The Brave New World 52 Marooned!

They'd spent a full month on the island, and they looked it. They were dirty - washing in the thin stream of brackish water they'd found was highly problematical. They had both lost weight - Cruz was happy with that because he'd been seriously overweight, but Susanto wasn't. Their clothes were stained and torn, here and there. They had haggard faces and bloodshot eyes, constantly irritated by the salty ocean air.

Although they'd kept watch around the clock, they hadn't spotted a single pa.s.sing ship, a single aircraft. A three-man team of sailors from the Golden Dawn had been dispatched to the island's southern coast a week earlier with a supply of food, binoculars, a flare gun, and a dozen flares. They were to keep their eyes peeled for a boat from Adamstown on Pitcairn Island, just over a hundred kilometers to the southwest.

Gabriel Cruz had argued for moving the camp to the southern sh.o.r.e of their island, Henderson Island, many times. But Susanto successfully opposed that move, pointing out that his grounded ship, the Golden Dawn, contained plenty of stores and equipment that might yet prove useful.

As of the previous day, that argument became null and void. The tide had finally dragged the Golden Dawn out into the ocean. Not very far: parts of it superstructure were still visible above water at low tide. But it had definitely ended its life as a supply depot.

Its loss hadn't been the tragedy it might have been for its stranded pa.s.sengers and crew: all food, water, and alcohol supplies that had been already taken off the doomed ship. What was far worse was that those supplies had dwindled alarmingly. Cruz and Susanto estimated that they would be gone within a week. After all, there were eighteen mouths to feed.

"We have to move camp to the southern sh.o.r.e, Rafi," said Cruz.

Susanto shot him a quick glance. Cruz was staring at the ocean, his mouth set in a bitter, disappointed line. He added:

"Or maybe it's time we sent out our boat to Pitcairn. There's a northwestern wind. The boat already has a mast. I know it's small and intended for the emergency beacon, but we could still rig a sail. Half a dozen men would be enough to man the oars around the clock. For a couple of days, anyway. And we won't need more than a couple of days to reach Adamstown."

"Not with eighteen people aboard."

"I'm not saying we should all go. What I have in mind is sending an expedition that will bring help. Six of the strongest oarsmen in your crew, and one of us. The rest stays here."

"I don't know," said Susanto. "If something happens to the boat... There is no guarantee of success, right? You saw the map. You know Pitcairn is less than half the size of our island. It's easy to miss it. And then the next landfall is on the f.u.c.king Antarctic."

"We have navigational instruments."

"Yeah. Instruments that no one knows how to use properly."

"I'm not talking about the s.e.xtant. We've got a compa.s.s, haven't we? In fact we've got two. All we need is to set a course, and stick to it. Even if we miss Pitcairn by a short distance, we should still at least see it."

"Unless we pa.s.s it at night, and there's a storm," Susanto said darkly.

"There is no other option, Rafi. I know it and you know it."

"What about all that stuff?" asked Susanto, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. They both turned their heads to look at the huge mound of items taken from the cube. There were exactly sixty one thousand of them: fifty thousand timon implant kits, ten thousand hiber beds, and a thousand doc.u.mentation scrolls.

They'd stopped taking items from the cube a week earlier. They'd both become convinced the cube could dispense an unlimited amount. It still stood there, just a few steps from their camp. It continued to glow softly even in bright sunlight.

"We'll leave everything as is," said Cruz. "There's no sense carrying it all across the island. The cube can't be moved, anyway. We'll just return here when we've straightened out our own situation."

"What if the cube is gone by then? And someone comes along and takes all this stuff that we've unloaded? It took days, Gabriel."

"It seems unlikely someone will, as you put it, come along and take anything at all. We haven't seen anyone come along for a whole month, haven't we?"

"Gabriel, we can't risk anyone else discovering the cube. Because if they do, they'll replicate in the New World just like we did. They will find gold just as we did. And they will find timon just like you did. And it seems to me that in the very near future timon will be much more precious than gold."

"They'll also find that the place is full of dinosaurs and other interesting, man-eating fauna. Just like we did. And give it a rest, just like we did."

"You don't want to go there again?"

"Of course I want to go there again. But much, much better prepared. It would also be a good idea to try a different spot for replication."

"But you found timon and gold on that hill right next to the beach on which we'd replicated."

"It will be present elsewhere, I'm sure. It seems that this island is huge in the New World. And finding timon and gold isn't enough. We have to find that stone called tiger rock, too. I hadn't seen any."

"Neither have I. But maybe we didn't look hard enough. It was difficult, with all these, with all these distractions."

Cruz laughed.

"Distractions is right," he said.

They fell silent for a while; they were both thinking about their last visit to the New World. It was the first time they'd gone together, with eight crewmen from the Golden Dawn. Susanto wanted to see with his own eyes the timon deposit Cruz claimed to have found.

The expedition turned into disaster almost instantly. They replicated on the now-familiar beach to see several man-sized dinosaurs feasting on the carca.s.s of a sea serpent of some kind. The dinosaurs immediately took interest in the new arrivals. A couple interrupted their feast and came after them. After the first two crewmen were killed, Susanto's mate - who had been left behind to supervise the sleeping members of the expedition - woke all of them up, and removed the implants.

They decided to stay away from the New World until they a.s.sembled a big team of specialists capable of dealing with its dangers. Susanto didn't even get to see any timon. He had to take Cruz's word for it. Cruz claimed to have walked around the whole hill, and to have found a cave whose walls were literally made of timon.

Susanto sighed and said:

"I think the others are getting restless."

Cruz turned around and looked at the crewmen and the wh.o.r.es gathered in the camp they'd set up. He saw many faces expectantly turned in his direction. He said:

"You're right, Rafi. We've been talking here for a while. It's time we told them what we've decided."

"And what have we decided?"

"To send the boat to Adamstown."

Susanto was silent. Cruz got up and brushed the sand off his legs.

"Come on, Rafi," he said. "You know we have to move our camp to the southern sh.o.r.e, and send the boat. We don't have any other options."

"Okay," said Susanto. "Okay."

He got up and looked at Cruz and said:

"But who is going to go? And who is going to stay?"

"I thought you would go. After all, those sailors are your crew, not mine."

Susanto swallowed. He didn't want to embark on a dangerous journey in a lifeboat to a tiny speck of an island over a hundred kilometers away. There was drinking water on Henderson Island, even if tainted with salt. There were coconuts. There were plenty of fish. Sooner or later, someone would come along.

"I think we should have a draw, just like we did before the first trip to the New World," he said.

Cruz shrugged.

"Fine," he said. "Shall we talk to the others first? They really are getting impatient."

It was true. Some of the crewmen had got up from their seats, looking at Cruz and Susanto. Even one of the wh.o.r.es had gotten up, and that was something. The wh.o.r.es seemed to feel best when sitting or lying down.

Susanto waved a hand to indicate he and Cruz would be along soon. Then he turned to Cruz and said:

"Let's do it."

They took a while selecting the right pebble from the beach. Susanto insisted it must look good. Somewhere deep in his mind, a Stone Age instinct had come awake. It insisted that he should use a nice stone for the magic ritual.

Finally Cruz found a nice, small stone. It was reddish on one side, and greenish on the other. Susanto would have preferred something uniformly white or grey or black, but couldn't see anything suitable.

Cruz held the pebble in the first draw - the draw that determined who would hold it for the second, decisive draw. Susanto pointed to the hand that was empty, which meant Cruz would hold the pebble for the second draw.

The previous time, Cruz had also won the first draw and got to hold the pebble. But on the second draw, Susanto pointed to the empty hand, and it was Cruz that had led their first expedition to the New World. Susanto felt dread. The odds of that particular sequence taking place again were too small for his liking. It was very likely that he would pick the stone in the second draw.

He didn't. Just like before, he pointed to the empty hand.

Cruz smiled.

"Looks like you're staying behind again, Rafi," he said. "Come on, let's tell the others."

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