The War of Immensities by Barry Klemm Page A

The sisters
flapped about him in a panic but he spoke calming words to them.
Sister Anna, his head nurse, came to stand beside him.
    “Is it over?”
she asked in French because the fear tricked her into using her
native language.
    “I’m sure it
is,” the Padre replied in Spanish. “Just a slight tremor.”
    But he was
looking at that cloud of steam climbing steadily upward.
    Over the next
hour, people with broken limbs or other minor injuries were brought
to the mission until it was overcrowded, but apparently no one had
been killed. He knew, though, that the disturbance of the water
table might cause typhoid or plague if they were not careful and
asked each visitor about the wells and rats.
    By nightfall,
most of the victims had been released and the cloud had turned to
rain, a profoundly unseasonable deluge that left dark stains on the
clothing. We have known worse, the Padre told himself. But two
hours after dark, and three after the tremor, the word came to the
mission that most of the fishing fleet from the three villages
above the mission had failed to return.
    Fear and
superstition gripped the villagers, who were now all gathering on
the rocks below the cliffs, gazing out into the strange green
twilight that hovered over a sea of dead fish. Many of the boats
could be seen bobbing on the water out there but it took some time
before the braver amongst the fishermen could be persuaded to go
and investigate.
    “Take me out
there,” Padre Miguel said to Rogelio, who he regarded as the
bravest of the fishermen.
    “It is a
graveyard of men and fish,” Rogelio replied coldly. “You ask me to
throw my net on men already in hell.”
    “Then I will
take your boat,” the Padre snapped.
    “You will make
my boat accursed. My net will be empty for eternity,” Rogelio
complained, but his options were narrowing.
    “What does it
matter?” Miguel answered cruelly. “As you see, all the fish are
dead.”
    They made their
way to the roadstead and took Rogelio’s skiff and rowed out of the
anchorage where usually two hundred such craft were moored. Rogelio
rowed strongly, while the Padre stood in the bow, holding a battery
lantern high, calling directions. The smell was indeed the
sulphurous odour of hell and the dead fish glowed like evil eyes
upon the surface of the dark water.
    Soon they came
upon the body of a man floating face down, and the Padre tried to
snare the body with the pole and at least turn him and identify him
but he lacked the skills.
    “It is
Pedrico,” Rogelio said. “See, there is his boat.”
    Padre Miguel
raised the lantern high and saw the belly of the capsized boat
looking like a giant fish, and another further over and two other
bodies floating.
    But he could
also see at least thirty boats floating, apparently empty. Or was
that an arm hanging over the side of that one?
    “Leave him,”
Miguel said. “Take me over there.”
    “You would
leave our friends to the sharks?” Rogelio asked mercilessly.
    “The sharks are
all dead too,” Miguel said as if he knew. In reality, he was
remembering that he had forgotten the habit of a lifetime—to pray
for the dead.
    “The ocean
itself has died,” Rogelio uttered, but he rowed.
    They approached
the skiff where the arm dangled. Already he could see that the two
men were still in the boat, lying in the bottom amid the nets as if
they were their own catch.
    “It is the boat
of Santiago,” Rogelio declared.
    The Padre
reached awkwardly and grabbed the protruding arm of Santiago or
perhaps his brother, and immediately, though the skin was chilled
by the night air, he could feel the warmth beneath.
    “Santa Maria,”
Padre Miguel gasped. “They are not dead but only sleeping.”

*

    This was the
right place, no doubt about it, except it wasn’t anymore. It was
gone in a instant, and then this was no longer the place to which
he had come, but nowhere, just the middle of an empty paddock.
    Brian Carrick
knew immediately the waiting was over,