Orbit 7 - [Anthology]
Page 22
Captain Phillip Ransom had been adrift, alone, for nine days when he saw the island. It was already late evening when it appeared like a thin line of purple on the horizon, but Ransom did not sleep that night. There was no feeble questioning in his wakeful mind concerning the reality of what he had seen; he had been given that one glimpse and he knew. Instead his brain teemed with facts and speculations. He knew he must be somewhere near New Guinea, and he reviewed mentally what he knew of the currents in these waters and what he had learned in the past nine days of the behaviour of his raft. The island when he reached it - he did not allow himself to if - would in all probability be solid jungle a few feet back from the water’s edge. There might or might not be natives, but he brought to mind all he could of the Bazaar Malay and Tagalog he had acquired in his years as a pilot, plantation manager, white hunter, and professional fighting man in the Pacific.
In the morning he saw the purple shadow on the horizon again, a little nearer this time and almost precisely where his mental calculations had told him to expect it. For nine days there had been no reason to employ the inadequate paddles provided with the raft, but now he had something to row for. Ransom drank the last of the water and began stroking with a steady and powerful beat which was not interrupted until the prow of his rubber craft ground into beach sand.’
Morning. You are slowly awake. Your eyes feel gummy, and the light over your bed is still on. Downstairs there is no one, so you get a bowl and milk and puffed, sugary cereal out for yourself and light the oven with a kitchen match so that you can eat and read by its open door. When the cereal is gone you drink the sweet milk and crumbs in the bottom of the bowl and start a pot of coffee, knowing that will please Mother. Jason comes down, dressed but not wanting to talk; drinks coffee and makes one piece of cinnamon toast in the oven. You listen to him leave, the stretched buzzing of his car on the road, then go up to Mother’s room.
She is awake, her eyes open looking at the ceiling, but you know she isn’t ready to get up yet. Very politely, because that minimizes the chances of being shouted at, you say, ‘How are you feeling this morning, Mama?’
She rolls her head to look. ‘Strung out. What time is it, Tackie?’
You look at the little folding clock on her dresser. ‘Seventeen minutes after eight.’
‘Jason go?’
‘Yes, just now, Mama.’
She is looking at the ceiling again. ‘You go back downstairs now, Tackie. I’ll get you something when I feel better.’
Downstairs you put on your sheepskin coat and go out on the veranda to look at the sea. There are gulls riding the icy wind, and very far off something orange bobbing in the waves, always closer.
A life raft. You run to the beach, jump up and down and wave your cap. ‘Over here. Over here.’
The man from the raft has no shirt but the cold doesn’t seem to bother him. He holds out his hand and says, ‘Captain Ransom,’ and you take it and are suddenly taller and older; not as tall as he is or as old as he is, but taller and older than yourself. ‘Tackman Babcock, Captain.’
‘Pleased to meet you. You were a friend in need there a minute ago.’
‘I guess I didn’t do anything but welcome you ashore.’
‘The sound of your voice gave me something to steer for while my eyes were too busy watching that surf. Now you can tell me where I’ve landed and who you are.’
You are walking back up to the house now, and you explain to Ransom about you and Mother, and how she doesn’t want to enroll you in the school here because she is trying to get you into the private school your father went to once. And after a time there is nothing more to say, and you show Ransom one of the empty rooms on the third floor where he can rest and do whatever he wants. Then you go back to your own room to read.
‘“Do you mean that you made these monsters?”
“Made them?” Dr. Death leaned forward, a cruel smile playing about his lips. “Did God make Eve, Captain, when he took her from Adam’s rib? Or did Adam make the bone and God alter it to become what he wished? Look at it this way, Captain. I am God and Nature is Adam.”
Ransom looked at the thing who grasped his right arm with hands that might have circled a utility pole as easily. “Do you mean that this thing is an animal?”
“Not an animal,” the monster said, wrenching his arm cruelly. “Man.”
Dr. Death’s smile broadened. “Yes, Captain, man. The question is, what are you? When I’m finished with you we’ll see. Dulling your mind will be less of a problem than upgrading these poor brutes; but what about increasing the efficiency of your sense of smell? Not to mention rendering it impossible for you to walk erect.”
“Not to walk all-four-on-ground,” the beast-man holding Ransom muttered, “that is the law”
Dr. Death turned and called to the shambling hunch-back Ransom had seen earlier, “Golo, see to it that Captain Ransom is securely put away; then prepare the surgery.”‘
A car. Not Jason’s noisy Jaguar, but a quiet, large-sounding car. By heaving up the narrow, tight little window at the corner of the turret and sticking your head out into the cold wind you can see it: Dr. Black’s big one, with the roof and hood all shiny with new wax.
Downstairs Dr. Black is hanging up an overcoat with a collar of fur, and you smell the old cigar smoke in his clothing before you see him; then Aunt May and Aunt Julie are there to keep you occupied so that he won’t be reminded too vividly that marrying Mama means getting you as well. They talk to you: ‘How have you been, Tackie? What do you find to do out here all day?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing? Don’t you ever go looking for shells on the beach?’
‘I guess so.’
‘You’re a handsome boy, do you know that?’ Aunt May touches your nose with a scarlet-tipped finger and holds it there.
Aunt May is Mother’s sister, but older and not as pretty. Aunt Julie is Papa’s sister, a tall lady with a pulled-out unhappy face, and makes you think of him even when you know she only wants Mama to get married again so that Papa won’t have to send her any more money.
Mama herself is downstairs now in a clean new dress with long sleeves. She laughs at Dr. Black’s jokes and holds on to his arm, and you think how nice her hair looks and that you will tell her so when you are alone. Dr. Black says, ‘How about it, Barbara, are you ready for the party?’ and Mother, ‘Heavens no. You know what this place is like - yesterday I spent all day cleaning and today you can’t even see what I did. But Julie and May will help me.’
Dr. Black laughs. ‘After lunch.’
You get into his big car with the others and go to a restaurant on the edge of a cliff, with a picture window to see the ocean. Dr. Black orders a sandwich for you that has turkey and bacon and three pieces of bread, but you are finished before the grown-ups have started, and when you try to talk to Mother, Aunt May sends you out to where there is a railing with wire to fill in the spaces like chicken wire only heavier, to look at the view.
It is really not much higher than the top window at home. Maybe a little higher. You put the toes of your shoes in the wire and bend out with your stomach against the rail to look down, but a grown-up pulls you down and tells you not to do it, then goes away. You do it again, and there are rocks at the bottom which the waves wash over in a neat way, covering them up and then pulling back. Someone touches your elbow, but you pay no attention for a minute, watching the water.
Then you get down, and the man standing beside you is Dr. Death.
He has a white scarf and black leather gloves and his hair is shiny black. His face is not tanned like Captain Ransom’s but white, and handsome in a different way like the statue of a head that used to be in Papa’s library when you and Mother used to live in town with him, and you think: Mama would say after he was gone how good looking he was. He smiles at you, but you are no older.
‘Hi.’ What else can you say?
‘Good afternoon, Mr. Babcock. I’m afraid I startled you.’
Dr. Death turns his back to the wind to light a cigarette he takes from a gold case. It is longer even than a 101 and has a red tip, and a gold dragon on the paper. ‘While you were looking down, I slipped from between the pages of the excellent novel you have in your coat pocket.’
‘I didn’t know you could do that.’
‘Oh, yes. I’ll be around from time to time.’
‘Captain Ransom is here already. He’ll kill you.’
Dr. Death smiles and shakes his head. ‘Hardly. You see, Tackman, Ransom and I are a bit like wrestlers; under various guises we put on our show again and again - but only under the spotlight.’ He flicks his cigarette over the rail and for a moment your eyes follow the bright spark out and down and see it vanish in the water. When you look back, Dr. Death is gone, and you are getting cold. You go back into the restaurant and get a free mint candy where the cash register is and then go and sit beside Aunt May again in time to have coconut cream pie and hot chocolate.
Aunt May drops out of the conversation long enough to ask, ‘Who was that man you were talking to, Tackie?’
‘A man.’
In the car Mama sits close to Dr. Black, with Aunt Julie on the other side of her so she will have to, and Aunt May sits way up on the edge of her seat with her head in between theirs so they can all talk. It is grey and cold outside; you think how long it will be before you are home again, and take the book out.
‘Ransom heard them coming and flattened himself against the wall beside the door of his cell. There was no way out, he knew, save through that iron portal.
For the past four hours he had been testing every surface of the stone room for a possible exit, and there was none. Floor, walls, and ceiling were of cyclopean stone blocks; the windowless door of solid metal locked outside.
Nearer. He tensed every muscle and knotted his fists.
Nearer. The shambling steps halted. There was a rattle of keys and the door swung back. Like a thunderbolt of purpose he dived through the opening. A hideous face loomed above him and he sent his right fist crashing into it, knocking the lumbering beast-man to his knees. Two hairy arms pinioned him from behind, but he fought free and the monster reeled under his blows. The corridor stretched ahead of him with a dim glow of daylight at the end and he sprinted for it. Then - darkness!
When he recovered consciousness he found himself already erect, strapped to the wall of a brilliantly lit room which seemed to share the characters of a surgical theatre and a chemical laboratory. Directly before his eyes stood a bulky object which he knew must be an operating table, and upon it, covered with a sheet, lay the unmistakable form of a human being.
He had hardly had time to comprehend the situation when Dr. Death entered, no longer in the elegant evening dress in which Ransom had beheld him last, but wearing white surgical clothing. Behind him limped the hideous Golo, carrying a tray of implements.
“Ah!” seeing that his prisoner was conscious, Dr. Death strolled across the room and raised a hand as though to strike him in the face, but, when Ransom did not flinch, dropped it, smiling. “My dear Captain! You are with us again, I see.”
“I hoped for a minute there,” Ransom said levelly, “that I was away from you. Mind telling me what got me?”
“A thrown club, or so my slaves report. My baboon-man is quite good at it. But aren’t you going to ask about this charming little tableau I’ve staged for you?”
“I wouldn’t give you the pleasure.”
“But you are curious,” Dr. Death smiled his crooked smile. “I shall not keep you in suspense. Your own time, Captain, has not come yet; and before it does I am going to demonstrate my technique to you. It is so seldom that I have a really appreciative audience.” With a calculated gesture he whipped away the sheet which had covered the prone form on the operating table.
Ransom could scarcely believe his eyes. Before him lay the unconscious body of a girl, with skin as white as silk and hair like the sun seen through mist.
“You are interested now, I see,” Dr. Death remarked dryly, “and you consider her beautiful. Believe me, when I have completed my work you will flee screaming if she so much as turns what will no longer be a face towards you. This woman has been my implacable enemy since I came to this island, and the time has come for me to” - he halted in mid-sentence and looked at Ransom with an expression of mingled slyness and gloating - “for me to illustrate something of your own fate, shall we say.”
While Dr. Death had been talking his deformed assistant had prepared a hypodermic. Ransom watched as the needle plunged into the girl’s almost translucent flesh, and the liquid in the syringe - a fluid which by its very colour suggested the vile perversion of medical technique - entered her bloodstream. Though still unconscious the girl sighed, and it seemed to Ransom that a cloud passed over her sleeping face as though she had already begun an evil dream. Roughly the hideous Golo turned her on her back and fastened in place straps of the same kind as those that held Ransom himself pinned to the wall.’
‘What are you reading, Tackie?’ Aunt May asked. ‘Nothing.’ He shut the book.
‘Well, you shouldn’t read in the car. It’s bad for your eyes.’ Dr. Black looked back at them for a moment, then asked Mama, ‘Have you got a costume for the little fellow yet?’
‘For Tackie?’ Mama shook her head, making her beautiful hair shine even in the dim light of the car. ‘No, nothing. It will be past his bedtime.’
‘Well, you’ll have to let him see the guests anyway, Barbara; no boy should miss that.’
And then the car was racing along the road out to Settlers Island. And then you were home.
‘Ransom watched as the loathsome creature edged towards him. Though not as large as some of the others its great teeth looked formidable indeed, and in one hand it grasped a heavy jungle knife with a razor edge.
For a moment he thought it would molest the unconscious girl, but it circled around her to stand before Ransom himself, never meeting his eyes.
Then, with a gesture as unexpected as it was frightening, it bent suddenly to press its hideous face against his pinioned right hand, and a great, shuddering gasp ran through the creature’s twisted body.
Ransom waited, tense.
Again that deep inhalation, seeming almost a sob. Then the beast-man straightened up, looking into Ransom’s face but avoiding his gaze. A thin, strangely familiar whine came from the monster’s throat.
“Cut me loose,” Ransom ordered.
“Yes. This I came to. Yes, Master.” The huge head, wider than it was high, bobbed up and down. Then the sharp blade of the machete bit into the straps holding Ransom. As soon as he was free he took the blade from the willing hand of the beast-man and freed the limbs of the girl on the operating table. She was light in his arms, and for an instant he stood looking down at her tranquil face.
“Come, Master.” The beast-man pulled at his sleeve. “Bruno knows a way out. Follow Bruno.”
A hidden flight of steps led to a long and narrow corridor, almost pitch dark. “No one uses this way,” the beast-man said in his harsh voice. “They not find us here.”
“Why did you free me?” Ransom asked.
There was a pause, then almost with an air of shame the great, twisted form replied, “You smell good. And Bruno does not like Dr. Death.”
Ransom’s conjectures were confirmed. Gently he asked, “You were a dog before Dr. Death worked on you, weren’t you, Bruno?”
“Yes.” The beast-man’s voice held a sort of pride. “A St. Bernard. I have seen pictures.”
“Dr. Death should have known better than to employ his foul skills on such a noble animal,” Ransom reflected aloud. “Dogs are too shrewd in judging character; but then the evil are always foolish in the final analysis.”
Unexpectedly the dog-man halted in front of him, forcing Ransom to stop too. For a moment the massive head bent over the unconscious girl. Then
there was a barely audible growl. “You say, Master, that I can judge. Then I tell you Bruno does not like this female Dr. Death calls Talar of the Long Eyes.”‘
You put the open book face-down on the pillow and jump up, hugging yourself and skipping bare heels around the room. Marvellous! Wonderful!
But no more reading tonight. Save it, save it. Turn the light off, and in the delicious dark put the book reverently away under the bed, pushing aside pieces of the Tinker Toy set and the box with the filling station game cards. Tomorrow there will be more, and you can hardly wait for tomorrow. You lie on your back, hands under head, covers up to chin and when you close your eyes, you can see it all; the island, with jungle trees swaying in the sea wind; Dr. Death’s castle lifting its big, cold greyness against the hot sky.
The whole house is still, only the wind and the Atlantic are out, the familiar sounds. Downstairs Mother is talking to Aunt May and Aunt Julie and you fall asleep.