Higher Cause

by John Hunt

  “The cost of saving your life’s dream!” Joseph cajoled. “The Island is very proud of you. The news on the intranet is all about your escapades. You’ve become a hero, as well as the boss and a father figure.”

  “A father figure? I am way too young for that!”

  “Nonetheless, you have become one. You’ve been looked upon with reverence over this past year and more, and now people are beginning to look upon you with awe as well.”

  Petur shook his head. “I haven’t looked at the Island news yet today. Has Jeff Baddori met with a similar fate?”

  “His name was mentioned. But no photo. I can’t say I have met the man, although we might have bumped into one another at some point.”

  “Perhaps not. He’s only been on the Island once before, briefly, several months back. I think he likes to keep his face out of the public eye, so he probably avoided photos.”

  Joseph sipped at his juice and looked out the sliding glass window through which he had entered. It opened onto a wooden porch, which was broad — lining most of the lengthy wall on that side of the house and extending partially around the right-hand wall. On the far end of the porch was a doorway into Petur’s home office, disconnected from the interior of the home. Beyond the porch lay a long downward sloping hill with low-lying vegetation. Petur had an almost 180-degree view southward, encompassing the harbor, the resort complex, and Science Hall. Through the kitchen window in the back of the house, one could easily look up to the top of the higher peak of Paradise 1, where the communications array and the observatory sat majestically above all else.

  “You picked the perfect place to build your house, Petur. You can see almost everything from here.”

  Petur nodded. “The official residence of the president of Iceland sits on a small promontory on a bay. From that house, the president can look out over Hafnafjordur, Reykjavik, Kopavogur, and Keflavik. More than three quarters of the population of Iceland lives in those cities. This keeps the president in touch with the people, at least symbolically.”

  “You seem to stay in touch anyway. You have done well.”

  Petur laughed. “I’ve chosen well, perhaps. But it’s your money I am living off of, and your money that I spent on this house.”

  “No, Petur,” chastised Joseph. “You know better. You certainly have earned your pay. And you should be paid very well. Don’t feel guilty.”

  Petur had always felt guilty about accepting anything. But he did have to live. And after all, he had been successful.

  Onbacher continued. “You deserve to live well. You have performed marvelously in your position, which is essentially the chief executive officer of a major corporation. The Island Project is already on the road to self-sustainability. In fact, judging from your frequent reports, and assuming that you are not lying to your investors, you will likely need no further infusions of cash for the foreseeable future. Perhaps never.”

  “That is what seems to be occurring. I had hoped this might happen, but as you know, I had not counted on it. The power of this conglomeration of highly intelligent people, unfettered, has outperformed even my most optimistic estimates. These people put out more profitable inventions than I could have imagined.”

  “I am going to be a rich man.”

  Petur chose to not make any wisecrack comment in return.

  “I am highly pleased with my investment’s performance, Petur.”

  There was an awkward silence for a few moments. Petur did not like being complimented.

  “So, Joseph, what brings you by this morning? Not that I mind in the least, of course. It’s always a pleasure.”

  Smiling, Onbacher replied, “I have something interesting I wish to discuss with you. It is a venture, unlikely to be in the least bit profitable, but has the potential to be of incredible value to the future of humanity.”

  Petur interrupted, squinting his eyes suspiciously. “Joseph, that pitch is very familiar.”

  “Yes, it should be. I am paraphrasing the pitch you gave me more than two years ago. It worked then, so I figured I would try it on you.”

  Amused and curious, Petur said, “Soon I will be hoisted by my own petard. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Onbacher stood and moved back over to the kitchen. As he opened the refrigerator to get a refill of his juice, he spoke loudly so that Petur could hear.

  “Petur, do you remember when I ran that Hash with you?”

  “Of course I do. How could I forget? You were super! How come you haven’t run since? I thought you enjoyed it.”

  “I did enjoy it. I am also still sore, months and months later. I did way too much, way too fast, and I have been a gimp ever since.” He closed the refrigerator with his hip and limped over to the love seat in the living room where he winced as he sat down.

  Petur rolled his eyes. “You really are a great actor, and so dramatic, Joseph.”

  “All right,” he admitted. “I’ve just been lazy. It’s hard to get up on Saturdays. Besides, I’ve been in the States a lot lately. My family misses me when I am here, and I miss them. Haven’t been able to stay on the Island as much as I sometimes would like. Now, where were we?”

  “Are you getting old? We were Hashing!”

  “Oh, I guess I hadn’t started telling you anything, yet. Well, do you remember the pink-and-black beach, the one with the zebra striping?”

  Petur had gone back there on several occasions. It was the perfect, secluded beach: gentle waves, warm water, and usually completely empty. He nodded as he pictured it.

  “We found mulberries on that beach. Do you remember that?”

  Tipping his head to one side, Petur thought. “Not really.” And then, “Oh, yes. You seemed very excited by it. I was trying to figure out how to use that strange love of mulberries against you when it was time to give you a Hash nickname. I figured you must be a horticulturist on the side.”

  “Well, I’m not. But I am very familiar with that shrubbery. Or tree. I’m still not sure which it is.”

  “I’m still not sure why you cared about it at all,” replied Petur.

  “Do you remember what I told you mulberries were?” Joseph inquired.

  “No. Grapefruit? No, it was breadfruit. The stuff the Bounty had in its cargo when the mutiny occurred. So, what is the significance of that? You and Isaac seemed to lose interest right after you told me about the trees being there.”

  “Well, you said yourself that I am a good actor. So is Isaac. We have both been nearly jumping out of our shorts!”

  “I am dying to hear why.”

  “Do you have a lot of time?”

  “Are you going to tell me more of the story about Captain Cook and the sphere that floated in the air?” Petur thought back through the months, to Joseph’s tale of the young midshipman who had written that he had witnessed the strange Tahitian ceremony in the crater of a volcano.

  “Yes, Petur, that is my plan.”

  “I’m still curious. Tell me more of the story, Joseph.”

  “The next part starts with Cook’s sailing master, the night that Cook and John Carver both came back to the ship so late. Carver had his fling with the island girl, Lohanai. And then he witnessed that ceremony with the Tahitian royalty. Then he swam back to the ship and sneaked aboard, but the sailing master saw him. Do you remember?”

  “Yes, sure. The nice fellow who let Carver off the hook.”

  “Yes, that one. Although perhaps you will think of him less congenially in a moment. You see, that nice officer — the one who sympathized with the young midshipman Carver, who let him off the hook despite having disobeyed Captain Cook’s order to return directly to the ship — later was promoted to lieutenant and went on to become the leader of an expedition of his own. It was a ship that he sailed back to Tahiti ten years later in search of, purportedly, and silly as it sounds, breadfruit.”

  Petur laughed. “Oh, Joseph, don’t tell me it was Bligh!”

  “Yes. Lieutenant William Bligh. Captain of the ship that
suffered that most famous of all mutinies soon after leaving Tahiti in 1789: His Majesty’s Armed Vessel, the Bounty. William Bligh had been the sailing master of the Resolution during Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific.”

  “I of course know much of the Bounty.” Petur interposed. “It’s the Bounty’s tale that first inspired my interest in this area of the Pacific for my Island project. It’s the Bounty mutineers who settled Pitcairn’s Island — my initial, albeit inappropriate first choice for my scientific colony to be placed.”

  “Yes, I know that. It is why I gave you that cannonball. And now Petur, I have to tell you something that you may not like at all.”

  Petur looked at the plump older man, trying to imagine what Joseph might possibly have on his mind.

  Joseph looked at the floor, seemingly ashamed. “What caused me to sign on to help fund your project was not your impressive ability to convince, nor terrible concerns that the future of mankind was in the balance. I have come to agree with you over the past years, but at the time when we first met, in my home in Alexandria, I was focused entirely — well almost entirely — on my own purpose. You see, Isaac had told me about your interest in Pitcairn’s Island. It was our shared interest in Pitcairn’s that prompted me to decide that our fates lay on the same road. It was Pitcairn’s that brought me onboard.”

  Petur nodded. “I remember you alluded to this when we first met. And you did tell me about your personal mission to find your sphere.”

  “Right. True. Had I not told you then, I would have felt guilty about that ever since. But fear not. As I said, I have come fully to believe in your mission. Our mission.”

  “So, tell me the rest of the story, Joseph.”

  Joseph sat back in his seat once again, and took a breath. “The rest of the story has been hard to ascertain, Petur. Indeed, like the fanciful writings of young John Carver, what I am about to tell you may contain not an ounce of truth. It is perhaps but the pure conjecture of an old man.”

  “Tell me anyway. Maybe I can help you decide if there might be truth in it.”

  “Well, Captain Cook never returned to England, for he made the unfortunate decision to stop by the Hawaiian Islands first. Cook was killed by the natives there, in Kealakekua Bay. A monument to him now stands at the spot. I once tried to see the monument, but it is very hard to get to.”

  “So the Admiralty never learned anything more of the antigravity sphere?” Petur inquired.

  “Actually, they had Cook’s journal, so they probably did learn more. If so, they must have kept it completely secret. Cook was highly respected and acclaimed. His log would have been trusted. Newton’s thinking about gravity was still relatively recent in the minds of the elite of England. The power of this sphere would have been obvious to the Admiralty, and they assuredly would not wish it to fall into the wrong hands. But at the time the Admiralty learned of Cook’s death, the Navy was in disarray. And it was more than a decade before the mission to find the sphere gained priority.”

  “Now, Joseph, do you know this to be the case? Is there any record of this anywhere in the Admiralty files which you could find?”

  Joseph shook his head. “No, it is primarily conjecture. But let me continue with my fantasy.”

  “It makes a good story, if nothing else.”

  “Yes. I told you it would be an interesting tale. So, somehow, someone became interested once again in the story of the sphere in Tahiti. I am not certain who, but I venture to guess that it was Sir Joseph Banks, the now-highly famous scientist from Cook’s first voyage to Tahiti. In any event, after years of inattention, the Admiralty gained renewed interest in Tahiti. Purportedly, they wanted to collect young breadfruit shrubs to transplant onto the plantations of the Caribbean islands. Ostensibly, they sent the Bounty all the way around the world to accomplish this mission. Does this not seem silly to you?”

  “It always seemed a bit odd to me, Joseph, but, I assumed I did not have a grasp of the economics of the time.”

  “Well, the economics was not that different from that of today, except that they weren’t using fraudulent money then. The technology has changed, but economics has not. Look, they sent a small armed vessel halfway around the world for some saplings. This is the British Navy we are talking about, Petur. Not generally a lighthearted bunch, yet this mission seemed a joke.”

  “If I remember right, even the crew and officers did not think too highly of their mission.”

  “That’s right. They scoffed at it, and were embarrassed by it. The officers and men of the Bounty had no pride in the mission they were sent to accomplish. No pride means little motivation. And certainly, the lack of motivation to accomplish the mission played a great role in leading to the mutiny. But there was at least one man who knew the real mission: Lieutenant William Bligh, the captain of the ship and the sailing master of the Resolution more than a decade earlier.”

  “But the mutiny threw a wrench into the works,” Petur offered.

  “Perhaps. But, again, you get ahead of me. Bligh was troubled. Not initially, but the voyage on the Bounty changed him somehow. Initially kind and gentle, he became harsh and mean. There is no doubt that he was an able navigator, and a brilliant seaman. But he had developed a degree of brutality that was unlike him. He became verbally abusive, in that he could give a terrifying tongue-lashing even to his officers. Subsequent to the mutiny on the Bounty, Bligh was given other important commands, both ashore and at sea. He is the only known Naval officer in history to have been involved, in one way or another, with three separate mutinies, of which the Bounty was but the first.”

  “I didn’t know that. Sounds like the first mutiny, or at least the second, should have put an end to his career.”

  “It didn’t. For one thing, it is not clear that he was in the least bit at fault for any of the mutinies, and most historians look upon him as a fine leader, although with shortcomings. Indeed, what I find most intriguing, it was none other than Sir Joseph Banks who recommended Bligh for his later post as governor of New South Wales. History says the mutiny on the Bounty was in part because Bligh became a harsh taskmaster so unexpectedly. It was a setup for disaster: The men had suffered on their long voyage to Tahiti, in which they attempted to round Cape Horn in the midst of a constant storm, and failed. They were hungry and exhausted when they reached the haven of Tahiti. When they arrived, they found abundant naked women and wonderful food, and they had substantial leisure time in which to enjoy everything offered. Months passed. The crew softened. Even the most menial of the sailors were treated as royalty. The women served them with food and with their bodies. The men were in paradise.

  “But then, with the ship loaded with breadfruit saplings, it was getting time for them all to depart. You know Fletcher Christian, the Bounty’s master’s mate?” Petur nodded and Joseph continued. “Christian had learned the Maori language almost fluently during those months. He had grown fond of a girl there, daughter of the big king. He had taken up residence on the island, and as head of the shore party in charge of the breadfruit saplings, had slept there every night. He rarely dined with the other officers. He had been tattooed with traditional Maori markings.

  “Christian had become very well liked by the islanders, and particularly by the Maori king. But Bligh was concerned that he also had softened, and even wrote that in his personal log, although not in his official log.

  “When the ship left, the officers and crew, knowing nothing about the true mission of the Bounty, were thrust from this paradise back into the hell of shipboard life under a captain who had quite suddenly become particularly harsh. It took little to induce mutiny, and Fletcher Christian, the master’s mate, led the uprising.”

  Petur chimed in. “Christian had fallen in love with the Maori king’s daughter. He wished to return to her.”

  “Yes. That is what we believe to be the case. The girl was reportedly very lovely. It is assumed that one of the major motivating forces for the mutiny was the men’s desire to return for the wo
men. Christian was motivated by this.”

  “I know that he put Bligh with many other men into one of the ship’s boats, and set them adrift.”

  “Yes. Historians generally think of Christian as a good man in a difficult situation, although some say he was narcissistic and self-centered. I don’t know the truth. Regardless, he would not allow Bligh to be killed. So he set him adrift in the launch. And Bligh revealed his true courage and abilities on an amazing trip in an open boat with nineteen starving and thirsty men. He brought them all through the ordeal safely, except for one, who was killed by the natives of the one island upon which they landed en route. Bligh returned to Britain, where there was an investigation into the mutiny that found Christian culpable. Bligh was considered a hero.”

  “But he failed in his mission to obtain the sphere!”

  “Yes, but it was a mission to which the Admiralty was unwilling to admit. Nothing was said of it during the investigation, or subsequent trials.”

  “And what happened to the chest and the sphere? It remained on the Bounty, I presume?”

  Onbacher shook his head. “I don’t think it was on the Bounty yet, Petur.”

  “What do you mean? Bligh left Tahiti without it?”

  “I think so.”

  “You have me all confused, Joseph. What are you talking about?”

  “Are you getting tired yet?”

  “No.” Petur replied, a bit curtly.

  “Here comes the real speculation.”

  “Go on.”

  “The history of the Bounty after the mutiny is put together from bits and pieces of oral and written testimony. It is difficult to know what happened for sure just after the mutiny.”

  “They went back to Tahiti first, did they not?”

  “Not right away, it seems; but soon enough, that is just what they did. And they were greeted warmly by the Tahitian Maori upon their return. But Christian was wise and wished to leave as soon as possible, and this was probably in everyone’s best interest, for Tahiti would be the first place the British would look for them. And the mutineers knew the British would be looking for them. And mutiny was a capital offense. If caught, they would all be hanged.