9   RESCUE

The sea was calm, a gentle swell was all they had, and they hoped it would hold. This was a good sign and they took course east toward the Tuamotu. Luck was on their side concerning the weather. There was no wind to speak of. It would have been uncomfortable to run against the wind for a whole day. The boat had a windshield and its catamaran designed hard bottom was heavy enough to handle moderate seas, but it would have been bumpy. They keyed in the position they had, South 015 degrees 11.7', and West 146 degrees 07.0'. With the GPS set, they goosed the two outboard engines to the max. The boat was up on a plane in seconds and skimmed on the water like a flat stone tossed on a lake. Ivan was at the helm and ordered Gábor and Helena to rest.

"I need you two rested when we get into the area. I slept a few hours and the fresh air will be good for me. I'll wake you when I get tired."

They crawled into their sleeping bags and were out like a light. The bouncing of the boat and the running of the engines did not register with them, but when Ivan reduced the RPM's, and the motors turned silent, they woke up, opened their eyes, and for a few seconds wondered where they were, and then memory kicked in. They looked at Ivan who turned to them and announced: "Stop your snoring, unfasten your pants, and go for a swim. We’ve arrived."

"What do you mean? We're there already?"

"This is a great boat and could go faster, but I didn't want to ruin the engines and you needed a rest." Helena could hardly believe they slept that long, but she felt a lot better. In her dreams, she had seen and felt Leo. Gábor looked around. They'd slept for ten hours. It was seven in the morning and the sun was a hand span above the horizon.

"Looks familiar," he said with dry humour. All around them was only water without sight of land. Ivan and Helena knew, when Gábor faced a problem, he resorted to sarcasm.

"Let's see the charts and plan the search. We know the currents and the speed. Look around. Did you see the French patrol boats?"

"I was just going to call them on VHF, but I don't see them. It's a big pond," replied Ivan and handed the helm to Gábor.

 "A thought came up," Gábor said. "I don't think I should be here. I'm the suspect in this accident and the police would not want me to run around doing my own thing. I think we'd better carry on discreetly without stirring the waters." Helena looked concerned. "That will make things difficult. Will they not see us?"

"If they are using radar they possibly could, but I will tell them we are fishing and hope they won't recognize us. That may keep them happy," Gábor replied. "So let's do the fishing for our cat-fish then. Where do we begin?"

"This place is as good as any, get the binoculars. Helena, you take the port, Gábor, you starboard. I'll use the plotter to set the grid."

"Niau is only ten miles to the west of here and the current is weak. If the kid is floating, he could be on the island by now if he is alive. I don't know if he has enough stamina to swim for that long and I have no idea if he knows about the island at all. Even if he would know about it, you can't see these atolls five miles away from a boat, never mind from sea level. The only orientation he could get is from the sun and I doubt whether he knows how to apply that fact. But the current is setting on it and that could help."

Gábor didn't realize that he was thinking aloud, but then Ivan said: "You've got a good point and if he is alive, I know he can make it. He has a lot of strength and I think he could make the distance if the sharks didn't get him."

"He is alive. I can feel it." Helena said with confidence in her voice.

"I hope you are right," nodded Gábor, but he was not so sure if Helena's intuition was genuine or just the hope of a mother who would not accept the loss of her child. He really hoped she was right. An idea came to him and he turned to Ivan. "Let's go to the island and work our way back to here."

"Now that's a good idea," agreed Ivan and Helena's eyes lit up like a thousand watt light bulb.

"Let's go." Gábor took the helm and the boat sped away. Their conclusion was as faulty as a bucket used for target practice and had as many holes, but they thought it a good idea and with that, they entered into an incredible story.

They got within sight of the reef surrounding Niau and saw palms on the island about hundred-fifty meters away at 0730h. As they edged their way from the southern shores into a northern direction, a large pod of dolphins came into sight. They came close to the boat and circled it, crossed the bow and bumped the hull, then took off to the South for maybe a hundred meters, returned and bumped the hull again, and again swam about a hundred meters south, only to return and bump the boat once more. Helena watched the action of the dolphins with excitement and a bit of apprehension as they bumped the hull; it was the first time she had seen them this close, but then she paid more attention to what they did and she turned to Gábor. "Do you think they want something from us?" Gábor and Ivan had also watched the dolphins' unusual activity, did not know what it was about, and looked perplexed.

"I have no idea what is going on," admitted Ivan and looked to Gábor for a better answer, but Gábor seemed just as baffled.

"Why not follow them and see what they want?" Helena asked.

She had a funny feeling the dolphins' action was intentional and she wanted to see what this intentionality held. Accelerating the boat, they followed the pod, which now swam ahead of them, crossing the bow a few times, but they didn't bump the boat anymore. For about a kilometer, they followed them and approached the landmass when the dolphins crossed the bow several times, jumped clear out of the water and swam away from the boat toward the shore, but remained close. The reef was to starboard fifty meters away.

"Now, what is this all about?" asked Ivan and looked bewildered at the circling dolphins and then at the waters. Helena scanned the beach with her binoculars, panning slowly over the reef.

"Could you get a bit closer to the beach? There is something I want to check out."

She looked at a lump of weed and thought she saw something other than that. It was not like the other lumps and she used the binoculars to observe it thoroughly. Ivan moved the boat among some dangerous coral heads closer to the beach and Gábor, standing on the bow, guided the boat by indicating where it seemed deep enough to go. Suddenly Helena shouted.

"I see something. Go that way," and she pointed toward the port bow of the boat. As the boat got closer, the resemblance of a prone figure became visible on a brown patch of seaweed, no more than hundred meters away, but they couldn’t get any closer. Ivan had the engines half out of the water to be able to get some drive and touched the coral twice; he did not want to risk running aground in a coral bed or puncture the hypalon tubes. Waves, about a half-meter in height, ran toward the shore and broke on the reef. "It's a person," she cried. “Can you get closer?”

"That's the farthest I can go," Ivan said, but Helena was in the water already, Gábor close behind, with two life vests in his hands.

The water was about to their chest and there were sharp corals all around with colourful fish darting among them, but they had no eyes for them. As they got closer, the lump resembled more and more a creature's body. The figure did not move and small waves washed over it, lifted it a bit, but did not wash the body from the patch. Partially covered with seaweed and together with the fabric, it was difficult to make out what it was. But as they got within a few meters, they recognized the clothing. It was Leo, face down and the water covered his mouth with every wave coming in. Strange sounds escaped Helena's mouth and then a cry. "Leo."

Rushing forward, disregarding the sharp corals, she threw herself on Leo, lifting his head out of the water and that got some life into the limp figure. Leo opened his eyes and coughed. Gábor caught up with her, dropping the life jackets, put his arm under Leo, lifting him off the coral, then dove under him, heaving him out of the water onto his shoulder. Helena grabbed the life vests, held on to Leo, and followed Gábor as he made his way back to the boat with Leo's limp body across his back, around corals and patches of brown vegetation. They got to the boat and Ivan assisted them to lift Leo into it. Helena got aboard and then Gábor. Ivan put the boat in reverse, out of the coral garden into open water and put the boat on a course that would take them farther away from the dangerous coral reef. Picking vegetation from Leo's face and body and pressing his back, his mother tried to get some life into her son.

"Come on Leo. It's over. Come on, wake up." Gábor laid Leo onto the floor and began to check Leo‘s vital signs. Leo seemed to have become aware while he carried him but lost consciousness again.

"Weak pulse and almost no breathing," Gábor murmured.

Then Helena helped him to turn Leo onto his stomach, tilted his head and Gábor began pushing on Leo's back. After only a few presses, Leo coughed again and a bit of water escaped from his mouth. Then he coughed again, this time more like retching, and again some water came from his mouth and then he vomited. When he finished, he took a deeper breath, opened his eyes, and cleared his throat with rasping and growling noises, but clearly recovering. Gábor removed the plants and clothing from Leo's body to check him for injuries. Ivan helped him to sit up and Helena cried, kissing Leo's wet face, and she put her arms around him. None were aware of their tears. Leo closed his eyes once more. Gábor opened the bag they'd brought and took out clothing for Leo. He turned around, caught sight of blood on the floor, and realized it came from some cuts on his own hands and legs. He turned to Helena and looked her over. She was bleeding too and had cuts on her also. He grabbed the First Aid Kit, opened it, and got out the Band-Aid, some gauze, iodine, bicarbonate, and Polysporine. Ivan finished his visual inspection and then Leo opened his eyes.

"What took you so long?" he rumbled. The tension broke in a roaring laughter from all. They expected anything else, but not this, and Helena's tears and sobs were a mix of relief, laughter, and elation. Gábor's face was impossible to describe. Besides tremendous joy and let-up from the pain he had been feeling since the loss some thirty plus hours ago, he felt real happiness to have found Leo. Ivan wiped his eyes, pretending to have something in them.

"Going fishing without me, eh?" turning back to Gábor, he advised.

"I think it would be wise to get going before the French find out we've found Leo alive. We are still in the search area of the French Search and Rescue vessels. You can doctor him and you up on the way back. Leo now is a lost at sea case for real." Both adults looked at him and the reality of that sentence registered with them in all its implications. They didn't have to make up a story; they only had to be quiet about Leo's rescue by them.  Leo, the child is dead. Long live Leo, the real, new person, shot through Ivan's mind.

Gábor took the helm and Helena got busy with Leo. He had cuts on his body, mainly on his legs and arms and some were deep enough to worry her about infections. They were coral cuts and would fester for a while. The deep gash on his forehead was more of a concern, but it seemed to have stopped bleeding and now only the saltwater puckered the skin up a bit. Helena thought it would need stitches. She consulted with Ivan and he offered to do it. He'd seen it done before, but did not do it himself and Helena had no idea how she could do it, so they agreed to split the work; she would hold Leo's head and he would do the stitching.

"I'll scrream," volunteered Leo with a weak grumbling sound and closed his eyes. They all laughed and figured, if he had a sense of humour like this, he could not be in bad shape, and they went to work. The First Aid kit was very well stocked and they used the alcohol to disinfect the needle and thread, and for good measure used iodine on the thread. Leo winced when the first stitch went into his skin and then relaxed as Helena held his head and talked to him in a soothing voice. She wanted to know if he knew what happened to him and he answered positively which indicated to her that his mental capacity was ok. When his mother asked if he had seen any sharks, he answered he didn't know what he saw, but remarked about big fish swimming along with him, keeping him on the surface. At that, Ivan stopped his work and looked at Helena and then back to Leo. A knowing smile came to Helena's face.

"I heard about dolphins protecting humans from sharks and even rescuing them, but I thought they were stories only. Here I have a first-hand account of such a thing. One never stops learning. Do you realize you were in the water 32 hours? The dolphins must have taken care of you almost to the time we arrived here. That's incredible."

"Are you saying the dolphins saved him?" Ivan asked incredulously.

"Dey wrring ne, Ivan." Helena was pleased with how well he spoke. Ivan finished sewing and looked over his shoulder to Gábor. "What’s the course?"

"One-eight-zero, true." Scanning the area around them, they were satisfied that nobody was around.

"Let's clear the search area. An hour or two should do and then we head for Mehetia. Mark our position before you change course and then head for it. Stay clear of any traffic if you can, and watch those speed bumps. I'll catch some z's."

"Aye, aye Skipper," laughed Gábor. Ivan was the more experienced man and because of his eventful past, Gábor had no problems taking orders from him, and it was good to have him along in this adventure. Gábor could not ask for a better man at his side and regretted the times they missed socializing with him when they were in Canada. His mood was much better and he felt nothing in this world was impossible. They found Leo in a miraculously short time, alive, and they hadn't run into the rescue flotilla or foul weather during their search that could have killed them all.

What happened to the other man still troubled Gábor. Despite his initial anger, he wished no ill on the man. He hoped the dolphins took care of him too. The appearance of the dolphins and their intelligent behaviour reinforced his dawning recognition that intelligence was all around them; one just needed to let go of old beliefs and so-called certainties about what form intelligence could take. Often, humans display absolute stupidity in many ways, but nobody ever questions their human-ness and even the most unintelligent is treated as a human. Today they all had witnessed intelligence in other mammals that humans find astonishing. Why, he asked, why would it be so astonishing when other life forms show intelligence? Many animals show a variety of coping mechanisms that is miraculous in many instances and border of intelligence, as a human would classify it. Old belief systems, for millennia, have proclaimed humans as the crown of creation, thus making their world serve them. Humans changed their environment to suit them instead of changing themselves to adapt to it. Changes to their surroundings may sometimes be good, but men forgot when to stop and created an environment that became hazardous, toxic, and dead.

Even in relationships with each other, the same has happened. Man ruled woman and from there on downwards, the hierarchical ladder or totem pole mentality has set in. Each forces the other to comply; to suit someone else's needs, instead of accepting the other for who they are. He knew, he himself was not free of it, but now he had begun to open his mind and corrected his thinking and doings. These dolphins had opened his eyes more, to see a universal intelligence rather than a limited view. He had changed his view about Leo. These incidences were accelerating his growth in that regard, and if he could change, others could too.

He looked at Helena and marvelled at her beauty and her strength. How did she know Leo was alive? Was it only wishful thinking or some other kind of connection she had with him? Intuitively she was far ahead of him, but it had to be more than that. When they practiced martial arts, he often wondered about her reactions when he attacked, almost as if she could read his mind. She seemed to sense his move and often stepped out of the line of attack or fended off a strike with relative ease.  He had practiced with her since they knew each other in Hungary. She worked on her third degree in Aikido and that level did not include the mental training to sense an opponent's moves before they started them. Gábor thought because they knew each other, she anticipated his moves, but now he saw things a bit differently. He moved a little closer to her, bent down, and kissed the top of her head.

"I love you, Lena. I love our child, and I'm happy that we found him alive." She smiled up at him and with a smile reached for his hand, and gave it a squeeze without a word. He understood. He accepted Leo consciously for the first time as their child. A few tears rolled down her cheeks.

For an hour, the boat ran fast, steered with the autopilot on the southern course. The engines produced a speed of thirty knots at the three-quarters throttle and skipped over the waves smoothly and without much jarring. Gábor remained at the helm and the big cat, their son, slept with his head in Helena's lap. She stroked it gently and carefully so as not to touch the stitches. Ivan stretched out on the supplies and covered himself with a light blanket to protect against the sun. Ninety minutes later Gábor plotted their position, changed the course to two-four-zero, and noted it on the chart.

"Distance to Mehetia about hundred-sixty nautical miles. Time: Oh nine thirty" he informed Helena and she nodded.

"We could be there in about five hours, around 14:30h, but I think we'd better fuel up." As an answer to his point, the engines started to sputter.

Gábor throttled the engines and put the engine in neutral then shut them down. Ivan woke up, and without missing a beat, got up, and assisted Gábor to fill the tanks from the drum they had purchased in Papeete. Inserting one end of the plastic hose into the barrel, the other into the fuel tank, he covered the lid on the barrels with a plastic bag around the hose to create a seal, but left a little space to allow blowing air into the barrel. He took a deep breath and blew air into the drum to increase the air pressure inside. It was enough. The clear plastic showed the fuel starting to flow into the lower tanks of the inflatable.

Each of the two tanks held a hundred liters, and when they were full, one of the two barrels was empty. They would return the empty fuel drum to Papeete the first opportunity they had. Starting the engines again took a little cranking, but once they caught, they ran smoothly again. Both men returned to their stations, Gábor on the helm and Ivan to watch movies on the inside of his eyelids. Helena got up and placed a lifejacket under Leo's head and joined Gábor at the helm. She put her arms around his waist hugging him from behind for a moment then leaned her head on his shoulder and said softly:

"Thank you, Honey." Gábor knew exactly what she meant and turned, looked into her gentle deer-brown eyes and replied jokingly:

"I did it for Queen and Fatherhood. You're my queen and I'll take credit for the Fatherhood," then he turned serious.

"It will be hard to manoeuvre around all the legal rock-heads in Papeete and Canada. We were extremely lucky to find Leo alive and so quickly, but the other man may be lost. They will try to stick it on me that I have killed the man, even if it was an accident. I think it's called involuntary manslaughter." Helena looked frightened and let go of his waist to have a better look at him.

"We will hire a lawyer as soon as we get back to Papeete if we need one. I will fight to keep you out of jail. They must understand it was an accident and you did not shove him purposely into the water. He attacked Leo and hit him. You protected our child. They can't ignore that. And I don't care if they discover Leo's real identity."

"We'll see how things develop and take it from there. Let's not worry about things that may or may not come. Like you once said. To worry is to pay interest on a loan I didn't make, remember?" Since they had taken an awareness seminar, the two played a game to remind each other to be conscious and be in the present as much as possible. Smiling she asked.

"Do you remember everything I tell you? In that case, I better watch what I'm saying." Gábor let out a little laugh.

"I don't need to remember what you said because who you are speaks louder than any spoken words you could utter."

"And who am I to you?" she asked, looking at him inquisitively.

"The air that I breathe, the reason for my life and the first thought in my head when I wake up in the morning," he answered without hesitation.

 "What a coincidence. I would have said the same if you would have asked me first, but additionally, I think you are the most maddening creature on this planet. You drive me crazy with your impertinent behaviour to me, being the mother of our child and I still love you. Your lack of trusting me enough to come to me when you're troubled, at least let me hold you, is making me angry. It's okay when you don't have all the answers Gábor. We can find them together or cry together when we don't, but don't cut me out of your life when you have a problem or are confused. Your relentless pursuit of integrity, fairness, and liberty are what draws me to you. It makes you who you are and I love you for it. Please, understand; to all of the life's challenges love is the answer and I want to share my love, life, and freedom with you authentically. Trust me as I trust you. I will be there for you no matter what. I love you Gábor. Remember that whenever doubts obscure your vision. You are to me what I'm to you. You are my mirror image." She kissed him and put her arm around his waist again. Her statements and pledges sank deep into his heart and he understood what she asked of him and with all his resolve he vowed to heed her words.

“I will put more effort into it, I promise.”