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PETER ORNER
Obadiah
An old trick. It worked many times on the west coast. Portuguese sailors invented it. You send a female slave inland. Then leave her. Give her time to make contact with tribes in the area. Then you come back later and hunt her. In this way you can establish trade, make war, further enslave, all depending on your fancy.
In 1484, Bartholomew Diaz sails down the barren southwestern coast of an unknown land. He calls the slaves up from the hold and chooses a nubile young thing. If any slave will attract a crowd in this forsaken place—this tasty specimen will. He orders his men to row her ashore. His men do it. At the spot where they leave her they erect a marble cross. Since the creation of the world 6684 years have passed and since the birth of Christ 1484 years and so the illustrious Don Johannes has ordered this pillar erected here by Giacomo, his knight. Then the men row back to the ship. Diaz sails further north toward the Cape of Good Hope. Two months later he sails north again and sends his men into the beach where beneath the cross they find only the whiteness of bones picked clean by the gulls.
In his ledger that evening, Diaz writes the coordinates, followed by, “No Contact, hostile or otherwise.”
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