Portent (3 page)

    Muted cheers rang through the headphones and the cabin, itself, brightened. Rivers' tension eased when he straightened and looked back out the window: white-capped waves circled below, the sea a deep, almost peaceful, blue. The wall of the eye seemed pale and undisturbed in the sunlight from above.

    'Looks around twelve miles high,' someone said.

    'Yeah, and perfectly clear all the way down,' someone else replied.

    'Okay, let's locate the centre,' advised the pilot.

    'We're right over it,' Gardenia said.

    'I'll mark it.'

    'Jeez, we've hit a new low for aircraft surface pressure-892 millibars.'

    'No, it was close to that back in'69 with Hurricane Camille,' came in Gardenia's voice again. 'Gilbert in'88 was around the same if I remember correctly. It's unusual for tropical oceans, though.'

    'Wind's running on the south side at 138 knots, and, lemme see… 186 knots on the north.'

    'They weren't kidding when they said this one was a rogue. It's gonna do a lot of damage when it makes landfall again.'

    'Shit, it's gotta be a category five.'

    'Going on past experience, I'd say it'll cut a swathe of at least forty miles wide.'

    'Hey, we're already halfway across. The eye's shrunk considerably. What would you say-six or seven?'

    'Less,' said Gardenia. 'I figure five miles across.'

    'We're down 879 millibars. Can the pressure drop that fast?' No one spoke for a few seconds.

    Rivers listened to the drone of the aircraft's engines, his unease mounting. Moisture had made his thumb stick to the page of his notebook.

    Gardenia's voice came back on. 'Let's send down the windsonde.'

    A blue-uniformed crew member at a console just ahead of the scientific officer swivelled in his chair, the round, taped tube in his hands, ready for the drop. He opened a small raised flap in the aircraft's deck and pushed it through.

    Rivers leaned against the window to glimpse the windsonde as it fell.

    'This can't be right,' someone said.

    Rivers turned his head to see Joe Pusey staring at his monitors in bewilderment.

    'What is it, Joe?' asked Gardenia, and Rivers detected an edge to his question.

    'Air pressure's sunk even lower. I make it 878 millibars.'

    'Can't be correct, Joe, I've never known it that low.'

    'Come and take a look for yourself.'

    'You boys want me to stay inside for this?' It was the pilot who had spoken.

    'What?'

    'We're nearly through. I'm gonna have to bank fast if you want me to stay inside the eye. It's shrinking fast.'

    Rivers saw Gardenia whirl in his seat and look out at the huge wall of clouds looming up. He turned his head, left and right. 'It's shrinking.'

    'Like I said,' came the pilot's dry reply. 'Make up your mind quickly, Thom.'

    'Keep us in.'

    The wing on Rivers' side dipped sharply and he could just make out the tumbling windsonde as it caught the light on its way down to the sea. Then they were in cloud again, the greyness closing around them like thick fog. The aeroplane shook with the effort of turning and the winds that threw themselves at it.

    'Sorry, gentlemen, guess the eye has shrunk more than I figured. We'll be back inside in a minute or so.'

    'It's closed in to under five miles,' said Gardenia excitedly. 'Maybe four, Thom.'

    'Outstanding.'

    'Kinda scary.'

    They soon flew back into sunlight, the aircraft still banking hard.

    'I don't get it.' Gardenia's voice.

    'It's definitely smaller.' That was Pusey's, not a trace of tension in his tone. 'It's collapsing in on itself.'

    The plane began to level, but before it had completely, Rivers spotted something. His eyes narrowed.

    At first he thought it might be the windsonde still falling, but quickly realized that would be impossible-it would be in the sea by now. Besides, this thing was rising.

    'Does anyone else see what I do out there?'

    'I got all the interest I can handle right now, Doc,' Gardenia responded.

    'Wait, I think I see too,' a crew member came in. 'Over to the left. Lost it now. It's beneath the plane.'

    'What was it?'

    'A light.'

    'A reflection from the sea.'

    Rivers cut in. 'No, it was travelling upwards. It was quite small.' Others began looking out their windows. Apart from engine noise, there was silence again.

    'I see it!' someone shouted. 'There, coming up from the centre.' Rivers caught sight of it again, a round light, closer now, rising steadily against the eye's centre downdraught of warm air, no longer a pinpoint but a definite shape.

    'Hey, c'mon,' Gardenia chided. 'It's ball lightning, is all. We got exceptional meteorological conditions out there. It's interesting but it's not what we're here for. Joe, I'm coming over to take a look at your monitors.' He removed his headphones and unbuckled his safety belt.

    'It's level,' a crew member said. 'And rising.'

    Gardenia made his way to the meteorologist's position.

    Rivers' gaze followed the tiny ball of light; he was fascinated. It was pure white, with an undetermined edge.

    'Tinkerbell,' he said under his breath.

    The light passed on, heading towards the top of the hurricane's calm inner circle, to the lower stratosphere.

    Events suddenly moved very fast.

    'The eye's dosing in!'

    Without his headphones, Gardenia hadn't heard the warning from the pilot. He was leaning over Pusey, studying the bank of monitors. Everyone else immediately looked out their windows. 'It's three miles across.'

    'I'd say two-and getting smaller.'

    'We're nearly out.'

    'Oh shit-look up there, above us!'

    Rivers leaned hard against the clear plastic and peered upwards. His breath momentarily lodged in his chest.

    The smooth swirling clouds that formed the cylindrical shape of the storm's eye were turning inwards, looking black and angry, roaring from above to fill the calm space below.

    The aircraft rocked and Gardenia clutched the back of Pusey's seat, looking around in surprise.

    'Get back to your seat,' Rivers advised him.

    But it was too late. The windows filled with darkness and the plane suddenly dropped as though struck from overhead by a giant hammer or, as Rivers immediately thought of it, an avalanche of hostile weather.

    Gardenia hit the ceiling, his neck snapping with such sharpness that the sound could be heard over the storm's thunderous boom by anyone in close proximity. His instantly limp body did not fall on to the deck, for the cabin had tilted as the pilot battled to keep control: the dead man dropped over Rivers, pressing him against the wall. Anything that wasn't fixed-books, logs, keyboards and small instruments-flew across the cabin, while bigger machinery strained against their mountings.

    Rivers struggled to push Gardenia's body away from him and looked towards Pusey. The meteorologist was clinging to his desk with both hands, his safety belt holding him in his seat; he was staring frozenly at the instruments before him, at the dials and radar images as though it were they and not the raging storm outside that held all the horror of the crew's fate.

    Then the world turned over and Rivers found himself hanging from what had been the floor.

    Over the tumult of sound that came through the headphones and from outside them, the scream of the aircraft's straining engines, the shrieking rupturing of metal, he heard the pilot's shouts.

    'We're going down, were going down, we're…'

    

    

    Annie Devereux peeled away a section of spruce bark, taking care with the thick-bladed knife not to damage the tree itself. The distant buzz of chainsaws and mechanical tree shears intruded upon her peace, for to her they had become the sounds of encroachment rather than productivity; she hummed a tune to neutralize the noise.

    The old coastal Indians of British Columbia, the Kwakiutl, would chant a prayer as they stripped a cedar of its bark for dishes and buckets, or to cover their pit houses:

    
Look at me, friend!

    
I come to ask for your dress

    
For you have come to take pity on us;

    
For there is nothing for which you cannot be used…

    The day was coming, and sooner rather than later, when the scavengers would learn to feel that same gratitude.

    She examined the wood. 'No bugworm,' she said aloud, adding under her breath, 'thank God.'

    Tossing away the piece of bark, Annie tilted her head and looked through the high treetops at the sky, breathing in deeply, pleasurably, as she did so. The breath emerged again as a sigh.

    Fifteen years ago, when the Ministry of Forests had first employed her as a silviculturist, nearly half of British Columbia's ninety million hectares had been covered with forests, mainly softwoods but with hardwoods to the north-east; now those forests, most of them established after the Ice Age, were ailing, while the good growths were shrinking, being eaten away by the avaricious timber traders, despite so-called federal controls. Even the new growths were failing, mere shadows of their gloriously abundant predecessors. Yet still the ravagement continued.

    Competition from the consistently over-productive Brazilian market meant profits by excess, and even foreign currency fluctuations-the decline in value of the Swedish krona and the French franc, and worse, the dramatic fall of the Japanese yen-worked against Canada's competitiveness. In these times only quantity could guarantee viability.

    She touched the naked wood of the pine, the flesh beneath the hard skin, and its moistness was almost sensuous. Annie turned away, closing the knife and slipping it into her anorak pocket.

    Oh, to go back to the gangbuster days of cross-cut saws and steam donkeys, when teams of oxen were used to haul logs over skid roads greased with fish oil instead of yarded from the falling site by mobile steel spars, when log booms were sorted and steered downstream by men with stout poles and steady nerves instead of by boom boats and tugs. And now the trees-the hemlock, the spruce, the Douglas fir and the balsam fir, the pine, the cedar-were being genetically cloned. Also, scions from 'plus' trees, those of superior quality and disease-free, were crossbred under scientifically controlled conditions, and satellites watched over the timberlands like sky nannies, while computers judged merits and planned regrowths. Yet still the NSR-the 'not satisfactorily restocked'-areas were increasing, and the old growths were degenerating. More and more the seedlings were not taking, while the old established trees seemed to have wearied.

    She kicked forest dust and sank her hands into her pockets. Annie walked on through the woodland, the muted sounds of machinery still following, as if taunting her, telling her that progress was progress, and regress was regress, and after that there was nothing at all.

    She came upon a small clearing, a circle of trees and undergrowth that might have been formed by human hand had it not been so ragged. There, lying across it, was a fallen pine, one that had succumbed to years rather than disease. Part of it was rotted away, its powder spilling to the forest floor, but Annie found a place between leafless branches to sit upon.

    'My friends,' she addressed the trees around her, 'you're in trouble. But I guess maybe you know that.'

    She stooped to pick up a piece of bark from the soft forest rug; her face was solemn and her thoughts distracted as she broke it into little pieces. Annie Devereux was forty-one years old, and already her features were lined and coarsened by exposure, fresh winds and harsh weather the one disadvantage of spending most of her working life-as well as her leisure time-in the great outdoors. Not attributable to such lifestyle, though, was the prematurely greying of her short and otherwise dark, curly hair.

    There had been only three serious, and sexual, relationships in Annie's life so far, two if the clumsy high school romance with a boy one year her junior and at least one foot smaller (the school geek, in fact) were to be discounted. That had lasted all of six months, and was a blessed relief to them both when it had ended (school was out and love with it). Louis followed three years later, a tall, serious man whose mission was to save the world, and the one she was to marry. They met in Saskatchewan's Kelsey Institute and were wed before the two-year Renewable Resources course was over; ten beautiful years had followed, a sharing of common interests and uncommon love-the latter was too intense, too fervid, to be termed common. Their mutual enthusiasm for the protection and preservation of the environment led not only to the professions they'd followed, but also to an indulgence in nature itself, with journeys to Canada's lonely outer regions in a constant study of fauna and wildlife and the private planting of seedlings whenever on fieldwork for the ministry. And as they shared their love of nature, they shared their own love with nature.

    When they could, when it was possible, when the mood was on them, they made love in the open air. By a lake, in a forest clearing such as the one in which she now lingered, in the tall grasses -even on the snowy slopes of the Northwest Territories where their vacation cabin was not too far away for a hurried retreat and when appropriate holes had been tom in their clothes beforehand to minimize frostbite. Louis, from Quebec but only gently Gallic, had been a large man, unlike her first lover, yet a graceful one, his big hands as sensitive as a surgeon's and as strong as a faller or chockerman's. Mercifully his death had been swift, the cancer taking him with no half-measures and no respites, only with startling and rapid selfishness.