned on smoking. Not that he really cared what Burt thought, and it so happened he was really hankering for a smoke at the moment, but you never know when you might need someone’s help someday, especially a relative’s. A good politician couldn’t go about offending people without any purpose—if you’re going to offend someone, it should be for a very good reason…

His cousin must have had some kind of bug up his behind. He didn’t have any of his fishermen with him and he looked both ways before he lifted the corner of the tarp that covered something that looked like an enormous disk of some kind in the back of his fishing boat. Or maybe a portal cover for some Sheba-sized ship.

Under the tarp lay a disk alright, covered grime in between the lines that seemed to show some strange pictures—or maybe a kind of writing. A bit of whaleshine hit the edge of the disk as the fishing boat rocked with a gentle harbor wave. Grit covered parts of the disk, but the glint of light shone with an unmistakable golden hue.

Edard reached out and touched it. It had a heavy, smooth feel. Metal, but not too hard…obviously in the sea for some time, but not corroded to speak of. He knew what that meant. “Burt…I think that’s solid gold!”

“Well I think it idn’t,” replied Burt, his lips a bit puckered as if he were chewing lemons. “A solid gold disk would deform under its own weight—curve down in the middle when lyin’ flat. This disk doesn’ do that, so it has some stiffer metal its middle, so is only coated with gold. Granted, the coat is no electroplate job—it’s real thick, I figure about a centimeter on each side.”

“Well, well, cousin Burt, I’m impressed.” Edard felt a rush of relief that he hadn’t lit his cigar. “Cousin, you’ve come to the right man. I don’t know where you got that thing, but I’m sure we could get a pile of platinum for it…I’ll take only a modest commission, since you’re my cousin and all; you won’t regret this, Burt, you’ve come to the right man, your good ol’ cousin Edard will hook you right up!” He barely noticed how he’d started talking faster.

“I regret it already,” said Burt, looking more puckered than before. “You don’ understand. I want to find out what it says.”

Edard sighed. “Very well…the science types probably won’t pay as much as a private collector, but there are a few teams of science types working around here. I could connect you with them…granted, they might have to request some funds from up in Avenir to cover it purchasing it…which might mean you’d have to take payment in credits.” He found his own lips puckering like his cousin’s.

Burt sighed. “No, I don’t mean to sell it to the science jonnies either.”

“You want to keep it? Why? To sell it later? I doubt the price will go up over time, if that’s what you’re thinkin’. Demand won’t rise for somethin’ nobody’s seen before.”

His cousin pulled the tarp back down, covering the exposed portion of the disk. Eyes down at the tarp he said in a low voice, “You don’t understand. I intend to give this away—as long as I’m givin’ it someone who’ll try to figure out what it means.”

For several pounding beats of his heart, Edard had no answer to this. But then his natural poise poured back in a flood. “Burt, look, that’s just crazy talk. I can see you’ve found something special here and probably think that God or something wants you to make this bigger than just yourself—”

“That’s exactly what I think.”

“And it certainly can be even if you sell it—think of your men, Burt. The men who must have helped you haul this up. If you don’t feel right in taking money for yourself, consider that you should take the money for them—think of what it would matter to their families.”

“And maybe my cousin?” said Burt, scowling.

Edard removed the cigar from his mouth and gave Burt the sincerest glassy-eyed stare right into the eyes that he could muster. “Is it a crime to help a relative?”

Burt snorted and looked down again at the tarp. Voice quiet, he observed, “Yeah, the boys could prob’ly use some help…” His voice trailed off. Then he looked up again at Edard, square in the eye. “Get me someone who can really read this and we’ll talk about sales after that. All right?”

“Of course, of course,” blinked Edard innocently, grinning in triumph within.

Discovery

by Travis Perry

Burt Jonzn peered at the engraved sheet fifty centimeters by fifty, cut from bugshell—his grandfather’s almanac. He’d been fishing all his life but he still didn’t know when the complex tides of Eclectia would go in and out without studying the numbers in the tables and performing some quick computations. Of course, he took this as perfectly normal—his cousin Edard had once told him the tides of the world of their ancestors were much simpler, but God and everybody knew what a liar Edard was.

A quick glance at the sky and the position of the Whale low on the horizon confirmed the time. “Mount up, boys. She’ll be in any minute.”

His six fishermen mounted the stone steps to the berth high over this inlet to the Northern Ocean called “Funders Cove.” They stepped from there into the boat, an aluminum framer, purchased new from the vessel sales yard over Zirconia not two Foundings past. He’d heard it told the undersea city had taken up extracting metals for their building needs straight from the seawater—better to avoid paying the taxes on Avenir-refined ore. He had no idea if this bit of news from his politics-tainted cousin were true or not, but he did know he could buy quality boats at Zirconia Landing for far cheaper than he ever could from the Avenir-dominated Palmer Trading Company. And that never used to be so.

The water rushed into the cove in a torrent, rough hills covered with barren heaps of volcanic rock and powdery ash framing the left and right limits of the sea’s domain. Water rolled under the twenty-meter vessel in a boil. There were only three other berths in this isolated cove, none of the others currently occupied. Unlike Adagio, no walls protected this shore from tsunamis. All rocky homes here were high in the hills, safe from high waves, but fishermen could get killed easy enough on the way to and fro. But the fishing was much, much better here than anywhere close to Adagio…and Burt had a keen eye for signs of sudden disaster.

The Zirconian biodiesel motor roared and the aluminum hull thrust forward, taking the vessel far from the shore long before a capricious tide could strand the commercial boat. They’d sell their catch to Zirconia in exchange for good hard coin and needed goods, then time their ingress to their home cove at just the right moment to make it safely back to their berth.

After three hours at sea, Burt checked his compass and the chart he’d carved into bugshell himself ten Foundings ago. “This is the bank, boys. Cast off.” This shallow spot far out to sea teemed with scaled bluefish. Plus he’d never seen an angel in the area—and never wanted to see one either.

His crew tossed the leading edge of the net into the sea and Burt maneuvered the boat into a loop as the net continued to play out. In time, the fish trapped, four of the men in teams of two hand-cranked the two stainless steel reels that drew in each side of the net, while two of his men with hooks removed meter-long and longer blues from the net and cast them down the square gap in the deck into the fish hold.

As the net neared the point where all of it would be brought back into the vessel, Burt noticed his men struggling with the reel cranks. “What’s on, boys? Sam and Rikay not bringing in the fish fast enough?”

“No, boss,” shouted back Erik, “Most of ‘em are up. Net’s just too heavy somehow. Maybe’s scraped somethin’ up from the bottom!”

“Sam, Rikay, help with the cranks.” Burt stepped toward the rear of the boat. He took Sam’s fishhook and himself pulled blues and scraps out of the way. He saw the net strain downward with the weight of something below water. Three of them per each crank, straining hard, his brawny men were just able to raise it.

Water poured off a flat disc trapped in the net as it raised, pulling bottom mud off its surface as it ran down. Clearly the bank was shallower here than he’d thought. Burt reached out for the disc with a hook. “Help me here boys, let’s get this aboard!”

The boat was just wide enough to receive the wide but relatively thin disk he and his men just managed to get into the vessel. Three things were immediately evident about it, other than its sheer size. First, it had been crafted by someone—this was nothing found lying around in nature. Second, it was at least coated with what appeared to be pure gold. And last, it was covered on both sides in symbols spiraling in and out from the center, in a form of writing completely unlike anything Burt had ever seen before.