by John Wyndham
“How do you, speaking as a biologist, see the future of man?”
“I can’t look round corners. Life is full of accidents and imponderables. He seems evolutionarily to have come to an end. But he is not effete. Who can tell? He may produce a new type – and may allow it to survive. He may all but wipe himself out, again and again – and start again each time, becoming a new creature in the process. Or he may be superseded…just scrapped another of Nature’s unsuccessful experiments. On the face of it, and as he is at present, I can’t see much future for him.”
“No men like gods, in fact. And not much prospect for this project.”
“Oh, I don’t know. As you said, things move so fast nowadays, and, as I said, there are the imponderables – so there’s time for a number of unexpected discoveries in the next two or three thousand years. I only said that in his present condition and state of knowledge there doesn’t seem to be much future for him. One discovery – in the field of controlled heredity, for instance – could alter the whole outlook.”
“Well,” I said, “let’s hope. Let’s even go so far as to hope that Lord F’s Project is a success – and that it is here that the discovery may one day be made.”
“You do really believe in it, don’t you?” she remarked.
“I believe in it as a possibility. All things have small beginnings. Nationalism is becoming too narrow, too restrictive. The advanced men are beginning to feel the need of a place where they can live and work, and exchange ideas without restrictions. Someday they are going to make such a place for themselves – a kind of mind powerhouse, as Lord F said. Set on its feet, given time, this could be the place. Why not?”
She looked across the water for some moments, without speaking. Then:
“It’s a wonderful vision,” she admitted, “but it’s before its time. I can’t see the world tolerating it.”
“Possibly you’re right. But I think it’s worth trying. A kind of world university, the mecca of all the talents – and if it fails this time, well, at least there will be lessons to be learned from its failure, and the next time, or the time after that, it will be successful.
“His lordship may be a vain man, even rather a silly man, but the idea is bigger than he knows. After all, if it should succeed, and one day come to hold the reins of knowledge it will be a power. It will have authority. As a unifying force it might succeed where the League of Nations failed, and the United Nations is failing.”
“You are a romantic – and in a big way,” she said.
“Perhaps,” I admitted, “but unification must come in one way or another – or else destruction. The democratic way doesn’t appear to work; it’s not the United Nations that prevents destruction breaking loose now; it’s the balance of power. Perhaps an autocracy – an autocracy of knowledge – might work better…”
We talked on for an hour or more. The young moon rose higher, silvering the sea, turning the island from a dark mass to a shimmering shape which seemed to float on the water. I forgot the emptiness of it, the neglect, the choking vegetation. In my mind’s eye I saw it in order; planted, cultivated, cut by wide roads, set with fine buildings where unimaginable discoveries were being made. It was a brave sight – alas for it…
Four
The quantity of our stores and supplies laid out on the beach was prodigious. It took all of us working from dawn till dusk five days to get it all there, but it was done at last. We said good-bye to the skipper and crew of the Susannah Dinghy, watched her edge her way carefully through the passage of the reef, heard her give a couple of triumphant toots on her hooter, then saw her turn to the north-west and start to dwindle. It was to be six months before she returned with more supplies and, we hoped, more personnel for the project. Until then we were on our own.
It was remarkable how palpable that feeling of being on our own became. As long as the ship had been anchored in the lagoon we were linked with the outside world, but as she disappeared below the horizon the sense of isolation closed in. Everybody, even the children, felt it. We found ourselves looking at one another speculatively as if seeing ourselves afresh, with the reality of the situation only now coming home to us.
For myself I felt more than isolation. I felt that the island was no longer a neutral neglected place waiting for someone to put it in order. It seemed to have undergone a change; to have become no longer a passive, but an active challenge. To have taken on an air of resistance, even hostility. I found myself wondering whether that was the result of knowing it to be taken, of that knowledge working in the primitive, subconscious part of my mind to arouse the ancient fear of a curse…It was quite ridiculous, of course. For a curse to be effective one must believe in its efficacy, which I certainly did not. And yet I had the feeling that the island was brooding – inimically…
Whether some of the others had the same sensation I don’t know, but the departure of the ship left us all in a subdued mood, and it was Charles who took steps to break it up.
He and Walter had already chosen the site for the settlement, drawn up plans for it, and started staking the positions for the huts. Now he called us together, led us to the site and explained how it was going to be laid out. His confidence was infectious. Before long he had all of us visualizing how it would be, and asking questions. Within half an hour the oppressive sense of isolation had lifted, and everyone’s spirits appeared to rise. We trooped back to our temporary quarters – and to Mrs Brinkley’s cookhouse – feeling encouraged and capable.
During the meal Walter composed two messages to be dispatched via our radio to Uijanji for onward transmission. The first was to Lord Foxfield. It announced the successful completion of the landing operation, the departure of the Susannah Dinghy, and that the work of turning the Project into a reality would start tomorrow. The second, for publication and circulation among our relatives and friends, assured them that we were all well, and in good spirits.
When they had been read out and approved, he handed them to Henry Slaight who took them away for transmission. In a couple of minutes Henry was back, with a look of concern on his face. He bent down and whispered to Walter who got up and left with him. I slipped away and followed them to the nook among our stacks of cases which formed the temporary radio office. I found them peering inside by the light of a battery lamp. Over their shoulders I could see that where the transmitter had stood on a folding table there was now a wooden packing-case. The table, and the transmitter, were crushed beneath it.
It was a heavy case, and it took our united strength to move it aside. One glance at the transmitter was enough. It could be written off. We all turned to look at the gap in the top row of the wall of cases immediately above. It was evidently where the case had come from, but:
“It can’t just have fallen…” Walter said.
He tested the stability of the stacked cases with his hand. They stood rock firm.
“It’s impossible,” he added, uneasily.
We looked at one another. Walter shook his head.
“But who – ? It must have taken two or three men to dislodge that…” He shook his head again. “Better say nothing at present. Let them think the messages have gone off. I’ll break it to them later.”
The next day work began in earnest. Charles got the bulldozer going, and took it off to start clearing the site. Tom Conning started ferrying materials to it with the tractor and trailer. Henry Slaight strung lights through our temporary quarters, and got the generator uncrated to provide power. Mrs Brinkley chose her cookhouse squad, and got them busy. Jamie McIngoe went off, prospecting a pipeline route for a water supply. Joe Shuttleshaw with a gang of helpers began sorting out the parts of sectional buildings, and stacking them ready to be moved up as required. Jeremy Brandon put the concrete-mixer together and made it ready. Everybody, including the children, was found a job of some kind.
It went on like that for six days – leaving us all dead tired at the end of each. But we had something to show for it. By that time Charles
had the central site cleared, and had started on preparing more land for cultivation. Much of the clearance debris had been gathered into piles and burnt. The foundations for the first building, a communal dining-cum-general-hall with kitchens attached, had been poured, and the parts of it lay ready for erection. The concrete-mixer had moved on to prepare more foundations, these for a storehouse in which our more vulnerable supplies could be got safely under cover. Jamie had run a temporary pipeline to our camp, and had started digging a trench to take a permanent one to the site. Altogether we were not displeased with our progress, and felt we had earned the rest day that Walter declared.
The question was how to spend it. Tom Conning, however, had no doubts.
“It’s time we saw something of the place. It’s nearly a fortnight since we landed, and so far nobody’s been more than a quarter of a mile from here. I propose to climb the mountain – if you can call it a mountain, at any rate it should be high enough to give a view of the whole island. Anyone come with me?”
Alicia Hardy and four of the younger ones promptly accepted the invitation. Joe Shuttleshaw’s boy Andrew held up a hand, too. His father pulled it down for him, and he protested loudly. Tom said:
“Let him come, Joe. He’ll be no trouble.”
I looked at Camilla.
“Not you? I thought you were getting impatient to see more of the place.”
“After the last week I’m not spending my rest day hacking my way along overgrown tracks. I’ve looked at them. I doubt whether they’ll get halfway in a day. Besides, you can’t see anything when you’re occupied with slashing. I’ve got a more comfortable idea. If Walter will let me have the boat we could go round the coast, and perhaps land here and there.”
She got the boat. Walter was half-inclined to come in it himself, but Charles persuaded him to stay and work on some modification of their plans. Most of the others seemed to be content to take the rest day literally. They proposed to do nothing more energetic than he in the shade, and recover from the energies of the week.
So, the following morning, after we had seen the exploring party, all armed with machetes, make their start, we launched the boat and set off.
There were five of us aboard: Camilla, Jennifer Deeds, David Kamp, Jamie McIngoe, and myself. Since we had already seen something of the western coast from the deck of the ship as we approached, we decided to go south, round the southernmost point and make our way up the east coast.
There was a set-back when we discovered that the reef did not continue round the island as we had supposed. Instead, it swept in to join the southern headland, so that we found ourselves in a cul-de-sac, and we had to follow the reef half a mile back before we found a safe passage to the open sea. Fortunately it was a calm day with only a light wind, and a gentle swell running.
We turned eastward again, keeping well off the reef but passing the south cape inside the islet of Hinuati, which lies something under a mile off shore.
On the far side of the cape the coastline changed entirely. Instead of the white beaches we found low basalt cliffs standing sometimes with their feet in the water, here and there separated from it by a narrow strand of greyish sand, and shouldered at intervals by falls of boulders that projected into the sea. They stretched away to the north like an irregular wall, sometimes sixty feet high, sometimes a mere twenty-five, but seemingly without a break. The sombre, forbidding aspect of them was made the more cheerless by the lack of movement, except for the waves splashing at the cliff-foot nothing moved.
I heard Camilla ask herself in a puzzled tone. “But why are there no birds…?”
“God,” said David, “what a coast to be wrecked on.”
We chugged on in a subdued mood.
Then I noticed something else. Up on the cliff top the vegetation crowded to the very edge. Nearby, the bushes and the tops of trees were quite sharp and clear, but further away they became hazy, and in the distance it was as if the whole cliff top were fringed with a dingy white.
“What on earth’s that?” I asked.
Camilla shook her head. “It could be some sort of blight,” she suggested.
Jennifer Deeds put in: “I seem to remember Walter mentioning patches of mist on the eastern side when he flew over it to inspect.”
“Aye, he did so,” said Jamie McIngoe. “Maybe it would look like that from above, but that’s no mist.”
Nobody contradicted him. Apart from the fact that the light breeze would have dispersed any mist, it looked too static. Camilla produced a pair of field-glasses and studied the cliff-tops as well as she could against the slight rocking of the boat. Presently she lowered them.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to move at all. It must be a blight of some kind. Can’t we go a little closer in?”
I borrowed the glasses off her. It was impossible to keep them trained on one spot, but I could catch glimpses of the outlines of leaves and branches through the stuff that shrouded them on the nearer trees, further away it seemed to grow more opaque and to lie on them like a bank of soiled snow. But what it was I could form no guess.
Jamie cautiously edged the boat nearer to the shore as we went on, but we could not make anything of the stuff, only that it was certainly more solid than the first we had seen. Looking at it through the glasses now one caught occasional iridescent flashes.
“I must get some of that stuff and examine it,” Camilla said.
“You’ll need to be a good climber,” David told her, looking at the cliffs.
“There must be a break somewhere. Will you put in, Jamie, when we find one?” she asked.
We went on. About half a mile further along we found a break – of a sort. It was a small bay about fifty yards across. The cliffs here were no more than thirty-five feet high. In the middle they were split by a cleft down which flowed a small stream. The sides of the cleft looked scarcely more climbable than the face of the cliff itself, but the stream had evidently carried down silt so that at the foot of the cleft a bank had formed some feet above the high-tide level. There a number of bushes and small trees had taken root and formed a clump. Hiding the top of them was a cloud of the mysterious static mist.
“We’d be able to reach that,” said Camilla. “Can we land here, Jamie?”
Jamie scanned the shore line of grey sand fringing the bay. He grunted, doubtfully, but he swung the nose towards the shore, reduced speed, and began to approach cautiously. David went forward and hung over the bow, shading his eyes, to peer down through the clear water.
“Sandy bottom,” he reported presently. “Looks all clear.”
Jamie reduced speed still further, and held one hand on the reverse lever, ready to throw it immediately. There turned out to be no need. David kept on reporting clear sandy bottom until we were close in. The beach here shelved gently. Jamie gave a final spurt, and as the bow grated on the sand, he shut off the engine.
The silence came down like a blanket. It had such an unnatural, ominous quality that for some moments none of us moved. We sat there looking at the dark cliffs, and the dreary grey sand of the beach stretching smooth and unbroken except by half a dozen patches of brownish stuff which looked like clumps of stranded seaweed.
“Not a welcoming spot,” said David.
“It’s like the dead end of the world,” Jennifer said. Then she gave a little exclamation.
“Look!” she said, pointing to the nearest clump of seaweed. “It’s moving!”
We looked. The brown patch was irregular in shape, looking as if it had been spilt there. The main part of it measured about two feet by three feet. There was no doubt about its motion. It was sliding slowly across the beach in our direction. At that distance we could make out no details. It suggested something seen under a low-powered microscope, an enormous amoeba flowing across the sand.
“What is it? I don’t like it,” Jennifer said nervously.
David laughed. He jumped out of the boat and started to splash his way through the few yards of water that separa
ted us from the dry sand. Almost immediately the brown patch speeded up, coming down the beach towards him, at almost walking pace, elongating slightly as it came.
David stopped to watch it, bending forward a little. Then he laughed again, ran forward and jumped over it, and went on running up the beach towards the bushes.
The brown patch stopped, then went into reverse, and started to follow him.
“Look,” cried Jennifer, “the other ones, too. Look out, David!” she called.
All the other half dozen patches on the beach were now in motion, converging towards him at walking pace. He looked round and saw them. He paused to wave a reassuring hand to us, and then ran on, jumping over another of the patches that was advancing ahead of him. It, too, altered direction to follow him.
We saw him reach the bushes and jump up to grab some of the misty stuff that covered them.
It was impossible to be sure what happened then. One moment he was completely visible, the next something seemed to fall on him, half-hiding him.
Then there was a scream. While it was still echoing across the little bay, David turned and came pelting down the beach towards us. His head and shoulders were turned to a brown blur by the stuff that had fallen on him. He kept on at full tilt to the water’s edge and into the water, until he tripped and fell with a great splash a few feet away from us.
Jamie and I leapt out of the boat to go to his help. As we waded towards him we saw the brown stuff coming off him, resolving into hundreds of globules and washing away. We paid no attention to it. We laid hold of him and turned him over. I had a glimpse of his face, a vivid scarlet, as we dragged him back to the boat and lifted him aboard with the help of the two women. Then we climbed aboard ourselves, and stood panting from our efforts while Jennifer examined him as he lay in the bottom of the boat.
Presently she looked up. In a wondering, incredulous voice she said:
“He’s dead. David’s dead.”
Unnoticed by the rest of us Camilla had climbed over the side. She returned in time to hear Jennifer’s verdict, carrying something wrapped in a handkerchief. This she put carefully in a corner of one of the seats before she climbed up and turned to look at him.