Discovery (9780545628112)

by Korman, Gordon

  “Go for it, dude,” whispered Dante. “He’s going to cook you.”

  The octopus apparently took that advice to heart. It slithered to the gunwale and promptly disappeared over the side.

  As they were unloading equipment on the dock at Côte Saint-Luc harbor, Menasce Gérard had his first look into the empty bucket that had once held his dinner. His frown was a thunderhead.

  Adriana read his mind and saw accusation in it. “I swear we didn’t do it, Mr. English! He climbed out, ran across the deck, and jumped in the ocean. Honest!”

  But once again, the dive guide had retreated into a series of grunts — grunts of suspicion.

  17 April 1665

  At thirteen years old, Samuel Higgins remembered his mother, but the mental image was fading.

  He’d been only six, after all, when Sewell’s men had come for him — small enough to be carried off, kicking and howling, in a burlap sack. It was a kidnapping, to be sure, but no constable or sheriff ever came to far-off Liverpool to search for him. What reward might there have been? Samuel’s family had nothing. And now six-year-old Samuel had no family.

  He would not have been hard to find, if anyone had been looking. Sewell, the chimney sweep, had many climbing boys working for him — all undersized and underfed, abandoned or kidnapped. Samuel, it turned out, excelled at the dirty work. He could scamper up a chimney as easily as walking down the cobblestone alleyways of the port city. And, unlike the boys who worked alongside him, he did not grow long of limb or broad of shoulder as he reached his adolescence.

  “Don’t worry, lad,” laughed old Mr. Sewell over and over, “I’ve seen a hundred like you. You’ll be dead of a fall long before you’re too big to climb one of those chimneys.”

  The man was as sharp as he was heartless, but he turned out to be wrong about that. Samuel never succumbed to the terrible accidents that extinguished the short, unhappy lives of the other boys. And the day did finally come when young Samuel Higgins could no longer fit into the narrow sooty tunnels where he’d earned his keep since he was only six.

  “Sorry, lad,” Mr. Sewell had told him. “If you do no work, I can’t be keeping and feeding you.”

  It had not been a loving family. But at least he’d belonged. Now he was being driven out. Would the world ever find a place for Samuel Higgins?

  Sewell had been hard, but hunger, Samuel’s new master, was even harder. At first, he considered a return to the countryside and his mother. But he was not certain where he might find her, or if she was even alive. This life — with Sewell — was the only life he remembered. And now that was over.

  His heart yearned for his lost family, but his empty belly was in charge. There was no future in England for a penniless boy except starvation and death. His only hope, his one chance, lay with the sea.

  He signed on with the Griffin for a plate of stew and a promise of future wages — not a princely contract, to be sure. But considering that his former employment had come as the result of a kidnapping, this represented freedom, and he was much satisfied. He had no inkling, at that time, of the true purpose of the Griffin and its fleet, nor what its business was in the vast ocean that stretched westward to a new world. He knew only that there was food in the galley for him to eat, and a small rectangle of deck planking outside the captain’s quarters where he could sleep. Home.

  As the captain’s boy, Samuel was the personal manservant to Captain James Blade. His duties included everything from delivering the captain’s meals to cleaning and brushing his uniform and wigs, delivering messages to crew members, and emptying the man’s chamber pot.

  To Captain Blade, Samuel was less than human, a utensil, like a spoon or a shaving razor. “Boy!” he would bark when he needed something. Or often he’d shout, “You!”

  The one time that Samuel had the audacity to venture, “My name is Samuel, sir,” the captain pulled out a furled snake whip from his belt and smacked him across the side of the head with the bone handle.

  “You can ride on this ship or in the waves below — take your choice, boy. But you’ll not open your lip to me!”

  The blow knocked Samuel clear through the hatch to the captain’s quarters, sending a laden tray of food flying every which way.

  “And swab this deck!”

  There was an emerald the size of a musket ball set in the handle. It left a deep, bloody gash in Samuel’s cheek. The wound did not stop oozing until they had passed the Canary Islands.

  Tad Cutter and his team had been sent from Poseidon’s head office in San Diego, California, to map the reefs of the Hidden Shoals northeast of Saint-Luc. Like many scientific undertakings, the results may have been interesting, but harvesting the data was very boring work indeed.

  The job consisted of dragging a sonar tow that would measure the depth of the seabed below. To do this over 274 square miles of ocean would take every minute of the eight weeks budgeted for the project. To help them, Cutter and company had been assigned the four teenage interns. But as the early days of summer passed, Kaz, Dante, Adriana, and Star found themselves completely ignored by the Cutter team.

  Day after day, the four would awaken in their cabins in the Poseidon compound to find that Captain Bill Hamilton and his Ponce de León, the boat assigned to Cutter, were already out there mapping, and had left them behind.

  Cutter always had an excuse. “Sorry, guys, but we’re just so busy. To gather this much data in just a couple of months leaves us no wiggle room. If you’re not on board at five A.M., we’ve got to take off without you.”

  The next day, they were there at five only to find that the Ponce de León had slipped its moorings at four-thirty. The day after that, they arrived at four. There they waited by the boat for three hours before realizing that Cutter and his crew had taken the catamaran to Martinique for supplies.

  “We have to complain,” argued Dante. “This is our internship, and they’re not letting us do it. It’s a rip-off.”

  But there was no one to complain to. Dr. Gallagher was far too busy to see them. And when they ran into him around the institute, he was always lecturing to the video camera that seemed to follow him like a tail. In addition, the director now wore a thick bandage on his forearm, which he carried in a sling. They were all pretty sure it had something to do with his great white shark jaw.

  “If he doesn’t get away from here fast,” Kaz observed, “one of these days that thing is going to come down off the wall and eat him.”

  Captain Vanover was sympathetic, but not a lot of help. “I know it’s lousy, but Tad’s probably not doing it on purpose. These research guys — when they get their teeth into a project, they’re like zombies. They eat, sleep, and breathe work. They just can’t focus on anything else. Don’t let it bum you out. I’m sure your time will come.”

  “Maybe,” grumbled Dante, “but what year?”

  Vanover promised to take them out for another dive. But the Hernando Cortés was booked almost every day by other scientists, so they would have to wait until the ship was free. In the meantime, the captain agreed to have a word with Bill Hamilton.

  The only other person they knew around the institute was English, and no one was in the mood to ask him for favors. Whenever they passed the hulking dive guide in the halls or on the gravel paths of the grounds, they would slink by, and he would look right through them.

  “You should talk to him,” Dante urged Star. “He likes you.”

  “He doesn’t like anybody,” she growled. “He just hates me the least. Besides, he doesn’t have any clout around this place.”

  Poseidon was only a part-time job for English, whose main employment was as a hard-hat diver for the oil rigs off the west side of the island. There his skill and toughness were legendary. He would work at incredible depths of one thousand feet or more, welding underwater pipe and repairing drills and equipment that weighed hundreds of tons.

  The more they learned about Menasce Gérard, the more cowed they became.

  Their situati
on did not make for a happy group. Staff members who took pity on them gave them odd jobs to do around the institute. But photocopying, pencil sharpening, and stirring iced tea were not what they had traveled to the Caribbean for.

  The others were jealous of Dante, who at least had some meaningful work to do. He got permission to spend a couple of hours in the Poseidon darkroom, developing his underwater photographs. The pictures, though, were a big disappointment. They were excellent wildlife studies, beautifully framed and composed. But the color processing had been so overdone that the pale turquoise Caribbean appeared a deep purple.

  “This is the reef?” Star said dubiously, examining the prints. “It looks like outer space.”

  “It needs to be lighter,” Dante agreed.

  “It needs to be blue,” Star amended. “A coral reef is the most beautiful scenery on Earth, not that you can tell from what you shot. You don’t have to be a genius to make it look good. Just so long as the water isn’t purple.”

  “I specialize in black and white,” Dante admitted sheepishly. “I’m just getting the hang of working with color in the lab.”

  They were all unhappy, but Adriana was downright miserable. After three summers with her uncle at one of the top museums in the world, this felt a lot like exile.

  It was exile, she reminded herself, thinking bitterly of Payton with Uncle Alfie in Syria.

  And for what? To run errands for a bunch of oceanography nerds. With the British Museum, she had dug on Roman ruins, translated hieroglyphics, and helped to present a paper at Buckingham Palace. This place was a joke by comparison, and a bad joke at that.

  Eventually, though, the gofer jobs would run out, and the four would end up in the tiny village of Côte Saint-Luc, looking to keep busy. It wasn’t easy. Since Saint-Luc had no tourism, there was virtually nothing to the town itself. There was a small church with a bell tower, a butcher shop with emaciated chickens hanging upside down in the front, and a dark store with flyspecked windows that sold such strange and random items that Dante had taken to calling it Voodoo “R” Us.

  There were two restaurants — a bar and grill that was much more bar than grill, and a European-style café that could have been on any street in Paris.

  They preferred the bar and grill because the conch burgers were cheap, and Dante liked to sit at the outdoor tables, snapping pictures of the locals with his underwater Nikonos. When there were no passersby, he photographed his three dive mates.

  Kaz, who was camera shy, commented, “One more click out of that thing, and it’s your nose ring.”

  “Take me,” put in Star. “I’ve always wanted to be purple.”

  Dante put down the camera with an exaggerated crash. The boredom and frustration were beginning to set them at one another’s throats.

  “We’ve been here a week,” said Star, turning her attention to Adriana, “and you have never worn the same pair of shoes twice. How many shoes did you bring? How many shoes do you own?”

  “Enough to wedge one where the sun doesn’t shine,” Adriana snapped back readily.

  “Nice shot,” chuckled Kaz, his mouth full of fries.

  “Mind your own business, rink rat,” Star warned. “What do hockey players know, besides how to put each other in the hospital?”

  She wasn’t sure how, but it was clear that she’d struck a nerve with that comment, because of the deathly quiet of Kaz’s reply:

  “Don’t you ever, ever say that again.”

  Tempers flared like that regularly. But nothing came to punches; nobody stormed off down Rue de la Chapelle. All four knew that there was nowhere to go.

  We’re stuck here, Adriana reflected, out in the back of beyond. We’re in this together.

  And suddenly, she was looking straight at it. Across the narrow alley was a tiny neat cottage. The windows were open for ventilation, and in the largest one hung some kind of large wooden sculpture. She couldn’t make out exactly what it was, but she had worked at the museum long enough to recognize its age. Time had dulled the sharpness of the carving, the paint was present only in small faded chips, and the wood was weathered and bleached. She had seen pieces like this before — ornate newel posts from mansions and cathedrals that dated back hundreds of years.

  She jumped up, almost knocking over her chair. “Guys, you’ve got to see this!”

  They followed her across the dirt lane to the little house.

  “It’s an eagle,” she explained, now that she could see the piece close up.

  “What?” asked Star. “That lump hanging in the fishnet? I thought it was a big piece of driftwood.”

  “See? Here’s the beak and the wings, and the talons are carved in relief against the body,” Adriana went on excitedly. “I make it at least three hundred years old, maybe more.”

  “It’s busted,” commented Kaz, indicating the jagged break along the eagle’s body. “It looks like a giant snapped it off the top of a totem pole.”

  “Totem poles are North American,” Adriana lectured. “I think this came from Europe.”

  Star looked disgusted. “I know you’re, like, wondergirl from some snooty museum, but how could you possibly know something like that?”

  “It’s oak!” Adriana exclaimed. “There’s no oak on Saint-Luc. It’s all tropical stuff here. It had to have been brought in by ship. Dante, take a picture. I can scan it at the institute and e-mail it to my uncle.”

  Dante hefted the camera, grumbling, “You don’t need a Ph.D. to tell you what that is. I’ll tell you right now.” He clicked the shutter. “That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!”

  As Dante spoke, the occupant of the little house appeared in the window. Kaz tried desperately to clamp his hand over the photographer’s mouth, but it was too late. The man had heard everything.

  It was English.

  The enormous guide scowled at them, reached out his long muscular arms, and closed his hurricane shutters with a loud slam.

  “Nice timing,” snickered Star.

  “Oh, why did it have to be him?” Dante lamented. “Hey, what are you doing?”

  Adriana was marching purposefully to the front door. She rapped smartly and called, “Mr. English, it’s us again. Could you please tell us the history of that piece in your window?”

  At first, it seemed as if English intended to ignore them. But finally, he thrust open the door, glowering at Adriana.

  “You Americans, you have the nerve! You call every shark in the ocean with your macho stupidité! Then you steal my octopus! Now you come and insult me in my own home! Vas-t’en! This means go away!” And he shut the door in her face.

  “I’m from Canada,” called Kaz, but he kept his voice low.

  Adriana reached out to knock again, but Star grabbed for her wrist. “Forget it. Who cares what he hangs in his window?”

  “So long as it isn’t us,” added Dante feelingly.

  But that night, over dinner at the Poseidon commissary, Adriana asked Captain Vanover about the diver’s strange window decoration.

  The captain chuckled. “No wonder you couldn’t get an answer. I think he’s embarrassed about that thing.”

  “How come?” asked Star.

  “It’s an old family legend,” Vanover explained. “Probably a load of hooey. He’ll tell you when he’s good and ready.” He added, “Or he won’t.”

  “He definitely won’t,” predicated Dante. “Not after I called it ugly.”

  Adriana shook her head in amazement. “That piece must be hundreds of years old, and he just hangs it in an open window. I hope he has insurance.”

  The captain brayed a laugh. “That’s a good one — stealing from English!” He noticed Tad Cutter walking to a nearby table. “Hey, Tad — over here.”

  The blond, blue-eyed man set his tray down at an empty place. “Hey, Braden — guys — ”

  “Your sonar’s been in the water for almost a week now,” the captain said amiably. “Why don’t you have the kids give it a scrub when they’r
e diving with you tomorrow?”

  If Cutter was caught off guard, he didn’t show it. “Yeah, it must be pretty crusty with salt by now. Thanks, guys. See you in the morning.” He walked off to join his crew.

  “He’s going to blow us off,” Star predicted resentfully. “He says that every night, and he hasn’t taken us out once.”

  “Oh, I know that,” the captain agreed. “But if you’re going to teach a horse tricks, it helps to be smarter than the horse. Wait till midnight and then go sleep in the boat.”

  The R/V Ponce de León had four tiny crew cabins belowdecks. Just after midnight, the young divers split up, one to a berth, to wait for dawn and Tad Cutter.

  Dante spread his bedroll over the hard bunk and went to sleep — if you could call it that. The waves lapping against the metal hull, while not loud, seemed to echo through the boat with a teeth-jarring quality. Every time he did manage a light doze, his head was pushed against the bulkhead by the motion of the boat in the water.

  The blue water, Dante reminded himself. Think in color.

  That was easier said than done. His little “problem” —

  That’s a private matter! Nobody’s business!

  The headlines in the clippings in his mother’s scrapbook appeared in a collage before his eyes. 13-year-old Wins Adult Photography Prize; Prodigy Behind the Lens; Move Over, Ansel Adams … The critic from the New York Times wrote that his use of light and shading was representative of an artist four times his age.

  And that should have been enough for them, right?

  But the next line was always the same: Can you imagine what he’ll do with color?

  Well, that mystery was over. He knew exactly what he was going to do with color. He was going to butcher it. He was going to make the sea purple.

  That’s why he had jumped through hoops to learn to dive — a talent he could have been very happy without. A coral reef was the most colorful item on a planet full of color. If the rich hues and tones couldn’t reach out to imprint themselves on his artistic sense in this place, then it was never going to happen. And coral reefs didn’t exactly turn up on every street corner. You had to go where they were — and that meant underwater.