The Drowned World

by J. G. Ballard

  Now and then, at intervals through the night, a small group of looters would reappear, wheeling their booty in front of them, a bronze statue or a section of portico, hoist them into the ship and then vanish again, ignoring the motionless figure hunched on the throne among the shadows. By now Kerans was asleep, unaware of his fatigue and hunger, waking for a few minutes before dawn at the coolest ebb of the night to shout for Beatrice. He had not seen her since his capture after Bodkin's death, and assumed that Strangman had locked her away within the depot ship.

  At last, after the exploding night with its bravura of drums and star-shells, the dawn lifted over the shadow-filled square, drawing behind it the immense golden canopy of the sun. Within an hour the square and the drained streets around it were silent, only & distant whir of an air-conditioner in the depot ship reminding Keians that he was not alone. Somehow, by a manifest miracle, had survived the previous day, sitting out unprotected in the full noon heat, shaded by only the cloak of weeds trailing from his crown. Like a stranded Neptune, he looked out from this make shift pavilion of sea weed at the carpet of bnlhant light covering the bones and garbage. Once he had been aware of a hatchway opening onto a deck above, and sensed that Strangman had come from his cabin to observe him—a few minutes later several buckets of icy water were tossed down onto him. He sipped feverishly the cold drops falling from the weeds into his mouth like frozen pearls. Immediately afterwards he sank off into a profound torpor, waking after dusk just before the night's festivities were to begin.

  Then Strangman had come down in his pressed white suit and examined him critically, in a strange access of pity suddenly murmured: "Kerans, you're still alive, how do you do it?"

  It was this remark which sustained him through the second day, when the white carpet at noon lay over the square in incandescent layers a few inches apart, like the planes of parallel universes crystallised Out of the continuum by the immense heat. Across his skin the air burned like a flame. He stared listlessly at the marble statues, and thought of Hardman, moving through the pillars of light on his way towards the mouth of the sun, disappearing over the dunes of luminous ash. The same power which saved Hardman seemed to have revealed itself within Kerans, in some way adjusting his metabolism so that he could survive the unbroken heat. Still he was watched from the deck above. Once a large salamander three feet long had darted among the bones towards him, its insane teeth like flints of obsidian flexing slowly as it scented Kerans, and a single shot had roared out from the deck, smashing the lizard into a writhing bloodied mess at his feet.

  Like the reptiles which sat motionlessly in the sunlight, he waited patiently for the day to end.

  Again Strangman seemed baffled to find him, swaying in an exhausted delirium but still alive. A flicker of nervousness creased his mouth, and he glanced irritably at Big Caesar and the crew waiting around the dais in the torchlight, apparently as surprised as himself. When Strangman began to whoop and shout for drums the response was markedly less prompt.

  Determined to break Kerans' power for once and for all, Strangman ordered two additional casks of rum lowered from the depot ship, hoping to drive from his men's minds their unconscious fear of Kerans and the paternal guardian of the sea he now symbolised. Soon the square was filled with noisy stumbling figures, tipping their jugs and bottles to their lips, tap dancing on the drum skins. Accompanied by the Admiral, Strangman moved swiftly from one Party to another, inciting them to further acts of extravagance. Big Caesar donned the alligator head and tottered about the square on his knees, a whooping troupe of drummers behind him.

  Wearily Kerans waited for the climax. At Strangman's instruc tions the throne was lifted from the dais and lashed to the cart Kerans lay back limply against the head-rest, looking up at the dark flanks of the buildings as Big Caesar heaped the bones and sea-weed around his feet. With a shout from Strangman the drunken procession set off, a dozen men fighting to get between the shafts of the tumbril, throwing it from left to right across the square and knocking down two of the statues. Amid a chorus of excited. orders from Strangman and the Admiral, who raced along be.. side the wheels, trying helplessly to restrain it, the cart rapidly gathered speed and veered away into a side-street, careened along the pavement before demolishing a rusty lamp-standard. Bludgeoning the curly pates of the men around him with his massive fists, Big Caesar fought his way to the front of the shafts, seized one in each hand and enforced a more leisurely progress.

  High above their heads, Kerans sat in the rocking throne, the cool air slowly reviving him. He watched the ceremony below with semi-conscious detachment, aware that they were moving systematically down every street in the drained lagoon, almost as if he were an abducted Neptune forced against his will to sanctify those sections of the drowned city which had been stolen from him by Strangman and reclaimed.

  But gradually, as the exertion of pulling the cart cleared their heads and made them move in step, the men between the shafts began to sing what sounded like the lay of an old Haitian cargo cult, a deep crooning melody that again underlined their ambivalent attitude towards Kerans. In an effort to re-establish the real purpose of the outing, Strangman began to shout and brandish his flare pistol, after a short scrimmage made them reverse the direction of the cart so that they pushed it instead of pulled. As they passed the planetarium Big Caesar leapt up on to the cart, clinging to the throne like an immense ape, picked up the alligator's head and clamped it down over Kerans' shoulders.

  Blinded and almost suffocated by the foetid stench of the crudely skinned hide, Kerans felt himself flung helplessly from side to side as the tumbril gained speed again. The men between the shafts, unaware of their direction, raced along the street, panting after gtrangman and the Admiral, Big Caesar pursuing them with a rain of blows and kicks. Almost out of control, the cart swerved and lurched, narrowly missed wrecking itself on a traffic island, then straightened up and accelerated down an open stretch of roadway. As they neared a corner Strangman suddenly shouted to Big Caesar, without looking the huge mulatto flung his weight on the rightband shaft and the cart pivoted and bounded up on to the sidewalk For fifty yards it raced along helplessly, several of the men tripping over each other's legs and falling to the ground, then in a scream of axle iron and timber collided with the wall and pitched onto its side.

  Torn from its mooring, the throne was flung half-way across the street into a low mud bank. Kerans lay face downwards, his impact with the ground softened by the damp silt, freed of the alligator head but still trapped in his seat. Two or three of the crew were spreadeagled around him and picked themselves up, and an upended wheel of the cart rumbled slowly in the air.

  Staggering helplessly with laughter, Strangman slapped Big Caesar and the Admiral on the back, soon had the rest of the crew jabbering excitedly to each other. They gathered around the wrecked cart, then went over to look at the upturned throne. Strangman rested one foot upon it majestically, rocking the shattered headrest. Holding the pose long enough to convince his followers that Kerans' power was now truly spent, he bolstered his flare pistol and ran away down the street, beckoning the others after him. With a chorus of jeers and shouts, the pack made off.

  Pinioned below the inverted throne, Kerans stirred painfully. His head and right shoulder were half buried in the bank of caking silt. He flexed his wrists against the loosened thongs, but they Were still too tight for him to free his hands.

  Shifting his weight on to his shoulders, he tried to pull the throne over by his arms, then noticed that the left-hand arm-rest had snapped from its vertical support. Slowly he pressed his blunted fingers under the arm-rest and began to work the thongs loop by loop over the ragged stump of the support protruding from the mortice joint.

  When his hand freed itself, he let it fall limply to the ground, then massaged his bruised lips and cheeks, and kneaded the stiffened muscles of his chest and stomach. He twisted himself onto his side and picked at the knot clamping his right wrist to the other rest, in the brief flare
s of light from the star-shells loosened the thongs and freed himself.

  For five minutes he lay inertly under the dark hulk of the throne, listening to the distant voices recede into the alleys beyond the depot ship. Gradually the flares faded, and the street became a silent canyon, the rooftops faintly illuminated by the fading phosphorescent glow of the dying animalcula, which cast a web-like silver veil over the drained buildings and turned them into the expiring corner of an ancient spectral city.

  Crawling from below the throne, he rose uncertainly to his feet, stumbled across the sidewalk and leaned against the wall, his head pounding from the exertion. He pressed his face against the cool still-damp stone, staring down the street into which Strangman and his men had disappeared.

  Abruptly, before his eyes closed involuntarily, he saw two figures approaching, one familiarly white-suited, the other tall and bowshouldered, walking swiftly down the street towards him.

  "Strangman...!" Kerans whispered. His fingers gripped the loose mortar, and he stiffened into the shadows which covered the wall. The two men were a hundred yards away, but he could see Strangman's brisk, purposive stride, Big Caesar's loping step behind him. Something gleamed as it caught a ray of light shining down an intersection, a stab of silver that swung from Big Caesar's hand.

  Searching the darkness, Kerans edged along the wall, almost cut his hands on a ragged angle of plate glass in a store window. A few yards away was the entrance to a large arcade, running through the block until it joined a parallel street fifty yards to the west. Black silt a foot deep covered its floor, and Kerans crouched down as he climbed the shallow steps, then ran slowly through the dark tunnel to the far end of the arcade, the soft silt muffling his limping footsteps.

  He waited behind a pillar at the rear entrance, steadying him self as Strangman and Big Caesar reached the throne. The machete in the mulatto's giant hand seemed little more than a razor. Strang man raised one hand warningly before touching the throne. Carefully he scanned the streets and walls of windows, his lean white jaw illuminated in the moonlight. Then he gestured sharply at Big Caesar and kicked the throne over with his foot.

  As their oaths rang Out into the air, Kerans drew himself back behind the pillar, then tiptoed quickly across the street towards a narrow alleyway that ran off into the labyrinthine nexus of the university quarter.

  Half an hour later he took up his position on the top floor of a fifteen-storey office block that formed part of the perimeter wall of the lagoon. A narrow balcony ringed the suite of offices, at its rear leading to a fire escape that trailed off across the lower roofs into the jungle beyond, finally swallowed by the giant retaining banks of silt. Thin pools of water which had condensed from the afternoon heat mists lay across the plastic floors, and after climbing the central stairwell Kerans lay down and bathed his face and mouth in the cool liquid, slowly soothing his wounded wrists.

  No search party came after him. Rather than concede complete defeat—the only interpretation most of the crew would put upon Kerans' disappearance, Strangman had evidently decided to accept his escape as a fait accompli and forget him, assuming that Kerans would set sail for the lagoons in the south. Through the night the looting parties continued to rove the streets, each succeeding find signallised by a display of rockets and pyrotechnics.

  Kerans rested until dawn, lying in a pool of water, letting it soak through the ragged strips of the silk dinner jacket that still clung to him, washing away the stench of the sea-weed and silt. An hour before dawn he pulled himself to his feet, tore off his jacket and shirt and stuffed them down a crack in the wall. He unscrewed a glass light bracket that was intact, carefully scooped up the water from one of the clean poois on the floor below. He had collected about a quart by the time the sun was lifting over the eastern perimeter of the lagoon. Two corridors down he trapped a small lizard in the washroom, killed it with a loose brick. He lit a fire of tinder with a lens of chipped glass, roasted the filets of dark stringy meat until they were tender. The small steaks melted in his cracked mouth with the exquisite tenderness of warm fat. Recovering his strength, he climbed back to the top floor and retired to a service cubicle behind the elevator shaft. After wedging the door with a few lengths of rusty bannister rail, he settled down in the corner and waited for the evening.

  The last sunlight was fading over the water as Kerans paddled the raft below the fronds of the fern trees dipping into the water around the lagoon, the blood and copper bronzes of the afternoon sun giving way to deep violets and indigo. Overhead the sky was an immense funnel of sapphire and purple, fantasticated whorls of coral cloud marking the descent of the sun like baroque vapour trails. A slack oily swell disturbed the surface of the lagoon, the water clinging to the leaves of the ferns like translucent wax. A hundred yards away it slapped lazily against the shattered remains of the jetty below the Ritz, throwing up a few broken spars of timber. Still restrained by the loose net of mooring lines, the fifty-gallon drums floated together like a group of hump-backed alligators. Luckily the alligators Strangman had posted around the lagoon were still in their nests among the buildings, or had dispersed into the neighbouring creeks in search of food as the iguanas retreated before them.

  Kerans paused before paddling out across the exposed face of the derelict bank adjacent to the Ritz, scanning the shoreline and the exit creek for any of Strangman's sentries. The concentration needed to build the raft from two galvanised iron water tanks had almost drained his brain, and he waited carefully before pushing on. As he neared the jetty he saw that the mooring lines had been slashed deliberately, the wooden box frame crushed by some heavy water-craft, probably the hydroplane, which Strangman had berthed in the central lagoon.

  Wedging the raft between two of the floating drums, where it floated unobtrusively among the shifting debris, Kerans pulled himself up on to the balcony and stepped over the window ledge into the hotel. Quickly he made his way up the staircase, following the trail of huge blurred footprints on the blue carpet mould which led down from the roof.

  The penthouse had been wrecked. As he opened the outer wooden door into the suite a ragged glass panel of the interior air-seal fell to the floor at his feet. Someone had moved through the rooms in a berserk frenzy of violence, systematically smashing everything within sight. The Louis Quinze furniture had been hacked to pieces, dismembered legs and arms hurled through the internal glass walls. The carpeting over the floor lay in a tangle of long torn strips, even the cord underlay ripped apart so that the floor seals could be hacked and breached. Its legs lopped, the cabinet of the desk lay in two divided sections, the crocodile skin pared from its edges. Books were scattered underfoot, many of them slashed cleanly into two. A rain of blows had fallen upon the mantelpiece, huge gouges cut into its gilt lip, and enormous stars of frosted glass and silverscreen burst across the mirror like frozen explosions.

  Stepping over the litter, Kerans ventured briefly onto the terrace, where the wire mesh of the mosquito screen had been ballooned outwards until it burst. The beach chairs where he had lain for so many months were chopped to matchwood.

  As he expected, the decoy safe behind the desk had been sprung, its door open on the empty vault. Kerans went into the bedroom, a faint smile crossing his face when he realised that Strangman's housebreakers had failed to find the deep safe behind the bedroom mirror over the escritoire. The dented cylinder of the brass compass he had idly stolen from the base, still pointing to its talismanic south, lay on the floor below the small circular mirror, which it had shattered into a pattern like a magnified snow-flake. Kerans carefully rotated the rococo frame, released the hinge and drew it back to reveal the unbreached dial of the safe.

  Darkness fell from the air, throwing long shadows into the suite as Kerans' fingers raced through the tumblers. With a relieved intake of breath he pulled back the door, quickly slipped out the heavy Colt .45 and its carton of slugs. He sat down on the wrecked bed and tore the seals off the carton, then loaded the chamber, weighing the massi
ve black weapon in his hand. He emptied the carton and filled his pockets with the slugs, then tightened his belt and went back into the lounge.

  As he surveyed the room, he realised that by a curious paradox he bore Strangman little malice for wrecking the suite. In a sense its destruction, and with it all his memories of the lagoon, merely underlined something he had been tacitly ignoring for some time, and which Strangman's arrival, and all it implied, should have made him accept—the need to abandon the lagoon and move southwards. His time there had outlived itself, and the air-sealed suite with its constant temperature and humidity, its supplies of fuel and food, were nothing more than an encapsulated form of his previous environment, to which he had clung like a reluctant embryo to its yoke sac. The shattering of this shell, like the piercing doubts about his true unconscious motives set off by his near drowning in the planetarium, was the necessary spur to action, to his emergence into the brighter day of the interior, archaeopsychic sun. Now he would have to go forward. Both the past, represented by Riggs, and the present contained within the demolished penthouse, no longer offered a viable existence. His commitment to the future, so far one of choice and plagued by so many doubts and hesitations, was now absolute.