The Islanders Read online

  Later explorations were to establish that nowhere else in the huge group of islands was there any evidence of recent habitation.

  For Aubrac, the new islands were an entomologist’s dream come true. Soon after he arrived he communicated to the head of his university department that his life’s work now lay ahead of him. This turned out to be literally true, as he was never again to leave the chain of islands.

  The number of new species of insects catalogued by Aubrac is simply vast – more than one thousand were identified within a year of his starting work. Although he was to die at a relatively young age, Aubrac is recognized as the leading zoologist in his field. He was awarded a posthumous Inclair Laureateship for his work. There is a monument to him in Grande Aubrac Town, which in the modern age is the administrative capital of the group.

  Aubrac’s name will be forever identified with one particular insect, not for its discovery as such but for most of the detailed research work that was to follow. The incident that began his research was an unfortunate contact by one of his assistants, a herpetologist named Hadimá Thryme. She was accidentally infected by one of the insects. Aubrac describes in his journal what happened to this woman:

  In the early evening Hadimá wanted to observe her tree-snakes again, but no one else was free to accompany her. The snakes have a deadly venom, but Hadimá knows what she is doing and she carries antidotes so I gave her permission to go alone. She said the snakes are always torpid in the evenings. She had been gone for less than half an hour when her emergency bleeper went off. I took the GP vehicle, and Dake [Dr D. L. Lei, the toxicologist on Aubrac’s team] and I drove at high speed to the site. We assumed of course that one of the snakes had bitten her.

  Hadimá was barely conscious when we found her, and obviously suffering intense pain. We examined her quickly but could not find any sign of a bite, even in the area of her right ankle – she was bent double, holding the ankle tightly. Dake Lei administered about 2ccs of anti-crotalic serum, effective against most haemotoxic or haemolytic reptile venoms. We then put her inside the vehicle and brought her back to the base as quickly as possible.

  We began emergency medical procedures, with Antalya [Dr A. Benger, the team physician] taking charge, and Dake and I assisting.

  Although by this time Hadimá was only semi-conscious, she managed to convey to us that the bite was definitely in her ankle. Still we could find no puncture mark. The skin was slightly reddened, which we assumed was partly caused by the tight grip she had had on it. To be on the safe side, Antalya made an incision in that area, and a vacuum pump was pressed against it to try to evacuate any venom that remained. We applied a tourniquet above the knee. Antalya injected more serum, this time including anti-bothropic serum. Hadimá kept resurfacing into consciousness, and screaming in agony. She complained that the left side of her body was giving pain. The electronic monitors revealed that her blood pressure and heart-rate were both dangerously high. She said the crown of her head was hurting as if a knife blade had been thrust into it from behind. Her right foreleg swelled up, and became darkly discoloured. This was an indication of haemolysis: the haemoglobin in her blood was breaking down. Antalya injected antivenin, in an attempt to halt it.

  The swelling continued to spread. Blood was flowing rapidly from the incision on Hadimá’s ankle and she complained that it was almost impossible to breathe, even with applied oxygen. In a moment of rationality, Hadimá said she was certain a snake had not bitten her. She remembered brushing against a large black sphere on the ground, which she had thought was a seed pod. It was covered in short and bristly hairs.

  This was familiar. I hurried to my office and collected some photographs taken a few days ago. I showed them to Hadimá and although she was clearly slipping into semi-consciousness again, she instantly confirmed that it was one of those she had touched.

  I knew then that she had been poisoned by an insect, rolled into a protective sphere. I have not yet had time to do anything more than simply note the presence of these large arthropods, and take the photographs. I have witnessed the defensive rolling several times. The insects are everywhere around us, and although in an entomological sense they are fascinating, we find them repulsive to look at and sense a bite or a sting from one of them would be at least unpleasant and possibly dangerous. We are all keeping a safe distance from them until I have a chance to investigate them properly. I am planning to capture a few in the near future and examine them properly. Fortunately, the insects seem to feel as wary of us as we are of them, and scuttle off if we surprise them. I am now certain Hadimá must have brushed against one of them.

  Her pulse started to vary wildly, from below 50 bpm to above 130 bpm. She voided her bladder incontinently and the liquid was highly coloured with blood. She complained again about the pain and appeared to be about to lose full consciousness. She was deathly pale and her entire body was covered in sweat. Antalya injected more stimulants, coagulants and antivenins into her. She made small incisions on Hadimá’s arms and legs, to attempt to relieve the acute swelling. Blood, lymph and pale liquid gushed from these incisions. Her right leg was darkly discoloured for its entire length. Briefly, her pulse could not be detected and we carried out emergency resuscitation procedures. Further stimulants and coagulants went into her and although they increased the physical pain they restored her to consciousness. More discoloration was developing: on her arms, her abdomen and her neck. Both eyes were bloodshot. She vomited repeatedly, bringing up blood. Antalya administered further antivenin serums. Hadimá’s neck and throat had swollen to the point where she could not speak, and was barely able to breathe, with or without the oxygen mask.

  Fifteen minutes into her ordeal, a deep calm suddenly came over Hadimá and we feared the worst. I could see the way Antalya was reacting – it had become a matter of life support. Hadimá’s pulse first accelerated, then calmed down again. She began to tremble, at first just her hands and feet, but then her whole body was shaken by tremors. The oxygen mask came off and Dake had to hold it over her mouth and nose by main force. We all felt we were losing her. But then she opened her eyes, and when Dake offered her some water she took it orally and kept it down. Gradually, the tremors left her. Her limbs were still discoloured and swollen. She shouted with pain if we touched her anywhere.

  At the point where the sting or bite had been made a series of large blebs had appeared. These were hard to the touch but gave the patient no extra pain, so Antalya experimentally lanced one of them. A pale fluid filled with tiny black particles issued. Dake quickly examined these particles under a microscope, then on his urgent advice Antalya lanced the remainder of the blisters. The fluid that issued was carefully collected and stored in glass flasks.

  Within another half an hour Hadimá Thryme was able to breathe unaided. For three days, under constant monitoring and light sedation, she was allowed to sleep while being fed intravenously. The swelling gradually went down, although the acute pains continued.

  Aubrac ordered an emergency vessel from Tumo, and Hadimá was evacuated back to the university hospital. A few weeks later the team, who had remained on station, were relieved to hear that she had recovered from the poisoning and that all traces of the toxins were gone from her. She underwent a long convalescence, and afterwards said she did not wish to return to the expedition. She was replaced by Fran Herkker, a herpetologist from the main zoo in Muriseay Town, who arrived at the base a few weeks after the attack on Hadimá.

  After Hadimá’s departure, Aubrac set aside his pleasurable pursuit of butterflies, beetles, wasps, and so on, and concentrated almost entirely on research into the insect that had stung her.

  In the first place, knowing it was a new species, he named it after Hadimá and gave it the scientific name Buthacus thrymeii. The genus was as yet tentative, because in general shape and ferocity the thryme was close to a scorpion, having two large and muscular pincers carried beside its head, and a curved tail rising over the body, tipped with a poisonous sting. But scorp
ions were of the arachnida class, having eight legs, while the thryme had only six. It was also significantly larger than any scorpion: most adult thrymes he eventually managed to capture were fifteen to twenty centimetres in length, but others he saw in the wild, which eluded him, appeared to be thirty or forty centimetres in length. From Jaem Aubrac’s journal:

  We have at last managed to capture three thrymes, after several weeks of danger and frustration. It took trial and error, and a substantial degree of risk to myself and Dake. Naturally we were wearing protective gear, but the daytime temperatures on this island are suffocating. We have discovered that thrymes are most active when the rains come, which is every afternoon for about three hours. There is no lessening of temperature during the rains, so any physical movement across the muddy ground is exhausting.

  The particular problems of trying to trap a thryme (setting aside the fact that the mature insect is one of the most venomous insects I have ever encountered) are firstly that they can run for short distances at an amazing speed, faster than a running man, even when the ground is muddy or waterlogged; secondly, they vanish into underground burrows with astonishing alacrity. Neither of us felt willing to start digging to try to find their nests.

  In the end the only way we could get hold of them was to make a sudden or alarming noise or movement, which would make most of the insects in the vicinity roll themselves up. This at least made them stationary, although they would unroll very quickly indeed, their stings raised and their mandibles open for a strike. However, by moving swiftly we were able to scoop up and trap the ones we wanted.

  We discovered just how dangerous the insect could be when rolled: the bristles are as fine as hairs, but they are stiff and hollow and act as hypodermic needles for the venom they contain. The bristles of one of the first thrymes I tried to pick up easily penetrated the outer level of the handling gauntlets I was wearing, although the inner layer managed to block them. One of the insects Dake picked up unrolled in his hand, and spat venom directly towards his eyes – needless to say he was wearing visor protection, which saved him.

  Once the insects were safely contained in laboratory condition, Aubrac began to examine them at close quarters. Although none of the team had ever been attacked by one of the thrymes, they were clearly ferocious. Aubrac’s first enquiry was into the creatures’ aggressive nature, or whether its fearsome weapon system was merely for defence:

  I have created three test environments, each made of an escapeproof glass container, with a layer of moist soil and leaf-mould at the base. Into this I have introduced a number of different kinds of potential foes or predators, to see how the thryme would get on. The grim results are as follows:

  A hawk-like predatory bird, seen by us to hover and dive against small animals or perhaps insects on the ground. The bird we captured for this test was approximately three times the size of the largest thryme. It panicked as it was thrust into the test cell, and was dead within four seconds. We have not repeated this experiment.

  A pit viper, at least three metres in length: survived for forty-eight seconds.

  A rat: killed within nineteen seconds. It survived so long only by fast attempts to escape.

  A giant venomous centipede, with a heavily armoured carapace and one of the most pernicious venoms Dake says he has ever analysed: it vigorously joined the thryme in battle, but survived for only thirty-three seconds.

  A large spider, seen to attack birds’ nests and to display ‘huntsman’ tendencies of aggressive behaviour, and equipped with two large sacs of highly effective venom: dead within four seconds.

  A huge scorpion, one of the largest I have ever come across: it attacked the thryme with instant relish, but was dead within eight seconds.

  More alarming still was the discovery Dr Lei made about the system of venom carried by the thryme. It carried two arrangements of venom sacs: one in the tail, the other in tiny bladders inside its mandible. From the jaw it could envenom both by a bite and in some cases by spitting. This was a fairly conventional arrangement, although the venom was a peculiarly powerful cocktail of proteins, amino acids and anti-coagulants. Lei’s analysis of the compounds was to a large extent frustrated by the discovery that the venom appeared to change its nature from one individual thryme specimen to another, and even then to change its constituents at different times of the year.

  The impact of a bite or sting on a human being, as they had seen when Hadimá Thryme had been merely scratched with one of the defensive fine hairs, was a full-scale attack on not only the nervous system but also the blood and cells. Although standard antitoxins alleviated many of the symptoms if applied quickly enough, the venom was so intense that it was almost impossible, at least for a small team working on site, to know if an effective antidote would ever be possible.

  However, an extra threat existed, as Aubrac described:

  We have established that the really dangerous thryme is the female of the species. There is not much to distinguish male from female by outer appearance alone: the female seems to be slightly larger than the male, although as we have to work with so few specimens it’s difficult to be certain. She has extra joints in her arthropodic shell, and her thorax is wider than that of the male. However, if coming across one of these dark, fast-moving beings in the wild, you would not be able to tell the difference from the superficial appearance. The obvious rule remains: if you see a thryme, keep well away!

  The female carries her young in a marsupial pouch inside her jaw – at this stage they are microscopic grubs, or in some cases fertilized eggs. A bite from her could be either a venomous bite, an impregnation of parasitic grubs, or a mixture of the two.

  I am now urgently concerned to know whether or not it was a female who infected Hadimá, because Dake tells me he has found traces of fertilized ova inside some of our captives’ bristles. The news from Tumo is that she has made a complete recovery, so let us hope so.

  A few weeks after he wrote that journal entry Aubrac was informed by the university on Tumo that Hadimá had suddenly fallen ill, suffering horrific symptoms of poisoning once again. The medical staff at the hospital had been unable to help her, and she died within two hours of feeling the first twinges of pain. No traces of venom were ever found. A post-mortem examination was begun, but her internal organs proved to be massively infested by parasitic maggots. All her major organs had been destroyed in this way. Aubrac immediately ordered that no more examination should be made of her body and that it should be kept in isolation in an hermetically sealed casket. He then arranged for Antalya Benger to travel to Tumo to certify her death. After this, Hadimá’s body was removed from the mortuary and cremated.

  Now realizing that the incubation period of the infestation was at least several months, Aubrac instituted a major program of incineration at his research station: every thryme they had ever had inside the laboratory, all the remains of any of the animals tested against the laboratory specimens, any of the soil media used inside the captive thrymes’ cases, any organic thing at all that had had the least, most glancing contact with a thryme… everything was incinerated. The glass cases were treated with acid, then broken up and buried.

  Staff at the hospital where Hadimá had died were moved into isolation until they could be tested negative for infestation. Fortunately, it transpired that no parasitic invasion to key workers had taken place.

  Soon after Aubrac learned of the death of Hadimá Thryme, an unexpected change took place in the weather. Aubrac’s journal again:

  We have been getting used to the daily cloudbursts but about three weeks ago they became a thing of the past. We are now afflicted with a steady wind from the east, which is hot, dehydrating and relentless. It has the usual negative effect of an unwavering wind: we are all feeling short-tempered and depressed, we find it difficult to sleep and we are desperate for a change. Every day is now the same.

  I have been trying to extract some information from the university about the climate of these islands, but they say that
there was practically no knowledge of them before our expedition. All they could tell me was that because of the position – a few degrees north of the equator, with a lot of open ocean around us, to west and north – we are exposed to a prevailing wind known as the Shamal. There are many barren or desertified islands upwind of us. Paneron is the best known.

  The relief from the endless mud and humidity was of course welcome at first, but all five of us are alarmed by the effect the sudden drought is having on the thrymes. Whereas until quite recently we would spot them on a daily basis, they remained shy and furtive. The dry weather has critically changed their behaviour.

  For one thing they appear to be hungry. They are violently attacking anything alive – two days ago a seagull landed incautiously on the ground close to our base, and in full view of us was almost immediately overwhelmed by a horde of thrymes. There are now hundreds, perhaps thousands of them around us. It is of course impossible to venture out unless full precautions are taken, but because of the clumsy weight of our protective gear, and the hot wind and unbroken sunshine, we keep outside trips to a minimum.

  This morning Yute [Yuterdal Trellin, the team’s intercession scientist] had to go across to the storage building to collect some medications and other materials. When he returned there were three thrymes attached to the back of his protective suit, their pincers deeply buried in the protective material. Dake and I managed to get the insects off him, killed them by beating with the paddles we have kept for just such an emergency, then incinerated the bodies, destroyed the suit Yute had had been wearing, and gave him a thorough medical examination to determine if any punctures had been made to his skin. All is well. No one is more relieved than Yute!