El Planeta del Tesoro (Treasure Planet)

[Recording available at https://soundcloud.com/user-224867227/treasure-planet-el-planeta-del-tesoro - Excuse the actor]

Tesoro Bound

Captain Silver takes the controls,
The Hispaniola rides a diffusion wave,
dark matter doesn't.
The Catapult shoots past, tourists
for Andromeda. Silver's kite is flotation
sprung for comfort.
And like any buccaneer,
Silver has his own destination;
Tesoro, the emerald planet,
tiny speck in the vastness
of the Pegasus Square.

Silver isn't lonely, a paraquito
talks, preens chartreuse feathers
and whistles space-shanties.
Jim, meanwhile - and the others -
are candle-dreaming in cryo-cribs
like chrysales.
Then the vacuum radar screen
warns of a meteor shower approaching:
Silver puts off the Catalepton®
to stay awake for the greatest
show in light years.

The Catalepton® takes effect,
the rapid eye movement begins a trove of dreams
of Tesoro, and Silver knows
that X will mark the spot.

Silver

Captain? Self-
promotion is
ambition's
true soulmate.

Silver charms
his way along:
besides, who fears
a cripple.

But why so...
disadvantaged
in days of Foeto-stem®?
Narkotikon's

best can grow
limbs of any
kind. Silver lost
his leg on

Jupiter's
moon; something
more that Flint's
ghost owes him.

The rumours
range from lack
of funds for drugs
or - darker

still - whispers
speak of a seal's
flipper hid
below Dryon®

trousered flap,
sewn sailor-stitched
around the thigh.
Silver knows

all the tall
tales, tailor-made
for his own
purposes.

Planetfall

Jim jerks awake
Catalepton® groggy
he reaches for the stimujab.
The pods are all closed.

Just Jim alone
with the damned parrot.
Tesoro fills the VistaScreen,
a truly green planet, rare

as its sobriquet.
There are minutes
to planetfall. Is there something
he should do?

A desert planet,
but green withal:
it's not inhospitable sand
that awaits them.

Jim just watches:
the Hispaniola floats
down: a leaf on the diffusion wind
just like Silver said it would.

B is for Buccaneer.

Bored: the boy brings
back memories of Benbow,
run-down space-trucker stop: last
Spacegrog before the Milky Way.

Billy Bones banging on
about a one-legged man
or banging out a chorus
of Yo-Ho-Ho! over a bottle of rum.

Black Dog bearding Billy
barking friendly toasts
before Billy's cutlaser swipe
bares his shoulder to the bone.

Blind Pew bringing bad
news on barest vellum -
save the Black Spot
that saw old Billy bow out.

But,

nostalgia brings
its own hazards, as boys find out
before long in any story.

Bump.

Not so leaf-like,
after all.

Smollett :

Single
Matrix
Organised
Loop
Light-wave
Emitting
Topological
Transponder.

Silver has disabled it,
its actor's voice
disturbed too many
of their number.
Dire warnings of
manual overide
and strange destinations.

And who is concerned?
None now: Silver will
face Consul Trelawney
and the Doctor down.
Have they not followed
Flint's hologram message?

The lucite catafalques are open,
the stimujabs administered:
the lines will soon be drawn.
Silver, Merry and Allardyce
will be suited up and,
Jim does not doubt it,
in the vicinity of X,
before the Consul
makes his mind up.

On Tesoro

Cool looks from Trelawney and the Doctor:
“Deceived by a silver-tongue,' the latter mutters.
Jim shrugs inside the landing suit -
though none can see this diffident gesture.
He follows Silver, Merry and others
aboard the landing craft. Heart in mouth,
hand in glove with Silver or so it seems.

Nothing leaf-like in the lander's first
encounter with the planet's surface either.

The collision with Tesoro is no more violent
than Silver's acolytes' arguments.
The Black Spot figures loud and
Jim makes his escape to sylvan sanctuary,
peering hopefully out of the writhing trees.

Tom, honest Tom, appears in a gap in the glade:
running, running for his life that Silver's
cut-laser shears from his body
as if swatting a mosquitillo.
And Jim is decided now.
Besides Tom's presence means
the Consul and Livesey are on Tesoro too.

So he runs as he has never run,
when comes a ragged, wall-eyed loon,
warbling a cracked and croaking shanty,
while scratching at faded Dryon® clothes.
'Marooned, Marooned' he shouts,
'Ben Gunn, Ben Gunn!', quite demented:
a gibbon hopping from gristly leg to leg.
As much by blind and forgiving chance,
Gunn leads Jim to the rest of the crew,
listening to Hawkins' rambling tale
and flees a-howling at Silver's name.

The abandoned settlement nestles on the green quartz,
the tree-wurms kept at bay by something intangible.

The settlement is all talk and tirade,
the Doctor and Trelawney can agree on nothing:
each citing SMOLLETT as justification
for their polarised intentions. When
suddenly out of the squirming lignite
the holo-flag of truce is held aloft
by none other than Silver, of course.

For once the computer reads the data
the same as both Doctor and Consul,
and Silver retreats uttering dark threats
claiming them as die will be the lucky ones.
Be that as it may, Hawkins is no dullard.
He asks a last favour of the marooned
and takes the Dirigible, whose limitations
may stretch to reaching the Hispaniola,
Jim means to secure the ship and
keep it from the mutineers. He hopes,
how he hopes,from the deep of his bones
that he can outwit any skeleton crew.

Skeleton Crew

Jim is quite relieved, the back and forth
between the Doctor and the Consul
continues, surely, planet-side?
Silver and his cronies left in the night
- for what are pirates but thieves
of the space lanes?

Still, perhaps SMOLLETT - now switched
on and de-cradled from the ship-board
systems - will advise the two of them
and Livesey and Trelawney
will navigate all of them through
these dangerous times.

The worst of it all is Jim's
fellow skeleton crew member.
'Call me Israel,' Hands has said:
Jim cannot do it, fearing the look
of the meanest Hydrato, many-
headed snake of Hyperion IV.

Jim heads aft to the vanes
of the diffusion sails.
The prickling of his neck
imagined or worse...

Israel Hands

The vanes holding up the diffusion sails
are no thicker than a man's wrist
easily grasped by hands or Hands.
Jim looks down, his resolve almost fails
the Coxswain's leer visible through mist
from the aerosol repair can that stands
to reason he is using to repair any tears.
It is a long way to the planet's surface, down
to green quartz-like rock that scarcely bears
resemblance to Benbow or a hundred other lights
in the night-sky's velveteen gown.

The vanes curve the way history says
the whale-bones did in long-ago days.
Israel is gaining on Jim-lad: and so
the pirate will kill him in any fair go.
The only way is up, it seems;
Hands' golden tooth gleams,
as does the the dagger in his teeth.
Jim scurries aloft, the devil is beneath.
And sudden, as if to prove
a surface- not diffusion- wind can move
the vast titanylene surfaces, it blows
and Israel panics and almost goes
the long drop into the emerald green
the dagger slips and rips titanylene.

Jim keeps scrambling up the vanes,
a scarce hand's breadth from Hands' fist.
Israel continually taking pains
to soothe the boy with placatory signs,
offers him bribes as if from a list
or even “ship's articles” as 'none should mind
signing - friend Jim.' Meanwhile a glittering leer,
not to say a cut-throat's grin
splits Israel's face from ear to ear.
He overhauls the boy, he's a grown man
face-to-face, chin to chin,
Jim blinds him with the spray from the aerosol can.

The coxswain's scream echoes after the fall,
Jim Hawkins feels nothing, nothing at all.

The Black Spot

Jim flips the very last switch;
a large, dust-blackened, yellow lever.
SMOLLETT not being available,
Jim has had to land the Hispaniola
in a most old-fashioned way.
The long caught breath hisses out,
as he hears the pulsar motors die
and the dynamo hum of stati-grav begin.

Jim Hawkins, Space Pilot:
he wonders what Silver
would think of that.

In the clearing, it is yet day-light
or what passes for such on Tesoro.
51 Pegasi is eight billion years old
as any schoolboy knows, and
a yellow-dwarf running low on hydrogen
is a cold-comfort sun on any planet.
Jim shivers inside the landing suit,
takes an oxy-boost from the internal tube,
sets off through the Wurm-trees
toward the settlement.

Through a gap in the seething forest wall,
he can see the smooth metal of Settlement 91-A,
Jim thinks it best to slip in after nightfall, unsure
of the welcome he might receive, since
the Consul's temper is quicker than his wits,
the boy has all too often found.

Imagine his shock, when - for all the
circumspection - his sneaking after dark
is greeted by the familiar, hearty roar
'Jim Lad! Well met again, saving Silver's skin
from these motherless moon-rats!'
The welcoming embrace is a little tight
on the hermetic collar for Jim's comfort
and Silver stands trembling behind his hostage.

Merry, Job Anderson and John advance close,
barely held at bay by Silver's presence:
they threaten thumbscrews and sundry other
torturous schemes to extract the map
or treasure's whereabouts from poor Jim.

But,

to Jim's surprise, Silver will brook
no interference with his captive.
Merry tears a page from the only book
he has, and the opening of Deuteronomy
gains a rough roundel of black by
dint of some grime from the ageing
walls of Settlement-91a, while Silver
castigates the coward for defacing
a Bible in such a manner.

Still.

Silver feels a certain pride,
for who else has received
the Black Spot not once, but twice?

X Marks the Spot

'The lad can't give 'ee what 'ee don't ave'
Silver, a bear at bay, growls at Anderson.
'He knows', a mutineers' chorus follows
and the creak of the gallows cracks their voices,
as if - at last - they begin to doubt the right of it.
What if the Doctor and the windbag Consul -
map-in-hand and bang-to-rights - are
standing over shovelling, lick-spittle,
quarterdeck-hands?

Silver brandishes the creased and greasy parchment -
not one pirate worth his salty epithet
would trust a holo-map or even a crude
and old-fashioned tera-dongle.
Besides, they think, whoever heard of space-port
scanners screaming alarums over
ragged and faded paper?

The pirates slink as one to disparate bunks
as far from each other as a clear
and constant sight-line allows.
Silver keeps his Jim-boy close,
though for whose protection,
who could say?

Morning comes and all but Silver
and the boy shake the Space-Grog
from their heads: its jaws still
clamp the murderous Merry,
who grumbles yet awhile
that Silver allows Jim the reading
of the cursed map, though not
a blessed buccaneer knows his letters
save Silver himself.

And the cheers are long and loud
until the digging proves easier
than it ought.

The hoard is gone: although a single
piece of eight remains and Captain Flint
the paraquito mocks them all with
a repetitious round of the very same,
'til Silver places the bird within the
confines of his landing-suit and sighs,

'Leastways it's proven after all
“X has unequivoc'lly marked the spot.”

Treasure

A hole, wholly filled with treasure trinkets,
feathers, twigs and pebbles. Green quartz
plucked from the emerald surface
ot Tesoro. All these worthless things
given Gunn's prideful place.
While in a corner a chest,
all sharp edges and cryo-locked,
marked Flint, and bearing customs
tags from Jupiter's Moon, stands
as table for an empty flask of
Rhum from Gamma Kah.
Jim sighs and gives a light tenor
rendition of 'Fifteen Men.'

Silver is philosophical as such men may be;
Merry has been cut-lasered down by the Doctor,
who proved as handy with that weapon
as with any light-scalpel.
Jim has killed another man, Anderson:
but the fight was passing fair and Jim felt
as little for Job as Israel.

Flint's chest, Gunn and Silver are brought
aboard the Hispaniola, though most eyes
are on the booty, and that might be foolish
in Jim Hawkins' bold opinion.
The Consul declares that Silver's safe enough
a one-legged man cannot run far, he says,
not from a vessel like the Hispaniola.
They'll cast off in the morning and unfurl
the diffusion sails and Silver will get his
just desserts on Tortuga and no mistake.

And Silver grins at this, but makes no rebuff.

Morning comes and Silver is gone:
a life-ship is missing and Ben Gunn
is tearing already wild hair and
beating a scrawny breast.
Ben's share of the spoils is diminished
by half, though he seems to believe it
small premium, in the matter of
payment to a devil.

******
Epilogue

And on Benbow, light years later,
the Landlord of the Captain Flint,
one James Hawkins, views the silver
in his hair - and ponders another -
and whether the pirate has
long since met his Nevacca wife
and lives still in comfort with her.
The boy's smile looks out from the mirror
and the old man rather hopes the cripple
still lopes in this life - for Jim knows
he'll see but little comfort in the next.