The Islanders

Aubrac Grande or Aubrac Chain

The AUBRAC CHAIN is unusual in the Dream Archipelago, in that it has no discernible patois name, but instead is named after the scientist who discovered the true nature of the islands. His name was JAEM AUBRAC, an entomologist at Tumo University, who had taken on the field trip to replace an indisposed colleague. Aubrac left unfinished a laboratory research project on which he had been working, believing that it would be only a matter of a few weeks before he returned.

When Aubrac and his team of four young assistants arrived at the chain of thirty-five islands they and the operational staff set up a working base camp on one of the islands (then unnamed). It was not until some time later that they began to realize the island they had chosen was completely uninhabited.

Aubrac’s journal records the discovery in what seems now to be an unexcited way, considering the reason for it that he later established. At first the team made the assumption that there would be settlements somewhere, if not on that particular island then certainly on some of the other thirty-four islands. They also kept in mind past experiences of remote islands, where indigenous people had been frightened of the new arrivals and kept out of their way. However, the team gradually realized they must have stumbled across a genuinely uninhabited part of the Archipelago.

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 scorpions 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 escape-proof 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:

1.

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.

2.

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

3.

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

4.

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.

5.

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.

6.

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!

Matters deteriorated over the next few days. Swarms of the thryme were seen outside the station and Aubrac ordered that no one should go outside. He discontinued keeping his journal around this time, because, according to Dr Lei, the entire team realized field work had become impossible.

They knew they were going to have to evacuate the base, and that it would be only a matter of time before they did. Accordingly, they began dismantling their laboratories and transmitted all their written notes to Tumo University. These included Aubrac’s journal, which is how his record has survived.

Evacuation presented a serious logistical problem, as any activity at all attracted the attention of the thrymes. The GP vehicle, kept sealed up close to the main building, was secure enough, but transferring to it and loading it up was fraught with dangers. While the team prepared, a boat was despatched from Tumo to pick them up.

Aubrac’s last message to the university summed up what he clearly felt at the time was the only significant discovery they had made: ‘This island group is uninhabitable,’ he wrote. ‘No one has ever lived here, no normal human being ever will.’

They went ahead with the evacuation but it was almost a total disaster. Fran Herkker was attacked by two thrymes while trying to enter the GP — in spite of the protection she was wearing she died almost instantly. The team felt they had no alternative but to abandon her body on the ground just outside the base buildings. In the stress and anxiety of making their escape, they had no facilities for burying or cremating her body. Less than an hour later, while the GP was still heading towards the coast, Aubrac himself was attacked by a thryme, which had somehow managed to get inside the vehicle. He died traumatically and with horrifying swiftness. Although the remaining three felt that in the interests of science they should at least attempt to take his body back for post-mortem examination, they quickly decided the danger was too great. Aubrac’s body too was abandoned.

Dake Lei, Yuterdal Trellin and Antalya Benger survived the journey to the coast and were safely picked up by the ship sent to save them. A few months later, Yuterdal Trellin died suddenly, and his body was found to be infested with parasitic grubs.

Thus the background story of the Aubrac Chain. Fifty years after the premature end of the expedition, the entire group of thirty-five islands was named after Aubrac, as was the largest island: Aubrac Grande. Other individual islands were named Lei, Benger, Trellin and Herkker. The Archipelago authorities declared the group a nature and wildlife reserve, and entry to the islands was prohibited on an absolute basis.

That is how the Aubrac Chain might have remained until the present day, if it were not for two unforeseen events.

The first was the discovery of several colonies of thrymes on some of the more southerly islands in the Serques. Until this, it was believed that the insects were found only in the Aubracs and would be contained there by natural processes. How some of the insects had emigrated, or crossed the sea, no one knew, but it raised the horrific spectre of the insect starting to disseminate throughout the Archipelago, with an all too easily imaginable impact on the lives of millions of people.

The Serque colonies were eradicated, although thrymes are still encountered on some of the more remote islands. As for wider dissemination, since the Serque discovery colonies of thrymes have been found on other islands and the insect is now habituated throughout most of the tropical zone. By rigorous culls and other precautions, thryme colonies have been effectively contained and controlled. Some islands have succeeded in eradicating the insect altogether, but in most places it has survived at a minimal level.

In general the thryme is feared more than it is encountered. It is true to say that most people are phobic because of its appearance and speed, its darting gait, the movement of its long legs. Practical fear of the consequences of an attack is of course another matter entirely. The insect is easily identified and people stay well away from it when it is discovered.

Local Seigniory departments have set up eradication squads, and most public buildings are routinely sanitized. Property sold on the open market is obliged by law to possess anti-thryme certification. Effective antidotes to the poison now exist, if applied quickly enough.

The Aubrac Chain is the insect’s natural habitat. While the islands remained unused by human settlers the thryme was presumably dominant, as it had been before and during Aubrac’s few months of scientific work. But the population of the Dream Archipelago was increasing rapidly and the need for living and working space was mounting. The availability of a huge expanse of undeveloped island territory, lushly vegetated and quite likely rich in mineral deposits, was too great a temptation.

Corporations from the new technologies identified Aubrac as the ideal location for a gateway hub, made the necessary arrangements with Seigniory departments, and started construction and re-zoning work.

From the outset, the environment of the Aubrac chain was planned on a non-enviropollutant basis, which is to say that every existing aspect of the natural habitat would be systematized and supplanted. All danger from the thrymes would be removed along with everything else. Natural rainforest would be converted to woodland parks, deserts would be irrigated and made arable, rocky shores and open plains would be turned into leisure and sports complexes. Wildlife would be introduced to game parks, if no natural wildlife was already present. New cities would be built. New industries would leap into existence. Prosperity would be guaranteed.

In the modern age, the developed Aubrac has become the dynamic heart of the Archipelago’s booming silicon economy. The various huge IT corporations which now administer the islands are the engine-house of this prosperity, dominated by the creators and inventors of operating and networking systems. From the forest of gleaming towers, campuses and development facilities, all wrapped in landscaped parkland, the hidden infrastructure of today’s world is reliably routed through a system of hi-def optical cables and digital links.

From Aubrac arise all IT service and support facilities, unified communications setups, telepresence opportunities, content delivery facilitators, troubleshooting guerrilla squads, web exchange activists, borderless optical networking, application management, corporate partnership consultancies, vid-conferencing suites, prestige data centre availabilities, immersive operability and anti-operability, gaming interfaces, collaboration experiences and implementative facedowns.

Many of the thirty-five Aubracian islands have been ecologically systematized and industrially managed as planned by the IT companies, but a few of the smaller islands were parcelled up into smaller tracts to be developed by private enterprise as dwellings. The corporate standards of infrastructure remain on these residence islands, with total commute accessibility to the hubs, digital holism and full leisure gateways.

One of the largest Aubracian islands, Trellin, has been redesigned as a tourist and visitor attraction, based on its large sweeps of natural rainforest (fully managed, but reconfigured as a wilderness activity interface area), and the spectacular cliffs overlooking the Midway Sea. There are no zoning controls or plans on Trellin, because of the input of many entrepreneurs from the distant island of Prachous. These powerful Prachoit families are the principal interests behind the booming economy of the Aubrac Chain. Their luxurious homes are of course not accessible to visitors, but some of them may be glimpsed from afar.

For the intending visitor, certain preparations are necessary.

Firstly, a minimum amount of convertible currency must be imported to the Aubrac Chain and spent while there. The local currency is of course the Aubracian talent. There is no official exchange rate with the Archipelagian simoleon, so currency should be bought before leaving home.

Full travel and medical insurance is obligatory, and this must include provision for funeral and crematorium expenses, and repatriation costs for relatives and other travelling companions. Every traveller, no matter what age, must be insured in this way. There are strict shelterate laws, and unless a work permit has been obtained in advance, no one is admitted to the Aubrac Chain without a recognized round-trip or return voyage certificate. Anti-importunation regulations are the strictest in the Archipelago. Erotomanes must be licensed in advance, but not all local values are acceptable on Aubrac — visitors should check with their home Seigniory before setting out.

Finally, some rather more informal words of advice to all visitors who, in knowledge of the history of the Aubrac Chain, might have residual fears about the possible danger of a thryme sting.

Here we use information from the Official Aubracian Handbook, copies of which can be obtained throughout the Archipelago from licensed tour operators. The Handbook describes life in the Aubrac Chain in comprehensive detail, but is in our view rather too vague about some matters. What follows has to be our unofficial interpretation of that which has been left unsaid. We merely observe a few facts.

Workers around the Aubrac silicon lagoon are amongst the highest paid and best treated in the world. They do, though, suffer an abnormally high mortality rate, and in most cases the cause of premature death is not revealed.

It is against Aubracian law to be anywhere at any time without a supply of antidote serum.

All depictions or descriptions or even mentions of deadly insects are prohibited by law. The word ‘thryme’ may not be used (and is not used in the Handbook). The ban extends to books, magazines and newspapers, public notices, warning signs and official literature. No drawings of large insects, or photographs or digital image files of them, may be made, held or distributed. The word ‘thryme’ may not be used in conversations, and use of the word ‘insect’ must always be either in the strict scientific sense, or to refer to butterflies, bees, and so on.

There is no such thing as burial of the dead anywhere in the Aubrac Chain: all dead bodies, human or animal, are invariably cremated. Organic waste is incinerated. Sewage is subject to intensive reprocessing.

A full medical examination (including in some cases exploratory surgery) is mandatory for all visitors, not only on entry to Aubrac, but also on departure.

All physical ailments which appear while in Aubrac, however mild, chronic or medically describable, will invoke deportation orders from the authorities, and these are invariably carried out.

Although our readers will draw their own conclusions, we should add in fairness that the Aubrac Chain remains one of the most intriguing and interesting destinations anywhere in our Archipelago. The swimming is superb and the sea is clean, there is no better cuisine anywhere else in the islands, all hotels operate at the highest international standards, uninterrupted web access is guaranteed . . . and the golf courses, our researchers have reported, are incomparable. After a successful putt, though, visitors are not allowed to remove their golf-balls by hand from the cup. Automatic ball-retrieval devices, or trained staff, are always on hand to be of service.