Cataveiro

by E. J. Swift

  But he can’t see anything. His eyelashes flutter, the eyeballs rolling beneath them. His skin is slack and clammy. Taking one hand off the yoke, she reaches under the passenger seat and pulls out a blanket and wraps it around him as best she can.

  Likely he’ll have a couple of siblings, if they’ve survived the plagues. His mother will live in constant fear of losing a child to the jinn or, Nazca keep us, the redfleur, but not like this. Not an accident. Not so sudden and so cruel.

  ‘Alé,’ she says. ‘Alé, stay awake.’

  The boy does not respond.

  ‘Alé, I need you to stay awake for me. Can you do that? I know all you want to do is sleep, but you mustn’t, you’ve got to stay awake for me. Just until I get you to the doctor.’

  He moans. In her pack are one or two shots of morphine, but she is scared it will send him off for good. She reaches out and takes his slick, bloodied hand and clutches it tightly in hers.

  ‘Hang in there, Alé. Come on, you can do this. Tell me about yourself. Alé, that’s a good name. What’s it short for – Alejandro?’

  ‘Yes.’ A slip of a voice.

  ‘I knew an Alejandro once.’ He turned out to be a selfish bastard, but you can’t know everything at fifteen. ‘How about your family? Do you have a brother? A sister?’

  ‘Lu.’

  ‘Lu. That’s a good name too. What’s that for, Luisa?’

  This time there is no answer. She can feel him slipping from her. She keeps squeezing his hand, asking him questions. She has been told that an unconscious person can still hear, or at least can sense that you are there.

  ‘Shall I tell you a story?’ She thinks. She needs a good one. ‘I’ll tell you one about the city. Have you heard of the city? In the south? It’s a long way from here. Two to three days’ flying, when the weather’s fine. It was a boy like you who went there first. He was a juggler. Have you ever seen a juggler, Alé? This one was very good. In fact, he claimed to be the best in the land. He styled himself “The Great Cataveiro”. People asked him to prove it, of course, so he pitched a tent by a river in a Patagonian valley, and he offered to juggle with the possessions of every traveller that passed. He made a promise – not to drop a single one. Imagine that. And if he did, he said they could ask him to do anything they liked. This was the gamble. So, of course, everyone wanted a go. They gave him all sorts of things. Lúcumas and peaches. Family heirlooms. Lizards, alive and wriggling. He caught them all.’

  Ramona stops there, because now she remembers the end to this particular story, and the juggler does not come out of it so well, in any version.

  ‘If you ever go to the city you’ll see lots of jugglers there,’ she says. ‘Are you awake, Alé? Hey. Wake up. Come on. Don’t you crash out on me.’

  The boy is unresponsive. She watches the empty, arid land passing below. The speedometer wavers at two hundred kilometres. The plane is at its limit; she can ask no more of it. When the salt marshes of Titicaca finally glide into view she manoeuvres the plane for as long as she can with one hand, until she is forced to let his go and use both. There is the isolated town and the white roof of the medical centre.

  ‘All right, we’re landing now. You’ll feel a weird sensation in your ears, but don’t worry, it’s over fast. They’ve radioed the doctor. She’s waiting below. She’s right there. We’re coming down now. Hold on tight. Hold on for me, Alé.’

  She brings the plane down as smoothly as she can. She can see a medical team running towards them as she taxies to a halt. They have a stretcher ready. The boy makes no movement. Has she lost him?

  The doctors lift the boy from the plane. They are talking – technical terms she does not recognize. They rush the boy away on the stretcher and into the medical centre. Ramona follows slowly.

  After a few minutes someone comes out and asks what her blood type is. They take a litre. She watches the needle siphoning it from the crook of her elbow into the clear plastic bag. She asks if he’ll be okay. The nurse says the transfusion is his best chance.

  For two hours Ramona waits. She goes back to the plane and mops up the mess as best she can, trying not to think about how much there is, about the injury that must have let out that much blood. She returns to the waiting room. It’s clean and orderly, but everything looks decades out of date. She is the sole occupant. It’s only a small outlet station, with one emergency operating room. The doctors are all Patagonian. Titicaca is clinging on, but the marshes grow smaller every year. From above, you can see the grading of the landscape, outlining what was once a vast lake, and how far it has receded.

  When the surgeon comes out she tells her the boy will live.

  ‘And his leg?’

  She says they have had to amputate the foot. The boy was exposed for too long; gangrene was already setting in. They couldn’t save it.

  ‘Can I see him?’

  They let her into the room. The boy is drugged and woozy. He does not know who she is but she sits by the bed and takes his hand and holds it. The nurses have cleaned him up; now his hands have been washed she can see that the nails are bitten very short and the fingertips are callused. The bedcover dips where the surgeon has removed his left foot at the ankle.

  The surgeon, hovering, says, ‘Lucky for this one you were in the area.’

  Ramona hears the shift in her voice, almost a reverential tone, and she wants to say, Don’t. She looks at the boy and pictures his life now. There won’t be football. He will move awkwardly, using crutches, and the plant that employs his family will have little use for him when he grows old enough to work. His mother will care for him as best she can, maybe resorting to stealing opium when he’s in pain.

  But he is alive.

  ‘You’re a survivor, Alé.’ She squeezes the boy’s hand tightly. ‘Remember that.’

  2 ¦

  THE JOURNEY SOUTH is punishing. A day’s clear flying followed by two days grounded by storms, a narrow flood escape, and another three troubling days in the air. By the time she crosses the strait from the mainland to the island of Tierra del Fuego, Ramona can no longer deny that there is something wrong with the plane. She first noticed the alarming engine noise towards the end of the job in Nazca, and over the past forty-eight hours it has been getting progressively worse. She has checked everything, but the aircraft is handling badly, yawing in the slightest wind. Maybe she pushed it too hard taking Alé to the medical centre. She levers the yoke anxiously.

  ‘Come on, Colibrí.’

  She keeps the plane high as they drift over the island’s silver lakes, partly because it seems to respond better at altitude, and partly because she prefers her arrival not to be witnessed – at least, not by her employer. They pass briefly through mist as they cross the ridge of the mountains, but it clears on the other side. The roof of the Facility, jutting out from the face of the mountain, is marked with yellow cat’s eyes. She begins the descent, circling down in small spirals, feeling the tension in the sick aircraft. When she touches down it’s a bumpy landing on a very short runway. She pulls the plane in a sharp U-turn and skids to an ungainly halt.

  The plane rocks, then settles. The motors rattle down to a quiet whine, the way they should sound all the time, before cutting out. For a moment she stays as she is, strapped into her seat, listening to the stillness until her own breathing becomes intrusive. She thinks of the dune. Cerro Blanco.

  When she checks the battery level she finds it is only a quarter full, which is unusual, worryingly so. She keeps the plane’s solar-leaf cells on a maximum charge. The battery should be full again in a couple of hours. She climbs out, abruptly aware of her aching feet, and snaps the mooring tethers onto their magnetic points. At the Facility there is no need for the chameleon, but she double-locks the hatch.

  It is a dull day to return to base. The sky is clouded over, entirely white, and the only sense of colour comes from the flag trees and thorny scrub that line the slopes above the Facility roof. On the other side, the road runs down to the harbour tow
n with its pink and blue and red buildings and the high sea walls that guard them. Fishing boats rock on their tethers, but there are no ships in the harbour. Is the fleet due, or has it already left? She thinks of Félix aboard the Aires, wonders where on the ocean they are. I’d like to see you, Félix. She can see the ocean surging inland, battering the flood barriers. Further along, the looming ruins of Ushuaia City poke out of the waters. On a sunny day, the plundered city is still a source of treasures for brave divers, but today the sea trawls through the ruins in sullen white and grey, as though in collusion with the depressing bureaucracy of the Facility.

  Ramona wants to put off entering the building for as long as possible so she grabs her toolkit, unscrews the panel to the engine nacelle and gets under the plane for the fifth time since leaving Nazca. For the fifth time, she cannot see what is wrong. Nothing seems broken, nothing is leaking; there’s no corrosion. She lies on her back, staring up at the cloud banks above the underbelly of the plane. She hopes Raoul has some ideas.

  She braces herself and enters the building via the roof hatch. With any luck, no one from the Facility will have seen her arrival, and she can escape a briefing with supercilious Lygia until morning. The building is quiet. She hurries past the shunned second floor, where the poor souls condemned to use computers put in their hours. They always sit on the other side of the Facility’s canteen. Sometimes Ramona feels bad about that. Not always.

  At ground level, the foyer is cold and grey. She is swamped with an immediate sense of gloom. Above the reception area hangs a faded Patagonian flag and the animals of the Nazca glyphs: monkey, hummingbird, spider, heron, orca. An old man with silver hair sits behind a desk. His uniform is equally faded, and the whole scene is like a tableau in a cave that has been left undisturbed for thousands of years.

  But the old man’s eyes light up at her entrance. He gets awkwardly to his feet, one hand supporting the small of his back.

  ‘Ramona Callejas!’

  ‘Hello, Eduardo. It’s good to see you.’

  ‘It’s good to see you too, Ramona. Yes, I’m always happy to see you’re still alive.’

  Eduardo’s smile does not waver but the statement is ambiguous, as is the man himself. Ramona leans against the desk. Eduardo, who sees all of the Facility’s comings and goings, is a useful man to have on side.

  ‘Have I missed all the excitement?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh, we’ve had plenty of excitement, never you worry. One mother of a storm last night, for a start. They lost a fishing boat. Sad tale, it is. Remember Pedro? His whole livelihood, that boat, and there’s three young kids. And I’ll put money on another tonight. I can feel it. My joints are telling me … But what have you been up to, our illustrious pilot, eh? You have some stories for old Ed?’

  ‘Mapping at Nazca. The lines. And the glyphs.’ Ramona glances up at the dusty flag. She does not mention her pilgrimage to Cerro Blanco; it is not something of which it can or should be spoken. Nor does she mention her illicit mercy dash. If Lygia finds out, she will make her disapproval very clear; she does not like Ramona going off-task. Instead, she puts on a mysterious tone. ‘On the way home I discovered a pirates’ nest.’

  ‘Pirates? Lots of them?’

  ‘Three ships. No markings. Not a renegade in sight. Quiet as the dead, they were. The bay was almost hidden … but I saw it from the air.’

  ‘Not El Tiburón?’

  ‘If it was, he didn’t dare show his face to me.’

  ‘Ha!’ His laugh is short and breathy. ‘You’re the lucky one. Where were they?’

  ‘Can’t say, Ed. Classified, isn’t it? Shouldn’t have told you this much.’

  He loves that.

  ‘You staying with us long, Ramona?’

  ‘You know me, Ed. I never stay any longer than I can help. It’s not the company, but …’

  He nods and offers her a wink, as though they share a conspiracy. Perhaps they do, she thinks. Perhaps Eduardo dislikes it here as much as I do.

  ‘I’ll sign you in.’ The old man enters Ramona’s name in a large, heavy book. His writing is slow, the letters solemnly etched. ‘You’ve got your key?’

  She lifts the chain hanging around her neck.

  ‘Ed, I need to get hold of Raoul—’

  The telephone interrupts; Eduardo holds up a hand. She waits as he takes the call.

  ‘Yes? Oh. I see. No, if it’s run out, it’s run out. No, I can’t get you another one. No, the energy room is closed.’ A pause. Eduardo’s expression is tight with annoyance. ‘Not until morning. No, there’s no one there now. I can’t help you. No. That’s too bad. Goodbye.’

  Eduardo whistles through his teeth.

  ‘Unbelievable.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘The Tarkie on the fifth floor. Used his energy ration. Now he expects me to whistle up a brand-new supply just for him. Those Tarkies come over all charming, but they take what they want when it comes to our precious resources. All right for them, isn’t it? They’ve got wind farms of their own. They don’t have to go begging for African solar cells.’

  Ramona frowns. ‘We don’t beg. Who is he, anyway?’

  ‘A researcher, so he says. A botanist.’

  Eduardo’s tone of voice encourages her to lean in closer.

  ‘So he says?’ she echoes.

  Eduardo looks to left and right, as though there might be hidden eyes surveying them. He has spent too long in this dusty foyer. Nothing happens in the Facility except for the creaking laws of government; if it’s news you want, you need the harbour.

  ‘I’ve never seen him collecting flower seeds, is all. Not that kind anyway. One day he comes in all worked up and when I asked him nice as anything to sign in – three times I had to ask – he starts shouting all kinds of things. So I know what he really does – or did, that is.’

  ‘What’s your theory, Ed?’

  ‘I reckon he’s been disgraced. Exiled. In fact, I’ll bet you on it.’

  Ramona rolls her eyes. ‘What are you betting?’

  The old man hesitates. He loves a bet. It must bring a ripple of excitement to his monotonous routine.

  ‘I’ll bet you a week’s hot water ration.’

  ‘All right. You’re on.’ Ramona knows she won’t take it from him, even if she wins. Probably Eduardo knows that too, but they both play the game. She tosses her key and catches it, thinking of the jugglers in Cataveiro.

  ‘Now what were you saying, before we got interrupted?’

  ‘I was saying, I need to get hold of Raoul.’

  ‘Can’t be doing that. He’s off island.’

  Why, she thinks, does Eduardo always sound happy when he delivers bad news?

  ‘Off island?’

  ‘His dad got taken sick. Didn’t say what it was. Didn’t sound good.’

  ‘Shit. I need a mechanic.’

  ‘Problems with the plane?’ Eduardo asks slyly.

  ‘It could do with some fine-tuning, that’s all.’ The last thing she needs is Eduardo babbling to Lygia, and Lygia trying to chain her to a desk for a week, or worse, sitting her next to a drone while they set her maps on a computer.

  ‘Well, you should try him upstairs.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Tarkie! Didn’t I say he let slip his old job? “I was an engineer,” he says. All high and mighty as if I was supposed to be impressed.’ Eduardo drums the desk gleefully. ‘Get him to make himself useful. Fifth floor, same as you. Can’t miss him, green eyes, a bit spooky. I should warn you, though, that Tarkie Portuguese will make your ears hurt. Barbarism to a decent language, that’s what it is.’

  ‘Well, maybe. If Raoul’s not back tomorrow, I could try him. Night, Ed. Don’t tell Lygia I’m here, will you? I don’t want to see her before I have to. And I’ll tell you the rest of that pirate story … tomorrow.’

  Eduardo winks.

  ‘You know old Ed. Your secret’s safe with me.’

  Eduardo is always here, however long she has been away; the
re is some consolation in that. Even if he is an unrepentant gossip. She climbs the back stairs of the building. Five flights, down another corridor. Same floor as the Antarctican – worth remembering. She walks past metal door after metal door. Only a small percentage of them are occupied at any given time. The rooms are home to a peculiar assortment of staff: governors, army officers and ad hocs, researchers, data entrants, ambassadors, the occasional freelancer like herself.

  The room with her name on it is a one and a half by two metre box. The key grates when she opens the door. She has been out for several weeks – another reason Lygia will want to pick her brain for information. She can never decide if it is her controlling nature that repels her the most, or the manipulative way she tries to befriend you. Typical politician. And yet it was Lygia who first took her seriously when she said: Let me fly this, and I’ll make you all the maps you need. It was Lygia who persuaded her colleagues to make Ramona an exception.

  Inside the room everything is dusty; she draws a fingertip through the fine coating on the table and pulls the bunk down from the wall. A tangle of old army blankets fall out. She shakes them out and stands on the bunk to open the tiny window and let in some air.

  Originally built by northerners for an entirely different purpose, this is one of the few buildings in the country to use bufferglass. Glass and solar cells have made the Pan-African Solar Corporation rich, and rumour has it they plan to buy up the Australian continent next. The new energy will go north, fuelling the glittering techno-cities of the Boreal States. In exchange for the Patagonian poppy harvest, a lean trickle of cells will come here.

  The Facility might not be Ramona’s idea of home, but it is a familiar quantity. She has spent enough recovery time in here. The worst was a broken leg, seven years ago, and because she was impatient, it still aches sometimes when she is tired. She thinks of Eduardo’s words earlier. You’re the lucky one. The way the surgeon at Titicaca looked at her. People assign luck to her, good and bad. If she has it, it is a peculiar kind. Sometimes she wonders what a life would be like without the charm of the plane, a life not marked by luck and all its expectations.