The Brave New World 88 The Coming of Cruz

At first, he thought his eyes were playing tricks. He stood up for a better view: boats! There could be no mistake, two boats, each outfitted with a mast and a sail. Who could that be? It couldn't be Cruz. He would return in a ship, hopefully a proper vessel outfitted with a shower and with plenty of hot water.

That fucking rash on the inside of his thighs was spreading. He was beginning to suspect it heralded a serious disease. History has recorded many instances of people offering a kingdom for a horse. Susanto didn't exactly own a kingdom, but he would have gladly paid a thousand - no, ten thousand! - dollars for a long, hot shower.

He watched the boats draw near with growing apprehension. It was very likely they contained a new bunch of castaways. Henderson Island wasn't exactly the land of milk and honey; an extra dozen hungry mouths would put a strain on resources.

Susanto turned away from the boats and trotted back to the campsite for his binoculars. He didn't get there. Halfway through, he heard a muted bang in the distance. He stopped and turned just in time to see a yellow flare explode in the sky. He remembered Cruz taking a flare gun! He remembered him taking multi-colored flares! Cruz?

Yes, it was Cruz. He couldn't make out faces at this distance, but he recognized the garish splash of Cruz's Hawaiian shirt. He resumed walking back to the camp: he wanted to check on things before Cruz showed up.

As he drew near, he saw that his fellow castaways had noticed the boats, too; several pairs of binoculars were being passed around, and there was a lot of hand-pointing. James stood to the side of the excited group, his face sour. He brightened when he saw Susanto approaching, just like a dog spotting its master. As soon as Susanto halted next to him, James said:

"Sir, those boats - it looks like we might have company. You've appointed me the quartermaster, so I feel it's my duty to tell you our food supplies won't last long with this crowd. There must be at least ten of them. I have to tell you the women are already failing to meet the quota, they've brought in just over a hundred coconuts yesterday. All of them! They were supposed to gather a hundred each."

"Forget about all that," Susanto told him. "It's mister Cruz. He's brought help."

"Mister Cruz!? Really, sir?"

"Yes. Make sure everyone looks decent, and behaves. I'm going down the beach to greet mister Cruz."

This he did. As he waited for the boats to come in, he made a final decision: he wouldn't be giving Cruz all the timon rights in exchange for a monopoly on the love fruit.

Susanto had made two more excursions into the New World looking for love fruit. Both expeditions were launched from new locations, from the westernmost and southernmost points of Henderson Island. The first time around, Susanto found himself in something resembling a mangrove swamp. He was afraid to move lest he might drown. James had woken him up in the nick of time: an anacondlike snake had appeared in the vicinity, and was eyeing the trembling Susanto with much interest.

The second expedition, launched from the cliffs lining the southern shore, started very promisingly. Susanto found himself atop a hill, so far inland that he couldn't see the ocean. The landscape reminded him of a savannah, and when he climbed a tree he saw a bunch of dinosaurs in the distance, enormous fuckers that almost made him piss himself. But the lizard cows showed no interest in him. They were grazing.

Susanto had noticed a couple of cone-shaped bushes that resembled the love fruit shrubs. But they were too far away for him to be sure, and getting closer would have meant getting a lot closer to the grazing dinosaurs. They looked peaceful, but they were just too fucking big for comfort. And so Susanto was still sitting astride a bough in the New World, straining his eyes, when James woke him up.

What if the love fruit was an anomaly that could be found just on that single clifftop, and nowhere else? What if the plant-eating dinosaurs devoured every single shrub the moment it bore fruit? That was a distinct possibility. It seemed that setting up a love fruit operation could be quite complex after all. What was needed was more exploration of the New World. And in the meantime, it was best to say nothing about the whole business to Cruz.

"Hey! Rafi!"

Susanto smiled and waved. The boatmen cheered, and set about lowering the sails. Within a minute, the first boat was close enough for Cruz to jump off - the water reached halfway up his thighs. He walked through it towards Susanto, swinging from side to side with each step.

"Gabriel!" said Susanto as soon as Cruz got out of the water. He spread his arms, but Cruz stopped short of his embrace. He wrinkled his nose and said:

"Good God, Rafi. When was the last time you had a bath? There is a whole ocean available, in case you haven't noticed."

"I can't do that," Susanto told him. ""I've got this rash... Fuck that. Who are those people? What happened? You've come to take us away, or to stay? Couldn't you get hold of a proper ship?"

Cruz sighed, and Susanto was instantly apprehensive. It had been a sad sigh.

"There's a lot I have to tell you, Rafi," said Cruz. "A hell of a lot. Those guys, they are from Pitcairn. The boats belong to them. There wasn't a proper ship available on Pitcairn. Most likely, there isn't a single proper ship available in the world."

"What?"

"We need to have a long talk. But in a nutshell, the world as we know it is gone. It just doesn't exist any more."

"What - Gabriel, start making sense. What doesn't exist any more?"

"Independent countries, for a start. There is a single global government. They're in New York. And all the money you have, all the money I have is worthless. There's a new global currency based on metal coins. Basically, everything and everyone has gone medieval. We're back in the Middle Ages, Rafi. All the computers are screwed."

Susanto stared at Cruz. Then he said slowly:

"You're right. We need a long talk. But first things first: have you come here to take us to Pitcairn? In a couple of fucking sailboats?"

"They were the only boats available, Rafi."

"We really need to talk."

Unfortunately, a couple of hours passed before Susanto and Cruz had dealt with all the issues that followed the boats' arrival. Four Pitcairn men had come along with Cruz and crewmen from the Golden Dawn: they formed a sulky group, and eyed the whores with great hunger. The whores had become pretty run down after all those weeks on the island, too. Susanto guessed Pitcairn women must be exceptionally shitty if their men behaved like that.

Following a dinner enriched by a bunch of bananas and a haunch of lamb brought from Pitcairn, Cruz made a short speech. He said they would all be leaving the island first thing in the morning. Beds and bathrooms were just twenty four hours away. The Pitcairn islanders were wonderful people, brimming with hospitality. The future was bright, and getting brighter.

He didn't say anything about the great changes, about the new world order. Susanto thought that was wise. Small minds panicked when confronted by huge issues. As it was, Cruz's speech lifted the castaways' morale considerably. The whores were particularly overjoyed.

During that time, Susanto did his best to prepare himself for more shocking news from Cruz when they finally got a chance for a prolonged private conversation. But still, he was totally unprepared for the bombshell Cruz dropped right at the start.

"I'm not going to be taking part in any of this New World business, Rafi," he told Susanto. "It's all yours to enjoy."

Susanto was dumbfounded, but only for a short moment. He began to question Cruz aggressively about his motives. He couldn't believe his ears. The man wanted to sit around smelling flowers and watching bees and butterflies and shit! So that's what happened to billionaires who abruptly stopped being billionaires: they lost their minds!

It dawned on Susanto that he was no longer a multimillionaire, either. For a while, he contemplated following Cruz's example and retiring to live a simple life. Well, maybe not too simple - that would be painful. Like Cruz, he had a few gold bars stashedaway, enough to live on comfortably for the rest of his days.

However, that wasn't a life worth living. Susanto's nature craved action. He needed to keep making deals. He needed to make lots of money fast, now that he was no longer a multimillionaire. He was determined to regain that status as quickly as he only could.

Cruz had gone soft in the head. That happened quite often to people as they got older. When Cruz got around to telling him about the promise he'd made to the governor and mayor of Pitcairn - two thousand New World colonists! - Susanto lost his cool. He snorted, and said:

"You doubled what they initially wanted? Why don't you send them even more? You know, why don't you also build them a nice, new hospital? With a psychiatric ward, that's mandatory. Patients could be made productive, grow flowers and keep bees and shit."

"No," Cruz said gently, after a diplomatic pause. "I'll send them the people I promised. I'll make sure they have rocket launchers and flamethrowers and machine guns. I'll burn the place to the ground."

"I thought you said you wanted to retire."

"I will. I just need to do a couple of things, first."

Susanto drew a deep breath, and said:

"Well, Gabriel, I want to tell you that I'm not retiring. I intend to carry on. I want to colonize the New World. You said those guys already have something happening over there. I want to take it over. I can't take it over if you erase those guys. So I'm asking you to reconsider. Don't you worry, I'll make them squeal. I'll make them suffer for all the, all the indignities they forced on you."

Although it was dark, Susanto felt Cruz look at him with a new interest. He heard Cruz say:

"You want to take over their colony?"

"Sure. Take over that fucking island of theirs, too. Why not? It's not like they got a huge population that can rise in arms. It looks to me I won't need two thousand or even a thousand people. How many did you say they've got - forty two? And those four you brought here are the prime male specimens? Gabriel, we can pull a coup the moment we get to Pitcairn. We got assault rifles and shotguns and pistols and stuff. Think about it."

Cruz did. After a longish silence, he said:

"You could have a point there. Let's talk about it again after you've seen the place."

"Deal," Susanto said.

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