An Island Called Moreau

by Brian W Aldiss

  I could see how uncomfortable Dart was under this peremptory tone, and it was Heather who answered sharply, “We hear too many of your complaints, 402. You know how short of staff we are here. Why don’t you do something for a change? Why aren’t you helping Da Silva to clear up?”

  “We were not responsible for the mess in the first place.”

  “Through into the Examination Room, the lot of you,” Dart said. “I wish to give you all an examination, besides the normal blood check.”

  At this they protested strongly, but they went, and Heather followed behind Dart’s chair, keeping her dark eye on me. When we were all in the Examination Room, which was a glorified surgery, extensively equipped, she shut the door behind us.

  The gnome she had referred to as 402 looked up at me and said, “What’s this human doing here? Is he on the Program? If so, I don’t recognize him. I desire to be better informed concerning him.”

  “If he was on the Program, he wouldn’t be tied up,” Dart said. “He is captive, and we’re keeping our eye on him till the sub arrives later. Then we ship him out of here.”

  He put his head down as he spoke; I could not see his facial expression.

  “If he’s not on the Program, then we are not being examined with him in the room,” 402 was saying, gazing at me with fishy distaste. “It’s written into our Charter, and we haven’t forgotten the fight we had to establish that.”

  The argument went on, but I lost track of it. The Master, ruffled by the sharp tongues of his SRSRs, had let slip a word not exactly intended for my ears. The supply submarine!

  In the general brouhaha, I had forgotten about the sub and the imminence of its visit. They were planning to put me on it as their captive, and presumably it was due to arrive soon. Since they knew that the helicopter would be here by midnight, could it be they expected the sub before that? It seemed likely. Otherwise, they could have thrown me into that cell again and forgotten about me while attending to more urgent matters.

  I was aware that to be delivered captive to the submarine commander would put me out of action for some while. That was what Dart meant by his remark, “Hatreds between nations are nothing to interdepartmental hatreds.” Once the U.S. Navy had me (and Dart would get me properly signed for to clear himself with the officer i/c of the Search-Rescue helicopter), they would be reluctant to relinquish me to the State Department, and months of obfuscation could pass before I was cleared. Months or years. Certainly long enough for Dart to lodge other complaints against me and render any move against him invalid.

  Once I was on the sub, my cause was lost.

  The SRSRs took a firm stand on my presence in the room.

  “Oh, very well, if you insist on being difficult,” Dart said. “Heather, take Roberts right through to the animal pens at the far end and lock him in there, will you? Leave him tied up.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Although I think you give in to these project people far too readily.”

  Taking me by the arm in cordial fashion, she led me further into the lab complex. The lights were off here, but I could see that planning had been on a generous scale. Scathingly though Dart had spoken of experimental animals, like mice and guinea pigs, there were plenty of them here, sitting in their cages. A monkey chittered at us as we passed, reaching out a hand in appeal.

  “You really are a slave to our crippled friend,” I said. “You work for him, cook for him, strip for him—what else do you do?”

  “The lot,” she said. “I was trained for this job and I take pride in doing it well. And I’ll take pride in kicking you in the balls if you try anything with me again.” She gave me a hard scowling look.

  “You must get a great buzz out of the SRSRs! You’re going to have to cook and clean for them, and scrape out the bottom of their cage, now that Bella’s dead.”

  “I hate the little bastards, if you must know. But they happen to be part of my job. As for that submarine—mention of which made you prick up your ears so eagerly—we applied for more staff and guards long ago, and they will be aboard this trip. Worry about yourself, not me. I can look after myself.”

  “And sexy with it,” I said, as she locked me in.

  “A hell of a lot you care about that!”

  Heather held up the key for my inspection, slipped it in a pocket of her tunic, and walked off, buttocks jolting.

  I was left in a small bare cell, one of six adjoining each other. The cells were constructed of fifty-millimeter-thick metal rods. They were veritable cages, with bars front, back, and sides, and top and bottom. They had been secured in place by massive bolts bonded into the concrete floor. It was possible for a jailer to walk round the back of the cages and fill the troughs there provided for water and food. My troughs were empty, although old caked meal still lined one of them.

  The smell of the place told me that this was where the Beast People were penned while Dart was working on them.

  So much I saw before Heather had reached the other end of the chamber. She closed the door behind her as she went, leaving me in gloom. The only windows were overhead, in the roof. I could see blue sky through them, and a scrap of foliage. The only artificial light came from a machine glowing and ticking to itself some meters from where I stood.

  A kind of despair enters a man’s mind when he finds himself caged. All my muscles locked: my autonomous nervous system was refusing to transmit an impulse to check out the fact that I was in a cage from which I could not escape.

  As I stood, gripping the bars, breathing dim fetid air, sounds came to me, music, which at first I could not identify. The music was no louder than a whisper; in sending my hearing out to chase it, rigidity left me. The whisper seemed to tell me that somewhere, if only in theory, happier things existed than the series of degradations I had encountered.

  Despite my predicament, that hopeful music brought a kind of enchantment. Then I recognized what it was. It was Haydn, Haydn again, and his confounded Clock Symphony. Not Haydn, but a tape of Haydn projected automatically through the lab complex. No one was listening, not Dart, not Bella, not Heather, not some postoperative ape learning to manipulate a lion’s legs. That civilized innocent Haydn had no right to speak to any of us who suffered at the end of this darkening century.

  By calling aloud, I tried to din out the insubstantial music. The old Viennese court was dead, and with it all the tidy resolutions contained in its harmonies. On the island it was an obscene anachronism. For a while, I was in a frenzy of senseless activity, out of my mind. When I recovered myself, the symphony was still playing, almost subliminally.

  I began to seek about for some protruding object on which I could attempt to loosen or cut my bonds; but the cage makers had taken care of that sort of ambition long ago.

  I stood still and thought about praying. But that complex matter was something I would have to sort out with myself later. Right now, I was frantic with anger and the need to escape. I tried to rock the cages; they all gave a few millimeters, after having no doubt been rocked in unison by tormented creatures, but the hope of uprooting them was a vain one. I shook the door; it rattled but did not budge. I stood on the wooden shelf seat; from there I could bang my skull on the bars overhead. There was nothing effective I could achieve.

  There was little I could do but stand there and let time pass. With some contortion, I could see the dial of my watch. It was 1835. Maybe five hours before the chopper got here. It would soon be sunset.

  Uncharted tracts of time floated by. The air thickened, the light waned. Night was coming. And the submarine.

  As I remained there raging, fixing my eyes in useless hope on every object in view—if only I could reach that stepladder, if only I was nearer that lathe—a shuffling noise caught my attention. I could hear the faint movements of the caged animals at the other end of the room; this was different, and closer.

  The lab was built of prefabricated metal sections, bolted into place. At this end of the lab, which faced toward the southeast of the island, t
he roof sloped downward, until it met the end wall behind me no more than two meters above the floor. In this sloping section was the skylight through which I could see the leafed extremity of the branch of a tree and the darkening sky. Someone was up on the roof.

  In a moment, a face appeared at the glass.

  I could make out only a blurred outline of a head and a sharp muzzle.

  Although the Beast People were not great friends, in this emergency anyone was an ally. Whatever they were about up there, they were against Dart, and so on my side. My fear was that, in the gloom of the laboratory, I would not be seen.

  Bending backward, I pulled off one of my shoes and struck at the bars with it repeatedly, making as much noise as I could.

  The head withdrew from the window. It was replaced a moment later by two heads. I stopped banging and waggled my leg through the bars at them, relying on the sharpness of their eyes. And in any case, I realized, they might well be looking to see if any of their kind was imprisoned, knowing the cages of old.

  They had seen me! One of them—now I was almost sure it was Bernie—raised a pole and drove it down on the glass. The glass shattered and came tinkling down to the floor. It was reinforced, but the pair of them struck at the wire core ferociously and broke it down. I dared not call encouragement lest, finding who it was, they left me there.

  The wire mesh fell away. One of the two figures jumped down and landed lightly on all fours, just beyond my cage.

  “Bernie!” I said. “It’s Roberts—your friend, remember me? Good boy, well done!”

  “Good boy, good man, hero, yes. Big stuff! No trouble.”

  He sidled up to the bars. I caught the blank red gleam of his eyes in the gathering dark.

  “Get me out of here, Bernie. Open the cage, break it open, find a strong bar if you can.”

  He rattled the bars. “No key, gone Master. You keep in cage like sad beast.”

  “Get me out! Find a bar, fetch it, good boy!”

  He went off vaguely, searching and sniffling. The monkeys started up a great chatter, throwing themselves about their cages, and I was afraid that Heather or Dart would come in. But Bernie returned after a while with a great flat bar with ratchets along one side.

  We inserted it between door and doorway, just above the lock, and threw our weight on it. The teeth grated and gripped, the chilled steel seemed to give a little. Over and over, we leaned all our weight against it. Gradually, the lock yielded under the combined pressure. One last heave, and it clicked open. I staggered out of the cage.

  Bernie spent a while fumbling with his malformed hands at the strap that bound me. Finally, it fell to the floor. I clasped his shoulder.

  “Very good boy, my friend,” I said.

  “You here bad place, my friend hero. Soon Foxy Man take flame, you Foxy Man, he take flame, flame up all Master. Bad place go soon. Lab’raty go Big Sky.”

  “Great! Let’s get out of here,” I said. “The sooner the better.” Slipping on my shoe, I ran for the stepladder I had previously glared at with such envy and set it up under the broken window. I went first, climbing out on the roof, helping Bernie up after me.

  It was a shock to find that his companion on the roof was one of the ape-men—whether Alpha or Beta, whether the one I had grappled with on Warren’s roof or not, I could not tell, although it struck me that I should try to avoid roofs in future. He came toward me, but after a few muttered words of explanation from Bernie, he slunk back and contented himself with glaring at me and making faces involving displays of sharp teeth.

  Outside, it was less dark than I had imagined. It was just past 1900. I saw how the Beasts had gained access to the roof. A long rope had been tied high in a tree to one side of the buildings; the other end had then been taken round to a tree on the other side, and secured at an equal height. It was then simple enough to climb out along the rope over the high fence and drop down, although they could hardly have carried out the plan if the inhabitants of the HQ had not been otherwise occupied.

  Even so, it was an ambitious plan. I knew who was behind it before I saw him. There was an impatient yip from the bushes behind us, Bernie answered in kind, and Foxy could be discerned, prowling on the other side of the barrier. I could make out other shapes, other eyes, behind him; the Beast People were gathered in strength. Foxy was carrying a light of some kind.

  He called to me, “Hey, hero, what you do? You no Beast People. I still got the shoot-gun. I now easy shoot you.”

  “I’m coming down. I’m getting away from the Master. He’s no friend of mine. You can see for yourself, the Master dumped me in the same lockup he used on you.”

  “You come down fast.”

  I was glad to get down. It was easy enough to work my way across the rope and slide down the tree to the ground. Foxy was waiting tensely for me at the bottom. He carried an old army dixie; in it, a little fire of twigs burned. As I came close, he set the dixie down and unslung a carbine from round his shoulders. He held it at the ready, pointing toward my feet.

  “Fire!” he said proudly, indicating the dixie with a bushy red eyebrow. He had overcome one of the basic animal fears.

  Curiously, I stared at him, the creature who had tried to kill me. He looked like a real brigand. He still wore his tattered cloak while on his head was that symbol of authority, George’s old leather hat.

  He tapped his prow-shaped chest. “Foxy me you no longer more afraid flame like all Beast People. Me shoot shoot-gun, kill George, kill anybody people, you savvy, hero? Me man same you, use flame, savvy?”

  “I savvy only too well.”

  “Good savvy well. Me same you, me shoot-gun you killed, you give trouble, hero.” A skein of saliva ran down silver from his jaw as he looked me over to estimate the effect of his threats. “Now is all time finish.” He knew he had not got right what he wanted to say, and so repeated it, still regarding me slyly. “Now is time all finish. Master go. We you Beast People get up burn Master Death Place Lab’raty down, Master kill with shoot-gun, savvy?…”

  It was a long speech. More saliva ran to the ground like quicksilver. Then he added emphatically, “We be this place Master, all Master.”

  Malformed and hostile faces peered at me. The flame flickering in the dixie illuminated fangs as well as eyeballs. I did not intend to challenge them.

  “You’ll never set fire to this place with that small light. Listen, get a big branch burning well. Climb right to the far end of the HQ. Look down into the compound, savvy? Many paint pots there, belong to dead Hans. Paint burns fast and well. Best idea. Drop the burning branch on paint pots.”

  His red gaze bored at mine.

  He gave one nod of his head. As he turned away to get the others moving, he said slyly, “You savvy I get this flame where from you friends on Seal Rock. Lorta, she give me flame in tin when I give her rum and bully tinmeat. You like Lorta. I savvy.” Solemnly, he tapped his head, then his genitals. His gesture was more companionable than contemptuous; he had placed me now.

  Then he turned to drive the other Beast People forward and get the plan into action. They pressed past me, conspiratorial, no longer nervous of my presence, grotesque of eye and facial form and body, yet no longer one half as alien to me as once they had been. They had moved closer to man. I had moved closer to them.

  Standing there in the dark before slipping away, seeing them press past, I recalled how the fable of H. G. Wells, when the beasts on his island had slowly degenerated from the human back to the animal, sounded a note of melancholy. These actual beasts were slowly advancing from the animal to the human; and I could not find it in my heart to think that less melancholy.

  It was now entirely dark. I was at a disadvantage among the trees. Foxy had gone to join the ape-man and Bernie on the roof; I could hear Bernie whimpering his approval of Foxy’s presence—poor Bernie had found a new master to follow. The other animals were advancing stealthily forward along the stockade, keeping pace with those above them. I was free to go; I had inter
fered enough; what happened now must be played out without intervention from me.

  The time was moving toward 1930. In four or five hours, the helicopter from Fiji should be here. And the submarine?

  My safest plan was to remain somewhere out of harm’s way. In the dark, I could not get very far. I regretted having neither torch nor gun with me. I wondered about Heather. Dart and the saturnine Da Silva must accept whatever fate befell them; for Heather, I could not put away a sneaking sympathy.

  I would wait by the mouth of the lagoon. The submarine would arrive there, but I could hide away above it on the eastern side of the mouth where the cliff began to rise. From there, I could also keep a watch toward the HQ.

  The moon, now on the wane, was already shining, although it provided little light. I moved slowly toward the water, half reluctant to leave the vicinity of the HQ. As I went, a flame leaped up somewhere behind me.

  Foxy’s simple stratagem was working. The paint was dope- rather than lead-based, and highly inflammable. The flame spread among Maastricht’s old discarded cans, rising and setting fire to the branches of trees standing just inside the compound. A great light spread and continued to grow. The fascination of all fires is such that I turned to watch. I doubted whether the blaze was going to be enough to catch the HQ itself alight.

  The brilliance of the flames enabled me to see the figure of Foxy, dancing on the roof. At the same time, savage shouts came to my ears, and a group of Beast People charged at the gate of the compound. They carried a battering ram. It struck the gate with force. They pulled back and struck a second time.

  Before they could strike a third time, a new light was turned on the scene.

  This was a colder and more powerful light. Roughly circular in shape, it blazed somewhere along to my right, in the woods above the village, and slid rapidly along until it transfixed the invaders at the gate. In dismay, they stopped still and turned to glare into the searchlight.