An Island Called Moreau

by Brian W Aldiss

  She put an index finger to her mouth and nibbled at the nail. “I hear you’re lucky to be alive. Sorry, passing messages just isn’t my thing.”

  “Then I want to speak to Dart—or Maastricht, or Da Silva.”

  “Da Silva lives in the lab. Hans is drunk as usual. You know, if that guy would only make the effort, he could throw off his alcoholic addiction just like that. Fundamentally, he is very nice.”

  “Let me speak to someone else then. I can’t waste any more time.”

  She put her arms akimbo and summed me up with her big eyes. There was too much conscious charm in the gesture for my taste. “So you were the only one who survived ten days in an open boat. Why do you imagine you alone survived and your friends did not?”

  “They happened to be blown up, else they’d have survived. They were real tough. Look, lady, it’s nice to see you—will you show me to the radio?”

  “Do you think I would have survived in your boat?”

  I was growing impatient with the conversation. She—Heather—was prowling about the room now, laying a hand on chairbacks and desks as she passed them. She was very graceful, and I observed the little plump buttocks in her trousers.

  I said, “I’d guess you’d be better in bed than in an open boat.”

  Thinking back afterward I could see that it was not the kind of remark to make to that kind of lady. The tight trousers misled me. She took my intended compliment as an insult of a particular male kind and, being of a tricky temperament, made me pay for it during the rest of my time on the island.

  She glared at me. “What makes you think I couldn’t survive in an open boat? I’ve survived plenty, believe me. You have to be tough to exist here.”

  She sounded belligerent but was preparing to escape.

  “No offense intended. Don’t fly off the handle. What exactly is your function?”

  At that, she prowled nearer to me, still looking unfriendly.

  “They fished you out of the ocean, feller—what right do you have to question me? Let’s just say that I play Man Friday to the Master’s Robinson Crusoe, is that okay?”

  Forcing a smile, I said, “It doesn’t tell me what you’re doing here.”

  “What I’m doing is bringing your supper, since Bella’s nowhere to be found.… It’s in your bedroom.” Unease showed beneath her display of fighting spirit, and I thought it was the first time she had answered one of my questions directly. “I never met an Undersecretary of State before, so I wanted to see what you were like. You’re no different from anyone else.”

  As she made for the door into the corridor, I grasped one of her slim wrists. She must have been expecting it. She twisted in such a way that pain sprang up my arm and I let go of her. I caught one mocking glance from her large eyes; then she was gone.

  Over my cold Korean meal, I wondered how much I was being manipulated. Someone like Dart would have a powerful compulsion to gain as full a control over his environment as possible; to that end, he could have no better setting than a small island. It remained to be seen how much the fey Heather was her own agent or something Dart controlled. What was her remark about having perfect control over herself?

  Although I regarded what I had seen of the events on the island with misgiving, my interest lay elsewhere, and my duty was to report back, and then get back, to the center of things as soon as possible. There was a war on, and I was part of it. I went to bed in a moderately bad temper and spent an immoderately bad night.

  4

  A Quick Swim in the Lagoon

  When breakfast came, it was Bella who brought it, not Heather. She sidled into my room with a tray and would, I believe, have slunk out without speaking had I not called to her. Her heavy head came over her shoulder and she regarded me with those smoldering feline eyes.

  “Bella, will you tell your Master that I wish to speak to him? I wish him to send a message by radio and then I intend to quit his establishment. I will stay in the village until my relief party comes. Tell him that.”

  “You no like this place?”

  “Do you, Bella?”

  She considered the question, looking down at the floor. At last, she said, “You Four Legs Long but you no like see me get whip last yest’day.”

  “Tell Master what I say, Bella—he won’t whip you.”

  “You no got whip.”

  She went. You no got whip! was that her way of commending me, or did she speak contemptuously? Was she telling me to mind my own business? I had no idea.

  When the Master came, rolling quickly up in his self-propelled chair, I was awaiting him. I held out a sheet of paper.

  “Here’s a signal to ASASC HQ, informing them that I am alive and stating my whereabouts. I’ll ask you to add grid references for this island. May I remind you that there is a war on, and that it is your duty as a British citizen to assist the Co-Allied cause by beaming this message immediately. Meanwhile, I’ll take up your offer of yesterday and leave these premises. I can stay somewhere down in the village until the relief party comes.”

  “Stay somewhere in the village? That’s good. You won’t find any Holiday Inn to put up at. No way.”

  “I’m not here on vacation.”

  Dart looked at me curiously. Then he snatched up the paper with prosthetic fingers and swung round in his chair. “If it’s local color you’re after, you’ll get a basinful of that right enough. You obviously don’t care for my company—perhaps the company in the kampong will suit your tastes. Though they don’t play Haydn down there, you’ll find.”

  I didn’t answer that. I followed him outside.

  When we reached the outer gate, he raised the seat of his chair electrically until he was high enough to insert a magnetic key in a lock set well up the gate. Then he spun a wheel, as I had seen him doing on the outside of the compound. The gate rolled open. I was free to go.

  “See you,” I said, tipping a finger at him.

  He sat watching me, still and alert as a toad, as I walked through the gate and out into the sunshine.

  The view under the trees was striking. The eye was led under an avenue of foliage toward the glittering waters of the lagoon, with the village nestling modestly among palm trees on the far side. The sound of the ocean pounding against rocks came clear to me; it was the permanent sound of Moreau Island, and would remain so, long after men had gone. I could not help contrasting my surroundings with the silent and austere landscape of Luna.

  But I was preoccupied with thoughts of Mortimer Dart, the Master, and the kind of man he was. I had yet to grasp the situation on the island, and that I determined to do. The whole concept of an island ruled over by one man was an anachronism—something that the big powers would not tolerate. There were certain matters here I could investigate before the rescue party came to pick me up.

  I was not entirely sure that Dart intended to transmit my message. To make certain, I would send a cable from the village. Or so I told myself, making a grave error of judgment.

  I started optimistically toward the village. I had gone half a dozen paces when a figure leaped from the bushes. It ran across my path and stopped beside me, panting and laughing.

  It was Bernie the Dog Man, showing his teeth in nothing but an amiable way and pushing his face with its large moist eyes toward mine. He tapped his chest as when we first met and said, “Your name Bernie—good boy, good man. Speak only with speech. Never eat filth, no, no!”

  “Hello, Bernie. You still remember me, do you?”

  His whole body wriggled with pleasure and he moved as close to me as he could. “Ha, many nighttimes! You Four Limbs Long, well made. Good boy, good man, take out of the big waters all wet. Like fish, yes, good. Use the hands, speak only with speech. Don’t be bad or need Whip any more.”

  As I began to move on, he kept pace with me, still talking, giving me watchful sideways glances which reminded me of the hulking George, although there was none of George’s menace in Bernie’s evasive stare.

  “Are you coming
with me to the village, Bernie?”

  “Are you coming with you, Bernie, yes! Good speech, many nighttimes! Good, Bernie good, good boy—got little hands and arms like Master. I come with you in my body, good. Not need Whip any more, you’ll see. One, two, three, five.… Green, yellow, plate. You Bernie, you not Master, you friend, you good boy …”

  With such conversation to enlighten us, we came down to the harbor.

  When I had passed this way on my arrival on Moreau Island, my exhaustion had been too great for me to take in much of my surroundings. I stood and regarded them now with disappointment. The harbor and the village were poor things; proximity to what I had regarded as a picturesque South Sea island retreat brought nothing but disillusion.

  The harbor was constructed of concrete-filled sandbags, the fabric of which had long ago rotted away. A wooden walk stretched a few yards out over the water, but I would not have wanted to trust myself to it. Two battered old landing craft—one of which had been used in my rescue, I did not doubt—were moored there. The place reeked of neglect.

  As for the village! In the noonday light, only a row of half a dozen palms, sloping out over the water, lent it a touch of beauty. It was no more than a collection of hovels. Some of the hovels were constructed from natural materials such as palm leaves. Others were built with the castoffs of Western civilization—ancient jerry cans, corrugated iron, old packing cases, rusting automobiles. All were miserable in the extreme. One or two brutish faces peered out of doorways, not moving in the heat. My expectations about sending cables died at once.

  The only sign of activity, or of intelligence, was round on the other side of the lagoon, on the right of where I stood with Bernie. There groups of natives were bending their backs, a concrete mixer was chugging, a mobile crane swung blocks of stone out into the green water.

  Sunshine enveloped me. Sweat trickled down my backbone. I stood gazing at the scene, taking in all the parsimonious evidences of mankind set against a natural prodigality. I stared down at the concrete of the quayside beneath my feet. The concrete was laid in prefabricated slabs, many of which had been broken at the corners during the process of laying. Cracks ran like lines on an automobile map, creating cartographic sketches of obliterated cities; weeds, forcing their way among the fissures and avenues, represented vegetation surviving in microcosmic Hiroshimas. All directions ultimately led nowhere. The primitive roadway, to my anxious mind, formed a diagram of what was in process; I saw I also had a miniature battle on my hands here. I would have to overcome Dart if I was ever to leave Moreau Island.

  I began walking slowly along the edge of the lagoon, oppressed with a thunderous sense of fate which I tried to tell myself was nothing more than the receding tide of my weakness. The chug-chug of the concrete mixer ahead, the swinging arm of the crane, seemed to offer something stable in my uncertain state. As I advanced, I heard my name called. A hand waved from the crane. My pace became more positive in response. The arm of the crane halted in midswing, and Maastricht jumped down.

  He strolled toward me, bare-chested, riot gun slung over his right shoulder.

  “You’re jack-of-all-trades, I see, Mr. Maastricht.”

  “Nobody else to do it if I don’t. Can’t leave it to this gang of brutes to do sensible work.” He evaded my gaze as he spoke by glancing at the natives he referred to.

  “There must be other—well, white men on the island.”

  “Warren—no, no, there’s no person else, just the Master and me. And Da Silva.” He ran a hand across his face, as if to wipe out a mistake he had nearly made. “I thought you understood the setup. You’re slow to catch on, you a Yankee politician.”

  “My brain’s been boiling in my skull for too many days, Mr. Maastricht.”

  “Call me Hans, for heaven’s sake, man. You stuffy politicians, I don’t know. Come and have a drink.”

  “I don’t drink. I thought I told you. You’re slow to catch on.”

  He looked almost straight at me and then grinned. He pulled a crumpled pack of mescahales from his pocket and lit one. “Bet you don’t smoke either?”

  “Correct. It’s a vile habit.”

  “You’re not drinking, not smoking—what do you do, Mr. Roberts?”

  I outstared him, and he dropped his eyes, muttering.

  “I’m not such a bastard as I might appear.” Then he turned and kicked out with one foot, catching the wretched Bernie on one flank. “You, Bernie, what the hell are you doing? Four Limbs Long, Song Gone Wrong, remember. Back to work.”

  Bernie departed, yelling and hopping. Behind us, the work crew labored slowly and clumsily on. I saw George sitting on a slab of stone, eyeing them darkly from under his hat, and gathered that he was the foreman of the gang.

  “Yes, as I was saying, I’m not such a bastard. It’s just that the Master—Dart—I get the custom of calling him Master—he brings out the worst. I used to be a painter, in my good days, bygone.”

  “An artist, eh? Amsterdam’s a good city for artists.”

  “No, no, you misunderstand, no Rembrandt. I paint houses, inside or out. I have three men work under me. Now only animals! Come and see what we are doing now here.”

  He showed me how they were straightening out the curve of the lagoon at that point by throwing in stone, so as to make a proper mooring for small ships.

  “That little quay you passed was built by the Japanese, way back in the last world war, when I was a little baby. Here the water is much deeper, to make a better berth. You see the fish?”

  We stood looking over the edge. The water was a clear green. A million little fish glittered in it, all the way down to sand.

  “Where do you get the blocks of stone? It doesn’t look as if you’ve been blasting the cliff.”

  “No, we don’t blast the cliff.” He leaned in the shadow of the crane, picking up his familiar bottle and taking a swig. “See, we have an underground reservoir for fresh water. You get to it from inside the palisade. Much stones. That was all dug out by hand, by the Beast People.”

  “The Beast People!”

  “You see, the secret is to keep them working, Calvert—Mr. Roberts. You must keep them working. Now I’m a Marxist, myself, unlike the Master, who’s a fascist pig, so I know all about the proles. What was I going to be saying? Yes, that’s right. You keep them working. First they dig out the reservoir, take several years, now they build the new quay with the stones.”

  “I’d like to ask you a lot of questions about Dart, Hans. But first of all, can I send a radio message from anywhere here?”

  “Through the Master’s transmitters. No other way, of course.”

  “That’s a little awkward, because I have just moved out.”

  His expression became very gloomy and worried.

  “That’s bad. However, he is very consistent—no, I mean he is not consistent. I will speak to him for you. You must be inside by nightfall, of course.”

  “How so?”

  He looked askance at me. He took another swig from the bottle. He looked at the selection of burly and hairy backs near us, at the little eyes that forever furtively regarded us over hunched shoulders. Then he shrugged expressively.

  “They’re dangerous?” I asked in a low voice.

  He laughed roughly to show how stupid he thought my question—too stupid to answer. Instead, he took another drink. “You’ll end up a drinking man before you’re here a week, chum. I bet you!” I could see he was relapsing into the sullen mood in which I had found him on our first meeting.

  “I don’t intend to be here a week,” I said.

  He gave me an odd look, and then heaved himself back into the crane.

  I walked on, past the work group, to the extreme tip of the land, where the lagoon met the ocean. The water of the lagoon was green; the water of the ocean was blue. I saw how sheer the cliffs were, and knew that they went on down into deep waters. There was no continental shelf here. Anything that fell into the Pacific would keep on falling for a long way.


  The air smelled good. I breathed deep, feeling strength return.

  I was in a position where I could see the north coast of Moreau Island, curving to either side, since the lagoon lay roughly in the middle of its length. The island was boomerang-shaped. The high cliffs lay to the east of the lagoon; on the west, they were replaced by a broken shoreline. Out to sea was nothing, except for one sizable rock, crowned by a stunted palm, standing about a kilometer off the eastern tip of the island. Nothing else but unbroken horizon, not even a cloud. The Moon never looked quite so empty. And the empty lives about me …? From that thought, I turned away.

  While I sat staring out toward the horizon, beyond which a world war was gathering strength, the dog-like Bernie crept up to me again. He panted and groveled at my feet without daring to speak. So isolated was I that I felt glad to have him there.

  “Good boy, good man,” I said.

  A siren shrilled. For a while, I wondered if an air attack were imminent—the work gang dropped whatever they were doing and took to their heels, shouting and bellowing as they went. Bernie jumped up and started whining, although he did not leave my side.

  The stampede headed round the rim of the lagoon, making for the village. One of the natives fell, to scamper on unhurt. Maastricht jumped down from his crane and called to me.

  “That’s lunchtime. Now is where I switch on the music!”

  He went across to a metal locker like a small sentry box which stood near the water, opened it, and pressed a switch. Drumming filled the air.

  Amplifiers were dotted here and there over the island. Some were fixed to the lamp standards round the lagoon, with a concentration of them in the village.

  A series of jingles burst from the amplifiers, filling the air.

  One thing unites us all—that’s Love!

  Come on, there, Baby, don’t matter the Shape—

  Be Beastly now, rock, push, and shove,

  Wolf, leopard, jackal, with man, bull, and ape!

  Maastricht came up to me, laughing at the expression of disgust on my face.