An Island Called Moreau

by Brian W Aldiss

  He was moving fast. He and George both swerved to avoid each other. But they both swerved in the same direction and so collided just the same. They fell over, rolled about, and immediately began to fight.

  Maastricht’s drunken laughter echoed across the lagoon.

  “We must break that up!” said Dart. “This is not a funfair.”

  He raised his carbine and fired it into the air, twice.

  As soon as the fight commenced, the Beast People began rushing toward the action. The shots halted them momentarily. Then their curiosity got the better of them, and they dashed forward again. With a cry of anger, the cyborg started toward them, moving rapidly on his power-assisted legs. I followed more slowly, walking down the shadow-flecked path until I was halfway between the fight and the point on the harbor where Maastricht stood, still laughing inanely.

  The arrival of the Master on the scene was sufficient for the Beast People. They broke and ran, jumping among the bushes and huts with no regard for any scratches they might receive. Even George and Foxy broke apart, to stand glaring at each other and breathing heavily.

  Both creatures were bleeding freely, as I saw when I got closer. Foxy nursed his left arm. The sleeve was torn away, revealing a long tear in the sandy flesh where George’s teeth had slashed. George had the heavier build and did not seem hurt, although his lower lip was swollen and leaked blood which he did not attempt to stanch. They held their ground and glared defiance, at Dart as well as at each other.

  Dart—wisely, I thought—said in calmer tones, “Okay, back to work, everyone! George, get back to the crane. Do what I say, no cause trouble.” He drew his whip and cracked it.

  “I all kill up boss-man George very soon,” Foxy said distinctly. He got the whip across his shoulders and fled.

  In contrast with the sullen submission I had seen so far, Foxy’s was an exceptional piece of defiance—and couched in exceptionally clear English. Maybe the Master thought so as well; but he contented himself by shouting a threat at Foxy’s retreating back before stomping off toward the crane.

  George, muttering darkly to himself, cast about on the ground, picked up his dusty hat, and rammed it on his head. As if in so doing he regained his courage, he went galloping off toward the harbor, overtaking the Master, waving his stubby arms and yowling, much as he had done previously.

  I stood in the shade of a tree, watching, certain that there would be trouble between Dart and Maastricht. The latter was too drunk at present; but later he might be a valuable ally against Dart. The two of us would be more than a match for Dart, for all his armament, if we stayed outside the compound. And Maastricht had a carbine.

  Maastricht stopped laughing as Dart approached and began shouting instead. Dart shouted back. A slanging match developed. I saw Dart stoop and seize Maastricht’s half-empty bottle from where it stood on top of the caterpillar track. He flung it out toward the open sea.

  Uttering a few curses, Maastricht climbed awkwardly into the crane and started it up. George set up a loud hullabaloo. The workers were running past where I stood, jostling to get back to their rocks and their cement. Satisfied, Dart turned away. I walked forward.

  Maastricht started up the crane. It began to crawl slowly along the harbor edge. He leaned out of the cab to shout to George, who was furiously conducting the workers. As he did so, he caught my eye, and raised a thumb in a gesture of defiance to the fates. I signaled back. And at that moment the crane tipped forward.

  I saw the far track go over the edge of the concrete in a shower of mortar. Slowly, the machine canted to one side. Maastricht swore, tugging at a lever. Its engine roared and the track spun. Then the whole thing slewed over and plunged into the lagoon.

  I yelled and broke into a run.

  The scene was one of tremendous confusion.

  The Beast People milled about on the edge of the water, uttering a medley of cries. Most of them appeared in genuine terror—though here and there I saw furtive gloating at the disaster. Many plunged to the edge of the water, jumping on the rocks and collapsed cement wall without daring to venture into the alien element. One old fellow with a face like a horse fell in; in the scramble to rescue him, others joined him in the water. Never was there so much screaming and crying!

  And George—he was the most demented! He charged madly to and fro, hooting madly. Finally, he flung himself in the lagoon and was forced to scramble out again at once.

  All this was marginal to my attention. My eyes were fixed on the great confusion in the water where the crane had gone down. One corner of the cab and a section of track was above water. Bubbles came billowing up. There was no sign of Maastricht. I kicked my shoes off.

  “Roberts, please—please save him!”

  I heard Dart’s words as I dived in.

  On the first dive I found Hans. Slicing under the cab, kicking strongly in the muddied water, I came on his naked back and right leg. He was struggling. A great deal of sand and muck had been churned up, but I saw that his arms had in some way been trapped in the entrance of the cab and were wedged from inside. His head was in the cab, the rest of him outside, as though he had almost been flung out as the machine tipped over. I seized and shook his shoulder to let him know that help was on the way before returning to the surface to regain breath.

  I went down again through the upper door of the cab, plunging down to him through the clouded water. Diesel oil seeped up past my eyes.

  Maastricht’s face was close to mine, full of anguish. His carbine and its strap had caught in the grip by the door, trapping his arm as he had tried to jump free. His left arm was still fighting to release himself. It took me only a moment to push the weapon out of the way and let his arm go. I seized him under the armpits and heaved at him.

  What I needed was more purchase. For that, I had to get further through the cab and grasp his torso. Against myself, I was forced up to the surface.

  Those dark and alien faces whirled round me. What a racket they made—or else it was the blood hammering in my arteries. Dizzily, I gulped air, then plunged for the third time, right down through the cab.

  This time, I got my arms round Hans and my feet against the caterpillar wheels. I heaved and tugged and slipped. He was still struggling. Still I could not budge him. With my head in the murk and a vague square shadow of light above me, I heaved … and heaved again, unable to understand why he did not now float free. With my lungs bursting, I kicked down further and found that his left leg was pinned between crane and lagoon floor.

  When I returned to the world of sunlight, the Master loomed above me on the broken wall.

  “Get him up, you must get him up, Cal!”

  George was up to his hocks in the water, his black gaze devouring me. “You fish me out water—please!” Much later, reviewing the scene, recalling what George had said as he crouched there with his great neckless head thrust forward, I asked myself, Just a confusion with pronouns or a genuine identification with the drowning man?

  But the one creature there with real presence of mind was Foxy. He pushed through the melee with a length of rope from the building site. He threw one end to me, with a curious glance of triumph and mistrust from his shifty red eyes.

  “Take the other end, Dart,” I called. Then I dived once more.

  It was no problem to tie the rope about Hans’ chest. His eyes still stared, his hair streamed upward, tendrils of his beard drifted into his open mouth. Slithering in the muck on the floor of the lagoon, I jerked on the rope and kicked out for the surface.

  Dart heaved at the rope. The rabble, despite their awe of him, also pulled. It was a ghastly tug-of-war, during which I had visions of Hans floating up with one leg missing. But he never floated up at all.

  Twice more I dived to the lagoon floor. His leg and foot were crushed between the crane and one of the slabs of rock thrown in to build the harbor.

  At last I pulled myself out of the water.

  “He’s trapped. You’re going to have to move the crane,” I
told Dart. “Harness up the two landing craft with hawsers. If you can shift it a few inches, Hans will come free. Speed it up!”

  They did as I suggested. The operation was a shambles. What should have taken ten minutes, not more, took over an hour. Eventually, the crane was got to move, and we hauled poor Hans up. Dart laid about him with the whip while I applied the kiss of life. No response.

  We emptied a gallon of water out of his lungs and I tried again. It did not work. Hans Maastricht was dead.

  I squatted by his pale body, looking round at those who had known him. I was getting to recognize many individuals; not merely George, giving me his black inscrutable stare, Bernie, pleasingly staying as near as he could, Foxy, sneering over some secret pleasure, but several others—an old gray Swine Woman, a heavy Horse-Hippo with slow tread, a pair of Bull Men, very morose. They had enjoyed the excitement; most of them were beginning to back away, content to leave the sprawled body where it lay.

  Dart pointed his whip at the two Bull Men. “You two—carry the body to HQ. Pick it up. Quickly!”

  They seized Hans’ body by the shoulders, dragging it slowly along without expression beyond a habitual one of grievance, letting the dead man’s heels trail along the ground. Dart strode on ahead. George trotted about beside the Bull Men, patting the body, prodding it, as if unable to believe that life had fled. The rest of the Beast People milled about and started to trail home. Foxy had disappeared.

  The body was brought to a small surgery in one corner of the laboratory block. This was the first time I had been here; something of the Bull Men’s unease communicated itself to me. When the corpse was laid on a table, Dart shooed the carriers outside.

  “Come back tomorrow. Tomorrow funeral—bury Hans, savvy? Hans go underground, meet Big Master. Savvy?”

  The Bull Men looked gloomily at me. Then they turned and galloped for the exit. Dart locked the gate behind them and we went indoors. I got a towel from my bedroom and dried myself.

  When he appeared in the doorway, Dart had shed his armor and was back in the chair.

  “This is a miserable turn of events, to be sure! Well, that’s what life’s all about. Always some fresh misery.”

  “I notice you try to inculcate religion into your people, even if you don’t believe in God yourself!”

  “You can cook without eating the food yourself. You mean that business about ‘Big Master underground’? We’ll have more of that at the funeral tomorrow—which we’ll hold at three p.m., the same time as your fictitious funeral. There’s bloody hypocrisy—but you didn’t object to that, did you?”

  “Hans is unmistakably dead. At least give him a proper burial.”

  “It’s a good chance to rub in the Big Master stuff. It does no harm—it’s designed to keep them in order, to worry them that someone invisible with an even bigger whip than mine might be watching them when I’m not about. Isn’t that how all religions started?”

  “You’re bitter about your country, your name, your religion—I can see you have your reasons, but, after all this while, can’t you come to terms with your disabilities? You’ve done well in that respect physically; why cripple yourself spiritually?”

  He gave a cold smile. “If I believed in your bloody Christian God, then I’d have to believe that he made me in his image. Neither you nor I would want a God who looked like that, so that’s all there is about it. Now, give up trying to rile me. Enough’s enough for one day. Come and have a whisky with me, like a man. A sundowner.”

  “A cordial will do me.”

  Bella brought us in two plastic trays of lunch and we ate together in the control room, with Bella leaning behind Dart’s chair. I gathered she ate in whatever served as the kitchen. Looking at her, I shuddered; the mixture of woman and beast in her seemed so complex; in her slinking attitude was something seductive, yet her face was terrifyingly ugly under its dark wig.

  In the manner of one making conversation, Dart said, “A little drink does a man no harm. It’s a custom that goes with civilization. Too much drink is another matter; you lose control. That was poor Hans’ trouble. His grandmother was a Malay. He drank too much and today it finished him off.”

  “No. He may have drunk too much, but what finished him off was the rotten way the harbor was built. The concrete collapsed.”

  “He was boozed and drove over the side.”

  “Not so! The wall collapsed and the crane tipped over. It wasn’t Hans’ fault. The lousy setup here on Moreau Island killed him.”

  “It was drink, I tell you—I’ve known Hans for years. He had colored blood in him. I always said booze would kill him.”

  I grew angry. “What if booze did kill the poor guy? Why did he take to the bottle? Just to blot out the shame of living here with these mutilated creatures, these parodies of human beings.”

  Looking down at his plate, Dart said, “I knew him best. You don’t understand, Roberts. You’re only a bloody politician. I was fond of Hans. I’m going to miss him.… Oh, confound the whole damned rotten human setup!” He struck the table with a metal fist. The violence of the gesture soothed him. He looked up at me and said, in a perfectly calm manner, “We were on good terms, Hans and me. He had had a rough deal from life, right since he was a kid. This island was a sanctuary for him—for once he wasn’t on the receiving end. So he understood how I felt and I understood how he felt. Now you and I …”

  He let the sentence hang there. When I refused to say anything, he started again.

  “You and I—could we ever be on good terms? You’re a man of power, you’ve been around, you are probably on good terms with everyone you meet. You don’t even know what ‘good terms’ means—it’s something you take for granted. I can never have that relationship because of what I am. A thalidomide freak. I have to rule or go under. Does that sound like megalomania to you? Well, it’s not. It’s the result of experience, and you don’t buck experience. Not that I’ve any ideas about ruling anything but this little blob in the ocean—that’s all I want. But I don’t know what you’re thinking, do I? For all I know, you’re thinking you ought to wipe me out.”

  I looked out of the window.

  “I don’t think in those terms. I can see you are determined to force me into opposition to you, whether you realize it or not, but that’s a result of your paranoia, not my behavior.”

  “My paranoia! What old cant are you handing me? Do you know—have you any idea what paranoia is? It’s a rational reaction to surrounding circumstances. Why shouldn’t you be thinking about wiping me out? There’s a war going on all around the world, which you’re part of and I’m not. Who’s fighting that war, ask yourself! Not freaks like me, Mr. Roberts, no, but normals like you! War’s your idea! Wiping out’s your idea.”

  He was trembling now, and I could feel anger rising in me.

  “You aren’t exempt from guilt, Dart. Listen to what you’re saying. You’re talking to me as if I were a multitude, not an individual. You know very well war was not my idea, but if you can see me as a force rather than a person, then it’s easier for you to hate me. That’s how wars begin. Your deformities don’t give you any monopoly over right.”

  In speaking, I was leaning forward, pointing a finger at him. He seized on the gesture and starting shouting before I could finish.

  “I don’t want to hear your crap! Take a look at yourself! You are instinctively aiming a gun at me now, only all you have is a finger. So watch it, because I am armed, remember!”

  He brought up the automatic and aimed it at my stomach.

  “Now who’s thinking about wiping out?” I asked. “You’re right, Dart—only when you’ve got that thing in your claw can you be on equal terms with another man. I wonder you dared let poor Maastricht carry a gun.”

  Although he remained pointing the gun at me, his gaze left mine. He gazed down at the floor with little darting glances and began to bite on his lower lip.

  When he looked up at me again, he put the automatic back in a clip on the insid
e of his chair, and said, “I have a hasty temper, Mr. Roberts, and you deliberately tried making me shirty. All I was trying to tell you was that I wanted us to be on good terms. I want you to do something for me. I’ve just remembered that we haven’t got Hans’ carbine. Where is it? Down on the bed of the lagoon?”

  “It’s safe there. The Beast People don’t dare enter the water.”

  “You must get that gun for me, Mr. Roberts. If you don’t, they will.” He hitched himself up in the chair in agitation. “They mustn’t have firearms. Try and imagine the havoc they’d cause.”

  “I’m not going diving again, Dart, that’s final. You saw George and the rest of them. They are afraid of water.”

  “It’s the Seal People, Roberts. The Seal People! They’ll dive down and get the carbine. They might give it to the villagers, to Foxy, or one of the others. They’re all in league together. We’d have a full-scale uprising on our hands. Will you please go and get that gun—now, before sunset.”

  Privately, I doubted whether the seals would be able to find the carbine, even if they went looking for it. I shook my head, waiting to see if Dart would draw his gun on me again. Instead, he pressed a button on his chair arm.

  Bella appeared.

  “Fetch Heather here,” Dart commanded.

  He gave me as unpleasant a smile as I had ever seen but remained silent.

  In a minute, Bella returned with the dark American girl. She walked springily over to Dart’s side and stood there attentively, nibbling an index finger. Bella stood behind me, by the door.

  “Heather is a remarkable young lady, Mr. Roberts. My admiration of her is almost unbounded. She is very kind and very beautiful. Heather, my pet, would you kindly remove your clothes so that Mr. Roberts can see how beautiful you are? Bella, put a light on.”

  Heather was wearing the same costume she had worn earlier. She moved to one side so that she had plenty of room; and then she began to undress. She bent and removed her sandals, placing them together. Smiling remotely at me, she set her head on one side and unknotted the incongruous scarf. She pulled it from her neck and, extending her arm, let the material float to the floor. It was clear that she was expert at provocation. Next, she slowly undid the buttons of her saffron tunic, working from collarbone to navel, until the garment opened, revealing the flesh beneath it. With delicacy, she peeled the tunic from her narrow shoulders, casting it to the floor over the scarf, shaking her hair free as she did so. The movement emphasized the beauty of her breasts, which were not particularly full; she caressed the left one with her hand, running one of the nipples between her fingers as she did so.