He walked around the pool and approached the tree with a keen eye. There were dozens of burrows dug into the tree by numerous animals over the years. At about eye level he spotted an abandoned burrow that looked to be the right size.
Hastelloy shrugged off the pack he carried on his right shoulder and placed it on the ground. He untied the knot, reached in, and pulled out a shiny metal box measuring a foot and a half on all sides. Hastelloy placed it inside the burrow and then pressed a button on top that shot four metal rods, two up and two down, into the tree to anchor it in place.
He yanked and pulled on the device with all he had but failed to move it even a single millimeter. He reached down and grabbed a handful of soft, malleable mud. Hastelloy packed it into the burrow to fill in the extra space around the edges before he plastered over the device itself. He reached down for another handful of mud while evaluating his handiwork from different angles.
That momentary distraction was all the jungle needed to lash out at him with one of its many deadly threats. While his hands dug around in the mud, Hastelloy felt the painful bite of four tiny daggers clamp down on his hand. He jumped back from the tree and in doing so yanked his hands out of the mud to find a three-foot long snake dangling from his left hand.
Hastelloy wasted no time grasping the snake by its triangular-shaped head and pressed in on both sides of its mouth to force the jaw to unclench. He held the serpent in his grasp for a moment while he looked it over. He did not recognize the breed, but he knew by the look that it was a pit viper of some sort. The fact that he was already becoming short of breath and losing muscle control informed him that the viper’s venom was very potent.
He whirled the snake above his head for three revolutions before flinging the snake as far as he could into the dark jungle. Hastelloy staggered his way back to the tree and began scraping away the mud from the front of his hidden device. With his hands beginning to shake uncontrollably, he managed to open hatches on the top and bottom of the machine’s front face.
Hastelloy scraped away another fistful of mud and forced the wet soil down into the top hatch. While the molecular resequencing components of the replicator worked their magic, Hastelloy’s condition grew exponentially worse by the second.
Finally, a thick white liquid began running out of the bottom hatch. He leaned his limp body against the tree and managed to careen his neck just enough to place his mouth under the hatch and drink in the liquid. The result was almost instantaneous. His numb extremities regained feeling. His lungs returned to full capacity, and the encroaching tunnel vision cleared to a full view of the clearing once more.
“That will be the first of many lives you save my friend,” Hastelloy uttered to the inanimate object. He placed a canteen skin into the flowing white stream until the device ran out of atoms to resequence and the flow stopped. May as well take some of Tonwen’s replicated stem cell serum with me in case this jungle strikes at me again, Hastelloy thought.
He spent a few more minutes in the clearing covering up the device once more. Hastelloy then pulled out a thumb-size device from his bag and activated it to send the exact coordinates back to the command chamber for Commander Gallono to catalog.
Bringing their advanced technology out of hiding violated just about every letter of the Novi’s noninterference directive. Nonetheless, it was the necessary thing to do. It was also the right thing to do, which was a rare pleasure considering how often those two motives stood in contrast to each other.
Once the Europeans began arriving on these new continents, they would bring with them countless contaminants. Europe, Africa, and Asia had already developed antibodies to fight diseases like smallpox and the plague, but this separate ecosystem had never experienced them. The only way to prevent tens of millions of natives from dying on this continent was to be here with a cure, a cure manufactured by this replicator.
Hastelloy’s first instinct was to keep the replicator with him at all times while in the New World, but that would be problematic. Humans were curious, especially explorers and the adventurous settler types who would come. Odds were very high that the device would at some point fall into the wrong hands.
The solution was to get the device here before settlement began and hide it where no one would find it. Hastelloy and his crew would then be able to make a trip to the remote location, replenish their supply, and return to civilization with no one the wiser.
With that thought in mind, Hastelloy made his way back to the landing skiff with half a day to spare before Captain Corde ordered them all back to La Esperanza in order to sail on to the next location needing exploration in this vast new world they had discovered.
Chapter 3: A Gift from God
MONTEZUMA SIGNALED THE other two in his hunting party to move to the left and right of their target, the mighty danta. The massive beast stood four feet tall and eight feet long, with fearsome tusks protruding upward from either side of its lower jaw. The creature weighed close to a thousand pounds and was docile most of the time, but like any animal, it could be very dangerous when threatened.
As the other two moved into position, Montezuma brought his spear to the ready and released a breath he was holding, one filled with nervous tension. They had been tracking the danta for most of the day, and the time for action was at hand. It was also a breath filled with frustration.
Montezuma enjoyed hunting, but he did not like doing it at the behest of his older brother, the emperor. The man was a bumbling idiot devoid of any useful skills, yet he was the ruler of their Aztec tribe by virtue of being firstborn. He knew Montezuma was his superior in every way, and that was why he kept assigning him to lead dangerous hunting excursions. The emperor wanted Montezuma out of the way, and a hunting accident was the perfect way to do it. Perhaps his brother had some cleverness about him after all—not much, but some.
“Now,” Montezuma ordered, sending his men into action. Both hunters drove their spears into opposite sides of the danta. The beast wailed in pain as it reared back on its hind legs and then lurched forward into a full speed charge heading straight for Montezuma. He aimed his spear for the center of the animal’s chest and let its momentum bury the sharpened tip two feet deep.
He let go of his spear and tried leaping to avoid the collision, but he was too slow. The danta’s tusk scraped along Montezuma’s right leg as it crumpled to the ground and skidded to a stop amid a flurry of kicks and grunts. One of the other hunters walked over, retrieved his spear, and proceeded to stab the animal three more times to put it out of its misery.
While that took place, the other hunter helped Montezuma back to his feet. His right leg felt like it was on fire, but, thankfully, the wound was only a shallow scratch. It ran the entire length of his leg, but nothing was broken. He would recover from the wound just fine, this time at least.
The danta’s screeches and grunts eventually came to an end, which allowed Montezuma to hear another sound in the air. Someone, a man in the distance, had shouted two words that he did not understand. He looked to the others for an explanation, but they were just as confused about the noise.
“You two take care of getting the danta back to the city. I will investigate that sound,” Montezuma ordered before moving on toward the east and the source of those shouted words.
A few minutes later, Montezuma heard footsteps approaching. Without making a sound, he retreated into a nearby bush and vanished from view. Soon he saw a man, a tall man with pale skin and hair on his face, step past. He had come from the shores and was heading into the jungle.
Montezuma knew that he had a decision to make. He could follow the man to where he was going, or he could investigate where the stranger had been. Since there were other voices coming from the shores, Montezuma decided to investigate those sounds first.
When he reached the edge of the tree line, Montezuma could not believe his eyes. Out in the middle of the seawaters stood the largest boat he had ever seen. His people frequently made voyages to the nearby is
lands to trade with other tribes, but their boats were miniature toys compared to this towering behemoth. The lone thought in his head at that moment was this vessel could only be worthy of the gods.
On the beach in front of him, twenty or thirty pale-skinned men worked to unload cargo from a large canoe that probably brought them to shore from the massive ship. Montezuma concluded in an instant that he wanted nothing to do with the large group of men. He would therefore backtrack and follow the one in the jungle.
The pale-skinned stranger did not leave much of a trail to follow, but Montezuma managed to pick it up anyway. He followed the man and watched him from the shadows for three days. The man was quite skilled at both moving through the jungle without much sound and avoiding the many dangers of his environment. Just when Montezuma began to think that the stranger would never stop walking, he came to a small clearing in the jungle.
The stranger walked up to a large tree nestled above a small pond. Montezuma watched with curious wonder as the man reached into the bag he had been carrying over his shoulder and pulled out a box with shiny, reflective sides. The stranger placed it in an old burrow in the tree and then began covering over the opening with mud.
Montezuma nearly jumped backward himself when he saw the stranger spring to his feet with a snake biting his left hand. The stranger pried his hand free from the serpent and flung it into the jungle where it landed near Montezuma.
The snake rolled around on the ground until it was on its belly once more. Montezuma recognized the snake in an instant as a jumping pit viper with extremely potent venom. He crushed the snake with the heel of his foot to save his own life, but the stranger was a dead man.
Montezuma watched the pale man stagger over to the tree and uncover the shiny object he had hidden. He could not believe his eyes when he witnessed the stranger stuff a fistful of mud into the object and then drink the white fluid that flowed from the bottom as a result. It must have been enchanted water coming from the artifact because the stranger completely recovered from the viper’s deadly bite in a matter of seconds.
The stranger filled a skin canteen with more of the miracle liquid. He then covered over the device once more before heading back into the jungle the way he had come.
Montezuma remained hidden just outside the clearing for over an hour contemplating what he had witnessed. It was a miracle. Matching that miracle with the boat worthy of a god sitting in the waters to the east, he could only conclude that the stranger was a god. The question remained, however, why was this god here?
The answer was in that tree. Montezuma stepped out into the clearing, crossed over to the tree, and scraped away the mud that concealed the object. He felt around the front face of the artifact and opened the two hatches he saw the stranger use. Montezuma then followed his example and stuffed a fistful of mud in the top.
The object made a curious humming sound for a few seconds before the white liquid began running out from the bottom hatch. He had no idea what the substance was, but he braved the unknown and drank from it. The liquid had no real taste and Montezuma did not feel any different, but, then again, he was not about to die from a venomous snakebite. He did however have a wounded leg.
Montezuma pulled his head back and moved his scraped leg under the flowing white liquid. His eyes widened in amazement at the sight of his skin healing itself. Within a few seconds, his leg was good as new with only a narrow pink line of new flesh to show for it.
His mind raced with all the possibilities that this wondrous tool presented. The gods had answered his prayers. If he could heal his men with this wondrous fountain, then no one could stop him. Not even his brother, the emperor.
Chapter 4: Nearly There (1488 AD)
“BOY, IT’S THE top of the hour. Time to tip the sandglass again,” Hastelloy ordered without looking up from his navigational charts.
“Yes, Sir,” the ship’s boy responded as he walked over to the hourglass encased within four decorative spindle columns. He unhooked the suspension string, turned the device over to send the sands into motion once more, and placed the sandglass back on the hook to continue its half-hour countdown.
“That is the eighth glass,” the youth stated on his way toward the ship’s bell in anticipation of his superior’s next order. “Shall I signal the shift change for the crew?”
“Yes, please do. Then make ready to take another speed reading.”
“Oh for the love of Christ, not again,” the boy groaned as though he was sentenced to be hanged at the gallows. “If I have to listen to that old, decrepit pilot sing another tone-deaf note, I’m going to go stark raving mad. Mad I tell you.”
The comment brought Hastelloy’s head out of his charts to shine an amused grin at his apprentice. “Signal the shift change. I want to make sure that if you’ve learned one thing from me during these years at sea, let it be this: a pilot who can sing with perfect tempo is far more valuable to a ship’s navigator than one who can merely carry a pleasant tune.”
“True,” the boy responded between two strikes of the bell to signal the shift change. “Still, I’d like to find one who doesn’t sound like he’s crushing a cat in a winepress every hour.”
Hastelloy let the display of his grin morphing into a no-nonsense flat line conclude the discussion. “Get to it.”
“As ordered,” the boy declared and continued under his breath on his way to the ship’s railing. “One tortured feline coming up.”
The ship’s boy dropped a five-inch-long scrap of wood into the water near the front of the boat. The piece of flotsam drifted quietly along the ship’s hull until reaching the first mark on the railing. Then the usually friendly winds began carrying a ruthless violation of his hearing that could only be described as ear rape.
The violation persisted for six nauseating measures of “singing” until a crewman standing at the second marking, sixty feet farther down the railing, raised his arm and brought the vile serenade to an end.
Hastelloy beckoned the boy back with a wave of his arm to stand with him over a table featuring a map of the Atlantic Ocean and the known lands contained within and around the gigantic mass of water. The western coastlines of Europe and Africa framed the eastern edge of the map. The islands of Iceland and part of Greenland encased the northern edge, while the map’s center featured a cluster of tiny islands, the Azores, which sat roughly 850 miles west of continental Portugal.
Prior to this voyage, those islands marked the farthest point west of the known world. The fact that it occupied only the center of this map gave ample foreshadowing as to the ambitions of this voyage.
A line of yellow pins marked their course taken from Portugal to the Azores. The yellow markers then continued in a south by southwestern arc until intersecting with a hand-drawn representation of the lands that this ship and her crew spent the last two years exploring. Dozens of islands and vast tracts of land running north and south, seemingly without end, framed the western edge of the map.
A series of red pins plotted their return course, which strayed several hundred miles north of their original path and now bent southward as they, at long last, drew near the Portuguese coastline.
“Now, Juan,” Hastelloy said to the ship’s boy to begin the lesson, “the pilot reached the end of six measures.”
“That means this ship traveled sixty feet in four seconds,” Juan interrupted, eager to show off his abilities. “That is fourteen feet per second. Holding that speed for the full hour means we traveled just short of ten miles during that time.”
Hastelloy graced the boy with an approving nod of his head. “Very good. The compass tells us we held a perfect southeast course, so that puts the ship where?”
“Right here,” Juan answered and emphasized his certainty by adding another red pin to their plotted course on the map. “If these strong winds continue, we should be in port no later than tomorrow evening.”
Hastelloy beamed with pride at the young man’s abilities. When Juan first boarded the ship as a
wide-eyed eleven-year-old boy added to the crew as a favor to the crown, he was good for little more than flipping the sandglass when ordered. Two years later, the boy had more or less navigated the ship all the way across the Atlantic to reach homeport using the rather difficult dead reckoning navigation methods of the day. In truth, it was probably less Juan’s abilities and more Hastelloy’s guidance since he was the one setting the ship’s course to best utilize the planet’s natural wind currents to speed them along on their return voyage. Still, the young man showed much potential.
Juan looked up from the map at Hastelloy with wonder in his eyes. “We’ve made remarkable time this entire voyage, both sailing from and returning home. It’s been the talk of the ship for weeks now. Everyone thinks you must be exceedingly pious to command so much divine favor. Either that or you’re the luckiest navigator on Earth to have favorable winds carrying you for thousands of miles in both directions.”
Most of Hastelloy’s attention was still dedicated to the map before him when he delivered an offhanded remark that bristled with indignation at the notion that it was luck. “An observant navigator doesn’t need luck, especially when the simple behavior of nature tells him all he needs to know.”
“What do you mean? What clues is nature giving you that the rest of us cannot see, not even the captain?” Juan asked.
Hastelloy evaluated his apprentice with pursed lips for a moment. The youth was not only smart, but also inquisitive. Since mariners would soon discover the secret of trade winds on this planet anyway, he concluded that it was time to see just how much potential young Juan truly had in him.
“Have you ever attended a Festa Junina in Lisbon?” Hastelloy asked.
“Of course, what self-respecting son of Portugal would miss the midsummer festival?” Juan responded and leaned in to inform Hastelloy in a low, quiet voice. “I actually lost my virginity during the last festival before we set sail on this voyage.”
Origins: Discovery Page 3