The Weaver Fish

by Robert Edeson

  The second man ran a few metres toward his comrade but stopped short, staring. Then, throwing his rifle to the ground, he turned and fled for the vehicle, grabbing at what was probably a radio on his belt. But before he was halfway to safety another condor attacked, also knocking him over with force of impact, great wings reaching around, enfolding him.

  For those witnessing this from above, the sight was sickening.

  ‘My God,’ whispered Anna, ‘My God.’

  It seemed profane to watch. She turned away and sat down, lightly holding the tripod for support. The others looked at her, expressionless. Then, as if physically weakened by what they had seen, they also sat.

  ‘What happened there? How do they kill?’

  The two men were quiet, observing her emptily. Eventually Paulo spoke.

  ‘Talons, beak. Suffocation maybe.’

  Somehow this elementary rationality served to distance the grotesqueness, and Nicholas nodded without conviction.

  ‘I’ll get us some water,’ he said, rising to walk to the Land Rover.

  ‘Actually, I’ve never heard of condors attacking people, except mythologically,’ said Paulo when Nicholas was gone.

  ‘It was pretty unequivocal.’ Anna spoke with unintentional dryness. In both their minds was the strangeness of sentiment. Before, seeing the depredation of the forest, watching the hunting of the birds, only villainy attached to the Chinese. No consequence seemed too severe. But the vengeance they had seen, so extreme and merciless, unsettled their sympathies. It also unsettled their fears.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do. We can’t get down there.’

  Paulo might have been speaking to himself. Nicholas was handing them bottles, looking out. He took up binoculars and quickly scanned the plain.

  ‘Those condors have gone. The men look dead. I think we might have a new visitor. Helicopter above the deck. They got a mayday through.’

  He crouched down, and the others moved forward, keeping low.

  The aircraft came directly at them. When it reached the scene it banked, hovered at about twenty metres, slowly turning as the pilot studied the terrain. It was army camouflaged, loaded with armaments. It put down on the track, forward of the first victim and facing back. The pilot stayed in place, keeping the rotors spinning, while two figures jumped out through a sliding door in the hull. Each was carrying a rescue pack. They ran to the nearest man and knelt briefly beside. One looked toward the pilot and signalled with his hands. The pilot acknowledged through an open flight deck window. Then they ran on to the other body, repeating the exchange. This one they rolled onto a stretcher and hurried to the aircraft, returning quickly for the first. They clambered back on board as the revolutions picked up. The whole operation was over inside three minutes.

  From above, they heard the characteristic thwacking as power was increased abruptly, and saw small clouds of dust raised from the drier parts of the track. The aircraft lifted, quickly reaching half their height, and they could see into the cockpit through the raking roof shield.

  Then, just as the pilot pulled the nose round and dipped on course for the ship, three large condors appeared from nowhere. They dived below the rotor and streaked upwards, two through the side door, one into the flight deck. Instantly, the cockpit turned solid black. The machine lurched to port, made a little height, then the nose dropped and it fell like a dead weight. The main rotor touched the surface of the swamp and sprayed a great arc of water as the forward half of the fuselage disappeared into the mud, tail rotor still spinning until residual torque flipped it sideways into the water. Before the side door fully submerged, three condors sped out and up, heading for the cliff.

  They watched until the turbulence settled. Each wanted some remission of the horror, a crewman to emerge, gasp for air, swim to the bank, walk clear. But only a spreading oil slick remained; it diffracted sunlight beautifully, like the iridescence of the condor itself.

  ‘We should move out,’ said Paulo. ‘The Chinese won’t understand what happened. They’ll think sabotage, terrorism. All hell could unleash. If they have another ’copter they’ll be scoping the plateau. They’ll easily sight us under cover with sensors.’

  Nicholas was already folding the tripod. They collected the rest of their gear, covered the datum peg with brushwood, and ran to the Land Rover. Nicholas drove. The first village was fifteen kilometres in; they would be safe there. Wherever the forest thinned, Paulo looked anxiously upward, hoping not to see pursuing aircraft. So did Anna, hoping not to see a condor.

  8

  ANNA CAMENES

  Over the following week, Anna joined in the activities of the station, as well as maintaining daily contact with her colleagues at the Compton Institute, where she ran a research programme in psychiatry. Nicholas had set up excellent communications and she was able to participate in teleconferences with, it seemed, fewer technical problems than occurred in Cambridge. She found herself adapting easily to the minor privations that were part of remote station life, and discovered new and surprising appreciations of the country’s beauty and climate.

  At least daily, she would walk to the Edge, usually alone. There was always a point in the path, depending on the atmospherics of the moment, where the sound of the camp generator became fully attenuated by the forest. By some odd alertness of her senses, this fact of silence always presented itself, forcing her attention to ideas about isolation and loss. They were often painful. In a way this walk became a visit to Edvard, and as the forest broke to a view of the sea she was sometimes tearful. Sitting there on the canvas chair, looking out, that would have been a perfect place for conversation.

  She liked the society of the LDI team, and admired their commitment, their intellectual integrity, and the ethos of the whole station community. Sharing an office with Paulo, she had enjoyed many stimulating discussions about his work. And although an initial impression was that Edvard had cultivated research interests sometimes only tenuously related to language studies, it became clear to her that, in fact, and in proper accordance with the LDI charter, it truly was linguistics that held centre in the whole, dedicated enterprise. She learnt more why the Ferent language family was particularly fascinating to researchers, having unique features of grammar and no discernible ancestry in all of East Asia. Much of Paulo’s current work, and Nicholas’s statistical modelling, was concerned with identifying elements of a proposed protolanguage.

  A favourite project was the school. This was held in a large, open-sided tent, and provided for about fifty village children each day. It was staffed by volunteers, but Paulo was making a case to the educational authorities in Madregalo that there should be government recognition and a contribution of state teachers and materials. Anna had read his submission, partly to ascertain the legal implications for the Trustees, and been impressed; they were awaiting a response. Sometimes, she joined in with the classes, and noticed that while the children were given the benefit of education, LDI also had much to learn from them.

  Naturally, the subjects of the Chinese logging and the condor occupied much of their thinking. According to Paulo, Edvard had somehow related the two. For them also, if only by chance, they were intimately connected in the bizarre, repellent events of that single day.

  As a doctor, Anna had wondered about the provision of health and medical emergency services in the station, and once spent a few minutes fossicking around in a large first aid cupboard that she noticed in the canteen. She had not given any priority to the subject in her discussions with Paulo. In one reflective moment at the Edge she had imagined changing her life completely: resign her chair in Cambridge and start a clinic here, provide health care, become a volunteer, study linguistics.

  And so the meagre content of the first aid cupboard was what came to mind when Anna was told that a sick man was being brought to the station. The school bus had found him staggering and wildly waving his arms on the track just south of Copio, picked him up, and radioed ahead. The driver, a local volunteer, said t
he man had spoken incoherently only one word, over and over. He couldn’t understand it but thought the accent was western Ferent, which indicated, in the plateau scale of distance, that his passenger was a long way from home.

  Paulo and Anna waited in the canteen, which had the best facilities for receiving the patient. The volunteer kitchen staff had cleared one of the refectory tables of breakfast remnants, and covered it with a thick layer of blankets. On another table were organized the total health resources of the station. Nicholas had fuelled the long-wheelbase Land Rover and converted it to a makeshift ambulance with a mattress in the rear, ready for a drive to Madregalo if required.

  It was about an hour from the first message when the bus appeared, crossing the clearing with uncharacteristic speed to stop outside the canteen. Anna saw the man slumped sideways in the passenger seat, leaning against the driver. The twenty or so children on the bus burst into loud, excited chatter, and a teacher herded them away through the rear exit. Anna ran around the front of the bus and opened the door. She was shocked. She turned to Paulo, immediately behind.

  ‘We’re going to need help.’

  ‘We can all help.’

  ‘I mean major help. Intensive care help.’

  She was matter-of-fact. Paulo looked past her and wondered how she could reach that judgement after a glance. But he called out: ‘Nicholas. Get Madregalo Hospital. Tell them we have an emergency. Find out about intensive care.’

  A number of men helped carry the patient to the canteen table. He was unresponsive, breathing rapidly. Someone placed a pillow under his head, and Anna quickly intervened to ensure his airway was clear. He was roughly bearded, and grossly oedematous, with swollen neck, hands and feet. She had difficulty retracting the puffy eyelids to examine his pupils. His clothing was in tatters, much of it caked with mud. Grabbing an old stethoscope, Anna tore his shirt open, exposing large areas of cutaneous haemorrhage in the chest wall. As she leaned forward to listen she spoke loudly.

  ‘Everyone who’s touched him, wash your hands. How is it going, Nicholas?’

  ‘Still being connected through.’

  ‘Stress the urgency,’ she said.

  A volunteer had been charged, after quick tuition, with keeping a time record of events. Anna called out some vital signs. When she had completed a physical examination she looked at hands, arms and feet for venous access. The gross oedema made it impossible. She went back to examine the neck, and called for the table to be tilted head down. Two kitchen staff lifted the end and supported it on upturned saucepans. There was a suggestion of an external jugular.

  Amongst the first aid supplies was some intravenous equipment, old cannulae and two packs of Hartmann’s solution past their shelf life. Anna primed a giving set, then scrubbed the patient’s neck with antiseptic. Using a syringe she searched carefully and was rewarded with a flashback; the cannula fed without difficulty, and she attached the Hartmann’s, securing the site with dressing tape.

  ‘Flatten the table.’

  ‘Anna, I’ve got a Dr Tersley on the line. He’s an anaesthetist with a field surgical team working out of Madregalo. Can you speak?’

  She nodded and quickly washed her hands, taking the mobile extension.

  ‘Anna Camenes.’

  ‘Philip Tersley. How can we help?’

  ‘They found a man delirious on a track into here, about two hours ago. Hard to age—fifty, maybe. Race indeterminate. He’s critical. Septic, shut down, heart rate 130, rapid, shallow respiration, GCS 8, no lateralizing signs, no neck stiffness, generalized oedema. He’s got petechial haemorrhages, ecchymoses all over. Lost a lot of blood, conjunctiva almost white. I’ve got a short line in his neck, crystalloid running, but we don’t have much of anything here. No oxygen, no airway gear. No BP cuff even.’

  ‘What’s your transport situation?’

  ‘He needs retrieval, Philip.’ Again, the tone was matter-of-fact.

  ‘Hold on.’

  Anna had walked back toward the patient as she described the clinical picture. Her eye was caught by something previously noted but forgotten. A watch on his left wrist was almost completely concealed by oedema.

  ‘Someone get that watch off or he’ll lose his hand.’

  ‘Anna?’

  ‘Yes, Philip.’

  ‘The colonel wants a word.’ There was a short delay.

  ‘Colonel Barker. And this is?’

  ‘Dr Camenes.’

  ‘Situation report?’

  It seemed a waste of time. ‘We have a critically ill man; septic shock, major blood loss, coagulopathy, respiratory failure. We don’t have a diagnosis. He needs resuscitation. He needs intensive care. He needs air retrieval. We haven’t got hours.’

  There was a long silence, followed by ‘Standby’.

  Philip’s voice came on. ‘Jesus. What did you say to the colonel? He looked like he was having a stroke.’

  ‘I just said we needed medical evacuation, as soon as possible.’

  ‘Yeah. Hold on.’

  He was back in a minute. ‘LDI station, South Joseph, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s a good clearing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Inside an hour. Me, nurse, technician, pilot. We’ll have O-neg. I’m passing you over to a signals guy. See you shortly.’

  He was gone before Anna could respond. She handed the phone back to Nicholas, guessing that it was about an in-flight communication link, and said loudly, ‘Under an hour, everybody.’

  There was palpable relief. She moved around to the patient’s head, and felt for the carotid pulse. It was slightly slower, and stronger. She called out the rate, and turned to collect the second bag of Hartmann’s from the adjacent table. Someone had placed the watch there. It looked familiar. She picked it up and turned it over. Inscribed on the case was ‘Edvard Tøssentern’. Anna recalled Edvard’s last letter: his watch, a gift from his parents, had been mislaid. She looked at the comatose man, viewing him from the top of the table. How did you get this? Who gave you this? What can you tell us about Edvard?

  Suddenly the whole stressful situation was fused incomprehensibly with that other pain. She moved to his side to examine the hand that had been badly tourniqueted; she still couldn’t feel a pulse, but there was capillary return. She glanced at his face, unshaven, dirty, bruised, swollen beyond recognition.

  Beyond recognition. She stared, trying to resist the mad, impossible thought.

  ‘Edvard,’ she whispered. Then, louder and urgently, ‘It’s Edvard.’

  Paulo turned from what he was doing. He didn’t look at the man. He looked only at Anna, his face showing acute concern for her state of mind.

  ‘Anna,’ he said gently. He briefly caught Nicholas’s eye, conveying his anxiety. Nicholas came across, still holding the mobile.

  ‘Anna,’ repeated Paulo. ‘How can it be Edvard?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe he made it to land. Maybe he even crashed on land. We don’t have a clue which way the balloon went in the storm.’ She felt a falseness in her heart, creating hope out of nothing, but added, ‘That’s his watch.’

  Nicholas had positioned himself at the man’s right hand, staring quietly at his face. ‘You could be right, Anna.’

  Anna looked at Nicholas, seeking confirmation of her sanity as much as her judgement.

  ‘It’s possible, Paulo,’ Nicholas said.

  Paulo shifted his stare from Anna to Nicholas, then, at last, to the man. ‘I’m not sure I see it,’ he said.

  Several kitchen staff had heard Edvard’s name and crowded around, murmuring their views. Anna pulled up a refectory stool and sat down, holding the man’s hand.

  She stayed there until they heard the helicopter coming in. She only half watched as three figures emerged, bent over, carrying large cases. Paulo and Nicholas met them on the gravel and led them in. They introduced Anna. Philip shook hands quickly, saying, ‘This is Max and Kelly,’ gesturing at his companions but looking at the patient.


  ‘Fuck,’ he said very quietly as he took in the scene. The others were setting up their gear on the adjacent table.

  ‘Max,’ he called, ‘give three.’

  Max nodded and walked quickly to where he had full view of the aircraft, hand signalling a message. They heard the pilot power down.

  Philip started a quick physical examination, just as Anna had. At the same time he asked, ‘How’s he been since we spoke?’

  ‘No change in conscious state; his heart rate has come down a little. We’ve kept an obs chart.’

  Philip didn’t reply, raising a stethoscope to his ears. The others had already set up oxygen by mask, and attached an ear probe oximeter. Kelly was now applying ECG dots. They functioned superbly as a team. An automatic sphygmomanometer had been put on the right arm.

  ‘Can’t get a BP, Phil,’ said Kelly, turning to look.

  Philip acknowledged. There was an oximetry trace. He took the obs chart and glanced at it, passing it to Kelly who had started a resuscitation record. Max had opened a fold-out mobile lab and was testing a blood sample from a finger prick.

  ‘BSL OK, Hb 50.’

  Philip was reading an ECG strip. He nodded and said, ‘Blood,’ adding, ‘Sinus, no ischaemia; 12-lead when you’re able, please Kelly.’

  Kelly had taken a pack of blood from an insulated cool-box and was setting it up on Anna’s drip; by now the second Hartmann’s was fully run through. Philip leaned across to examine the infusion site.

  ‘Jesus, you did well to get that in,’ he said admiringly.

  ‘I wish I could have done more,’ said Anna, looking at their equipment.

  Philip glanced at her neutrally. All doctors wish they could do more.