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.

Disaster Aversion

by Travis Perry

Adagio Mayor Edard Jonzn’s mind raced for a solution. A tsunami coming in, the west water gate damaged and open—open at his command, no less. The tidal wave would push into the harbor and sweep east across it—he saw it in his mind’s eye—to the lower land on that side…where his office stood…which held the conference room where the Avenir governor and the Zirconia deputy mayor, “Lieutenant” MacBane, ostensibly still waited.

Jonzn barked some quick orders over the phone to his engineer and sprinted out of his ashbrick office, through the white-conch painted doorway into the next building over, which held the conference room. At the polished bronze table sat the Avenir governor in his own chair, resplendent in his fancy nanoweave suit, his eyes wide in shock, his face drained white, along with two of his so-called Ministers.

“Where’s MacBane?” shouted Jonzn.

“I…I don’t know,” said the governor. “He left.”

Jonzn charged back out of the room, out of the building, his heavy belly jiggling in his too-tight gray suit made of Zirconia cotton. Down the hill toward the nearest sea dock he ran.

MacBane stood outside his personal submarine, in the act of stepping into in, its motors already powered up, as Jonzn shouted down, “Wait! I need your help!”

The Zirconian official paused, clearly considering pushing off without Jonzn. Instead, he answered, “Hurry up! The bay is already receding.”

Jonzn saw it too…water pulling back, out of the bay…only to come back not long from now with a vengeance. He hit the end of the dock and literally jumped into the sub, landing on his hands and knees and scrambling back up to the nearest seat.

“Seal the hatch!” shouted the pilot from the single seat right behind the two round windows on the left and the right sides of the nose of the sub. “Shove off—I’ll get it!” snapped back MacBane and the pilot did as he was told, the boat flying forward on the surface of the bay, twin propellers thrusting it ahead in a roar of biomass diesel. Water sloshed ankle-deep into the vessel before the Lieutenant sealed the door, which swung down from an overhead hinge.

J
onzn had always called himself an agnostic, but was seriously reconsidering the value of prayer…Dear God, dear God, dear God…let there be enough water to make it to the gate!

The submarine drove forward on the surface, headed for the west gate. Jonzn explained his plan in brief words.

MacBane tapped his lips with the end of the bugizzard cigar he’d been chewing. “It might work. There’s a hook near the tail for the chain. But if there’s not enough water at the gate…” his voice trailed off.

The chief engineer and five of his men were fixing the heavy steel chain to two rings on the inside edge of the western watergate—only the inside of the gate had the walkway where they could access it—just as the submarine pulled up alongside, careful not to get too close to the shore on the left side. MacBane broke the seal of the door and swung it up enough for Jonzn to shout instructions, new water sloshing in. 

The bay had receded but there remained for the moment enough water by the gate for the submarine to function. The engineer crew hooked the chain to rear of the sub and without further command the pilot pushed his throttle lever ahead as the lieutenant resealed the door. Once the chain pulled taut, confirmed by shouting and waving engineers, the pilot pushed the lever as far down as it would go and the engines roared like thunder.

The watergate, designed to roll on a track with relative ease, began to move…just a bit. The submarine jerked and shuddered as its propellers bit into the still-receding water…and the gate moved more, more quickly now. It needed to make it just over four hundred meters.

“Dear God, dear God, dear God,” chanted Jonzn, his hands pressed to either side of his stubble-whiskered plump face, rocking back and forth in the passenger seat to the right of MacBane. A round portal window on his side of the sub faced away from the action of the moving gate, but gave him full view of Adagio and its harbor…which was mostly dry land by now…fishing vessels stranded on a downward-pointing curve.

Now the gate must be moving quickly, for the submarine started accelerating and the chain hadn’t broken or come loose. Jonzn’s prayers ceased and a smile tugged at the corner of his lips, in spite of his still-pounding heart.

Then the submarine hit ground with a horrible scraping and ground to a halt. The gate, however, contained considerably more inertia than the submarine. It kept plowing ahead, its end now visible in the pilot’s portside window as Jonzn looked forward.

The chain, which had gone loose as the massive gate caught up to the ten meter submarine that had pulled it, went taut again as the huge wall of the water gate passed it, rolling smoothly on its track. The chain twisted the sub around violently, now pointing tail first, and the rolling gate jerked the vessel along behind and began dragging it through the mud and rocks that once had been deep underwater in Adagio harbor.

As the submarine jerked and scraped with the horrible scream of tortured steel, Edard Jonzn instantly rediscovered the value of prayer. As he bounced, the submarine scraped, as he prayed and cursed, some part of him still looked out his portal window, which now faced the gate. The gate was beginning to slow, it was slowing, the dragged submarine acting as its brake…it would not make the last hundred meters or so to closure with the east gate…it would not make it…dear God, dear God.

And Jonzn then noticed some sort of structure on the floor of the harbor not far from the gate. A stone archway…as if some ancient civilization had built something in the bay, now revealed by the emptied water. But Jonzn knew that wasn’t the case, there had been no ancient civilization…or he thought he knew.

Looking through his portal window, the only one looking out that side of the sub, Jonzn saw stepping through the doorway a man with golden hair and a golden sword in his hands. In a single effortless motion he slashed the chain dragging the submarine and stepped back into the arch. Then both the man, and it, vanished from view. Jonzn’s mind assumed the sub had moved somehow so the arch was no longer in view. But later he realized that wasn’t what happened at all.

The gate kept rolling, slowly rolling, to closure, meeting the east gate at the center of the harbor.

#

The gate had closed just before the tsunami hit, saving Adagio. And not too hard, either, since Jonzn realized that in his original plan, the submarine would have been trying to slow the gate as it hurled shut and probably would not have been able to undo built up inertia in time—dragging the submarine for over one hundred meters had barely managed to slow it just enough. If things had worked the way he’d planned them, he would have smashed the ends of the gates to smithereens,  the west gate rolling closed far too fast, which would have been its own disaster, destroying the center where the gates met…like how the Zirconian submarine had been destroyed. He owed Zirconia, more than ever, for the use of that vessel—that was for sure. He tried to put out of his mind the other help that had come literally from the middle of nowhere.

He and his chief engineer stood over a rough metal table in the engineering gatehouse, examining the ends of a sliced chain. The man turned to him, “Boss, what I can’t figure is how you would have done it. Maybe with explosives or something you could, not that you had any on you that I know of—but it wouldn’t turn out like this at all.” The separated pieces of chain were perfectly smooth, mirrored metal, as if cut with a high-powered laser.

Jonzn took three quick drags on his cigar and laughed. “Now, now, you can’t ‘spect me to give up all my secrets, Fred. Maybe I cut that chain out there and maybe I didn’t. I didn’t get in the position I’m in by tellin’ everything I know.”

With a grin he added, “Which won’t keep me from taking all the credit, of course.” He winked at the engineer, puffing cigar smoke.

Disaster Visitation

by Travis Perry

Lieutenant MacBane showed up for the meeting just in time, ushered quickly into the building adjoining the mayor’s, taking his seat among half-dozen key players at the conference table. He was too late in fact to hand off his “package” to Mayor Jonzn prior to the disaster-relief committee meeting. This put the mayor in a rather foul mood.

After  what “up abovers” in Avenir, in space, and on Sheba and Quatermain called “The War” (because it had been their only one), which the landsiders and undersea dwellers called “The Great War” (because there had been others on Eclectia), the Peace Council had been established to provide for a common legal system, with common police and military service, throughout all the diverse settlements in the system. Since Avenir had won the war with the help of the spacers, naturally the Peace Council met there and represented Avenir and spacer interests more than any of the people dwelling “down under.” All combined undersea colonies had exactly one representative on the council, the same number all landside colonies had. One.

The Peace Council directly controlled peacekeepers and through them, the enforcers. They also appointed governors to each significant individual location, in all regions: on the ground, underwater, and in space. The governors employed “ministers” to assist them. But these appointees did not replace native local governments and institutions where they had already existed...

“Our first item for the agenda should be the Avenir Gratitude School. Avenir has paid over two hundred thousand credits to establish this groundbreaking institution, yet all we’ve got for our troubles is a floor, four walls with doorways and windows, and a ceiling. We’ve gone through three contractors, and costs keep overrunning—”

“Hey, first off, this is bidness for the education committee, which meets next fiveday,” snarled Jonzn. “Second, maybe if you paid in real coin like everyone else uses, you’d get better results than you do with your useless Avenir credits!”

The governor’s eyes opened wide. “Useless! My dear mayor, any of the over two hundred and thirty merchants and vendors on Avenir will fully redeem all payments made in credits, plus your local money market allows transfer to your backward hard currency, if your contractors insist—”

“At a substantial loss!”

“This is by no means our fault, Mayor. If the Avenir Investment Ministry’s help is of no interest to you, AIM can just as well send monies to other backward areas. Such the Zirconia orphanage, for example—”

“Not that Avenir has an orphan problem,” said MacBane, rolling his eyes, chewing an unlit cigar.

The governor didn’t even glance at the official from Zirconia—his eyes remained fixed firmly on Jonzn’s. “Are you saying I should recommend to the Peace Council that AIM withdraw its assistance?” The governor leaned back in his aluminum frame padded chair that he’d brought with him to the meeting. Apparently the wrought iron chairs around the mayor’s polished brass conference table weren’t good enough for him…

Jonzn hastily changed his sneer into the best smile he could manage. Avenir credits were unfair—they benefitted the up-above economy at the expense of everyone else—and they didn’t amount to all that much real money. But they were a lot better than nothing and his people needed everything he could get for them. “Look, I’m sorry, Gov’ner. Had a bad mornin’. Didn’t get my lava tea this day. Of course we both want and need your help down ‘ere.” In the back of his mind Jonzn was wondering if he could start a rumor that would work its way up to the council and get this skyscrubber of a governor fired.

“In my opinion—” said MacBane. He didn’t finish, because at that moment the tsunami warning siren sounded over the city of Adagio, the signal to close the watergates, the only things protecting the city from certain destruction.

Jonzn squeezed his round belly out from underneath the table and ran for the door to his office. There, panting from the short sprint, he picked up his landline phone and dialed the main engineer house at the gates. Sweat drenched his head for reasons that had little to do with running.

“Tell me you got the gates fixed!”

“No, sir! The west gate is still open and won’t close. I repeat, the west gate is still open!”

Disaster Preparation

by Travis Perry

Mayor Edard Jonzn genuinely loved Adagio. Which didn’t mean he was above laying aside a bit of money for himself from time to time.

The monthly disaster-relief committee meeting was to take place in only two hours and the watergate engines that sealed off the port were down, damaged and left closed after the tsunami from the last fiveday. This was bad, because the Zirconia representative normally rode in on his personal submarine only an hour before the meeting. And Mayor Jonzn desperately wanted him to make it for this particular disaster committee reunion.

Just over a Founding ago the fresh-faced “Lieutenant” in his quasi-military uniform, a legacy from the days Zirconia was military-run, had entered his office after a committee meeting, asking if he had any bugizzard cigars. The very question marked him as an outsider—very few people on Adagio had ever even heard of tobacco, let alone smoked it. For an Adagio native, a “bugizzard cigar” was simply a “cigar.”

He’d invited the clean-shaven kid over to his hand-crafted steel desk with a warm smile, looked him over, and handed him a cigar. The lieutenant had lit it with practiced ease and taken an appreciative puff. This made the young man seem different, as if he were the kind of person who kept up an appearance of propriety in public, but who secretly would have made an excellent customer back in the days Jonzn was Adagio’s number one bar-and-brothel owner. The “Lieutenant”—really a sort of deputy mayor—had laughed nervously after that and then made an unusual statement:

“I have something heavy in my pocket. I don’t want to bring it back to Zirconia with me.” He pulled out of the front right pocket of his pressed aqua blue trousers a small handful of coins. Gold coins. Lieutanant Macbane’s face flushed red. Obviously this had been his first bribe.

“For…for you, sir,” he stammered as he placed them on the mayor’s desk, seeming uncertain of what to do next.

Mayor Jonzn, on the other hand, had not been a virgin in the arena of “under the table” payments. “Of course, son,” he’d said. “You can rest ‘em right there. I’ll give ‘em a good ‘ome, room and board, so to speak.” He grinned and the Lieutenant giggled nervously.

When nothing else came, he’d prompted, “Was there anything you might want in exchange for me giving said wayward coinage comfortable lodging for the night?”

The young man had seemed to come to himself after that, drawing his stance up taller. “Just remember that Zirconia is your true friend. Adagio’s interests are our interests. We expect…uh, I mean, hope for…your support should we ever find ourselves in disagreement with… other interests.” By that he’d clearly meant the “governor” from Avenir.

The mayor needed no convincing for that. He hated that butt-licking skyscrubber anyway. So it had been a win-win situation. Free money for doing what he would have done in any case.

But now, with the watergates down, he’d miss this month’s payment. With his daughter hounding him about buying her a new nanoweave dress imported from Avenir for her birthday, he needed every glimmer of extra coin he could get his hands on.

He stood in his office, built of ashbrick and painted white with sea-conch paste. He disliked the smell, but he’d long ago covered it with the odor of burning cigars. The black phone receiver in his hand had been hand-carved from a bug’s leg. Sweating nervously and smoking, he shouted into it. “I don’t care what you do, I want a gate open. You have one half-hour!”

“Sir, I’ve got a broken servo on the west gate and on the east, the main rail is bent. I could rig the backup motor on the east side to pull open the west, but there’d be no way to close it again in an emergency— ”

He cut off his chief engineer, “Sounds good, make it happen. Now!”

“But, sir— ”

“You’re a clever man, you’ll have this solved by the end of the day.”

“Maybe…but what if there’s a tsunami between now and then?”

“Shut your face-hole and do as you’re told,” snapped the mayor. He sucked hard on his cigar, his right hand trembling.