It was then that Johnson made his decision to remain on board. All his life he had failed to impose himself on anything – running errands as a six-year-old for the Nassau airport shoe-blacks, cadging pennies for his mother from the irritated tourists, enduring the years of school where he had scarcely learned to read and write, working as a dishwasher at the beach restaurants, forever conned out of his wages by the thieving managers. He had always reacted to events, never initiated anything on his own. Now, for the first time, he could become the captain of the Prospero and master of his own fate. Long before Galloway’s curses faded into the dusk Johnson had leapt down the companionway ladder into the engine room.
As the elderly diesels rallied themselves for the last time Johnson returned to the bridge. He listened to the propeller’s tired but steady beat against the dark ocean, and slowly turned the Prospero towards the north-west. Five hundred miles away were the Bahamas, and an endless archipelago of secret harbours. Somehow he would get rid of the leaking drums and even, perhaps, ply for hire between the islands, renaming the old tub after his mother, Velvet Mae. Meanwhile Captain Johnson stood proudly on the bridge, oversize cap on his head, 300 tons of steel deck obedient beneath his feet.
By dawn the next day he was completely lost on an open sea. During the night the freighter’s list had increased. Below decks the leaking chemicals had etched their way through the hull plates, and a phosphorescent steam enveloped the bridge. The engine room was a knee-deep vat of acid brine, a poisonous vapour rising through the ventilators and coating every rail and deck-plate with a lurid slime.
Then, as Johnson searched desperately for enough timber to build a raft, he saw the old World War II garbage island seven miles from the Puerto Rican coast. The lagoon inlet was unguarded by the US Navy or Greenpeace speedboats. He steered the Prospero across the calm surface and let the freighter settle into the shallows. The inrush of water smothered the cargo in the hold. Able to breathe again, Johnson rolled into Captain Galloway’s bunk, made a space for himself among the empty bottles and slept his first dreamless sleep.
‘Hey, you! Are you all right?’ A woman’s hand pounded on the roof of the staff car. ‘What are you doing in there?’
Johnson woke with a start, lifting his head from the steering wheel. While he slept the lianas had enveloped the car, climbing up the roof and windshield pillars. Vivid green tendrils looped themselves around his left hand, tying his wrist to the rim of the wheel.
Wiping his face, he saw the American biologist peering at him through the leaves, as if he were the inmate of some bizarre zoo whose cages were the bodies of abandoned motor-cars. He tried to free himself, and pushed against the driver’s door.
‘Sit back! I’ll cut you loose.’
She slashed at the vines with her clasp knife, revealing her fierce and determined wrist. When Johnson stepped onto the ground she held his shoulders, looking him up and down with a thorough eye. She was no more than thirty, three years older than himself, but to Johnson she seemed as self-possessed and remote as the Nassau school-teachers. Yet her mouth was more relaxed than those pursed lips of his childhood, as if she were genuinely concerned for Johnson.
‘You’re all right,’ she informed him. ‘But I wouldn’t go for too many rides in that car.’
She strolled away from Johnson, her hands pressing the burnished copper trunks of the palms, feeling the urgent pulse of awakening life. Around her shoulders was slung a canvas bag holding a clipboard, sample jars, a camera and reels of film.
‘My name’s Christine Chambers,’ she called out to Johnson. ‘I’m carrying out a botanical project on this island. Have you come from the stranded ship?’
‘I’m the captain,’ Johnson told her without deceit. He reached into the car and retrieved his peaked cap from the eager embrace of the vines, dusted it off and placed it on his head at what he hoped was a rakish angle. ‘She’s not a wreck – I beached her here for repairs.’
‘Really? For repairs?’ Christine Chambers watched him archly, finding him at least as intriguing as the giant scarlet-capped fungi. ‘So you’re the captain. But where’s the crew?’
‘They abandoned ship.’ Johnson was glad that he could speak so honestly. He liked this attractive biologist and the way she took a close interest in the island. ‘There were certain problems with the cargo.’
‘I bet there were. You were lucky to get here in one piece.’ She took out a notebook and jotted down some observation on Johnson, glancing at his pupils and lips. ‘Captain, would you like a sandwich? I’ve brought a picnic lunch – you look as if you could use a square meal.’
‘Well …’ Pleased by her use of his title, Johnson followed her to the beach, where the inflatable sat on the sand. Clearly she had been delayed by the weight of stores: a bell tent, plastic coolers, cartons of canned food, and a small office cabinet. Johnson had survived on a diet of salt beef, cola and oatmeal biscuits he cooked on the galley stove.
For all the equipment, she was in no hurry to unload the stores, as if unsure of sharing the island with Johnson, or perhaps pondering a different approach to her project, one that involved the participation of the human population of the island.
Trying to reassure her, as they divided the sandwiches, he described the last voyage of the Prospero, and the disaster of the leaking chemicals. She nodded while he spoke, as if she already knew something of the story.
‘It sounds to me like a great feat of seamanship,’ she complimented him. ‘The crew who abandoned ship – as it happens, they reported that she went down near Barbados. One of them, Galloway I think he was called, claimed they’d spent a month in an open boat.’
‘Galloway?’ Johnson assumed the pursed lips of the Nassau school-marms. ‘One of my less reliable men. So no one is looking for the ship?’
‘No. Absolutely no one.’
‘And they think she’s gone down?’
‘Right to the bottom. Everyone in Barbados is relieved there’s no pollution. Those tourist beaches, you know.’
‘They’re important. And no one in Puerto Rico thinks she’s here?’
‘No one except me. This island is my research project,’ she explained. ‘I teach biology at San Juan University, but I really want to work at Harvard. I can tell you, lectureships are hard to come by. Something very interesting is happening here, with a little luck …’
‘It is interesting,’ Johnson agreed. There was a conspiratorial note to Dr Christine’s voice that made him uneasy. ‘A lot of old army equipment is buried here – I’m thinking of building a house on the beach.’
‘A good idea … even if it takes you four or five months. I’ll help you out with any food you need. But be careful.’ Dr Christine pointed to the weal on his arm, a temporary reaction against some invading toxin in the vine sap. ‘There’s something else that’s interesting about this island, isn’t there?’
‘Well …’ Johnson stared at the acid stains etching through the Prospero’s hull and spreading across the lagoon. He had tried not to think of his responsibility for these dangerous and unstable chemicals. ‘There are a few other things going on here.’
‘A few other things?’ Dr Christine lowered her voice. ‘Look, Johnson, you’re sitting in the middle of an amazing biological experiment. No one would allow it to happen anywhere in the world – if they knew, the US Navy would move in this afternoon.’
‘Would they take away the ship?’
‘They’d take it away and sink it in the nearest ocean trench, then scorch the island with flame-throwers.’
‘And what about me?’
‘I wouldn’t like to say. It might depend on how advanced …’ She held his shoulder reassuringly, aware that her vehemence had shocked him. ‘But there’s no reason why they should find out. Not for a while, and by then it won’t matter. I’m not exaggerating when I say that you’ve probably created a new kind of life.’
As they unloaded the stores Johnson reflected on her words. He had guessed that the chemic
als leaking from the Prospero had set off the accelerated growth, and that the toxic reagents might equally be affecting himself. In Galloway’s cabin mirror he inspected the hairs on his chin and any suspicious moles. The weeks at sea, inhaling the acrid fumes, had left him with raw lungs and throat, and an erratic appetite, but he had felt better since coming ashore.
He watched Christine step into a pair of thigh-length rubber boots and move into the shallow water, ladle in hand, looking at the plant and animal life of the lagoon. She filled several specimen jars with the phosphorescent water, and locked them into the cabinet inside the tent.
‘Johnson – you couldn’t let me see the cargo manifest?’
‘Captain … Galloway took it with him. He didn’t list the real cargo.’
‘I bet he didn’t.’ Christine pointed to the vermilion-shelled crabs that scuttled through the vivid filaments of kelp, floating like threads of blue electric cable. ‘Have you noticed? There are no dead fish or crabs – and you’d expect to see hundreds. That was the first thing I spotted. And it isn’t just the crabs – you look pretty healthy …’
‘Maybe I’ll be stronger?’ Johnson flexed his sturdy shoulders. ‘… in a complete daze, mentally, but I imagine that will change. Meanwhile, can you take me on board? I’d like to visit the Prospero.’
‘Dr Christine …’ Johnson held her arm, trying to restrain this determined woman. He looked at her clear skin and strong legs. ‘It’s too dangerous, you might fall through the deck.’
‘Fair enough. Are the containers identified?’
‘Yes, there’s no secret.’ Johnson did his best to remember. ‘Organo …’
‘Organo-phosphates? Right – what I need to know is which containers are leaking and roughly how much. We might be able to work out the exact chemical reactions – you may not realise it, Johnson, but you’ve mixed a remarkably potent cocktail. A lot of people will want to learn the recipe, for all kinds of reasons …’
Sitting in the colonel’s chair on the porch of the beach-house, Johnson gazed contentedly at the luminous world around him, a fever-realm of light and life that seemed to have sprung from his own mind. The jungle wall of cycads, giant tamarinds and tropical creepers crowded the beach to the waterline, and the reflected colours drowned in swatches of phosphoresence that made the lagoon resemble a cauldron of electric dyes.
So dense was the vegetation that almost the only free sand lay below Johnson’s feet. Every morning he would spend an hour cutting back the flowering vines and wild magnolia that inundated the metal shack. Already the foliage was crushing the galvanised iron roof. However hard he worked – and he found himself too easily distracted – he had been unable to keep clear the inspection pathways which Christine patrolled on her weekend visits, camera and specimen jars at the ready.
Hearing the sound of her inflatable as she neared the inlet of the lagoon, Johnson surveyed his domain with pride. He had found a metal card-table buried in the sand, and laid it with a selection of fruits he had picked for Christine that morning. To Johnson’s untrained eye they seemed to be strange hybrids of pomegranate and pawpaw, cantaloupe and pineapple. There were giant tomato-like berries and clusters of purple grapes each the size of a baseball. Together they glowed through the overheated light like jewels set in the face of the sun.
By now, four months after his arrival on the Prospero, the one-time garbage island had become a unique botanical garden, generating new species of trees, vines and flowering plants every day. A powerful life-engine was driving the island. As she crossed the lagoon in her inflatable Christine stared at the aerial terraces of vines and blossoms that had sprung up since the previous weekend.
The dead hulk of the Prospero, daylight visible through its acid-etched plates, sat in the shallow water, the last of its chemical wastes leaking into the lagoon. But Johnson had forgotten the ship and the voyage that had brought him here, just as he had forgotten his past life and unhappy childhood under the screaming engines of Nassau airport. Lolling back in his canvas chair, on which was stencilled ‘Colonel Pottle, US Army Engineer Corps’, he felt like a plantation owner who had successfully subcontracted a corner of the original Eden. As he stood up to greet Christine he thought only of the future, of his pregnant bride and the son who would soon share the island with him.
‘Johnson! My God, what have you been doing?’ Christine ran the inflatable onto the beach and sat back, exhausted by the buffetting waves. ‘It’s a botanical mad-house!’
Johnson was so pleased to see her that he forgot his regret over their weekly separations. As she explained, she had her student classes to teach, her project notes and research samples to record and catalogue.
‘Dr Christine … ! I waited all day!’ He stepped into the shallow water, a carmine surf filled with glowing animalcula, and pulled the inflatable onto the sand. He helped her from the craft, his eyes avoiding her curving abdomen under the smock.
‘Go on, you can stare …’ Christine pressed his hand to her stomach. ‘How do I look, Johnson?’
‘Too beautiful for me, and the island. We’ve all gone quiet.’
‘That is gallant – you’ve become a poet, Johnson.’
Johnson never thought of other women, and knew that none could be so beautiful as this lady biologist bearing his child. He spotted a plastic cooler among the scientific equipment.
‘Christine – you’ve brought me ice-cream …’
‘Of course I have. But don’t eat it yet. We’ve a lot to do, Johnson.’
He unloaded the stores, leaving to the last the nylon nets and spring-mounted steel frames in the bottom of the boat. These bird-traps were the one cargo he hated to unload. Nesting in the highest branches above the island was a flock of extravagant aerial creatures, sometime swallows and finches whose jewelled plumage and tail-fans transformed them into gaudy peacocks. He had set the traps reluctantly at Christine’s insistence. He never objected to catching the phosphorescent fish with their enlarged fins and ruffs of external gills, which seemed to prepare them for life on the land, or the crabs and snails in their baroque armour. But the thought of Christine taking these rare and beautiful birds back to her laboratory made him uneasy – he guessed that they would soon end their days under the dissection knife.
‘Did you set the traps for me, Johnson?’
‘I set all of them and put in the bait.’
‘Good.’ Christine heaped the nets onto the sand. More and more she seemed to hurry these days, as if she feared that the experiment might end. ‘I can’t understand why we haven’t caught one of them.’
Johnson gave an eloquent shrug. In fact he had eaten the canned sardines, and released the one bird that had strayed into the trap below the parasol of a giant cycad. The nervous creature with its silken scarlet wings and kite-like tail feathers had been a dream of flight. ‘Nothing yet – they’re clever, those birds.’
‘Of course they are – they’re a new species.’ She sat in Colonel Pottle’s chair, photographing the table of fruit with her small camera. ‘Those grapes are huge – I wonder what sort of wine they’d make. Champagne of the gods, grand cru …’
Warily, Johnson eyed the purple and yellow globes. He had eaten the fish and crabs from the lagoon, when asked by Christine, with no ill effects, but he was certain that these fruits were intended for the birds. He knew that Christine was using him, like everything else on the island, as part of her experiment. Even the child she had conceived after their one brief act of love, over so quickly that he was scarcely sure it had ever occurred, was part of the experiment. Perhaps the child would be the first of a new breed of man and he, Johnson, errand runner for airport shoe-shine boys, would be the father of an advanced race that would one day repopulate the planet.
As if aware of his impressive physique, she said: ‘You look wonderfully well, Johnson. If this experiment ever needs to be justified …’
‘I’m very strong now – I’ll be able to look after you and the boy.’
‘It m
ight be a girl – or something in between.’ She spoke in a matter-of-fact way that always surprised him. ‘Tell me, Johnson, what do you do while I’m away?’
‘I think about you, Dr Christine.’
‘And I certainly think about you. But do you sleep a lot?’ ‘No. I’m busy with my thoughts. The time goes very quickly.’ Christine casually opened her note-pad. ‘You mean the hours go by without you noticing?’
‘Yes. After breakfast I fill the oil-lamp and suddenly it’s time for lunch. But it can go more slowly, too. If I look at a falling leaf in a certain way it seems to stand still.’
‘Good. You’re learning to control time. Your mind is enlarging, Johnson.’
‘Maybe I’ll be as clever as you, Dr Christine.’
‘Ah, I think you’re moving in a much more interesting direction. In fact, Johnson, I’d like you to eat some of the fruit. Don’t worry, I’ve already analysed it, and I’ll have some myself.’ She was cutting slices of the melon-sized apple. ‘I want the baby to try some.’
Johnson hesitated, but as Christine always reminded him, none of the new species had revealed a single deformity.
The fruit was pale and sweet, with a pulpy texture and a tang like alcoholic mango. It slightly numbed Johnson’s mouth and left a pleasant coolness in the stomach.
A diet for those with wings.
‘Johnson! Are you sick?’
He woke with a start, not from sleep but from an almost too-clear examination of the colour patterns of a giant butterfly that had settled on his hand. He looked up from his chair at Christine’s concerned eyes, and at the dense vines and flowering creepers that crowded the porch, pressing against his shoulders. The amber of her eyes was touched by the same overlit spectrum that shone through the trees and blossoms. Everything on the island was becoming a prism of itself.
The Complete Short Stories, Volume 2 Page 80