Vector

by James Abel

  “Only to see Shrek, Doctor.”

  I didn’t get it at first. I thought he’d said a Portuguese word. I asked Bracamonte what Shrek meant and he smiled despite the boy’s pain and told me, “It is the American film. You never heard of Shrek?”

  “The movie?”

  “We watched it at FUNAI,” Abilio forced out. “It was funny. There was a green man. Animals sang songs and talked in the movie. I laughed very much.”

  “Did all the kids who got sick go to the movie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were adults there, too?”

  “They were at a government meeting about the new dam. Only children saw the movie.”

  “You liked the movie?” I asked, not to learn a clue, just to keep him talking while I figured out more questions. But sometimes the wrong question gets the right answer.

  “The donkey was funny! It was cold in the room from the air conditioner. So cold! That old conditioner was making so much noise that it was hard to hear the singing donkey.”

  I sat back and let my eyes rove over the children. Blankets were thrown off some, who were sweating. Or piled on cold ones, who shivered. The ward smelled of vomit. Abilio had just said something important. About the movie. What was it? The animals talked, he said. No adults were there, he said. And then I saw it. The disparate symptoms might have just fallen into place.

  Cold, he’d said. Cold!

  “Old air conditioner,” I said softly.

  “And noisy! Clackclackclackclack!”

  “Dr. Bracamonte, do you have a microscope in the hospital? Can I see his sputum or blood? Can we also get someone to scrape dust off that air conditioner?”

  The hospital had no electron microscope, he said, but their compound-light unit would provide a 2,000 magnification. In a dimly lit lab, fifteen minutes later, I peered down at Abilio’s sputum and saw something inside it looking like churned-up chopped meat from a hand grinder, pinkish strands. I sat back on the stool, breathing rapidly. An hour later the same pink strands showed up in the dust brought back from the AC vents at FUNAI. That the doctors here had missed the symptoms was not unusual. This particular disease is misdiagnosed even in developed countries 90 percent of the time. In fact I’d only thought of it because bioterror seminars always feature presentations on biodelivery systems, and airflow systems—ventilation shafts, cooling towers, AC—top the list.

  “It’s Legionnaires’ disease.”

  The rare illness is often misdiagnosed because the diarrhea—not normally part of pneumonia—throws clinicians off. And Indians in recent contact with the modern world would be particularly susceptible. Legionnaires’ was named in 1976 after it killed several American Legion conventioneers in Philadelphia, spread by a hotel vent system. The good news was that if you catch it early, treatment is available, and different for children than it is for hardier adults.

  “Penicillin doesn’t work on this,” I explained to Dr. Bracamonte. “You used the right drug for pneumonia, but not for what they have.”

  Bracamonte told me that the recommended drug for children stricken with Legionnaires’—azithromycin—was unavailable in Porto Velho. I got on the sat phone and woke Stuart in New York, at 4 A.M. I told my boss that we could improve “local government relations” if he sent down some crates of the drug. If there are two words that Stuart responds to instantly, they are government relations.

  “They will be there tomorrow,” Stuart said. “How are things otherwise, Joe? Any word on Eddie?”

  “No.”

  When I hung up, a grateful Bracamonte told me, “While you were on the phone, two men from the miners union were asking about you. They are thugs. They had your photo. One of them said he is a friend of yours, but I did not believe it. I told them you were not here. I hope I did right.”

  “Thank you. You did. I was never here, okay?”

  That night, Cizinio let us sleep at the Indian House, the publicly maintained hostel open to any tribal member in town. It was a hard dirt compound ringed by a clay wall and it offered visitors simple dorm buildings with bunk beds along three walls. We spent the hours before dawn squatting before a campfire as Cizinio traced maps of New Extrema and the island in the dirt, beneath the southern stars. He’d not come with us, he said. He’d stay with his son.

  “The guards are usually by the dock, here. Two of them. This is where they will many times buy Indian artwork, blowguns, or pottery. But then they send us away. There is a stream here, in back of the island, where there are no guards, but there are biting snakes and sand that you sink into, unless you step in the right place.”

  “Cizinio, do you know where I can get a gun?”

  “You need gold for that.”

  “I have it,” said Rooster helpfully.

  “I’ll pay you back,” I promised. “My money is at my hotel, in the safe.”

  Rooster’s plastic vial of gold dust got emptier at a shanty where an emaciated, cigarette-puffing, coughing man nicknamed “Hulk” sold us an old, well-oiled Brazilian-made Taurus pistol, wrapped in rags. It came with thirty rounds of .40-caliber ammunition. I racked the slide. When a water truck went by outside, its muffler broken, I fired into a tree. The pistol pulled slightly to the left. But it worked fine.

  Rooster also paid for the boat tickets (we had to wait until dusk to leave), rice, hammocks, mosquito netting, and rain ponchos, in an open-air market near the Indian House. I felt lousy about the next part but not bad enough not to do it. Since my medical kit was at the hotel, at a side door to the hospital, we bought stolen antibiotics; tet and sulfa . . . from a fat, furtive attendant who Rooster knew. Yesterday I’d helped save patients here. Today I was robbing them. But if Eddie needed care I wanted to be able to provide it. For everything I steal, I will send five times the amount back from the U.S., I promised myself.

  If I get home.

  But Eddie comes first.

  “Your brother might not even be on the island, Rooster. And if he is, things might get violent.”

  “If you risk going, I can, too.”

  “If you knew that your brother might be on that island, why did you wait so long to check it out?”

  Rooster blushed in embarrassment. “I was afraid. But you are so determined. You made me brave.”

  Now the weekly ferry chugged into a darkness as thick as nonexistence. The lights of Porto Velho had long ago fallen behind, steady ones for electric light, flickering ones for firelight in shantytowns. On deck, riders played dominoes or guitar music. A woman unwrapped beans and rice from a foil-covered plate for her family. It smelled good.

  The river looked calm and black and I saw a pink fin glide on the surface. River dolphins turned into men at night, the story went, seduced women, and lured them back to the deep. Folktales were facts here. Spirits flew among shadowed trees. Karitiana shamans saw ghosts in the mist. I was a fool to believe that Eddie had been taken.

  “That man is staring at you,” said Rooster.

  That’s when I saw the crewman, frozen, on the stairway leading to the upper deck and pilot house; a big, curly haired man, mouth open in surprise, and he turned and scurried off, glancing back as if to confirm that I was there. There was no point going after him. A confrontation would create a scene, and there was no way off this boat.

  Someone could have shown him my picture. If the union people or police are really looking for me, they could have easily spoken to the crew before we left. I think it would be a good idea if Rooster and I take turns going to sleep tonight. We need to switch off standing guard.

  I watched a roach the size of a mouse run beneath my hammock. The ferry panted to reach a speed that could not have exceeded four miles an hour. Every once in a while a smaller, fast-moving flying boat came up from behind, as if to catch us, and my heart seized up, but the boats passed, heading for New Extrema. Bored, people in neighboring hammocks struck up con
versations, and in this casual way I learned some history about the outpost ahead.

  “It started as a collection point for rubber during the boom in the 1800s,” an old man—a retired priest—told us, sharing Rooster’s coffee. “Back then the only place the world got rubber from was Brazil. But rubber trees cannot grow commercially, on plantations. They fall victim to a fungus, so attempts to make rubber farms failed. In nature rubber trees grow with great separation, as natural protection. So the negocianos, the businessmen, needed people to harvest rubber for tires and rain ponchos and boots. They tricked poor city people into the jungle, lied to thousands from São Paulo. They said that rubber grows in great balls that could be plucked from trees. That the Amazon was a paradise and that they would grow rich picking rubber. They lent these people money, and the uneducated slum dwellers flooded the forest. They bought tools on credit and trekked into the jungle. They built shacks to live. By the time they knew they had been tricked it was too late. They could not go back.”

  “They were stuck here,” I said, appalled.

  “The only way to pay their debt was to harvest rubber.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Thousands died of malaria, starvation, and snake bites. The few who lived could not read or add, so the merchants cheated them, paid just enough to keep them alive, but stole the rubber. In Manaus lived rubber millionaires. They built an opera house and sent their laundry to Portugal, filthy rich people; until British sailors stole some rubber trees from our jungles and planted them in Asia. There’s no fungus there. Trees can grow on plantations. Their rubber was cheaper and the Brazilian market collapsed. The millionaires went broke. The opera house rotted. But the tappers are still there, eking out a living, walking the forest, sticking little tubes in the trees, harvesting rubber in drip cups like photographs I saw of maple farmers in the United States.”

  The man nodded sadly. “These days, in New Extrema, all that remains are some poor tappers, or smugglers who bring gold across to Bolivia, and drugs back in.”

  Rooster handed the man a tin plate containing a mass of sticky rice and cooked vegetables and bits of grayish meat.

  “You sleep first,” Rooster said, patting the pink mosquito net hung over his own hammock. “Seven hours left.”

  The engine coughed, broken. We drifted to shore.

  “Give us an hour to fix it,” a crewman said.

  At 2 A.M. we started off again, just as I saw another fast-moving light coming up on us, on the river.

  “Police,” Rooster gasped.

  But it turned out to be another flying boat, two figures on board as it crossed our searchlight. One man steered. The other was slumped over. The man at the tiller waved but the other man did nothing. He might have been sleeping. Or ill. Or dead.

  That boat gave me an idea. I will hire a small boat and visit the island. I will tell the doctor there that I’m a visiting physician from the U.S. A courtesy call would be normal. If they let me on, I’ll figure out what to do.

  A whole day had wasted away and another dusk was coming. The sky was gray with misty rain. At 5 P.M. the mosquitoes swarmed. I saw them crawling on my mosquito net, masses of black against pink. I saw one enter the net through a dime-sized rip. I crushed it, saw from the blood on my thumb that it had already bitten someone else.

  In Wilderness Medicine, I teach my students, be patient in remote areas. Don’t expect things to work as they do back home. Go with the flow unless there is an emergency. Understand that concepts of time are different.

  It was impossible to follow my own advice.

  • • •

  Rooster was shaking me. I must have slept, and the sun was high and we were moving again.

  Rooster whispered urgently, “She is here, Joe.”

  “Who?”

  “The woman from your hotel, and the restaurant. She is on the upper deck with her companion. I think she saw me, too.”

  The boat chugged around the nine millionth bend, which looked the same as the first one. The trip was taking forever. Rooster’s anxious look turned to puzzlement as he watched my expression. “Joe, you are pleased?”

  “Well, if she’s here, maybe we’re in the right place.”

  But between the crewman who’d recognized me, and the woman, all my ghosts were coalescing in the same place.

  I started for the stairway to the upper deck, to confront her. The boat would be perfect for this. She’s not police, or she would have approached by now. She’s not union or she wouldn’t have stayed at my hotel.

  The Brazilian-made Taurus beneath my shirt had a blue finish, and a .40 caliber, fifteen-round capacity. Pulling it out on this boat would guarantee a radio call to the Federal Police by the Captain. It was useless here.

  “Maybe she is here by coincidence,” Rooster suggested.

  “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t know we’re here.”

  I laughed.

  The upper deck came into view, and with it, another crowd like the one below, hammocks strung, noise, crates, dogs, music. I saw the woman and her male companion. They reclined on their hammocks, drinking from liter bottles of water, by a pile of stacked crates. The man spotted me first and rose almost lazily and said something and her head swiveled sharply in my direction. He was the one blocking direct access. He was large and muscular and wore soiled khakis and moved with light-footed grace for a big man. His eyes, as I closed, looked sleepy beneath rectangular eyeglasses. He’s protection, she’s the boss.

  The woman leaned back and pulled something from a knapsack and I tensed but saw it was a camera, which she aimed at me. I saw no weapons. Then again, they couldn’t see mine. Rooster waddled so close behind me that I could hear his quick, hard intakes of breath, and smell garlic. He was too close for me to back away fast if something happened.

  Snapsnapsnap . . . she was taking photos.

  Close-up; she was slim and dark, and looked to be in her early thirties; fit, not pretty but arresting, sexy in some violent way. The skin was naturally dusty, café au lait. The body looked hard as a rock climber’s or gymnast’s. She had eyes the dirty green of the North Sea, two fathoms down. The cheekbones were sharp, nose thin but not knifelike, mouth a generous surprise and hair thick, curly and shoulder length, wild, colored somewhere between copper and cherry. Terrific posture. Castizo, I thought. A mix of mestizo and European. I saw a white, arced, penny-sized scar below the right eye. It should have marred the attraction. In her, somehow, it added challenge.

  People on deck suddenly pointed beyond her, calling happily to their friends. Look! Finally! New Extrema!

  Her hands fluttered up, patted the air as if to say Calm down, boy! The lips curved as if amused but the eyes were hard. Khaki undershirt top. Tropical-weight painter’s pants and lightweight boots. She held the camera tightly, slightly lowered now.

  “It took you long enough to see us, Joe Rush,” she said in English, with a Brazilian accent. “Keep your voice down. I will take your picture.”

  I smelled Avon Skin So Soft, repellant of choice among Amazon travelers, even the toughest men.

  “Stand still! What I want to know,” she said mockingly, snapping shots, “is what kind of moron goes to another country and can’t speak the language? Ambassador to China who can’t speak Chinese. CIA in Baghdad can’t speak Arabic. You have no idea what these people are saying about you, do you? Not a clue.”

  “He knows,” I said defensively, nodding at Rooster.

  “You think so? The passengers see you’re together so they talk about chickens when he’s around. Everyone on this boat except you and that pessoa, incompetente, knows what’s going to happen to you, and they’re afraid to tell you, because then it would happen to them. They’re even taking bets.” Her eyes flickered left.

  I looked. Most passengers eyed the approaching landing, b
ut the one or two faces that looked back at me showed the sick fascination marking onlookers at a traffic accident. The eyes you see staring before you pass out, the gapers torn between wishing you well, and wanting the entertainment of being the audience for your pain.

  The woman told me, “The Captain got a radio message about you and then he sent crew to look for you. Get it? The union, the police, the Captain . . . connected. If you get off this boat in New Extrema, you’ll be killed, Joe Rush. Emboscada. Our time-honored frontier assassination.” She glanced at the sun meaningfully. It was starting to sink. The faint moon was up already, ghostly above treetops, like a cataract eye.

  “Ray sent you?” I said thinking, He came through!

  “Who the hell is Ray?” She shook her head like a fifth grade teacher disgusted with a lazy student. “You people make me laugh. You shut us out. You lie. Although I admit, I might have not figured out about New Extrema if not for you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Oh, you don’t like it when friends don’t share imformation? You’re frustrated?” Considering the force in her, I was surprised at her diminutive size. Her head barely reached my chest. She was barely five feet tall. Only now did I see that her contempt was cover for rage.

  “Look, whoever you think I am,” I said, fed up, “I’m not. And whatever you think I know, I don’t. So give me a break and stop talking in riddles. Who are you? And him?”

  The landing coming up was dwarfed by forest. It looked like an afterthought, and could be wiped off the earth in the blink of an eye, the usual eventual fate of flyspeck settlements in this part of the world. This place had been falling apart since the moment of its creation. I saw a dozen squarish hut-like buildings, cinderblock walls, tin roofs, two rooms at most; and meat-scented cooking smoke rose from a stovepipe chimney. There had to be adults here but I didn’t see any, odd, because probably the once-a-week ferry arrival was a big local event.

  Maybe they’d been warned to stay away.

  A red dirt path meandered from the concave dock up the mud bank toward the forest . . . and the somnambulant air was underscored by a few chickens pecking, a mud-coated pig rooting, a skinny dog sleeping, a couple of paint-faded outboard boats and a dugout on the bank, and twin bare-chested, barefoot Indian boys grinning as the ferry coughed like an asthmatic and eased sideways and sooty smoke roiled out the top. Sleepy didn’t begin to describe this place. Dead was more like it. But the woman had just told me that killers were here. Which made the ratty buildings and massed trees all potential ambush points.