An Island Called Moreau

by Brian W Aldiss

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  An Island Called Moreau

  Brian W. Aldiss

  Dedicated to the spirit

  of H. G. Wells: The Master

  To sink below the surface of the ocean was to enter a world of sound. Much of the sound originated from organic beings, forever transmitting their signals and necessities in harmonics which ranged through a scale commensurate with their environment, from shrillest, fastest squeak to deepest grunt. No one ear in that great element could encompass the span of frequencies involved.

  Near the surface of the ocean, the sounds were light and many, and the organisms transmitting them similarly multitudinous and small. Lower, where larger fish swam, a deeper note prevailed. Lower still, deeper yet. As the light faded, as pressure increased toward the submerged valleys and hills of the ocean bed, the sounds became infrequent and acquired a lugubrious note in keeping with their surroundings.

  Another range of sounds also persisted. It issued from another order of existence entirely: from the inorganic, from the mantle of water which moved ceaselessly over the drowned landscapes of its domain. These throatless noises had been audible almost since the beginning of time, certainly long before any stirrings of life. Currents, waves, tides, sunken rivers, sunken lakes and seas, all served as restless atmosphere to a world remote from the sentient creatures whose existences were confined to exposed territories outcropping above the planetary waters.

  This ocean was of considerable depth. Its dimensions extended for thousands of miles in all directions. It occupied one-third of the surface of the planet, covering an area greater than that of all the exposed lands. A philosophical observer might regard it as the subconscious of the world, contrasting it to the exposed land area, which might—in the light of this rather whimsical notion—be considered as the seat of a fitful conscious.

  In the aqueous subconscious of the planet, all was as usual, all as it had been for millions of years. On land, away in another element, the teeming individual awarenesses of the dominant species were in more than normal ferment. Their actions were full of sound and fury. They had just launched themselves into a global war which threatened to lay waste much of the land area, besides bringing about their own extinction.

  Such military clamor scarcely penetrated the surface of the great ocean. Yet even there—even there, one could search and find contraindications, symptoms of pain.

  Meteorites flashing through the night sky from space were once regarded as portents of solemn events. The ocean also had its portents from an alien element. Like a shower of meteoritic debris, metal from a disintegrating craft scattered across miles of sea. Slowly the parts sank, turning through the water, reflecting less and less light from above as they fell. They drifted down toward areas of enormous pressure and permanent twilight.

  Finally, all that remained of the Leda came to rest upon a barren plain near the equator, bedding down in primordial oozes under six thousand meters of ocean.

  1

  Alone in the Pacific

  In times of peace, the crashing of the space shuttle Leda into the Pacific Ocean would have provided drama enough for most of the world to have heard about it by lunchtime. During the early months of war in 1996, the incident was little noticed, beyond the announcement that an Undersecretary of State was missing.

  It is not my intention to detail that crash here. It forms no part of the dreadful story I have to relate. Suffice it to say that my secretary and I were the only passengers, and that the crew numbered two, James Fan Toy and Jose Galveston. The shuttle splashed down into the Pacific close to the equator, latitude 2° south, longitude 178° east. My secretary was killed on impact; in a moment of panic, he jumped up just before we struck, and his neck was broken.

  The craft floated long enough for Fan Toy, Galveston, and me to climb free and jump into an inflatable life raft.

  To escape drowning was one thing, to escape the ocean another. The war was far away to the north of us, and we were in a little-frequented sector of ocean. We saw no planes, no ships, no land. Day succeeded day, the awful power of the sun making itself continually felt. We had little shelter and less water, rationing ourselves to a mouthful twice a day. As our life energies were burned from us, we took to lying under an inflatable plastic canopy, no longer paddling or even keeping watch on the unvarying horizon about us.

  On the eighth day, early in the morning before the sun had risen high enough to scorch us, Fan Toy gave a cry and pointed to something floating in the waves. We stood and stared, leaning against each other for support.

  How vividly I recall that moment, with the stench of our bodies and the boat’s fabric, the ceaseless motion of the waves, the vast expanse of water! In the water was a dolphin, making slowly toward us.

  “It’s bringing help,” Fan Toy said. We had sent out a radio call for help as the Leda reentered Earth’s atmosphere. This might well be a naval dolphin coming to guide us to a nearby submarine—such was the hope raised by sight of the creature.

  “Don’t be too sure he’s on our side,” Galveston said.

  We dipped our hands into the ocean and splashed our blistered faces and eye sockets to try and see more clearly.

  “Yes, it’s one of our boys,” Fan Toy said. “Take a look at the stars and stripes embedded in its tail.”

  I was peering too and could discern the insignia as he spoke.

  “It’s moving slowly. Could be it’s injured,” I said.

  The creature seemed to be making heavy weather of what was just a light swell; it wallowed from side to side as it headed toward us.

  Galveston got a paddle out. “I don’t like the look of the beast. Keep off!” He struck at the dolphin as it came within range.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Fan Toy said, trying to knock the paddle from Galveston’s hand. The two men struggled feebly together.

  My attention was momentarily attracted elsewhere. A school of flying fish—only the second school we had seen since taking to the life raft—passed behind us, clipping the waves as it flew. One of them, slightly adrift from its fellows, landed in the raft behind us.

  It was food. As I stooped down to seize it, my glance caught something on the far horizon. I could not say what it was—possibly the mast of a ship, gleaming in the sun. I bent down to snatch at the struggling fish.

  As well that I did. In that moment came the explosion. It struck me with a wall of sound and pitched me into the sea.

  I surfaced, choking and deafened. The water seethed all round me. The life raft had gone. So had Fan Toy and Galveston. I called their names. Limbs and flesh lay in the ocean about me, trailing tentacles of red which were dispersed among the waters. They had been blown apart, as had dolphin and raft.

  The one item still afloat and happily intact was the inflatable canopy. I managed to climb into it, bail out the water with my hands, and achieve a precarious stability. I also managed to retrieve a paddle. Then I lay where I was, in a daze, as slowly my hearing returned: but not my companions.

  For whatever reason, I had again been preserved. Triumphantly, I told myself—even whispered the words aloud through cracked lips—that my love of God and country would bring me through all perils to victory. I did not doubt that the Leda had been sabotaged by subversive elements in the Moon base, and that the sabotage had been aimed at me. Yet I had survived. And would continue to survive.

  Maybe Fan Toy and Galveston had been involved in the treachery, for one can trust no one during a global war. They had been destroyed. I lived.

  Now I had a makeshift boat. I w
as too numb at first to paddle. But a light breeze caught the canopy and bore me along, slowly increasing the distance between me and the carnage. Which was as well. Two sharks began to circle the area. Then another moved in, and another after. Soon I watched many triangular fins, circling the bloodied area at speed.

  There was little doubt as to what had occurred. The dolphin had been naval trained. It must have been on a suicide mission, loaded with an explosive charge, maybe a nuclear one, and programmed for some particular target. Enemy defenses had hit and wounded it. Half senseless, it had swum on, who knew how far. Seeing our raft, it had homed in on us, probably in search of aid. Galveston had struck it with his paddle, whereupon the explosive charge had been detonated.

  Confirmation of this theory lay in the way we found the dolphin swimming alone. An ordinary dolphin, when wounded, secures help from its own kind, who will escort it hundreds of miles, if need be, to a safe spot where it can recuperate. Our fellow, loaded with death, had had to travel alone to the last.

  It was impossible to stand in my flimsy canopy boat. I could manage only to sit up and stare about me, searching the horizon for that gleaming thing again. It was nowhere in sight.

  My strength began to desert me as hope went. The sun was growing powerful, and I crammed a flexible bucket on my head for protection. Then I slumped back as best I could, unable to paddle since there was nowhere to paddle to.

  Seconds, minutes, hours, drifted by before I looked up again. Who knows the teeming thoughts that poured through my mind? When I finally broke from my reverie and peered about me, an island was in sight!

  How beautiful it looked, how superbly more positive, more created, than the miserable element swilling all about me! I stood up in my excitement and capsized my boat immediately. Once I was back in it again, I turned eagerly to see what I could see.

  At this distance, the land appeared as a rock with a flat top. On that top, an installation of some kind had been built; this was what I had seen as I stooped to pick up the flying fish. Although any indication of human enterprise filled me with hope. I had reservations from the beginning; the world was so full of automated machinery of various kinds, from missile detection systems to navigational aids, that evidence of an installation was no proof men would be nearby. Yet even a deserted island was a hundred times more welcome than open sea. To die under a palm tree suddenly seemed like heaven.

  The island was still distant. A current was carrying me toward it, and I was content for a while to lie back in exhaustion and be borne onward. Again my mind wandered, half deliriously; I became involved in complex situations with people I did not know but thought I recognized.

  When I shook myself from my lethargy, the sun was low in the west and magnificent layers of cloud were drawing about it to celebrate its descent. The island was considerably nearer; I could make out gray walls of cliff. The installation was lost in late afternoon light.

  My drinking water was entirely gone. Exhausted though I was, I seized on the paddle and tried to guide my frail craft toward the island. For a dread filled me that ocean currents might carry me past this refuge in the hours of darkness, and that by morning it would lie far astern. Then I should surely die. My chance was now—or never again.

  I was still paddling as night came down. It was glorious and terrible to witness the world’s swift change from day to night; even in my drained condition, I was moved by it, and offered a prayer to God.

  The breeze which had earlier carried me westward was reversed with evening. My boat was almost at a standstill. I battled in the darkness as long as I could, collapsing at last in the bottom of my craft, where I slept fitfully, half in a delirium.

  I woke before dawn, chilled all through, convinced I was dying. I lay like a broken bundle, cradling my paddle, with my jaw hanging open and my mouth parched, as once more the processes of Earth brought this part of the world into light.

  I opened my eyes and lifted my head. Great cliffs loomed close, lit by early sun. They rose steeply from the waves without a shore. High above the waterline bushes grew, crowning the cliffs. Birds wheeled above them. I stared at the birds in wonder. My canopy was moving slowly westward again, no more than three hundred meters from the cliffs.

  One detail was especially remarkable. Carved into the cliff at a place which appeared totally inaccessible was a gigantic letter.

  The letter dominated me. I stared at it, trying to make sense out of it, but to my dazed imagining it seemed to be independent of meaning, to exist only for itself. Its very shape suggested a sturdy bipedal independence. It was a huge letter M.

  The cliffs dazzled with reflected light but the M was black. Whoever had sculpted it from the rock had made certain that it was visible from afar by filling its recesses with tar or some black pitchy substance.

  Thoughts of vaguely religious nature filled my mind. I heard my voice from my cracked lips say, “In the beginning was the letter.” I laughed feebly. Then I slumped back into the boat.

  When I brought myself to look again, the M stood some way behind, a double black pillar. The nearer cliffs were less steep and in shadow. Trees were more in evidence. I even imagined I might have seen a building among the trees, as my head drooped once more. But the insistence that I should do something rose within me, and again I dragged myself up. I splashed head and neck with seawater, although the brine made my lips smart.

  The boat was drifting past a southwest-facing cliff wall which lay no more than two hundred meters away. Ordinarily, I would have thought nothing of swimming ashore; now, all I could do was cup my hands and call for help; but there was the noise of surf against rocks to compete with, and my throat was choked by drought.

  I could see that in less than an hour we should reach the end of the island, to be carried into the open ocean again. The cliffs were becoming less massive. It would be possible to scramble ashore at the westernmost point. When it came level, then I would have to fling myself into the water, trusting to God and the remainder of my strength to get me ashore.

  As I was preparing for this ordeal, I discovered that I was being observed. Three or four natives stood under tall trees among bushes, watching me. At this distance, I could get no clear view, yet something about them—whether in their faces or their stances—gave an impression of singular bestiality. They stood almost immobile and stared across the waves at me; then they were gone; the bushes moved for a moment and were still.

  I turned my attention to the end of the island, which could now be seen to sprout an islet just beyond its shores, leaving a narrow channel between shore and islet. The question seemed to be, whether the current which carried me would sweep me clear away from the island or closely round its tip, between island and islet; if the latter was the case, it should not be impossible to get ashore.

  As I considered this question, a heavy craft with thundering engine swerved out from behind the island. Spreading a wake of white water behind it, it curved out and headed toward me.

  Two men were in the craft. I could get clear glimpses only of the man at the wheel. His face was black and again, as with the watchers on the cliff, I received an impression of brutishness.

  The craft he steered was painted a muddy brown. As it bore toward me and swung clumsily abeam, the wash from it swamped my canopy. I found myself struggling in the water. Half drowned, I heard the curses of the men in the boat; then my wrists were grasped, and my shoulders, and I was heaved unceremoniously into the landing craft, as it was referred to.

  As soon as they had me on deck, the boat was in motion again, swerving violently about. I was left to roll on the deck like a freshly landed tunny, coughing and spewing the seawater out of me.

  When I had recovered slightly, I heaved myself into a sitting position. I was confronted by as frightful a countenance as I have ever seen in my life. At close quarters, its brutishness was overwhelming, so that I half believed I was delirious.

  Under a floppy leather hat was no brow, simply a great swelling face covered with
stubble. The jaw was prognathous with no chin. A mighty mouth swept back, its corners almost vanishing into the absurd hat, its fleshy lips hardly fleshy enough to conceal large incisors in the lower jaw. Above this formidable mouth was a snout-like nose, wrinkled in a sneer like a hyena’s, and two almost lidless eyes. These eyes regarded me now—fixed themselves on me with a dull red glare. I pulled myself back from them in shock. But still I had to stare into them.

  The monster regarded me with the strangest expression, at once aggressive and shrinking, as though it was on the point of either throwing itself upon me or leaping out of my way.

  Only for a moment did we stare at each other so closely. Only for a moment was that strange ambiguity of gaze between us. Then the black man was struck on the back by his companion, who roared, “Get to the helm, George! None of your tricks!”

  Black George leaped back to his station with a frantic scuffle, quite devoid of dignity. He was a big burly fellow, with tremendous shoulders on him, but short in the shank. He was encased in an all-enveloping pair of gray work overalls.

  When I turned my attention to the other man, my first impressions were scarcely more favorable. A fine place I had come to! I thought. This specimen was recognizably Caucasian, and with no visible deformities, but he was also a great hulking brute. His face was fat and pasty; it bore a besotted, sullen expression. His eyes seemed to be the same pasty color as his skin; they looked directly into mine once, for an instant, then away, in such a furtive manner that I was as disconcerted as by George’s savage stare. He always avoided a direct gaze.

  Although everything about him appeared totally unfavorable—apart from the cardinal fact that he had rescued me from the sea—I gained an impression that he was an intelligent, even sensitive, man who was trying to bury some dreadful knowledge within him: and that the effort had brutalized him.

  His hair was tawny and uncared for and he had a straggling yellowy-brown beard. He carried a military carbine slung over one shoulder and clutched a bottle in his left hand.