An Island Called Moreau (15 page)

“Warren—” I said. My back was to the precipice.

He jumped at me.

The pause had lost him his best chance of getting rid of me. I had instinctively taken my balance, and I was heavier than he was.

He brought the metal bar down hard, but I took the blow on the left shoulder and, with my right hand, reached out and grasped him round the neck. He tried to kick my left leg away. I grappled him nearer to me until he dropped the bar and began to punch me in the stomach. I'd worked my right hand round his skull, and got my fingertips into the socket of his right eye. He yelled. He got a lucky kick under my kneecap. My leg buckled and I went down, taking Warren with me.

We lay across the rock, my head hanging over into space. Warren had sprawled on top of me but I got both hands on his throat, and my right leg round one of his.

“Lay off, you bastard, before we both go over the edge!”

I gave his neck a twist for luck, and then pushed him from me. He sat gasping in the grass, alternately feeling his eye and rubbing his throat. As I stood up, I saw that the metal strut lay behind me, lodged precariously where it had fallen, in one of the ridges of the rock. Picking it up, I flung it far out to sea, turning away while it was still twisting in the air toward the water.

“Get up!” I said.

“Don't throw me over, mister! I didn't mean you no harm, honest. I must have been crazed in the head.…” He crouched at my feet, one arm half raised in a protective gesture.

The realization came on me that I was trembling in every limb.

“Get up,” I said. “I'm not going to harm you.”

He climbed slowly to his feet, watching me all the while. We glared at each other like a pair of hostile cats. I observed that the trembling had hold of him too. His face was deadly pale. We went back to his place without speaking.

At the bungalow, with one hand on the lintel of the door, he paused and looked into my face, his mouth working.

“You really aren't intending to finish me off, on account of what I did to you?”

“All I want is to remain here. I told you. I'll leave you alone, you leave me alone. I shall wait here until the submarine comes, and then I'll get aboard it.”

He dropped his gaze.

“There's a total war on, Mr. Roberts. Nobody aboard that sub's likely to listen to one word you may say. I respect you as a merciful man, but you're as mad as the rest of 'em.”

9

Revels by Night

That night was calm. The breeze died; an almost full moon shone down on Moreau Island. I slept on a bunk in one of Warren's outbuildings and was tormented by evil dreams.

I was walking through a thicket of bamboo, in a confusion of light and shade. Suddenly, I came upon George, the Boar-Hyena Man. For a moment, I could hardly make him out; then I saw how blood ran down his face from a wound in his head, where the skin had been entirely torn away, leaving an ugly gash amid his thick curly hair. The streams of blood surrounded his deep-set eyes, running in the furrows of his nose and about his mouth. As he breathed, bubbles rose and broke in his nostrils.

Even as this terrible sight transfixed me, George jumped from his place of concealment and threw himself upon me. I awoke groaning, and was unable to calm myself until I dragged myself from the wretched bed and walked round the room.

After that, I unbarred the door and stepped cautiously outside. It was too hot in my bungalow—the air conditioning had broken down long ago. I leaned against the brickwork and breathed deep.

To my left, the ocean glinted through trees. Its slumberous roar came clearly through the night air. Overhead, more than one AES moved; some of them contained nuclear weapons, which could be guided to any desired target below. The island—isolated though its sordid dream might appear—was a part of the mainland of world tragedy.

A nightbird called. Otherwise, the island was hushed. The world also paused. This early stage of the war was widely recognized as a preliminary pause to gather corporate strength and will, during which appearances suggested peace; while, behind the scenes, enemy governments maneuvered for strategic positions, allies, total mobilization, and diplomatic formulas that would exonerate them from blame when the storm broke. As yet, only local actions had been undertaken; few had died; only tactical nuclear weapons had been used. But no one doubted that devastation on a hitherto unimagined scale was on its way. As yet, the birds still sang. But a final time clock had already started ticking.

While I stood, breathing deeply of the night air, the door of Warren's bungalow opened. I happened to catch sight of the movement by the widening of an angle of shadow, although the hinges were entirely silent. The gleam of a gun barrel showed before Warren himself stepped forth.

“Oh, it's you, is it?” he said. “What'n the hell you think you're doing strolling around at this time of night? I thought as we had visitors.”

“I wanted some air. Go back inside.”

“You set a mighty chancy business going here, Mr. Roberts. Like I told you, they're going to come looking for you, and then I'm going to be in trouble.”

“The better I get to know you, Mr. Warren, the worse I think of you. On your own admission, you are in your present predicament because of your loathing of your fellow men. You can hardly expect them to have mercy on you.”

He digested that. “Then you must be a bigger fool 'n me, because you never heaved me over the cliff when you could have.”

“I have religious beliefs, which occasionally prevent me from committing murder.”

“That accounts for your habit of saying things to make me look small. What are you, a Mormon or a Catholic or something? They used to make a lot of trouble where I lived.” He leaned his rifle against the wall, as if he felt inclined to talk. Why not? I thought, since we were all doomed anyway.

“My parents were Protestant, though we rarely went to church. We used to sing carols at Christmas. Last century and this, the Christian God has become discredited because he is identified more and more with materialist progress. So I don't think I pray to him.”

“Something in what you say. My folks was religion-mad, and much good it did them. You got some fancy religion of your own, then?”

“I've no patience with all the fakes who have been dragged in from the East to take God's place, your gurus and maharishis and swamis and the rest—the incense-and-flowers brigade. Nor do I see anything but placebos in the new science-based religions, like scientology or ufolatry. I'm happy not to believe in Dart's Big Master in the Sky either.”

“That don't leave you much.” He chuckled.

“Right. This hasn't been the best-ever century for faith, and some would say hurrah for that. No, I believe in a sort of abstract God, remote and not particularly comforting, whose specialty is continuity rather than succor. The universe is his—I mean, it makes more sense to think of a consciousness behind creation than to imagine that it all grew in its complexity out of nothing, like a mushroom out of concrete. But now that the universe is a going concern, my God is aloof from it—maybe he is now powerless to interfere. You could say he was more of an Artist than an Administrator.”

Warren grunted. “He sounds a worse dropout than me. You'd be better off worshipping a little brass Buddha than a God like that!”

“I agree. Except I don't believe in brass Buddhas. Oh God, I disbelieve—help thou my disbelief! The only contact my God has with men is that he is manifest in trace elements in our best aspirations. When you aspire to do good in any field, then you are furthest from yourself, and so nearest to God. It's up to you to keep the contact. It's not up to him.”

Warren listened to what I had to say with close attention. Poor fool, to be taken in by what I said, I thought; of course, he would be a sentimentalist at heart. I realized as I was talking that my belief in God was hollow, I no longer believed in anything.

Only a year or two ago, as the ideological blocs moved toward conflict, I had argued that God was the greatest invention of the human imagination, and merely a positive goal toward which we were all moving, generation by generation. The idea was that we should gradually evolve into a kind of godhead. Even as I expounded this view, I was moved by my own faith and sincerity; besides, it suited eminent Undersecretaries of State to speak of profound matters. People had listened.

Most of those people were now in uniform or subterranean bunkers.

After a knotty silence, Warren said, “It ain't for me to stake my claim that you're talking nonsense. For one thing, I know that you're better educated than me, just to hear the way you make with the words. But I guess my view is that mankind has somewhere, somehow gone wrong, and ended up too complicated. I'd agree with the Bible where it says that big cities is sinful—that I do agree with. No doubt but the Bible has a lot of sensible things to say, like ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' But the only time I get a glimpse of any durn God is when I look around me at the beauties of Nature.”

He indicated the silent scene around us, still bathed in moonlight, and its stately tranquility.

I had been aware of light scuffles in the undergrowth while we were talking. Now the vague indication made by Warren's hand directed my attention to a clump of bushes, dark and indeterminate, which grew under a cluster of palm trees. Had I seen something move?

Warren, too, appeared to have seen or heard something. He stretched out a cautioning hand to me, peering ahead, before reaching to grasp his rifle.

Tropical places generally have their share of nocturnal birds which forage in the undergrowth. Their rustling can conjure up all kinds of nervous fears if one has reason to suspect danger. We stood there, together yet separately, listening to the discreet noises. They seemed to come from all sides of us.

He turned back to me, saying in a low voice, “Is someone there, do you reckon?”

“Dart doesn't travel easily. He'd come in daylight.”

“May not be Dart …”

A cloud began to cross the moon. Immediately, a heavy crashing came from the thickets on our right, as if someone or something had decided to take advantage of the temporary dark.

“They're there, right enough,” Warren said. “They've come for you. This is your doing, confound it all, coming up here talking about God and getting me killed.”

“We'd better get inside. They may go away by daylight.”

He did not heed me. Instead, he ran into the middle of the clearing, raised his gun, and fired two shots. The noise was transfixing. Long after the actual shots had died, the echoes of them went racketing out across the wastes of the Pacific. As the echoes were still hurtling toward infinity, nearer sounds spoke of a big creature crashing away through the bushes in panic.

Warren stood where he was, gun half raised.

“Whoever it was, he's gone,” I called.

“He wasn't alone by any manner of means,” Warren replied grimly.

Almost as soon as he spoke, an answering shot came from the jungle. I recognized the report as that of a carbine. Foxy? Next moment, ill-defined figures rushed into the open from several directions, converging on Warren. I called to him. He raised his rifle and shot one of the charging figures stone dead before the others overwhelmed him.

I saw an oil painting in the backwoods of Austria once which represented the ultimate in self-betrayal. Two murderers in hunting outfits beckoned a young man into a gloomy forest. It was evident, even from the sickly smile of the youth, that he would never emerge living from that remote spot. But the two murderers had so cozened him that he was about to go with them voluntarily, unable to face the fact of his imminent death, thus deceiving himself as much as they deceived him.

As I ran back into my bungalow, I felt it as an act of self-betrayal. It would have been nobler to have thrown myself into the middle of the clearing and died attempting to rescue Warren. But an instinct of self-preservation hurried me inside and slammed the door behind me.

From the window, I was able to get a view of what happened to Warren. His attackers numbered at least ten. Among them, I thought I recognized the active Alpha and Beta, the two ape-men, and the grotesque form of the gray Horse-Hippo. Standing to one side, apart from the fray, was Foxy. He held himself like a man; the resemblance was heightened by the confidence with which he now carried his carbine.

By some miracle, Warren broke free of the pack and ran for the undergrowth. Then he swerved, as if suddenly becoming aware of what he was doing, and doubled back toward the buildings. I saw him running toward me.

One of the monstrously heavy Beast People—a creature that had been lurking undecided out of my line of view—bore into sight, charging at the running figure. Warren saw it, raised his arms, swerved slightly, and came on.

The charging creature had its head thrust forward. It cannoned into Warren just as he reached the next building. It made no attempt to pause or even to seize Warren, plowing on like an express train and crushing the man against the wall. Warren uttered one gasping cry of agony and collapsed. The brute, stunned, fell beside him. Immediately, other creatures ran up, throwing themselves on Warren in frenzy.

They began to tear his body apart, to rip his clothes and his limbs away from his body. Only Foxy stood aloof from the scrimmage. He came closer to watch the destruction of the body.

So ghastly were these scenes, enacted in the bright moonlight, that I remained where I was by the window. The realization that their sport would soon be over and that they would then be after me—presumably their original quarry—threw me into a sort of dazed resignation without being able to shift me from the horror of the scene. Only when some small torn thing struck the window and slid down it, three inches from my face, did I pull myself away and think of escape.

The building contained equipment for the solar plant overhead. Against one wall was a metal staircase leading up to the roof, and so to the great lattices outside. Since there was no place to hide inside the room, my way lay upward.