An Island Called Moreau

by Brian W Aldiss

  When he saw me regarding him, he held out the bottle before him, not looking straight at me, and said mockingly, “You look as if you could have use for a drink, hero!”

  I said, “I need water.”

  My voice was a croak. His was thick and had a curious accent. It took a while before I realized English was not his native language.

  “Palm wine for the morning. Fresh vintage. Do you plenty good!”

  “I need water.”

  “Suit yourself. You must wait till we are on the shore.”

  George was now swinging the craft in between island and terminal islet, hunched with a kind of careful ferocity over the wheel. I could see a strip of beach beyond. The blond man yelled to George to go more steadily.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  He looked me over again, half between pity and contempt, his eyes sliding round me.

  “Welcome to Moreau Island, hero,” he said. He took another swig at his bottle.

  2

  Some Company Ashore

  The landing craft ran into a narrow channel with rock on the left and island on the right. Open sea ahead indicated that although the island was several kilometers long, it was considerably less in width, at least at this western end. The beach was a slender strip of sand, bracketed in rocks and stones and encroached by scrub. George brought us swinging broadside on to this strip, hunching himself by the wheel and awaiting further instructions while he eyed me with distrust.

  “Are you fit enough to walk?” the blond man asked me.

  “I can try,” I said.

  “You’re going to have to try, hero. This is where you get out! No ambulances here. I’ve got the fishing nets to see to, and that’s trouble enough to do. George here will take you along to HQ. Get that?”

  Involuntarily, I looked at George with suspicion.

  “He won’t hurt you,” the blond man said. “If you drifted through the minefields okay, then you will be safe by George.”

  “What sort of a place am I getting to? Are there other—white men here? I don’t even know your name.”

  The blond man looked down at the deck and rubbed his soiled deck shoes against each other.

  “You aren’t welcome here, hero, you ought better to face that fact. Moreau Island is not geared exactly to cater to the tourist trade. But we can maybe find a use for you.”

  “My work is elsewhere,” I said sharply. “A lot of people will be looking for me right now. The ASASC shuttle I was in crashed in the Pacific some way from here. My name is Calvert Roberts, and I hold down an important governmental post. What’s your name? You still haven’t told me.”

  “It’s not any damned business of yours, is it? My name is Hans Maastricht and I’m not ashamed of it. Now, get on shore. I have work to do or I will be into trouble.”

  He turned to George, slapping the carbine over his shoulder to emphasize his words. “You take this man straight to HQ, get that? You go with him to Master. You no stop on the way, you no cause any trouble. Okay? You no let other People cause any trouble, savvy?”

  George looked at him, then at me, then back to the other man, swinging his head in a confused way.

  “Does he speak English?” I asked.

  “This is what he savvies best,” Maastricht said, slapping the carbine again. “Hurry it up, George. Help this man to HQ. I’ll be back when I’ve checked the fishing nets.”

  “Savvy,” said George. “Hurry it up. Help this man HQ, come back when I check the nets.”

  “You just get him safe to HQ,” Maastricht said, clouting him across the shoulders.

  The hulking fellow jumped down into shallow water and put out a hand to help me. I say “hand”—it was a black leathery deformed thing he extended to me. There was nothing to do but take it. I had to jump down and fell practically into his arms, leaning for a moment against his barrel chest. Again I felt in him the same revulsion as struggled in myself. He moved back one pace in one hop, catching me off balance, so that I fell on my hands and knees in the shallow waters.

  “Sort yourselves out!” Maastricht shouted, with a laugh. Swinging the carbine round on its sling, he fired one shot in the air, presumably as a warning, then headed the landing craft toward where the channel widened.

  George watched him go, then turned to me almost timorously. His gaze probed mine; being almost neckless, he hunched his shoulders to do so, as if he were shortsighted. At the same time, he extended that maimed hand to me. I was still on my knees in the water. There was something poignant in the fellow’s gesture. I took his arm and drew myself up.

  “Thank you, George.”

  “Me George. You no call George?”

  “My name is Calvert Roberts. I’m glad of your help.”

  “You got Four Limbs Long. You glad of your help.” He put his paw to his head as if trying to cope with concepts beyond his ability. “You glad me help. You glad George help.”

  “Yes. I’m feeling kind of shaky.”

  He gestured toward the open water. “You—find in water, yes?”

  It was as if he were striving to visualize something that had happened long ago.

  “Which way to your HQ, George?”

  “HQ, yes, we go, no trouble. No stop on way, no cause any trouble.” His voice held a curious clotted quality. We stood on the stony beach, with a fringe of palm trees and scrub to landward, while a comedy of misdirected intentions developed—or it might have been a comedy if I had had the strength to find the situation funny. George did not know whether he should walk before me or behind me or beside me. His shuffling movements suggested that he was reluctant to adopt any of the alternatives.

  The surface amiability of our conversation (if it can be dignified by that word) in no way calmed my fear of George. He was monstrous, and his close physical presence remained abhorrent. Something in his posture inspired distrust. That jackal sneer on his face seemed at war all the time with a boarish element in his composition, so that I was in permanent doubt as to whether he was going to turn round and run away or to charge at me; and a certain nervous shuffle in his step kept that doubt uppermost in my mind.

  “You lead, I’ll follow, George.”

  I thought he was about to dash away into the bushes. I tried again.

  “All right. I’ll go ahead and you can follow me.”

  I thought he was about to rush at me.

  “You no drive me?”

  “I want to get to HQ, George. I must have water. There’s no danger, is there?”

  He shook his great head to and fro, saying, “Danger, yes. No. No stop on way, no cause any trouble. Go with him to Master.”

  I began to walk. He darted forward immediately and remained exactly one pace behind, his little piggy eyes glaring into mine whenever I turned my head. Had I not felt so exhausted, I should have been more frightened or more amused than I was.

  In my condition and in this company, I was not well equipped to appreciate scenery. It presented, however, an immediate solid impression to me, an impression formidable and silent. Underfoot was that broken marginal territory which marks the division between ocean and land, even so precarious a wedge of land as this. Just ahead were bleached rocks and the somber greens of palm and thorn bushes. The ocean was at its eternal stir; the foliage hung silent and waiting, and far from welcoming.

  The undergrowth came down close to the water’s edge. I saw a track leading among the trees, and took it.

  George had evidently summed me up by now, for he said, “He got Four Limbs Long. You got Four Limbs Long.”

  “That’s how it happens to be with mankind,” I said sharply.

  George said, or rather chanted, “‘Four Limbs Long—Wrong Kind of Song!’”

  “Where did you get that idea from?” I asked. But I did not stand and wait for his answer. I set off along the path, and he sprang to follow on my heels, one pace behind. It was a relief to be among trees again, in shade. After all the days in the boat, my walk was uncertain, although I felt stre
ngth returning as we proceeded.

  My mind was preoccupied with many things, not least with my weakness and the contrasting strength of the moronic brute behind me. I was also puzzled by what Maastricht—whom I took for a Netherlander from his name and his accent—had said: “Welcome to Moreau Island.” The name meant something to me, yet I could not place it at all. Moreau Island? Had some scandal been connected with it?

  Despite these preoccupations, I took care to keep alert to my surroundings, for there had been something threatening in Maastricht’s warning to George. What or whom were we likely to meet?

  This strip of the island had little to offer, apart from the singular virtue of being terra firma. The rock to our right hand, sculptured as if by water at some earlier period of history, harbored many scuttling things, though probably nothing more exotic than birds and lizards. Bamboos were all about us, growing from cavities in the rock and from the ground, which was littered with stones and large shells. They grew thickly enough to obstruct our passage, though thinly enough for a pattern of sunlight and shadow to be cast where we walked. Occasionally we caught glimpses of the bright sea to our left, through a trellis of leaves.

  At one point, I almost tripped over one of the large shells. Kicking it aside, I observed that it was the whitened and empty shell of a tortoise. We seemed almost to be walking through a tortoise graveyard, so thick did the shells lie; there was never a sign of a live one.

  Boulders lay close on either side, some of them as tall as we were. Then we had to thread our way between them, and George came uncomfortably close to my vulnerable neck. Two of these big boulders virtually formed a gateway; beyond them, more of George’s uncouth breed of native were lurking.

  I saw them among the thickets ahead and halted despite myself.

  Turning to George, I said, “Why are they in hiding? What’s the matter with them?”

  With a crafty look, at once furtive and menacing, George said, “‘Four Limbs Long—Wrong Kind of Song.… Four Limbs Short—Right Kind of Sport!’” His feet began a kind of shuffle in the dust. His eyes would not meet mine. There was no point in trying to make conversation with him. Now that his own kind were close, he looked more dangerous than ever.

  “George, you take me straight to HQ, savvy? You no stop, you no cause trouble, you no let anybody cause trouble, okay? You savvy?”

  He began to pant in a doggy way, his tongue hanging out. “You no got carbine, Cal—” Perhaps he struggled to recall my surname; if so he failed, and his use of my given name carried an unwelcome familiarity.

  I was remembering what Maastricht had said, “Master got carbine!”

  He moved one burly shoulder at me, looking away, mumbling, “Yes, savvy Master got carbine …”

  “Come on, then!” Advancing between the boulders, I called, “Stand back ahead. We are in a hurry.”

  An amazing array of faces peered out of the bushes. They bore a family resemblance to George, although there was great variety in their deformity. Here were snouts that turned up and proboscises that turned down; mouths with no lips, mouths with serrated lips; hairless faces and faces covered almost completely with hair or stubble; eyes that glared with no visible lids, eyes that dreamed under heavy lids like horses’. All these faces were turned suspiciously toward me, noses twitching in my direction, and all managed to avoid my direct gaze by a hairbreadth. From some eyes in the deeper shadows, I caught the red or green blank glare of iridescence, as if I were confronted by animals from a ludicrous fairy tale.

  Indeed, I recalled series of drawings by artists like Charles Le Brun and Thomas Rowlandson, in which the physiognomies of men and women merged through several transformations into the physiognomies of animals—bulls, lions, leopards, dogs, oxen, and pigs. The effect was absurd as well as alarming. I moved forward, clapping my hands slowly, and slowly they gave way.

  But they were calling to George, who still followed me.

  “Has he not Four Limbs Long?”

  “Is he from the Lab’raty?”

  “Where is the one with the bottle?”

  “Has he a carbine?”

  And other things I could not understand, for I was soon to learn that George’s diction was a marvel of distinctness among his friends, and he a creature of genius among morons. He still followed stubbornly behind me, saying, or rather chanting—most of their sentences were in singsong—“He find in big water. He Four Limbs Long. He Five Fingers Long—Not Wise or Strong. No stop, no cause trouble. Plenty beat at HQ.”

  He chanted. I staggered beside him. They fell back or hopped back, letting us through—but hands with maimed stubs of fingers, hands more like paws or hooves, reached out and touched me as I went by.

  Now I caught a strong rank smell, like the whiff of a tiger cage in a zoo. The trees and bushes thinned, the sun beat down more strongly, and we came to the native village.

  Near the first houses, a rock on my right hand rose in a high wall. Climbers and vines, some brilliantly flowering, hung down the rock face, and among them fell a slender waterfall, splashing from shelf to shelf of the rock. It filled a small pool, where it had been muddied and fouled. But I ran to the rock, and let the blessed stuff fall direct onto my face, my lips, my parched tongue, my throat! Ah, that moment! In truth, the waterfall was not much more than a drip, but Niagara itself could not have been more welcome!

  After a while, I had to rest dizzily against the rock, letting the water patter on the back of my neck. I could hear the natives stealthily gather about me. But I offered a prayer of thanks for my deliverance before I turned to face them.

  Their ungainly bodies were hidden under the same coveralls that George wore; many an unseemly bulk was thus concealed from the world. One or two of them wore boots; most went barefoot. Some had made barbaric attempts to decorate themselves with shells or bits of bone in their hair or round their necks. Only later did I realize that these were the females of this wonderfully miscegenous tribe.

  Fascinated as I was with them, I believe they were far more fascinated with me.

  “He laps water,” one said, sidling up and addressing me without meeting my gaze.

  “I drink water, as I guess you must,” I said. I was torn between curiosity and apprehension, not knowing whether to try to establish communication or make a break for it, but at least this creature who came forward looked as harmless as any of them. George resembled an outré blend of boar and hyena; this creature looked like a kind of dog. He had the fawning aspect of a mongrel which one sometimes notices in human beings even in more favored parts of the world.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, pointing at him to get the message home.

  He slunk back a pace. “‘The Master’s is the Hand that Maims. The Master’s is the Voice that Names.…’”

  “What is your name?”

  He touched his pouting chest humbly. “Your name Bernie, Good man, good boy.”

  “Yes, you’re a good man, Bernie.” Weakness and a touch of hysteria overcame me. To find a Bernie here in this miserable patch of jungle on some forgotten rock in the Pacific—a Bernie looking so much like a stray pooch—was suddenly funny. Why, I thought, Bernie as in Saint Bernard! I began helplessly to laugh, collapsing against the rock. I still laughed when I found myself sitting in the mud. When they clustered nearer to me, staring down in a bovine way, I covered my face and laughed and wept.

  I scarcely heard the whistle blow.

  They heard. “The Master Knows! The Master Blows!” They milled about uneasily. I looked up, afraid of being trampled on. Then one started to run and they all followed, stampeding as if they were a herd of cattle. George stood till last, looking at me with a great puzzlement from under his hat, muttering to himself. Then he too attempted to flee.

  He was too late. The Master appeared. George sank to the ground, covering his head with humble slavish gesture. A whip cracked across his shoulders and then the Master passed him and strode toward me.

  Climbing slowly to my feet, I stood with m
y back to the rock. I was tempted to imitate the natives and take to my heels.

  The so-called Master was tremendously tall! I reckoned he was at least three meters high, impossibly tall for a human being.

  I could see him among the trees and huts, marching along a wide track, and not much more than fifty meters from me. I had a glimpse of tranquil waters behind him, but all my attention was concentrated on him.

  He carried a carbine in the alert position, ready to fire. It was aimed at me in a negligent sort of way. His stride was one of immeasurable confidence; there was about it something rigid and mechanical.

  His face was concealed beneath a helmet. I could not see his eyes. As he came near, I saw that his arms and legs were of metal and plastic.

  “My God, it’s a robot!” I said aloud.

  Then it came round the corner of the rock and confronted me.

  “Where did you spring from?” it demanded.

  3

  In the Hands of the Master

  One of my reasons for believing in God has been the presence in my life of emotions and understandings not susceptible to scientific method. I have met otherwise scientific men who believe in telepathy while denying God. To me, it makes more sense to believe in God than telepathy; telepathy seems to me to be unscientific mumbo-jumbo like astrology (although I have met men working prosaically on the Moon who held an unshakable belief in astrology), while God can never be unscientific, because he is the Prime Mover who contains science along with all the other effects of our universe. Or so I had worked it out, to my temporary satisfaction. God’s shifting ground.

  Directly I faced the Master, I felt some of those emotions—call them empathic if you will—which I have referred to as being unsusceptible to scientific method. Directly he spoke, I knew that in him, as in his creatures, aggression and fear were mixed. God gave me understanding.

  This could not be a robot.

  I looked up at him. Once I got a grip on myself, I saw that the Master, although indeed a fearsome figure, was not as tall as I had estimated in my near panic. He stood perhaps two and a quarter meters high, which is to say just over a head taller than I.