Belatedly, I dropped flat. The submarine had arrived. The beam was shining from its conning tower. The time was 1935.
The waters of the lagoon were no more than sixty meters from me. Squinting toward the source of the light, I estimated that the vessel was about as far from the shore. I could hear the voices of the crew. They spoke English. So Dart’s allies had arrived. He was probably in radio contact with them.
Only for a moment were the Beast People transfixed by the light. Then they broke ranks and dashed away in all directions into the darkness.
A machinegun opened up on the submarine. They had left it a bit too late, but I saw one of the sullen Bull Men hit. He made a leap into the air, fell clumsily, rolled over, and lay there twitching.
Finding myself uncomfortably near the line of fire, I crawled into the undergrowth. It was as well I did, because the searchlight now began swinging from side to side, the machinegun chattering at random. A heavy goat shape blundered past me, fell into a bush, and forged on through the undergrowth, croaking in terror. Under this new threat, the Beast People were as much of a menace as they had ever been.
It was best to keep to my plan and make for the cliff by the lagoon mouth. I moved forward again, keeping as low as possible. The firing stopped in a moment, presumably because there were no more moving targets to fire at; but I was too busy looking after myself to keep account of what was going on elsewhere. Now and again, I heard the sound of bodies pushing frantically through the undergrowth.
I was gasping as I climbed the last few meters and hauled myself up to a rocky ledge. There I could sprawl, half concealed by bushes from the action in the center of the island. For a while, I simply lay like a dog, desperately trying to recover my breath.
When I looked again, I saw how greatly the fire about the HQ had spread. Whole trees were burning like torches. I fancied that the HQ itself was now on fire.
The submarine was in clear view; the reflection of the fire in the water threw part of it into silhouette. A dinghy had been launched and was now at the quayside, where a party of twelve marines and an officer were smartly disembarking and forming up. The searchlight, meanwhile, was circling slowly about the surrounding parts of the island. When it came near me, I hugged the ground. Now and again, the machinegun spoke. Some poor creature was screaming away in the bushes.
Thinking I would be safer with a little rock between me and the arena, I waited until the light had gone by again, then climbed hastily to the top of the rock, sprawling at full length and feeling down over the dark side for a possible ledge. Otherwise, there would be just a precipitous slope between me and the ocean; the waves were breaking only a meter and a half below me—I could feel their spray on my arm and face.
The nearest thing to a ledge was a buttress of rock, upon the sloping top of which I could crouch for a short spell at least and feel myself safe, while being able to watch what went on.
Heaving myself cautiously over the lip of rock, I saw a light out to sea. I was too afraid of falling onto rocks and getting myself drowned to pay attention to it until I was wedged on my pitiable bit of buttress.
Then I saw that Moreau Island had an answering fire on its satellite. The cover of Seal Island was blazing furiously. Through the smoke pall that hung low over the intervening waters, I saw the palms spring suddenly into flame!
My heart went out to Lorta and the laughing men and little Satsu. My imagination only too readily traced a likely cause for the catastrophe. I had given them the gift of fire. They had built their own fires and traded the gift for—Foxy’s phrase came back to me—for rum and bully tinmeat. How eagerly their sportive natures would take to drunkenness! And in that drunken orgy, they had set fire to their crude shelter, and had probably perished in the blaze. I gazed and gazed in stricken remorse across the dark water.
Here was another aspect of the process in which I had played a fatal part.…
Crouching there in defeated state, I scarcely took in the shouting coming from the direction of the lagoon. I needed no more data on the world. Nevertheless, being human, I finally raised my head above the level of the rock against which I crouched and looked in at the violent island once more.
More marines were ashore. One party had marched round to search the native village. Whether inadvertently or according to instructions, they had set it on fire, so that yet another destructive beacon lit the night.
The HQ was now well alight. The senior blaze was also the biggest. Sparks rose high into the tropical air, whirling upward in a short-lived dance toward the stars. A party of marines was drawn up outside the stockades—well clear, I noted, of the upright George, who remained motionless at his post throughout the proceedings.
The marines were on escort duty, and the reason for their presence had just appeared. In good order, Mortimer Dart and his company were leaving the doomed building. The light from the fires was so bright that I could make out individual figures clearly.
First came Heather, escorting the SRSRs. Both she and they walked forward with no sign of panic that I could discern, although this was very likely the first time the subrace had ever left their laboratory. Heather carried bags or cases in each hand.
Behind her and her flock came Da Silva, pushing a large trolley loaded with metal boxes. No doubt Dart’s precious records and formulas were there. Last, following Da Silva, came Dart himself.
It occurred to me to wonder why they had been so long leaving the building—not because they had stopped to release all the helpless experimental animals. Dart must have had a more practical reason—or perhaps it was just that he had at first refused to believe that his citadel was going up in smoke.
In all events, he was leaving with a brave show. He had climbed into his cyborg suit, and now began to stump toward the submarine as I had first seen him, more a massive robot than a man.
As the party came forward, a marine was running and gesticulating. The escort raised their short-snouted rifles.
On the roof of the burning building—a figure, also armed! I knew who it was, even as I marveled that he had not fled or else perished from the heat. But perhaps the angle of the roof shielded him from the worst of it.
He took careful aim, bemused by the smoke. The marines opened fire on him.
Everyone else started running. Then Foxy fired his shot.
The gigantic robot lurched. He stood still, then twisted sideways, then collapsed.
My glance sped back to the roof. Of Foxy there was no longer any sign. A cloud of smoke obscured everything. It was 2010.
A marine officer was shouting through a bull-roarer, his voice audible above the roar of burning.
“Okay, you guys, get to him. Ma’am, will you and your party keep walking this way please. Straight into the dinghy before there’s more trouble. We’ll take care of Dr. Dart.”
The marines lifted Dart gently out of his harness: from the giant came forth a small child. It seemed that he might be alive still; I could not tell. He was carried into the boat, and to the submarine, which had already devoured Heather and the rest of his party, including his patent invention, the gnome-like subrace.
The last section of marines was returning smartly from its patrol. One final shot was fired into the shadows. Then those men too were swallowed into the black shape in the lagoon.
No moving figure, however remotely human, was left. The fires blazed on an empty scene. Fire and darkness, fire and darkness—the elements of the human psyche.…
A voice near me said, “Calvary, you are you yourself, is it?”
As if in a dream, I looked down to seaward, to the figures scrambling over the surges toward me.
“Lorta, is that you?”
“My funny Calvy, yes! Who else am I? We swim to see you, all, all here.”
“Satsu?”
“Me here, Calvy! Your little sucky Satsu.”
Leaning over, I extended an arm, and the others helped the girl up to me. Since it now appeared safe to emerge above my ridge, I guided t
hem over one by one. Even at that hour, they laughed and chuckled, swearing that I tickled them where I had no right to do while others were about. Soon we were huddled together on a safe ledge.
“Soon I am going to take you all with me to another place,” I said.
“That’s so good,” one of the men said. “Is it a better place?”
“Another place. Not exactly better … more to eat, at least.…” I could say no more.
The submarine was moving. So silent were its motors that we heard nothing but the clip of the waves. It slipped away, over the lip of the lagoon into the deep waters, and was gone, and all its dangerous knowledge with it, heading for a world that thought it needed such knowledge.
The fires seemed less brilliant. Certainly the blaze over at the village was almost dead, the other blazes dying.
A figure limped out of the bush and down toward the water’s edge. It wandered near the spot where Maastricht had drowned, many a long day ago. It set up a howl of desolation, like a lost dog.
Holding tightly to Satsu, I looked at my watch.
The time was 2055.
As usual, it was a matter of waiting. Of sitting tight and waiting.
The light died until the night itself had almost a material quality, like a body of which the still glowing remains of Dart’s headquarters represented a wound. In due time, the sullen crimson of the wound lit the belly of a helicopter.
The machine sank lower. It surveyed the land by infrared. The downward pressure of wind from its vanes created a pattern on the margins of the sea, veining it in a half circle until the beaten water resembled a hastily discarded shawl. This illusion vanished as the machine landed and cut its engines. The waves resumed their usual pounding of the rocks.
Some shadowy figures were collected from the beach of Moreau Island, after which the vanes of the machine recommenced to turn. The helicopter lifted, and again was caught briefly in the glow of dying fires before it vanished into the night.
On the forsaken island, a solitary figure, part man, part dog, emerged from its place of concealment and scuttled toward the edge of the sea. Time and again it ran into the waves, howling, only to run howling back again, finally to stand in bafflement on the rocks, staring out over the Pacific, as if attempting to resolve a riddle it could barely formulate.
Beneath the surface of the ocean, night and day were less distinct events than on the rest of the planet. The creatures of land were governed by the absence or presence of direct sunlight; below the waves, a different set of factors obtained. On the ocean bed, a permanent twilight reigned but, even on its upper levels, the water permitted its denizens to continue their activities with general indifference to the time of day.
A philosophical observer might see here an analogy with the human brain, between the parts labeled, for convenience if not accuracy, conscious and unconscious. The conscious brain is accustomed to a regular series of waking and sleeping states which correspond to light and dark. Matters are less clear-cut in the unconscious; a different set of clocks ticks. The unconscious has its own submarine element, unpunctuated by sun. The difference is between Reason, which invented the twenty-four-hour clock, and Instinct, which keeps to its own Great Time. Until humanity comes to an armistice between these yin-yang factors, there is no armistice possible on Earth. The bombs will fall.
The bombs fell. The great ocean contained many peripheral seas: the Guatemala Basin, the Tasman Sea, the Coral Sea, the South China Sea, the Yellow Sea, the Sea of Japan, the Sea of Okhotsk, the Bering Sea. Over all these seas, conflict flared as ideologies clashed and nation warred with nation.
Debris from various combats fell into the ocean, sank, disappeared into oozes far below the surface. Devastatingly effective products of chemical warfare rained down. The ocean absorbed them all. The ocean covered a third of the globe; it was in a sense the mother element of the globe; and could survive-most of the activities of its brood. But the day would come when it could absorb no more. Then it would die, and the planet with it.
The question was whether humanity’s instinct for survival would impel it to find a way to permanent peace. Otherwise, all would be lost. For the ocean was ultimately no more enduring than Instinct alone, or unaided Reason.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1981 by Brian W. Aldiss
Cover design by Nate Fernald
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1029-0
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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An Island Called Moreau Page 17