The Brave New World

He had just found out he was a beggar. His billions were gone, just like that. In just a few days, a new, coin-based currency was to become the only legal tender in the entire world. All the old money would become almost worthless. It could be used for one purpose only: the purchase of licenses to colonize the New World.

That was the last thing Cruz felt like doing. His experiences of the last weeks, culminating with the terror-fraught boat trip, had given him a new appreciation of his life on Earth. He had become determined to enjoy it to its fullest. He wasn"t going to spend any of his remaining time on Earth stretched out on a hiber bed while his second persona dodged dinosaurs in the New World. That kind of thing was fine for excitement-hungry kids, too stupid to understand and appreciate the extraordinary richness of ordinary life.

Being alive at all was magic! Unfortunately, it was magic with a best-before warning and an expiry date. In Cruz"s case that date wasn"t as distant as he"d have liked it, and it was getting closer every day. He wasn"t going to waste any of his remaining time on this whole New World business. The simple act of breathing was pure poetry!

Those had been his thoughts when he finally got to leave the boat, and felt solid ground under his feet: it actually felt odd not to feel it move. He"d had to wait quite a while before that happy moment arrived: they had to sail practically the length of the whole island to dock at a small pier squeezed in between rocks. Unlike Henderson, Pitcairn Island was mountainous and didn"t have a single beach. If one of the island"s longboats hadn"t come out to guide them, they would have never found the tiny harbor that was the island"s only port.

They were also lucky to arrive the one day when everyone in Pitcairn was wide awake despite the late hour. Earlier on, the island"s only functioning short-wave radio established contact with Welington, New Zealand. The islanders had been completely cut off from the world for eight weeks. The news they heard turned everything upside down for them as well as Cruz.

However, Cruz noted that they weren"t half as dejected as they should be. In fact, they seemed to be in high spirits. He quickly noticed almost everyone was wearing headgear of some sort: baseball caps, beanies, straw hats. The only people he saw bareheaded were people with a head of thick hair, long enough to completely obscure the scalp. There weren"t many of those. The permanent population of Pitcairn counted forty people, and most of them were around retirement age.

They greeted Cruz and his crew affably enough, but with none of the cordiality that follows a successful rescue. An old fellow named Peter Christian introduced himself as the mayor; moments later, another geezer presented himself as the island"s governor in the name of His Majesty the King. Pitcairn Island was a British Overseas Territory, but the English spoken by its inhabitants sounded like a different language to Cruz. That was even though he was someone who had traveled extensively, and had heard English being mutilated by a staggering mult.i.tude of voices.

The governor"s name was Paul Christian, and indeed he and the mayor were brothers. Power was something that seemed to run in the Christian family: they were both descendants of the infamous Fletcher Christian who had led the mutiny on the Bounty. The mutineers had settled on Pitcairn with a bevy of Tahiti women, and burned their ship in a ceremony meant to show their commitment.

The mayor and the governor were the sour fruit of that commitment. They quickly dispersed Cruz"s crew around Adamstown. Pitcairn"s sole settlement had plenty of tourist accommodation, and very few tourists. The mayor was quick to stress he was offering everyone a reduced rate because of that when he was showing Cruz into his room.

This was when the first complications ensued. Cruz had taken his wallet, loaded with glittering credit cards as well as a wad of American dollars. But the mayor shook his head dolefully.

"No cards, no cash," he said. Then he explained why.

It took him a long time. Cruz interrupted him constantly with angry, disbelieving questions: a couple of times he lay down on the bed, clutching his chest as if he was having a heart attack. Midway during this show, the governor showed up, expressing the hope that Cruz would pay for his crew"s rooms. After some more explaining and tough negotiations over the value of Cruz"s gold watch, bracelet, and neck chain, the matter was finally settled.

Cruz asked about food and drink, even though he had taken a small stash of supplies from the boat. After some hemming and hawing, the two gentlemen agreed to deliver something to Cruz and his men. Then they all agreed to meet again the next morning, and Cruz was left alone.

The food and drink showed up surprisingly promptly. It consisted of a bottle of water and some sort of fish paste mixed with leaves. Cruz forced himself to eat it: he had to admit it wasn"t as bad as he"d feared.

It was nearing dawn by then, and he was completely exhausted. But he couldn"t fall asleep. He just wasn"t able to get his head around everything that he"d heard from the mayor and the governor. Everything wiped clean, including debt! That hurt: a number of people owed him lots of money. He reminded himself that this money was worthless anyway, but that hardly made him feel better.

He began running his mind over his a.s.sets. He was instantly reminded that he had gold: he had over a hundred kilos in gold bars stashed in three different banks, in different countries. But there were no countries any more! And what would become of the banks? Banks needed money like a living body needed blood. And now all that blood would be gone, just like that, in a single day!

Cruz could already hear the crash of the whole banking and financial sector. It would be a deafening crash, punctuated by wet smacks as the bodies of the window-jumping bankers. .h.i.t the pavement. The successful retrieval of the gold he had stored in bank vaults would verge on a miracle. One bank was in Switzerland, naturally. Another in Luxembourg, and the third in Liechtenstein.

And how the h.e.l.l was he supposed to get to Europe? It would take half a year aboard a f.u.c.king sailing ship - it would have to go the long way, because Cruz knew the Suez ca.n.a.l was unlikely to be working. One of his companies had supplied new software for the computers that ran the complicated system of locks on the Suez ca.n.a.l. It was programmed to shut everything down in an emergency.

He remembered that he kept a bar of gold at his home in Manila. But it was a toy bar, literally. It weighed just a kilo and it really was his personal toy. He would take it out sometimes and play with it, weighing it in each hand, rubbing his cheek with it, and looking fondly at the fingerprints he"d left on the gleaming metal. They always reminded him of the time when the famous Economist magazine called him "the man with the golden touch".

But he also had a lot of real estate! He had half a dozen homes scattered all over the globe! Surely that would still be worth something? Cruz groaned: he wouldn"t know where he stood until he got back to the real world. Pitcairn didn"t count as the real world.

He thought a little about the people he"d encountered, and came to the conclusion that everyone on the island was involved in the New World. They obviously showed great care to hide their implants under all those silly hats and hairdos. They"d had a cube appear on Pitcairn too, and they took advantage. Wasn"t that exactly what he and Susanto had done?

It was more than possible that in the New World, Henderson and Pitcairn were parts of a single land ma.s.s. He remembered that the doc.u.mentation scroll stated there were two big new archipelagos in the Pacific, with islands as big as Greenland. If he was right, and the people of Pitcairn were colonizing the New World - did they find timon? How did they deal with the dinosaurs?

Cruz tossed around on his bed, prodded by his thoughts. There were very many questions he would ask the governor and the mayor when he met them the next day.

But first and foremost, he had to find a way rescue Susanto. Getting him off Henderson Island was going to be difficult. From what he"d seen, the Pitcairn navy consisted of a couple of longboats outfitted with masts big enough to carry a proper sail. They were more seaworthy than the boat in which he"d made the journey, but they would be carrying an extra eleven people on the way back. It wasn"t going to be a picnic, he would have to pay through the nose for any help, he could tell.

Pay? With what?

He forced himself to lay still and relax. There was a higher priority than rescuing Susanto. This priority was to get some rest. He needed to be rested for the upcoming meeting with the governor and the mayor. It would likely be the most important single meeting he"d ever had.

Staring at the dark ceiling, he slowly began to formulate a plan.

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