BRIAN ALDISS
Moreau’s Other Island

Contents

Title Page

Introduction

To sink below …

1. Alone in the Pacific

2. Some Company Ashore

3. In the Hands of the Master

4. A Quick Swim in the Lagoon

5. A Chance to Think Things Over

6. A Little Striptease

7. The Funeral Was Well Attended

8. An Independent Point of View

9. Revels by Night

10. After the Fall

11. Another Visitor for the Big Master

12. The Frankenstein Process

The light died …

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

Even if an author writes something as far-fetched as possible, still something of his family influence will remain.

And in the case of this novel, what remains is deliberate.

I am fortunate in having two sons and two daughters. My eldest daughter is very close to me (and indeed lives nearby). When she was still in utero, a drug called thalidomide was being touted, said to alleviate the suffering of morning sickness in pregnant women. Thalidomide was available between 1957 and 1962, after which it was banned.

Fortunately, our doctor did not prescribe the drug for my wife. It emerged that Thalidomide was in fact a teratogen – a substance causing terrible birth defects in children. Had it been prescribed, then my dear daughter would likely have been malformed from birth. All these years later, I rejoice still that she was spared any such deformities.

The dictator in this story is not so lucky. Mortimer Dart, who has inherited the island invented by Mr H.G. Wells, has to wear metal prostheses; he has suffered from the malevolent effects of Thalidomide. And Dart himself behaves much like a teratogen upon the creatures he rules over on his island – the Beast People.

It has always been a struggle to have any novel in the fantasy or science-fiction genres reviewed in newspapers or journals. This novel proved more fortunate than most. The elegant American hardback, which was first published by Simon & Schuster, quotes from four British reviews. Those reviews between them convey much of the kind reception of the book:

‘For a good yarn in an old style - and I do intend a compliment - no need to go further than Brian Aldiss’s descendant of Dr Moreau, the wicked man in the H.G. Wells story who first brought the concept of genetic engineering to the horrified eyes of middle-class Edwardians... But this creaky stuff isn’t really the point of the book: its pleasures are to enjoy the old-fashioned virtue of pace and narration, to be let up and let down by the pulling of the strings, to smell the heat and the rank vegetation of a Pacific island.’

Manchester Guardian

‘A sprightly homage to H.G. Wells’s fable about scientific irresponsibility, first published in 1896 … Aldiss has glossed ‘Frankenstein’ similarly and though he touches nothing he does not adorn, he’s onto an easy winner here, for simply restating this nineties theme in the eighties says a lot about the progress of notions and the notions of progress.’

Sunday Times

What the factual Brian Aldiss would add to these comments is that throughout this story a global war is in progress, emphasising the ready militarism of the West. The Beast People are among its victims.

Brian Aldiss

Oxford, 2013

To sink below the surface of the ocean was to enter a world of sound. Much of the sound originated from organic beings, for ever transmitting their signals and necessities in harmonics which ranged through a scale commensurate with their environment, from shrillest, fastest squeak to deepest grunt. No one ear in that great element could encompass the span of frequencies involved.

Near the surface of the ocean, the sounds were light and many, and the organisms transmitting them similarly multitudinous and small. Lower, where larger fish swam, a deeper note prevailed. Lower still, deeper yet. As the light faded, as pressure increased towards the submerged valleys and hills of the ocean bed, the sounds became infrequent and acquired a lugubrious note in keeping with their surroundings.

Another range of sounds also persisted. It issued from another order of existence entirely: from the inorganic, from the mantle of water which moved ceaselessly over the drowned landscapes of its domain. These throatless cadences had been audible almost since the beginning of time, certainly long before any stirrings of life. Currents, waves, tides, sunken rivers, sunken lakes and seas, all served as restless atmosphere to a world remote from the sentient creatures whose existences were confined to exposed territories outcropping above the planetary waters.

This ocean was of considerable depth. Its dimensions extended for thousands of miles in all directions. It occupied one-third of the surface of the planet, covering an area greater than that of all the exposed lands. A philosophical observer might regard it as the subconscious of the world, contrasting it to the exposed land area, which might – in the light of this rather whimsical notion – be considered as the seat of a fitful conscious.

In the aqueous subconscious of the planet all was as usual, all as it had been for millions of years. On land, away in another element, the teeming individual awarenesses of the dominant species were in more than normal ferment. Their actions were full of sound and fury. They had just launched themselves into a global war which threatened to lay waste much of the land area, besides bringing about their own extinction.

Such military clamour scarcely penetrated the surface of the great ocean. Yet even there – even there, one could search and find contra-indications, symptoms of pain.

Meteors flashing through the night sky from space were once regarded as portents of solemn events. The ocean also had its portents from an alien element. Like a shower of meteoric debris, metal from a disintegrating craft scattered across miles of sea. Slowly the parts sank, turning through the water, reflecting less and less light from above as they fell. They drifted down towards areas of enormous pressure and permanent twilight.

Finally all that remained of the Leda came to rest upon a barren plain near the equator, bedding down in primordial oozes under six thousand metres of ocean.

1
Alone in the Pacific

In times of peace, the crashing of the space-shuttle Leda into the Pacific Ocean would have provided drama enough for most of the world to have heard about it by lunchtime. During the early months of war in 1996 the incident was little noticed, beyond the announcement that an Under-Secretary of State was missing.

It is not my intention to detail that crash here. It forms no part of the dreadful story I have to relate. Suffice it to say that my secretary and I were the only passengers, and that the crew numbered two, James Fan Toy and José Galveston. The shuttle splashed down into the Pacific close to the equator, latitude 2˚ South, longitude 178˚ East. My secretary was killed on impact; in a moment of panic he jumped up just before we struck, and his neck was broken.

The craft floated long enough for Fan Toy, Galveston and me to climb free and jump into an inflatable life raft.

To escape drowning was one thing, to escape the ocean another. The war was far away to the north of us, and we were in a little-frequented sector of ocean. We saw no planes, no ships, no land. Day succeeded day, the awful power of the sun making itself continually felt. We had little shelter and less water, rationing ourselves to a mouthful twice a day. As our life-energies were burned from us, we took to lying under an inflatable plastic canopy, no longer paddling or even keeping watch on the unvarying horizon about us.

On the eighth day, early in the morning before the sun had risen high enough to scorch us, Fan Toy gave a cry and pointed to something floating in the waves. We stood and stared, leaning against each other for support.

How vividly I recall that moment, with the stench of our bodies and the boat’s fabric, the ceaseless motion of the waves, the vast expanse of water! In the water was a dolphin, making slowly towards us.

‘It’s bringing help,’ Fan Toy said. We had sent out a radio call for help as the Leda re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. This might well be a naval dolphin coming to guide us to a nearby submarine – such was the hope raised by sight of the creature.

‘Don’t be too sure he’s on our side,’ Galveston said.

We dipped our hands into the ocean and splashed our blistered faces and eye-sockets to try and see more clearly.

‘Yes, it’s one of our boys,’ Fan Toy said. ‘Take a look at the stars and stripes embedded in its tail.’

I was peering too, and could discern the insignia as he spoke.

‘It’s moving slowly. Could be it’s injured,’ I said.

The creature seemed to be making heavy weather of what was just a light swell; it wallowed from side to side as it headed towards us.

Galveston got a paddle out. ‘I don’t like the look of the beast. Keep off!’ He struck at the dolphin as it came within range.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Fan Toy said, trying to knock the paddle from Galveston’s hand. The two men struggled feebly together.

My attention was momentarily attracted elsewhere. A school of flying fish – only the second school we had seen since taking to the life raft – passed behind us, clipping the waves as it flew. One of them, slightly adrift from its fellows, landed behind us in the raft.

It was food. As I stooped down to seize it, my glance caught something on the far horizon. I could not say what it was – possibly the mast of a ship, gleaming in the sun. I bent down to snatch at the struggling fish.

As well that I did. In that moment came the explosion. It struck me with a wall of sound and pitched me into the sea.

I surfaced, choking and deafened. The water seethed all round me. The life raft had gone. So had Fan Toy and Galveston. I called their names. Limbs and flesh lay in the ocean about me, trailing tentacles of red which were dispersed among the waters. They had been blown apart, as had dolphin and raft.

The one item still afloat and happily intact was the inflatable canopy. I managed to climb into it, bale out the water with my hands, and achieve a precarious stability. I also managed to retrieve a paddle. Then I lay where I was, in a daze, as slowly my hearing returned: but not my companions.

For whatever reason, I had again been preserved. Triumphantly I told myself – even whispered the words aloud through cracked lips – that my love of God and country would bring me through all perils to victory. I did not doubt that the Leda had been sabotaged by subversive elements in the Moon base, and that the sabotage had been aimed at me. Yet I had survived. And would continue to survive.

Maybe Fan Toy and Galveston had been involved in the treachery, for one can trust no one during a global war. They had been destroyed. I lived.

Now I had a makeshift boat. I was too numb at first to paddle. But a light breeze caught the canopy and bore me along, slowly increasing the distance between me and the carnage. Which was as well. Two sharks began to circle the area. Then another moved in, and another after it. Soon I watched many triangular fins, circling the bloodied area at speed.

There was little doubt as to what had occurred. The dolphin had been naval-trained. It must have been on a suicide mission, loaded with an explosive charge, maybe a nuclear one, and programmed for some particular target. Enemy defences had hit and wounded it. Half senseless, it had swum on, who knew how far. Seeing our raft, it had homed in on us, probably in search of aid. Galveston struck it with his paddle, whereupon the explosive charge had been detonated.

Confirmation of this theory lay in the way we had found the dolphin swimming alone. An ordinary dolphin, when wounded, secures help from its own kind, who will escort it hundreds of miles, if need be, to a safe spot where it can recuperate. Our fellow, loaded with death, had had to travel alone to the last.

It was impossible to stand in my flimsy canopy-boat. I could manage only to sit up and stare about me, searching the horizon for that gleaming thing again. It was nowhere in sight.

My strength began to desert me as hope went. The sun was growing powerful, and I found a flexible bucket and pushed it on my head for protection. Then I slumped back as best I could, unable to paddle since there was nowhere to paddle to.

Seconds, minutes, hours drifted by before I looked up again. Who knows the teeming thoughts that poured through my mind? When I finally broke from my reverie and peered about me an island was in sight.

How beautiful it looked, how superbly more positive, more created, than the miserable element swilling all about me! I stood up in my excitement and capsized my boat immediately. Once I was back in it again, I turned eagerly to see what I could see.

At this distance the land appeared as a large rock with a flat top. On that top an installation of some kind had been built; this was what I had seen as I stopped to pick up the flying fish. Although such an indication of human enterprise filled me with hope, I had reservations from the beginning; the world was so full of automated machinery of various sorts, from missile-detection systems to navigational aids, that evidence of an installation was no proof men would be nearby. Yet even a deserted island was a hundred times more welcome than open sea. To die under a palm tree suddenly seemed like heaven.

The island was still distant. A current was carrying me towards it, and I was content for a while to lie back in exhaustion and be borne onwards. Again my mind wandered, half deliriously; I became involved in complex situations with people I did not know but thought I recognized.

When I shook myself from my lethargy, the sun was low in the west and magnificent layers of cloud were drawing about it to celebrate its descent. The island was considerably nearer; I could make out grey walls of cliff. The installation was lost in late afternoon light.

My drinking water was entirely gone. Exhausted though I was, I seized on the paddle and tried to guide my frail craft towards the island. For a dread filled me that ocean currents might carry me past this refuge in the hours of darkness, and that by morning it would lie far astern. Then I should surely die. My chance was now – or never again.

I was still paddling as night came down. It was glorious and terrible to witness the world’s swift change from day to night; even in my drained condition I was moved by it, and offered a prayer to God.

The breeze which had earlier carried me westwards was reversed with evening. My boat was almost at a standstill. I battled in the darkness as long as I could, collapsing at last in the bottom of my craft, where I slept fitfully, half in a delirium.

I woke before dawn, chilled all through, convinced I was dying. I lay like a broken bundle, cradling my paddle, with my jaw hanging open and my mouth parched, as once more the processes of Earth brought this part of the world into light.

I opened my eyes and lifted my head. Great cliffs loomed close, lit by early sun. They rose steeply from the waves, without a shore. High above the waterline bushes grew, crowning the cliffs. Birds wheeled above them. I stared at the birds in wonder. My canopy was moving slowly westwards again, no more than three hundred metres from the cliffs.

One detail was especially remarkable. Carved into the cliff at a place which appeared totally inaccessible was a gigantic letter.

The letter dominated me. I stared at it, trying to make sense out of it, but to my dazed imagining it seemed to be independent of meaning, to exist only for itself. Its very shape suggested a sturdy bipedal independence. It was a huge letter M.

The cliffs dazzled with reflected light but the M was black. Whoever had sculpted it from the rock had made certain that it was visible from afar by filling its recesses with tar or some black pitchy substance.

Thoughts of a vaguely religious nature filled my mind. I heard my voice from my cracked lips say, ‘In the beginning was the letter.’ I laughed feebly. Then I slumped back into the boat.

When I brought myself to look again, the M stood some way behind, a double black pillar. The nearer cliffs were less steep and in shadow. Trees were more in evidence. I even imagined I might have seen a building among the trees, as my head dropped once more. But the insistence that I should do something rose within me and again I dragged myself up. I splashed head and neck with sea water, although the brine made my lips smart.

The boat was drifting past a south-west-facing cliff wall which lay no more than two hundred metres away. Ordinarily I would have thought nothing of swimming ashore; now, all I could do was cup my hands and call for help; but there was the noise of surf against rocks to compete with, and my throat was choked by drought.

I could see that in less than an hour we should reach the end of the island, to be carried into the open ocean again. The cliffs were becoming less massive. It would be possible to scramble ashore at the westernmost point. When it came level, I would have to fling myself into the water, trusting to God and the remainder of my strength to get me ashore.

As I was preparing for this ordeal, I discovered that I was being observed. Three or four natives stood under tall trees among bushes, watching me. At this distance, I could get no clear view, yet something about them – whether in their faces or their stance – gave an impression of singular bestiality. They stood almost immobile and stared across the waves at me; then they were gone; the bushes moved for a moment and were still.

I turned my attention to the end of the island, which could now be seen to sprout an islet just beyond its shores, leaving a narrow channel between shore and islet. The question seemed to be whether the current which carried me would sweep me clear away from the island or closely round its tip, between island and islet; if the latter was the case, it should not be difficult to get ashore.

As I considered this question, a heavy craft with thundering engine swerved out from behind the island. Spreading a wake of white water behind it, it curved out and headed towards me.

Two men were in the craft. I could get clear glimpses only of the man at the wheel. His face was black and again, as with the watchers on the cliff, I received an impression of brutishness.

The craft he steered was painted a muddy brown. As it bore towards me and swung clumsily abeam, the wash from it swamped my canopy. I found myself struggling in the water. Half-drowned, I heard the curses of the men in the boat; then my wrists were grasped, and my shoulders, and I was heaved unceremoniously into the landing-craft, as I heard one of them call it.

As soon as they had me on deck the boat was in motion again, swerving violently about. I was left to roll on the deck like a freshly landed tunny, coughing and spewing the sea water out of me.

When I had recovered slightly, I heaved myself into a sitting position. I was confronted by as frightful a countenance as I have ever seen in my life. At close quarters, its brutishness was overwhelming, so that I half-believed I was delirious.

Under a floppy leather hat was no brow, simply a great swelling face covered with stubble. The jaw was prognathous, with no chin. A mighty mouth swept back, its corners almost vanishing into the absurd hat, its fleshy lips hardly fleshy enough to conceal large incisors in the lower jaw. Above this formidable mouth was a snout-like nose, wrinkled in a sneer like a hyena’s, and two almost lidless eyes. These eyes regarded me now – fixed themselves on me with a dull red glare. I pulled myself back from them in shock. But still I had to stare into them.

The monster regarded me with the strangest expression, at once aggressive and shrinking, as though it was on the point of either throwing itself upon me or leaping out of my way.

Only for a moment did we stare at each other so closely. Only for a moment was that strange ambiguity of gaze between us. Then the strange black man was struck on the back by his companion, who roared, ‘Get back to the helm, George! None of your tricks!’

Black George leaped back to his station with a frantic scuffle, quite devoid of dignity. He was a big burly fellow, with tremendous shoulders on him, but short in the shank. He was encased in an all-enveloping pair of grey work-overalls.

When I turned my attention to the other man, my first impressions were scarcely more favourable. A fine place I had come to, I thought! This specimen was recognizably Caucasian, and with no visible deformities, but he was also a great hulking brute. His face was fat and pasty; it bore a besotted, sullen expression. His eyes seemed to be the same pasty colour as his skin; they looked directly into mine once, for an instant, then away, in such a furtive manner that I was as disconcerted as by George’s savage stare. He always avoided a direct gaze.

Although everything about him appeared totally unfavourable – apart from the cardinal fact that he had rescued me from the sea – I gained an impression that he was an intelligent, even sensitive, man who was trying to bury some dreadful knowledge within him: and that the effort had brutalized him.

His hair was tawny and uncared for, and he had a straggling yellowy-brown beard. He carried a riot-gun slung over one shoulder and clutched a bottle in his left hand.

When he saw me regarding him he held out the bottle before me, not looking straight at me, and said mockingly, ‘You look as if you could have a use for a drink, hero!’

I said, ‘I need water.’

My voice was a croak. His was thick and had a curious accent. It took a while before I realized English was not his native language.

‘Palm wine for the morning. Fresh vintage. Do you plenty good!’

‘I need water.’

‘Suit yourself. You must wait till we are on the shore.’

George was now swinging the craft in between island and terminal islet, hunched with a kind of careful ferocity over the wheel. I could see a strip of beach beyond. The blond man yelled to George to go more steadily.

‘What is this place?’ I asked.

He looked me over again, torn between pity and contempt, his eyes sliding round me.

‘Welcome to Moreau Island, hero,’ he said. He took another swig at his bottle.

2
Some Company Ashore

The landing-craft ran into a narrow channel with rock on the left and island on the right. Open sea ahead indicated that although the island was several kilometres long, it was considerably less in width, at least at this western end. The beach was a slender strip of sand, bracketed in rocks and stones and encroached on by scrub. George brought us swinging broadside on to this strip, hunching himself by the wheel and awaiting further instructions while he eyed me with distrust.

‘Are you fit enough to walk?’ the blond man asked me.

‘I can try,’ I said.

‘You’re going to have to try, hero. This is where you get out! No ambulances here. I’ve got the fishing nets to see to, and that’s trouble enough to do. George here will take you along to HQ. Get that?’

Involuntarily I looked at George with suspicion.

‘He won’t hurt you,’ the blond man said. ‘If you drifted through the minefields OK then you will be safe by George.’

‘What sort of a place am I getting to? Are there other – white men there? I don’t even know your name.’

The blond man looked down at the deck and rubbed his soiled deck shoes against each other

‘You aren’t welcome here, hero, you ought better to face that fact. Moreau Island is not geared exactly to cater to the tourist trade. But we can maybe find a use for you.’

‘My work is elsewhere,’ I said sharply. ‘A lot of people will be looking for me right now. The ASASC shuttle I was in crashed in the Pacific some way from here. My name is Calvert Madle Roberts, and I hold down an important government post. What’s your name? You still haven’t told me.’

‘It’s not any damned business of yours, is it? My name is Hans Maastricht and I’m not ashamed of it. Now, get on shore. I have work to do or I will be into trouble.’

He turned to George, slapping the riot-gun over his shoulder to emphasize his words. ‘You take this man straight to HQ, get that? You go with him to Master. You no stop on the way, you no cause any trouble. OK? You no let other People cause any trouble, savvy?’

George looked at him, then at me, then back to the other man, swinging his head in a confused way.

‘Does he speak English?’ I aked.

‘This is what he savvies best,’ Maastricht said, slapping the riot-gun again. ‘Hurry it up, George. Help this man to HQ. I’ll be back when I’ve checked the fishing nets.’

‘Savvy,’ said George. ‘Hurry it up. Help this man HQ, come back when I check the nets.’

‘You just get him safe to HQ,’ Maastricht said, clouting him across the shoulders.

The hulking fellow jumped down into shallow water and put out a hand to help me. I say hand – it was a black leathery deformed thing he extended to me. There was nothing to do but take it. I had to jump down and fell practically into his arms, leaning for a moment against his barrel-chest. Again I felt in him the same revulsion as struggled in myself. He moved back a pace in one hop, catching me off balance, so that I fell on my hands and knees in the shallow waters.

‘Sort yourselves out!’ Maastricht shouted, with a laugh. Swinging the riot-gun round on its sling, he fired one shot into the air, presumably as a warning, then headed the landing-craft towards where the channel widened.

George watched him go, then turned to me almost timorously. His gaze probed mine; being nearly neckless, he hunched his shoulders to do so, as if he were short-sighted. At the same time he extended that maimed hand to me. I was still on my knees in the water. There was something poignant in the fellow’s gesture. I took his arm and drew myself up.

‘Thank you, George.’

‘Me George. You no call George?’

‘My name is Calvert Roberts – I’m glad of your help.’

‘You got Four Limbs Long. You glad of your help.’ He put his paw to his head as if trying to cope with concepts beyond his ability. ‘You glad me help. You glad George help.’

‘Yes. I’m feeling kind of shaky.’

He gestured towards the open water. ‘You – find in water, yes?’

It was as if he was striving to visualize something that happened long ago.

‘Which way to your HQ, George?’

‘HQ, yes, we go, no trouble. No stop on way, no cause any trouble.’ His voice held a curious clotted quality. We stood on the stony beach, with a fringe of palm trees and scrub to landward, while a comedy of misdirected intentions developed – or it might have been a comedy if I had had the strength to find the situation funny. George did not know whether he should walk before me or behind me or beside me. His shuffling movements suggested that he was reluctant to adopt any of the alternatives.

The surface amiability of our conversation (if it can be dignified by that word) in no way calmed my fear of George. He was monstrous, and his close physical presence remained abhorrent. Something in his posture inspired distrust. That jackal sneer on his face seemed at war all the time with a boarish element in his composition, so that I was in permanent doubt as to whether he was going to turn round and run away or charge at me; and a certain nervous shuffle in his step kept that doubt uppermost in my mind.

‘You lead, I’ll follow, George.’

I thought he was about to dash away into the bushes. I tried again.

‘All right. I’ll go ahead and you can follow me.’

I thought he was about to rush at me.

‘You no drive me?’

‘I want to get to HQ, George. I must have water. There’s no danger, is there?’

He shook his great head to and fro, saying, ‘Danger, yes. No. No stop on way, no cause any trouble. Go with him to Master.’

I began to walk. He darted forward immediately and remained exactly one pace behind, his little piggy eyes glaring into mine whenever I turned my head. Had I not felt so exhausted, I should have been more frightened or more amused than I was.

In my condition and in this company, I was not well equipped to appreciate scenery. It presented, however, an immediate solid impression to me, an impression formidable and silent. Underfoot was that broken marginal territory which marks the division between ocean and land, even on so precarious a wedge of land as this. Just ahead were bleached rocks and the sombre greens of palm and thorn bushes. The ocean was at its eternal stir; the foliage hung silent and waiting, and far from welcoming.

The undergrowth came down close to the water’s edge. I saw a track leading among the trees, and took it.

George had evidently summed me up by now, for he said, ‘He got Four Limbs Long. You got Four Limbs Long.’

‘That’s how it happens to be with mankind,’ I said sharply.

George said, or rather chanted, ‘Four Limbs Long – Wrong Kind of Song!’

‘Where did you get that idea from?’ I asked. But I did not stand and wait for his answer. I set off along the path, and he sprang to follow on my heels, one pace behind. It was a relief to be among trees again, in shade. After all the days in the boat, my walk was uncertain, although I felt strength returning as we proceeded.

My mind was preoccupied with many things, not least with my weakness and the contrasting strength of the moronic brute behind me. I was also puzzled by what Maastricht – whom I took for a Netherlander from his name and his accent – had said: ‘Welcome to Moreau Island.’ The name meant something to me, yet I could not place it at all. Moreau Island? Had some scandal been connected with it?

Despite these preoccupations, I took care to keep alert to my surroundings, for there had been something threatening in Maastricht’s warning to George. What or whom were we likely to meet?

This strip of the island had little to offer, apart from the singular virtue of being terra firma. The rock to our right hand, sculptured as if by water at some earlier period of history, harboured many scuttling things, though probably nothing more exotic than birds and lizards. Bamboos were all about us, growing from cavities in the rock and from the ground, which was littered with stones and large shells. They grew thickly enough to obstruct our passage, though thinly enough for a pattern of sunlight and shadow to be cast where we walked. Occasionally we caught glimpses of the bright sea to our left, through a trellis of leaves.

At one point, I almost tripped over one of the large shells. Kicking it aside, I observed that it was the whitened carapace of a tortoise. We seemed almost to be walking through a tortoise graveyard, so thick did the shells lie; there was never a sign of a live one.

Boulders lay close on either side, some of them as tall as we were. Then we had to thread our way between them, and George came uncomfortably close to my vulnerable neck. Two of these big boulders virtually formed a gateway; beyond them more of George’s uncouth breed of native were lurking.

I saw them among the thickets ahead and halted despite myself.

Turning to George, I said, ‘Why are they in hiding? What’s the matter with them?’

With a crafty look, at once furtive and menacing, George said, ‘Four Limbs Long – Wrong Kind of Song … Four Limbs Short – Right Kind of Sport!’ His feet began a kind of shuffle in the dust. His eyes would not meet mine.

There was no point in trying to make conversation with him. Now that his own kind were close, he looked more dangerous than ever.

‘George, you take me straight to HQ, savvy? You no stop, you no cause trouble, you no let anybody cause trouble, OK? You savvy?’

He began to pant in a doggy way, his tongue hanging out. ‘You no got carbine, Cal—.’ Perhaps he struggled to recall my surname; if so he failed, and his use of my given name carried an unwelcome familiarity.

I was remembering what Maastricht had said: ‘Master got carbine!’

He moved one burly shoulder at me, looking away, mumbling, ‘Yes, savvy Master got carbine …’

‘Come on, then!’ Advancing between the boulders, I called, ‘Stand back ahead. We are in a hurry.’

An amazing array of faces peered out of the bushes at me. They bore a family resemblance to George, although there was great variety in their deformity. Here were snouts that turned up and proboscises that turned down; mouths with no lips, mouths with serrated lips; hairless faces and faces covered almost completely with hair or stubble; eyes that glared with no visible lids, eyes that dreamed under heavy lids like horses’. All these faces were turned suspiciously towards me, noses twitching in my direction, and all managed to avoid my direct gaze by a hair’s breadth.

From some eyes in the deeper shadows, I caught the red or green blank glare of iridescence, as if I were confronted by animals from a ludicrous fairy tale.

Indeed, I recalled series of drawings by artists like Charles Le Brun and Thomas Rowlandson, in which the physiognomies of men and women merged through several transformations into the physiognomies of animals – bulls, lions, leopards, dogs, oxen and pigs. The effect was ludicrous as well as alarming. I moved forward, clapping my hands slowly, and slowly they gave way.

But they were calling to George, who still followed me.

‘Has he not Four Limbs Long?’

‘Is he from the Lab’raty?’

‘Where is the one with the bottle?’

‘Has he a carbine?’

And other things I could not understand, for I was soon to learn that George’s diction was a marvel of distinctness among his friends, and he a creature of genius among morons. He still followed stubbornly behind me, saying, or rather chanting – most of their sentences were in singsong – ‘He find in big water. He Four Limbs Long. He Five Fingers Long – Not Wise or Strong. No stop, no cause trouble. Plenty beat at HQ.’

He chanted. I staggered beside him. They fell back or hopped back, letting us through – but hands with maimed stubs of fingers, hands more like paws or hooves, reached out and touched me as I went by.

Now I caught a strong rank smell, like the whiff of a tiger cage in a zoo. The trees and bushes thinned, the sun beat down more strongly, and we came to the native village.

Near the first houses a rock on my right hand rose in a high wall. Climbers and vines, some brilliantly flowering, hung down the rock face, and among them fell a slender waterfall, splashing from shelf to shelf of the rock. It filled a small pool, where it had been muddied and fouled. But I ran to the rock, and let the blessed stuff fall direct on to my face, my lips, my parched tongue, my throat! Ah, that moment! In truth, the waterfall was not much more than a drip, but Niagara itself could not have been more welcome.

After a while I had to rest dizzily against the rock, letting the water patter on the back of my neck. I could hear the natives stealthily gather about me. But I offered a prayer of thanks for my deliverance before I turned to face them.

Their ungainly bodies were hidden under the same overalls that George wore; many an unseemly bulk was thus concealed from the world. One or two of them wore boots; most went barefoot. Some had made barbaric attempts to decorate themselves with shells or bits of bone in their hair or round their necks. Only later did I realize that these were the females of this wonderfully miscegenous tribe.

Fascinated as I was with them, I believe they were far more fascinated with me.

‘He laps water,’ one said, sidling up and addressing me without meeting my gaze.

‘I drink water, as I guess you must,’ I said. I was torn between curiosity and apprehension, not knowing whether to try to establish communication or make a break for it, but at least this creature who came forward looked as harmless as any of them. George resembled an outré blend of boar and hyena; this creature looked like a kind of dog. He had the fawning aspect of a mongrel which one sometimes notices in human beings even in more favoured parts of the world.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked, pointing at him to get the message home.

He slunk back a pace. ‘The Master’s is the Hand that Maims. The Master’s is the Voice that Names …’

‘What is your name?’

It touched its pouting chest humbly. ‘Your name Bernie. Good man, good boy.’

‘Yes, you’re a good man, Bernie.’ Weakness and a touch of hysteria overcame me. To find a Bernie here in this miserable patch of jungle on some forgotten rock in the Pacific – a Bernie looking so much like a stray pooch – was suddenly funny. Why, I thought, Bernie as in St Bernard! I began helplessly to laugh, collapsing against the rock. I still laughed when I found myself sitting in the mud. When they clustered nearer to me, staring down in a bovine way, I covered my face and laughed and wept.

I scarcely heard the whistle blow.

They heard. ‘The Master Knows! The Master Blows!’ They milled about uneasily. I looked up, afraid of being trampled on. Then one started to run and they all followed, stampeding as if they were a herd of cattle. George stood till last, looking at me with a great puzzlement from under his hat, muttering to himself. Then he too tried to flee.

He was too late. The Master appeared. George sank to the ground, covering his head with a humble slavish gesture. A whip cracked across his shoulders and then the Master passed him and strode towards me.

Climbing slowly to my feet, I stood with my back to the rock. I was tempted to imitate the natives and take to my heels.

The so-called Master was tremendously tall: I reckoned he was at least three metres high, impossibly tall for a human being.

I could see him among the trees and huts, marching along a wide track, and not much more than fifty metres from me. I had a glimpse of tranquil waters behind him, but all my attention was concentrated on him.

He carried a carbine in the alert position, ready to fire. It was aimed at me in a negligent sort of way. His stride was one of immeasurable confidence; there was about it something rigid and mechanical.

His face was concealed beneath a helmet. I could not see his eyes. As he came near, I saw that his arms and legs were of metal and plastic.

‘My God, it’s a robot!’ I said aloud.

Then it came round the corner of the rock and confronted me.

‘Where did you spring from?’ it demanded.

3
In the Hands of the Master

One of my reasons for believing in God has been the presence in my life of emotions and understandings unsusceptible to scientific method. I have met otherwise scientific men who believe in telepathy whilst denying God. To me it makes more sense to believe in God than telepathy; telepathy seems to me to be unscientific mumbo-jumbo like astrology (although I have met men working prosaically on the Moon who held an unshakeable belief in astrology), while God can never be unscientific because he is the Prime Mover who contains science along with all the other effects of our universe. Or so I had worked it out, to my temporary satisfaction. God is shifting ground.

Directly I faced the Master, I felt some of those emotions – call them empathic if you will – which I have referred to as being unsusceptible to scientific method. Directly he spoke, I knew that in him, as in his creatures, aggression and fear were mixed. God gave me understanding.

This could not be a robot.

I looked up at it. Once I had got a grip of myself, I saw that the Master, although indeed a fearsome figure, was not as tall as I had estimated in my near-panic. He stood perhaps two and a quarter metres high, which is to say just over a head taller than I.

Beneath his helmet was a pale face which sweated just like mine did.

‘Who are you, and where did you spring from?’ he demanded.

I am trained to understand men, to cut through their poses. I understand tough men, and men who have merely tough façades. Despite the truculence of this man’s voice, I thought I detected uncertainty in it. I moved forward from the rock where I had been leaning.

He shuffled awkwardly in order to remain facing me, at the same time swinging his gun up to aim it at my stomach. Once my attention was thus directed to it, I recognized the gun as a kind issued to Co-Allied Invasion and Occupation Forces. It was a Xiay 25A, cheaply manufactured by our Chinese allies, capable of multiple-role usage, firing ordinary bullets, CS gas bullets, nailbombs, and other similar devices. The robot-like man carried a whip and a revolver in his belt. He was well armed if he was out for a morning walk.

He repeated his question.

I faced him squarely, fighting down my weakness.

‘I’m American, which I believe is more than you can claim. My name is Calvert Madle Roberts, and I am an Under-Secretary of State in the Willson Administration. I was returning from state business when my plane was shot down in the Pacific. Your employees brought me ashore. I have to get in touch with Washington immediately.’

‘My employees? You must mean Maastricht. What the devil was he playing at landing you here? This isn’t a funfair I’m running. Why didn’t he bring you round to the lagoon?’

‘I’ve been nine days adrift. I’m about all in and I need to contact my department soonest, OK? If you’re in charge, I hold you responsible for looking after me.’

He uttered a grunt which might have represented laughter. ‘I am in charge here, that’s for sure … And I can’t very well have you thrown back into the ocean.’

‘That’s big of you. I’ve told you my name. Roberts. What’s your name?’

His lip curled slightly. ‘You call me Master, same as the rest of them do.’ He swung himself about with a violent bodily motion and began striding back the way he had come. I followed.

We made our way along what served as a wretched street for the native village. The natives, having gathered their courage, had returned to peer at us. They uttered apotropaic phrases as their Master went by.

‘His is the Hand that Maims …’

‘His is the Head that Blames …’

‘His is the Whip that Tames …’

Beyond the little ragged village lay the lagoon. The road skirted it, winding past its tranquil green waters to buildings glimpsed through trees. Beyond everything was a steep hill, its grey cliffs looming above the forest. However mean the affairs of men, nature had added a note of grandeur.

It was impossible to keep up with the great mechanical strides of the self-styled Master. I lagged farther and farther behind. There was a gang of natives working on the far side of the lagoon, where I observed a mobile crane; they stopped work to stare at us.

My vision began to waver as I moved uphill. A stockade of tall and rusty metal posts stood here. The top of the stockade was decorated with barbed wire, strand after entangled strand of it. The Master halted at a narrow gate in the wall, stooping awkwardly to unlock it. I heard tumblers click back. He turned a wheel, the gate swung open, and he passed in. As soon as I had followed him, he pushed the gate shut and locked it from the inside.

Weakness overcame me. I fell to one knee.

‘Bella!’ he called, ignoring me.

I rose again, making my way forward as a strange figure came out of a building towards us. It was wearing a dress. It – no, she, Bella – had the short deformed legs common to most of the other islanders. Her skin was a dull pink. Her face was as hideous as George’s and his fellows’, although her eyes were curiously – lambent, I believe the word is. They seemed to glow and had an oriental cast. She would not look directly at me, although she approached readily enough while listening to what the Master was telling her.

To my surprise she came straight up to me and attempted to lift me off my feet. I felt a sort of nervous thrill at her embrace. Then I collapsed.

My senses never entirely left me. I was aware of strange faces about, and of being carried into a shadowy room. Something cool was placed on my forehead. Water was poured into my mouth; I could hardly swallow, and the cup was taken away. Then my eyes were bandaged. I lay without volition as expert hands ran over my body and I was given a thorough examination. These were things that hardly registered at the time, although they came back to me afterwards.

When I finally roused myself, the bandage was off my eyes. I lay naked under a sheet and felt refreshed. As I propped myself up on one elbow, I saw that an ointment to soothe my sunburns had been applied to my chest and face. The woman called Bella sat hunched in one corner of the room. Her eyes flashed greenly at me as she turned her head.

‘You – feel OK now?’

‘I think so.’

‘You like whisky?’

‘Thanks, but I don’t drink.’

‘No drink? You drink water.’

‘I meant that I don’t drink whisky.’

She stared motionlessly at me. She had short dark hair. I wondered if it was a wig. She had a nose that resembled a cat’s muzzle.

‘Thanks for seeing me through, Bella. I was in a bad way. Just reaction.’

‘I tell Master.’ She slunk away, hardly opening the door enough to get through, closing it directly she was through it. Decidedly feline.

The room took on new proportions as soon as she had gone. My body felt extremely light. Well, I said to myself, that’s how it is, here on the Moon. You mustn’t expect reality. Reality here is only one-sixth of what it is on Earth.

Without any sense of effort, I climbed out of bed and found it was easy to stand on my two feet if I stretched out my arms for balance. Being naked made things much easier. I floated over to my one unglazed window. No glass: but of course there were no minerals on the Moon.

‘M for Moon,’ I told myself aloud.

There was music, played close by, music and the strong heat of a tropical day. The music was Haydn’s, that composer who had come to dominate all the others, even Bach and Beethoven, in the last decade. I believed it was his Fifty-Fourth Symphony being played. Haydn and heat …

By some trick of the mind, I remembered who Moreau was.

I was gazing out at an untidy courtyard. Cans of paint were stacked there, sheets of wood, and panels of metal. Maastricht, still clutching his bottle, crossed my line of sight. I had forgotten he was on the Moon.

I heard the Master shouting at him. ‘Why the hell did you dump that politician where you did? It was asking for trouble – this is no funfair! Suppose George had—’

‘I didn’t bother to take him round to the harbour because I was in a haste to get to the fish nets, like you told me,’ Maastricht’s voice replied. I’ve had enough shouting at for one day. George brought him in safely, didn’t he?’

‘I had to go and rescue the man. They were about to tear him apart, just to put you in the picture.’

‘Pfhuh! I don’t believe you. Anyway, what do we do with the guy now he’s here?’

‘You know he can’t be allowed to stay. Hypothesize, man. Suppose he took it into his head to team up with Warren?’

‘Jeez, don’t mention Warren … Let it ride a while, Master. It’s time I had a drink.’

There was more, but strange waves were radiating through my head, bringing darkness. I staggered back to the bed, tucked a hand under the pillow and fell into a deep, troubled sleep. Over and over again, I was half-roused by the terrors of my dreams, in which the recurrent motif was a gigantic letter M, black, carved sometimes from rock, sometimes from flesh. Occasionally I roused to find the woman Bella ministering to me, or clumsily mopping my brow.

Since I was on the Moon, things were pleasant that would otherwise have been unpleasant. In her cat-like fashion Bella pressed herself against me. Her mouth, with its sharp incisors, lay against mine. I enjoy power, and the wielding of it; in any given situation I will manoeuvre until I am in control; but with Bella against me, fawning yet predatory, I relished the weakness in which I floated. Things go like that on Luna.

At last a time came when I sat up and was absolutely clear in my head. My internal clocks told me I had been in a fever for two or more days. Neatly pressed clothes lay by my bed. I climbed out and stood. My shanks looked thinner than before. I tested my balance, and a faint heaving still lingered, a phantom of the days adrift in the boat; but I took command of myself and had no trouble walking across to the window.

There lay Moreau Island, soaking in the unending daily dosage of sun, with the Pacific waiting as always on the horizon, a vat of energy. In the untidy courtyard, a bird swooped. All else was motionless. The Moon had set below my psychic horizon. I returned to the bed and sat down.

A while later Bella slunk into the room.

‘You – are better?’ she asked.

I beckoned her closer. She stayed where she was, one hand on the door. Scrutinizing her, I reassembled the mixed feelings I had towards her during my fever. She wore an ankle-length drab gold dress. It was torn. The tear, and her general demeanour, conveyed an impression of wretchedness; yet there was in her regard, in her hunched shoulder, a defiance which I admired. By the same token she was ugly enough, yet there was an animality about her which had made some kind of appeal to my more carnal instincts.

‘I appreciate your attentions to me while I was sick, Bella,’ I said. ‘Now I have to work. Where’s your shower? I sure can use a shower.’

‘The Master wish to speak to you.’ Maybe she understood, maybe not.

She led me down a short corridor and into another room. Music was playing – Haydn again. I had expected to see the Master towering over me, but he was not there. It was quite a pleasant room, but almost bare of furniture. There was a long window which gave a view over the top of the palisade – almost a seductive view, you might say, if it were not for the sinister nature of the surroundings.

I could see part of a placid lagoon, where the water was almost turquoise and sheltered from the blue Pacific beyond by a spine of land which almost enclosed it. On the curve of the lagoon was a harbour, with a battered landing stage and a boat moored to it. Tall palms leaned across to the water, overshadowing some huts. Behind them was jungle, climbing up a slope, the top of which was lost behind the building in which I stood.

It was such a typical view that I wondered if I had seen it before, perhaps in some previous reincarnation. Then I recalled that this vista embodied one of the favourite early twentieth-century dreams of escape from civilization: the retreat in the South Seas where the steamer came from Europe once a month and the girls wore grass skirts. And I reflected, as I turned away to observe the Master’s room, that I had a great deal for which to be thankful. Like life itself.

On one wall was a 3V screen: I was looking into a vast and ornate chamber, part perhaps of some German palace, in which an orchestra sat giving of their best to the soul of Joseph Haydn. I recognized the channel instantly as World Third; it beamed music out from Chicago for twenty-four hours every day and was available by satellite anywhere, even in this remote spot on the ocean. They could pick it up in Moon Base too. One of the good things that the war had not yet put a stop to.

Then the Master’s voice cut in over the music, the orchestra dimmed, and he said, ‘I’m coming in to speak to you, Roberts. Are you prepared?’

‘Certainly. What now?’

‘You may be surprised.’

‘At that, a side door opened, and someone entered from the next room. Maastricht followed, but I scarcely noticed him.

I was too busy looking at the person who had preceded him.

It was the Master. I recognized the pallid face. He was about thirty-five years old. He was cut down to size since I last saw him swaggering along. He came rapidly forward in a mechanized wheelchair and halted in front of me. I backed away and sat down on a relaxer. He had no legs. A looseflowing garment covered his body.

‘This is where it’s at, Mr Roberts. Now you see me like this, we both know where we stand.’ He was full of old-fashioned slangy phrases from some decade back, and used this one without a hint of humour. ‘In any event, I can’t take prosthetic limbs for very long in this heat. Now, you and I are going to have a little talk while Bella brings you in something to eat.’

Peeled out of his armour, and decked out in that looseflowing garment, the self-styled Master looked weak and female on first impression. But in the pallid face with its sheer cheeks and narrow pale mouth I saw a remorseless quality that would have to be taken into anyone’s account: either respected or circumvented.

As he turned to say something to the Netherlander, who hovered by, I was busy estimating him.

‘Tough luck about your accident,’ I said, indicating the elaborate wheelchair. ‘How come you’re living on an island in the Pacific War Zone? You’re a Britisher, aren’t you, to judge by that accent of yours?’

He regarded me unblinkingly.

‘It does so happen I was born in England. So what? I care no more for England than it ever cared for me. Damn England. I’m stateless – as simple as that. Follow me?’

I let that go unanswered. Bella entered, wheeling a trolley which she set in front of me. The trolley held an assortment of alcoholic drinks which I ignored and some fresh lime juice which I drank avidly. The food was Korean, served straight from deep-freeze lunch trays and very palatable, especially to a man who had had nothing solid in his stomach for days.

‘Do you know something about construction works, Mr Roberts?’ Hans asked.

‘That’s not important,’ the Master told him. ‘Go away and let me speak to Roberts alone. Get back to the harbour. Why are you hanging about here, anyway?’

‘First you want me to paint signs, then you want me to work at the harbour—’

‘Hans, this is no funfair. There’s work to be done. Get down to that harbour when I tell you. You know the scum don’t work well without you.’

‘You think I care?’ Maastricht said, but he backed out all the same, casting black looks at the man in the chair.

When we were alone, the Master said dismissively, ‘I try to run a tight little ship. Now then, Mr Calvert Roberts, we can have a talk, since you are here, however unwelcomely.’

‘Food’s good … after a week and more in an open boat, I tell you, a man is more than glad when Providence delivers him to terra firma, and to water, food and human company – however unfriendly.’

‘Nobody has ever thanked Providence for being on this rock before.’

‘Maybe they should have tried it … I want to discuss what you call this rock with you—’

He shook his head. ‘I want to discuss you. Never mind what you want. First things first. I have my priorities.’

‘Look, friend, you come on pretty heavy. You haven’t even introduced yourself. You don’t own me, remember. I’m not addressing you as “Master” – what’s your name?’

‘“Master” is my name here.’

‘You’ll gain nothing by persisting in that attitude, I promise you. Your presence here, in the middle of a War Zone, is probably against military law, and carries severe penalties.’ I continued to eat while the orchestra continued to play and he wheeled himself fast about the room.

He returned to swerve in front of me, confronting me, and said. ‘If you find it so damned important, my name was Dart. Mortimer Dart – though I’m now as nameless as I am stateless. As I am formless. There is no place for you on this island unless you submit to my authority.’

‘Why not cool it, Mr Dart? I’m not challenging your authority, and I certainly don’t require one slice of your little island. My intention is simply to get back to the States as soon as possible. My presence is required. ASASC – that’s the Allied Space and Aerospace Corps, if you’re out of touch – will be searching this whole area for survivors of the shuttle crash. I must use your radio to get in touch with ASASC HQ in San Diego, to have a message relayed to the President, letting him know I’m functional and pinpointing my present position. You will be compensated for any inconvenience.’

He looked at me over one malformed shoulder, his lips compressed.

‘According to you, you’re an Under-Secretary of State. A buddy of the President’s, eh? Quite a big wheel. Important. It’s not a tale I find likely – you washed up here half-dead. Prove you’re who you claim.’

‘All my papers were lost in the Leda crash. Get on to ASASC, ask them if Under-Secretary Roberts is missing. Or I can raise my own department on confidential wavelength – they’ll be glad to identify me. You can also check the names of the other guys in the crash. I can give them to you. I’m real enough. The news I carry to the President is real enough.’

He regarded me suspiciously. ‘What news?’

I looked at my watch and calculated. The war moved fast, even in its rather phoney opening stages. Military movements which had been secret ten days ago on the Moon would be common knowledge on Earth by now.

‘You follow the events of the war?’

He gestured towards the orchestra without moving his angry eyes from mine. ‘This I prefer. If men kill each other, so what?’

‘Soviet ground, sea and air forces are about to occupy Hokkaido and neighbouring islands of Japan. They will thus command the Sea of Japan and sever sea links between the United States and China. I was returning from a conference on the Moon to decide the future conduct of war in the Japanese theatre; it is essential I report back at once. Too much time has been lost to the enemy already.’

Dart considered this sullenly. Then he spoke in a more conciliatory tone. ‘I saw a bulletin this morning. A tremendous strike against Japanese cities and ports has just started … Give me some details about yourself, just to put me in the picture.’

I clutched my knees. The nightmare, the closing agony of the twentieth century, was unrolling, and here I sat humouring some petty madman … Briefly I gave him a few details. Born on a farm in Connecticut, only son. Ambitious father of German descent, mother Scottish Presbyterian. Both sides of the family affluent. Father’s connections enabled me to go into politics straight from university. A minor post in the Ammader Administration enabled me to go on a mission to Peking when the Russo-Chinese campaign along the Ussuri flared up. Was in Helsinki at the time of the Helsinki Incident marking the start of active Soviet expansionism. Escaped Finland and Europe with certain vital memory discs from NAPA HQ. Given governmental post shortly after, under President Wilson.

To this account Dart listened intently, head on one side. I felt that he was struggling to decide whether or not to believe my story. What I said was convincing and near enough to the truth.

‘You’ve been adventurous. Managed to move round the world, despite all the travel restrictions, East-West, North-South, all that red tape… . Your years have been active, according to you, up to the hilt. Real value for money, if you’re not making it up.’ He sighed. ‘Just for the record, how old are you, Mr Roberts?’

I took care not to let my growing impatience show.

‘I’m thirty-five, getting a bit long in the tooth. Born 24th May, 1961. Married four times, divorced four times. No offspring. Anything else you want to know? I don’t need a passport for Moreau Island, I guess?’

He made another circuit of the room, the machine taking a wide sweep and bringing him back before me with an abrupt halt. Dart’s face was grim, his brow wrinkled with a scowl.

‘We are the same age, Mr Roberts. Born on the same day of the same month. Is that a coincidence, a bad joke or a frame-up of some kind? While you’ve lived your life to the full – cities, women, that stuff – I’ve had to drag myself through existence on crutches, or in this cart, or worse. Some day. Glory for you, humiliation for me …’

‘Glory …’

‘You don’t know the half of it, you four-limbed bastard.’ The words were spoken almost without emphasis; it was just something he habitually thought when confronted by ordinary people. He looked me in the eye as he said it. I dropped my gaze. Dart’s face, under its puffiness, was striking. He had a heavy formidable skull with plenty of jaw and nose, and a pair of deep-set malignant eyes with which to look out at the world. His hair was dark and carelessly but rather elegantly tumbled about his forehead. Maybe he was going to run to fat.

‘As you must have anticipated, I feel uncomfortable, Mr Dart. So our lives have been very different. Don’t imagine mine has not had its problems. Everyone’s has. You don’t need me to explain how mysterious are the ways of God, who communicates through suffering very often.’

‘God!’ he echoed, and made a blasphemous remark. ‘Although not only weak men swear, I consider the trait a sign of weakness. That’s your mother’s Presbyterian upbringing, I suppose …’

It was time to change the subject. The orchestra had embarked on the last movement of Haydn’s symphony, and Bella almost surreptitiously wheeled the food trolley away.

I said to Dart, ‘I consider myself conversant with most islands in the Pacific. Moreau Island I have not heard of. How come? Who gave it its name?’

He countered with another question.

‘Does the name Moreau ring any familiar bells with you?’

I rubbed my chin.

‘So happens, yes. I used to be a great admirer of the scientific romances of H. G. Wells, who wrote First Men in the Moon and The Time Machine. Wells also wrote a novel about a Pacific island, nameless as I recall, on which a Dr Moreau practised some unpleasant experiments on animals of various kinds. Any connection?’

‘You are on Dr Moreau’s island. This is that same island.’

I laughed – a little uneasily, I have to admit.

‘Come on, Dart. Moreau’s is a purely fictitious island. Wells was writing an allegory. I can distinguish between reality and imagination, thanks.’

‘An ignorant boast, Mr Roberts. Wells may have been writing an allegory, but his island was firmly based on a real one – just as the island on which Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked was based on a real one. You know Robinson Crusoe? Just as there was a real-life equivalent of Crusoe so there was a Moreau. The real Moreau was a gentleman of some distinction at the Edinburgh Academy of Surgery, by name Mr Angus McMoreau. He was a pupil of Thomas Huxley – Wells met him. His life is well documented. Wells did very little to camouflage the real situation, beyond some over-dramatizing. In fact McMoreau brought a lawsuit.’

‘All of which must have been over a century ago.’ Dart evidently harboured some dangerous illusions. I disbelieved all he said, but thought it best to conceal my scepticism.

‘Right, it was over a century ago, right,’ said Dart, laughing sourly. ‘What difference does that make? McMoreau’s experiments are still of relevance to research today. He was probing the borderland between human and animal nature, where the springs of modern man’s behaviour lie. Territorial imperatives, to name but one example I expect you’re au fait with. Questions the scientific world tries to answer today by resort to piddling disciplines like palaeontology and archaeology, McMoreau tried to resolve through surgery. His methods were primitive but his ideas were valid … He was a cute old nut-case and no mistake.

‘After McMoreau’s death, an assistant not mentioned in Wells’s novel carried on his work for several years. Then he passed on as well, and the inhabitants of the island were left on their own to survive as best they could. It can’t have been much of a picnic. As you know they were hybrid stock, but some offspring were born, and they form the basis of the population as you see it today. They can trace their ancestry right back to McMoreau’s times.’

The symphony finished. The orchestra bowed. Dart sat in his chair, staring out towards the lagoon as he finished speaking.

‘In the Second World War, Japanese forces invaded most of the Pacific, including this island. No permanent detachment was based here. Then, after the Japanese surrender, knowledge of the island came into American hands. Its native name is Narorana, by the way. Which means private. A scientific detachment was sent to investigate and—’

He paused. Something in the courtyard outside had caught his eye. He bowled over to the window. I also went to look, so impressed was I by the expression of absolute fury on his face.

Bella alone was to be seen. She stood against the palisade. For a moment I thought she was talking to herself; then it became apparent that she must be speaking to someone on the other side of the fortification.

‘How many times have I told her—’

Dart was moving again, charging through the door and along the corridor. ‘Da Silva! Da Silva!’ he called. His chair had a turn of speed to match his anger. He appeared outside, closely followed by a slender, dark-complexioned man in a lab coat who I guessed was the hastily summoned Da Silva. I saw Dart reach for a whip clamped to the outside of his chair. Then I started running myself.

When I got outside, it was to see him striking the wretched Bella repeatedly across her shoulders. She cowered under the lash but made no attempt to run away until I shouted, whereupon she showed a good turn of speed and ran inside by a farther door.

The man in the white coat grasped my arm without a great deal of conviction and I easily brushed him aside. I grabbed Dart’s whip and flung it to the far end of the compound.

‘You dare interfere – this is my island—’ Dart’s face turned a patchy yellow.

‘They aren’t your people to do what you like with—’

‘They are my people—’

‘You don’t own their souls—’

‘They have no souls, they’re animals—’

‘Animals deserve better than that. You and I are going to quarrel, Dart, unless you keep your temper in check. I can see you feel you have reason to hate the world, and I’m sorry, but I will not stand by and see you—’

‘You fool, I’ll throw you out of here if you speak to me like that! You dare attack me!’

He was far from subdued by my action. His face was a study in malice. Moreover, I had by no means disarmed him by wrenching his whip away. He seemed to be literally well armed. Whatever disaster had struck him, I saw now that he had his arms as well as his legs replaced, though the loose-fitting garment he wore made this hard to discern. Three pairs of arms were clamped on both sides of his chair, making him look somewhat like a plastic-and-metal spider. Some of these six interchangeable appendages ended in very odd hands indeed; at least two of them looked like lethal weapons.

But he mastered his wrath and said, ‘Just be warned. Come back inside; I wish to finish speaking to you. Da Silva, back to the labs.’

His chair bore him speedily back into the room we had left, and I followed.

Dart flipped off the vision on his huge screen. Only music flowed through the room – a quartet by Shostakovich.

‘These people have to be kept under stern control – as you will understand when you have been here a little longer.’ He spoke without looking at me.

I was still angry and would not reply. When Dart spoke again, it was again in a vein of explanation, although the tone of his voice gave no hint of apology.

‘The truth is, Roberts, that I’m vexed to be interrupted in my work by you or anyone else. My researches have gone through three stages. The first stage was merely to duplicate McMoreau’s original experiments, the second – well, never mind that. Suffice it to say, cutting the cackle, that I’m now into the culminating third stage. All the early crudities of approach have been set aside, junked – finished. I’m beyond all that. I’m discovering … I’m discovering the relativity of flesh …

‘The phrase means nothing to you, Roberts. But, believe me, all these years of pain – and pained thought – suffering is nothing unless you learn from it – I am the Einstein of a revolutionary biology …’

He darted a look at me.

‘I’m listening,’ I said.

He laughed. I saw again that dark and troubled thing in him. ‘I know you’re listening, man. Mr Roberts, I want you on my side and don’t know how to get you there. I’m not another Moreau. Not by a long chunk of chalk. You’ve decided already you hate me, haven’t you?’

‘I didn’t take to the way you treated Bella.’

‘Listen, I’m not another Moreau. He was a monster in many ways, a tyrant. I’m a victim. Try and dig that concept. A victim. Look!’

With a quick movement of his chin, he struck at a button on his right shoulder. So far as I had noticed it, I regarded it as a button securing his loose-flowing tunic. It was more than that. There was a sharp snap, a whir of servo-mechanisms, and Dart’s right arm slid off and clamped itself against the side of the chair.

Another brusque chin movement, and he pushed the tunic from his shoulder so that it fell away.

I saw his real arm.

It was not an arm. It was scarcely a hand. Four flexible digits like fingers sprouted from the shoulder joint. He swerved the chair so that I could see the detail, and the puckering of flesh where a shape almost like a hand had formed under the smooth nub of shoulder.

‘On the other side it’s a bit more grotesque. And my phalanges and metatarsal bones grow out of deformed femurs – that’s what I’ve got for legs. And I have a penile deformity.’

His voice as he spoke was throaty and the eyes of this Einstein of a revolutionary biology were bright with moisture.

Although I regarded him stolidly, my face unmoving, I had to fight an unexpected urge to apologize. ‘Why the healthy body should apologize to the defective I do not know. That’s not part of my philosophy.

‘Why are you so anxious to gain my pity?’

He leant sideways. The little fingers pressed a button inside the artificial arm. It moved back into place again, snapping when it was correctly positioned. The tiny sound provoked him to nod to himself almost complacently.

He was in control of himself, as his voice showed when he spoke again. ‘Back in all those crummy years when I was a kid, I used to go on reading jags, Mr Roberts. All sorts of crap I read. Not old H. G. Wells, I don’t mean. Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and a lot more, as well as technical books. A French writer called Gide compares Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. He finds them very alike, and do you know what he puts on about them? He says that Nietzsche was jealous of Jesus Christ, envied him to the point of madness, whereas Dostoevsky was struck with humility and regarded Jesus as a superman. You know what? As those two writers regarded Jesus Christ, so I regarded ordinary human beings – holding both attitudes at the same time. Because I was born monstrous and deformed, Mr Roberts. I was a thalidomide kid. Remember thalidomide?’

I remembered the thalidomide scandal well. The drug had been manufactured as a tranquilliser by a German company and licensed by chemical firms all over the world. The side-effects of the drug had not been properly researched; its teratogenicity had only become apparent when babies were born deformed. When the drug was administered to women in the early stages of pregnancy, it had the power of passing through the placental barrier and malforming the growth of the foetus. From eight to ten thousand children were born defective in various parts of the globe.

What made me recall the case so clearly was that over twenty years ago, when there was a court case in Canada regarding the amount of compensation to be paid one of the thalidomide children, my mother had said to me, ‘Cal, you were born at the time when thalidomide was available all round the world. We are just lucky that the States has sane laws about testing drugs – so that when I went to Doc Harris for a tranquilliser during pregnancy, he prescribed something safe, or otherwise you might have been born without your proper limbs like other babies your age in England and elsewhere.’

I said to Dart, ‘That whole case was a piece of criminal negligence.’ I could but stare at him, ashamed to move my eyes away.

‘My mother was prescribed Distaval, as thalidomide was called in England, and used it for a week only. One week! That week covered the forty-eighth day of her pregnancy. When I was born, I had these severe abnormalities on which you now gaze with such pleasure.

‘If the doctors had had any sense, they would never have let me live.’

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