Origins: Discovery

by Mark Henrikson

  “Good for you, young man,” Hastelloy commended with extra emphasis given to the last word. “Now tell me, in between all your manly fornicating did you happen to notice any sky lanterns in the night air during the festivities?”

  “You mean those upside-down, glowing paper baskets with a flame underneath them?” Juan asked for clarification.

  “Yes, they first appeared at the festival a few years before you were born. Some traders who managed to reach China over land without getting themselves lost or murdered brought the idea back with them. Since then it’s become something of a tradition at the festival,” Hastelloy explained. “Did you ever give much thought as to what makes those sky lanterns rise up into the air?”

  Juan furrowed his brow, shook his head, and admitted, “Can’t say I ever did.”

  “Well who could blame you with a pair of naked breasts demanding your attention at the time?” Hastelloy teased. “Thinking on it now though, what do you suppose makes those lanterns float in the cool night air over Lisbon?”

  “Heat. The flame heats the air inside the paper basket.”

  “And what happens to hot air?” Hastelloy prompted.

  “It rises because heat makes it lighter.”

  Hastelloy nodded his head in agreement. “Close enough. And by the same logic, cold air falls because as it cools it becomes heavier. Make sense?”

  A nod accompanied by a look of comprehension on Juan’s face allowed Hastelloy to direct the conversation back to the map stretched out across the table in front of him. “Where on this map would air be the hottest?”

  “Along the equator, and it would be coldest up north near Iceland and Greenland.”

  “Right,” Hastelloy confirmed. “When air reaches the equator, it heats up and rises. The air is eventually pulled back down near the poles, where it gets chilled. The colder air sinks to the surface of the ocean and then gets pushed back toward the equator by the pressure of cooling air from above. This creates a continuous cycle of airflow, which moves toward the equator near the surface, with the warmer air above moving toward the poles.”

  “If what you say is true, then that would create winds running north or south, not east or west,” Juan challenged.

  “What shape is the earth?” Hastelloy asked and drew a look of surprise from his apprentice.

  “It’s a sphere. Most commoners think it is flat, but any educated man or sailor worth his salt knows that the earth is round. Both Aristotle and Eratosthenes proved that before the time of Christ by measuring the geometry of shadows at different points of Europe.”

  “Outstanding,” Hastelloy commended with a broad grin of approval. “There was, and still is, some confusion about the calculated circumference, but we do know for sure that we reside on a gigantic sphere. A spinning sphere to be precise, unless you have let your dedication to the Catholic faith blind you to the fact that the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around.

  “I am perfectly aware that the cycle of day and night is brought about by the earth’s rotation,” Juan confirmed.

  “Good, then consider this. We are attached to a spherical surface rotating toward the east. The air around us is unattached to that moving surface. Therefore, when air meets at the equator, it is deflected due to this Coriolis Effect. The deflection causes the winds to divert to the west, creating a steady flow of wind heading that direction.”

  “That explains the wind at our backs heading to the new lands we discovered, but not the favorable winds we’ve experienced returning home on our eastbound course,” Juan challenged.

  “That’s because I didn’t tell you the whole truth,” Hastelloy admitted. “The airflow does not run all the way from equator to pole. There are actually three separate zones where the air does this little heating and cooling dance for us. It carries us west near the equator, and east when we travel farther north,” Hastelloy concluded as he gestured to the pictorial of yellow and red pins marking the vastly different paths their ship took during the voyage.

  Juan pondered the map for a few moments before a self-satisfied grin grew across his lips and joined an affirmative nod of his head. “I understand the concept I think, but how do you know when you’ve reached one of these wind currents?”

  To help with his answer, Hastelloy pointed up into the blue sky littered with clouds. “Puffy, cottonlike clouds such as those are normally very tall in appearance. Notice how those above us now are flat across their tops almost as if a sheepherder has shorn them off at the top. I think you can plainly see that the hot air current I described earlier flows above us right now. That wind current is the set of shears trimming those clouds.”

  “And the undercurrent along the surface is what moves us so fast across the ocean,” Juan concluded.

  “I must say, the two of you do find the most interesting topics to pass the time,” a gruff and impatient voice announced from over Hastelloy’s shoulder.

  “Captain, the navigator was just sharing his method of finding the best winds,” Juan explained as he brought himself to rigid attention.

  “Are you certain of that?” the captain asked as he leveled an accusing stare at the back of Hastelloy’s head. “I found it difficult to hear anything at all over the sound of blasphemy spewing forth from his mouth.”

  “My apologies, Captain,” Hastelloy said on the way to his feet and turning to face his commanding officer.

  “You know my feelings on the topic? Yes?” the captain demanded of his subordinate.

  Hastelloy managed to summon his most contrite tone to answer, “I am well aware of your feelings on the matter. However, it was the only way I could think to explain the phenomenon to the boy.”

  “The infallible words of the Almighty are not enough?” the captain accused and leaned in to emphasize his next point. “The learned scholars in the Catholic church say we reside in the center of the universe. There is no rotation, nor any spin causing the phantom winds of which you speak. The only plausible explanation, then, is that the favorable winds are an act of the divine. He has blessed our voyage of discovery with his approval. If you wish to remain an employed ship’s navigator, you would do well to remember that fact from now on.”

  Hastelloy swallowed his many words of protest to produce a respectful nod of his head in deference. “I will try, Sir. In the meantime, those divine winds have carried us to within a day of reaching port.”

  “Is that the state of things?” the captain asked of Juan.

  Hastelloy had to suppress an exacerbated sigh at having his authority undercut so blatantly by the captain asking the apprentice for confirmation. Two years Hastelloy had spent in cramped quarters with this captain, and he still had yet to figure the man out. It was common for a commanding officer to remain distant from his crew, but this man took it to an extreme. In fact, the only crewman he spent any time with during the prolonged voyage was Juan. The conclusion Hastelloy reached was that the captain was either molesting the boy or fostering a close friendship, hoping Juan’s affiliation with the king would be useful in the future.

  Juan, on the other hand, made friends with everyone on board from the captain down to the lowly deckhand who scrubbed the boards. The studious young man wanted to know everything about every aspect of making a ship at sea function. In many ways, young Juan reminded Hastelloy of another youngster who began his military career under his tutelage—Valnor. They both possessed the intelligence, raw ability, and ambition to go far in their careers.

  “Yes, Sir,” Juan replied to his captain. “Before sunset tomorrow we will be in port.”

  “Then this is cause for celebration,” the captain declared in a voice attempting to convey enthusiasm but came off rather flat and hollow instead. “Summon all hands on deck.”

  Juan complied by ringing the bell four times to bring the men at work to an attentive stop and signaled those sleeping below to join them. As the men scurried about to line themselves up for inspection, a pair of stewards rolled out a cask of wine labeled
Reserve in bold black lettering on the sides, top, and bottom. They worked together and heaved the heavy barrel to stand upright, while the men assembled on the main deck looked on with surprise and anticipation in their eyes.

  “This lengthy voyage of ours into the unknown and back again is nearly at an end. On the morrow, this ship will dock in the friendly waters of Lisbon harbor,” the captain declared to jubilant cheers from his crew.

  “After two years at sea, someone best warn the whorehouses,” a voice shouted, earning a chorus of hoots and whistles.

  “That means you’d have to remove your hand from your cock long enough for them to do anything,” another voice hackled to a rousing round of laughter.

  “Besides, how do you plan on paying for their company when you owe so much from playing dice?” another chided.

  “We just discovered a whole new land of riches,” the original voice countered. “Selling the maps will let us all live like kings for the rest of our days.”

  “Aye, if you don’t spend it all among the red lights first.”

  “Celebrate however you like on your own time,” the captain shouted over the din to bring the volume down once more. “On my boat we will commemorate the occasion like gentlemen with a glass of wine and a toast to our success.”

  With that announcement, the two stewards busted through the lid on the wine barrel and began handing out mugs to the men lining up. Each crewman waited his turn to plunge his mug into the barrel and return to the inspection line with their fill in hand.

  “As much as any man on this ship, this is your celebration, too,” the captain said to Hastelloy with a hand gesturing down the steps toward the barrel of libations. When his navigator did not move, he pressed the issue, “I insist. We all should raise a glass.”

  Hastelloy gave a silent nod and began heading for the steps, but something felt off about the whole thing. The captain never addressed the crew, even when they first boarded the ship two years prior. The man left little doubt in anyone’s mind that dealing with the lowly crew was beneath his station. Instead, he left the unseemly task to his senior staff. Now he saw fit to share a drink with all of them? Something felt off.

  He looked back over his shoulder expecting Juan and the captain to accompany him down the steps. Instead, he saw Juan retrieving a pair of crystal glasses and a bottle of wine. Judging by the dust on the bottle and the presence of an actual label on the side, it was a superior vintage to the swill that the crew was to consume. The world started to make sense again as Hastelloy filled his mug and took his place in line. He along with the rest of the crew was made to look up to the captain and Juan, their socioeconomic betters. The symbolism could not have been more pronounced as the two held their crystal filled with a finer wine from their elevated place.

  “Our futures lie before us like an undiscovered country. To the undiscovered country,” the captain repeated and took a long drink that finished his glass.

  The words passed right over the heads of the simpletons gathered around Hastelloy on the main deck. The thirty-five ruffians all gulped down their half liter of wine in an unspoken competition to either finish first, or at least not be outdone by their elitist captain finishing his glass. Hastelloy chose instead to continue holding his wine while he pondered the captain’s meaning.

  They were just returning from a newly discovered land, so referring to it as ‘the undiscovered country’ made no sense. The phrase could serve as a cleaver metaphor for the future, but the captain prefaced it with the words ‘our future’ already. A more morbid interpretation would liken ‘the undiscovered country’ to death. That notion sent Hastelloy’s strategic mind racing amid random coughs from the crewmen around him.

  Everyone who knew about the new discovery was on this ship sharing a toast. All but two, the captain and an apprentice with the king’s favor, were drinking from the reserve wine. If Hastelloy were in the captain’s shoes and wanted to keep the discovery a secret, poisoning the crew all at once would be his method of choice, too.

  The persistent coughing and gasping for air from the crew now strewn about the deck confirmed his suspicions. Hastelloy tossed his mug over the side railing and retrieved a sword with his emptied hand. Now armed, he prowled his way up the steps to find the captain holding a sword of his own with a frightened Juan standing as far away from the pending duel as he could.

  “No wonder you remained so distant from the crew during the voyage,” Hastelloy taunted as he stepped closer to touch blades with his opponent. “Wouldn’t want to start thinking of the crew as human beings before murdering us all now would you?”

  Before his opponent could mouth a reply, Hastelloy let loose a basic attack of six side-to-side blows to test the captain’s skill with a blade. Unfortunately, he easily parried them all with a well-practiced hand and even managed to back Hastelloy up a few steps with a series of testing strikes of his own.

  The captain pressed his advantage with a series of controlled attacks that felt almost choreographed in their precise execution. Hastelloy judged the man to be a superior tournament fencer where the gentleman’s code of conduct applied, but was ill prepared to handle himself in a real-world duel.

  When the captain attacked again, Hastelloy broke every conventional rule of fencing and let his weight shift onto his back heel. Observing this, the captain charged in with a head-level thrust that Hastelloy redirected to the side as he pushed off his hind leg to deliver a brutal punch that connected with the captain’s nose and jaw. Hastelloy tried taking a step back to deliver a deathblow with his sword, but the captain wisely chose to wrap him up in a bear hug while recovering from the blow.

  The two grappled as they twirled around twice until Hastelloy finally managed to break free, and in doing so pushed the captain up against the railing. The jarring impact sent the captain’s blade hurling over the edge and into the waters below.

  Killing an unarmed man went against Hastelloy’s admittedly flexible code of ethics, but this time the stakes were too high. Word about the New World needed to spread upon their return to Europe. This was the opportunity to engage the rest of the planet’s resources in his efforts to defeat the Alpha once and for all and get his crew and the Nexus device home. He was not about to leave the fate of that mission in the hands of a greedy captain looking to keep all knowledge of the New World for himself or sell it to the highest bidder.

  Hastelloy raised his blade to make the final cut but felt his body lurch forward from an unexpected blow delivered to his back. He suddenly felt short of breath and looked down to find three inches of bloodied steel protruding from his chest. Hastelloy staggered to the side but managed to keep himself upright by clinging to the railing. He turned his head just enough to find Juan standing behind him with his arm still raised from the motion of impaling Hastelloy through the back.

  As the lack of oxygen and loss of blood brought with them tunnel vision, Hastelloy focused his eyes on his murderer. He chastised himself for not considering the boy a threat. For the last two years, Hastelloy and Juan had been as close as father and son. The youth was either loyal to a fault toward his captain, or was a rare breed of ruthless pragmatist; an operative who could cultivate close relationships, extract necessary information, and still commit the murder. Hastelloy used his dying breath to determine which was the case.

  “Why?” Hastelloy pleaded as he collapsed to his knees, and Juan’s stone-cold reply drained from his veins what little blood remained.

  “Dead men tell no tales,” answered a voice that no longer carried the innocence of youth.

  Chapter 5: Keeping a Secret

  JUAN LOOKED ON from his vantage point along the ship’s railing as the captain and navigator crossed swords. A rush of excitement warmed his veins more and more with each chiming blow. Juan knew he had a life-altering decision to make in the next few moments, and that knowledge brought with it a rush of excitement unmatched at any other point in his young life. Who did he want to win the duel?

  It appear
ed to be an even contest between the two men, which left Juan holding the deciding blade. The winner would owe him a profound debt of gratitude that would likely shape the rest of his life. The question was, who had more to offer?

  The captain hailed from a wealthy Portuguese family with strong political connections. That, however, was about the only redeeming quality of the man. His seamanship was nonexistent, borderline counterproductive in fact. The man had all the personality of a dismembered corpse, and above all else, he was a coward.

  The captain knew full well that the crew would be poisoned at the end of this voyage. Rather than look his victims in the eye day in and day out, he instead chose to cower in his cabin looking for redemption at the bottom of a wine bottle. A real man, a man worth having in Juan’s corner, would get to know the crew. He would learn all that he could from them and still have the intestinal fortitude to carry out their murder when the situation required such action.

  The navigator on the other hand, he was the polar opposite of the captain in almost every way. The navigator stepped up and filled the leadership void left by the captain. He was fearless in setting the ship’s course to discover and map new lands. Not only that, he led numerous excursions into the jungles and successfully brought the ship home so that news of their monumental discovery could be shared. He was smart, daring, and a bona fide genius when it came to observing wind patterns of the world. In short, the navigator was more capable than any man Juan had ever met in his short thirteen years of life. That ability would carry him, and by extension Juan, far; much farther than the captain ever would.

  With his mind made up, Juan prowled toward the sparring pair as they moved along the far railing with his own blade at the ready. When he came within a few steps, the navigator suddenly fell off balance on his back heel and allowed the captain to gain the upper hand and press his advantage. If Juan wanted that favor he coveted, he needed to act right now while the captain’s back was turned.

  Juan bent his sword arm back and made ready to deliver his deadly thrust when circumstances changed again in the blink of an eye. The navigator broke dueling etiquette to land a devastating punch to the captain’s face. The navigator then managed to exchange positions so that the captain now had his back pinned against the railing with an imminent deathblow on the way.