An Island Called Moreau (6 page)

I remembered the thalidomide scandal well. The drug had been manufactured as a tranquilizer 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 fetus. 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 tranquilizer during pregnancy, he prescribed something safe. 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-first to 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.”

“But you've survived …”

“I'll leave you to think about what survival means in the circumstances. Life's not been much of a fun-fair, Mr. Roberts.”

He was gone, skidding away on two wheels. I stood where I was in the center of the room. I put my hands in my pockets. My brain was refusing to think.

Shostakovich was bringing his affairs to an enigmatic close.

It was not until the next morning that Mortimer Dart appeared again.

By that time, my strength had returned to me and I had gone through a good deal of anxious heart-searching. I had also met Heather Landis.

Dart's last remark had moved me; he had invited me to look into his life, that life of the same duration as mine (or so he claimed) but made so very different by physical accident. I had one way of understanding the sort of existence—I mean the sort of mental existence—he had led, by considering the uses to which he had put the island. Those uses (though I had only a sketchy notion of them so far) constituted a fairly broad indication of the sort of man with whom I was dealing.

I found myself virtually a prisoner. Although the house contained several doors, they were mostly locked. The only rooms to which I had access were my room with its attendant bathroom and the main room I have described. I could get into the compound, but that was of little avail since it did not lead to the rest of the house and the outer doors leading to the village were kept locked.

Beyond my captivity, the ocean and the daylight fulfilled their predestined functions without touching me. I felt myself as firmly imprisoned by the Master as if I were held captive in his mind.

Confinement was no new thing to me. Although I considered myself a well-traveled man, I was one of the late twentieth-century version of that species; I had been all round the world and to the Moon in my official capacity, yet most of that travel had been done behind metal plating, and most of the destinations had been security-shrouded rooms. Although I had plenty of muscle, my real strength lay in my nerve. I was a good negotiator when called upon—and negotiation calls upon use of the backside.

When dark came down over Moreau Island, extraordinary cries and whoops sounded from the direction of the village. I went into the compound to see what I could see, but the walls were too high for me to observe much more than the chilly blue-white eyes of lights burning above the deserted quayside. As I turned to go inside again, a figure crossed the shadowy room I had just left.

“Hey!” I called, and ran in after it. It had been a girl—not Bella.

There was only a desk lamp burning by an instrument panel.

By its light, dimly across the other side of the room, I saw a small deformed girl.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Hi there,” she said. She turned and switched more lights on.

“Who are you?” I asked in a different tone. The girl was small, certainly, but perfectly formed. Her hair was long, dark, and curly, and hung about her shoulders; tricks that the shadows played on it had led me to believe for a moment that she was a hunchback. Now I saw that was not so. She was of slender build, and wore a plain loose saffron-colored tunic and a pair of dark nylon trousers, with sandals on her bare feet. Her most remarkable feature was a pair of enormous dark eyes which regarded me with the surprised gaze of some nocturnal animal, a tarsier or a loris.

“I'm Heather,” she said. “I work for the Master.”

I moved closer to her. She backed away.

“I'd prefer if you'd keep a little distance between the two of us, Mr. Calvert Roberts.” Although wary, her tone was also slightly flirtatious.

“You American? You're not one of the natives?”

“You have a great way of handing out a compliment!”

“It was your accent—look, I don't want to offend Dart—after all, his boys pulled me out of the drink—but the sooner I can get a radio message to San Diego, the better. Can you help?”

She put an index finger to her mouth and nibbled at the nail. “I hear you're lucky to be alive. Sorry, passing messages just isn't my thing.”

“Then I want to speak to Dart—or Maastricht, or Da Silva.”

“Da Silva lives in the lab. Hans is drunk as usual. You know, if that guy would only make the effort, he could throw off his alcoholic addiction just like that. Fundamentally, he is very nice.”

“Let me speak to someone else then. I can't waste any more time.”

She put her arms akimbo and summed me up with her big eyes. There was too much conscious charm in the gesture for my taste. “So you were the only one who survived ten days in an open boat. Why do you imagine you alone survived and your friends did not?”

“They happened to be blown up, else they'd have survived. They were real tough. Look, lady, it's nice to see you—will you show me to the radio?”

“Do you think I would have survived in your boat?”

I was growing impatient with the conversation. She—Heather—was prowling about the room now, laying a hand on chairbacks and desks as she passed them. She was very graceful, and I observed the little plump buttocks in her trousers.

I said, “I'd guess you'd be better in bed than in an open boat.”

Thinking back afterward I could see that it was not the kind of remark to make to that kind of lady. The tight trousers misled me. She took my intended compliment as an insult of a particular male kind and, being of a tricky temperament, made me pay for it during the rest of my time on the island.

She glared at me. “What makes you think I couldn't survive in an open boat? I've survived plenty, believe me. You have to be tough to exist here.”

She sounded belligerent but was preparing to escape.

“No offense intended. Don't fly off the handle. What exactly is your function?”

At that, she prowled nearer to me, still looking unfriendly.

“They fished you out of the ocean, feller—what right do you have to question me? Let's just say that I play Man Friday to the Master's Robinson Crusoe, is that okay?”

Forcing a smile, I said, “It doesn't tell me what you're doing here.”

“What I'm doing is bringing your supper, since Bella's nowhere to be found.… It's in your bedroom.” Unease showed beneath her display of fighting spirit, and I thought it was the first time she had answered one of my questions directly. “I never met an Undersecretary of State before, so I wanted to see what you were like. You're no different from anyone else.”

As she made for the door into the corridor, I grasped one of her slim wrists. She must have been expecting it. She twisted in such a way that pain sprang up my arm and I let go of her. I caught one mocking glance from her large eyes; then she was gone.

Over my cold Korean meal, I wondered how much I was being manipulated. Someone like Dart would have a powerful compulsion to gain as full a control over his environment as possible; to that end, he could have no better setting than a small island. It remained to be seen how much the fey Heather was her own agent or something Dart controlled. What was her remark about having perfect control over herself?

Although I regarded what I had seen of the events on the island with misgiving, my interest lay elsewhere, and my duty was to report back, and then get back, to the center of things as soon as possible. There was a war on, and I was part of it. I went to bed in a moderately bad temper and spent an immoderately bad night.

4

A Quick Swim in the Lagoon

When breakfast came, it was Bella who brought it, not Heather. She sidled into my room with a tray and would, I believe, have slunk out without speaking had I not called to her. Her heavy head came over her shoulder and she regarded me with those smoldering feline eyes.

“Bella, will you tell your Master that I wish to speak to him? I wish him to send a message by radio and then I intend to quit his establishment. I will stay in the village until my relief party comes. Tell him that.”

“You no like this place?”

“Do you, Bella?”

She considered the question, looking down at the floor. At last, she said, “You Four Legs Long but you no like see me get whip last yest'day.”

“Tell Master what I say, Bella—he won't whip you.”

“You no got whip.”

She went.
You no got whip!
was that her way of commending me, or did she speak contemptuously? Was she telling me to mind my own business? I had no idea.

When the Master came, rolling quickly up in his self-propelled chair, I was awaiting him. I held out a sheet of paper.

“Here's a signal to ASASC HQ, informing them that I am alive and stating my whereabouts. I'll ask you to add grid references for this island. May I remind you that there is a war on, and that it is your duty as a British citizen to assist the Co-Allied cause by beaming this message immediately. Meanwhile, I'll take up your offer of yesterday and leave these premises. I can stay somewhere down in the village until the relief party comes.”

“Stay somewhere in the village? That's good. You won't find any Holiday Inn to put up at. No way.”

“I'm not here on vacation.”

Dart looked at me curiously. Then he snatched up the paper with prosthetic fingers and swung round in his chair. “If it's local color you're after, you'll get a basinful of that right enough. You obviously don't care for my company—perhaps the company in the
kampong
will suit your tastes. Though they don't play Haydn down there, you'll find.”

I didn't answer that. I followed him outside.

When we reached the outer gate, he raised the seat of his chair electrically until he was high enough to insert a magnetic key in a lock set well up the gate. Then he spun a wheel, as I had seen him doing on the outside of the compound. The gate rolled open. I was free to go.

“See you,” I said, tipping a finger at him.

He sat watching me, still and alert as a toad, as I walked through the gate and out into the sunshine.

The view under the trees was striking. The eye was led under an avenue of foliage toward the glittering waters of the lagoon, with the village nestling modestly among palm trees on the far side. The sound of the ocean pounding against rocks came clear to me; it was the permanent sound of Moreau Island, and would remain so, long after men had gone. I could not help contrasting my surroundings with the silent and austere landscape of Luna.

But I was preoccupied with thoughts of Mortimer Dart, the Master, and the kind of man he was. I had yet to grasp the situation on the island, and that I determined to do. The whole concept of an island ruled over by one man was an anachronism—something that the big powers would not tolerate. There were certain matters here I could investigate before the rescue party came to pick me up.

I was not entirely sure that Dart intended to transmit my message. To make certain, I would send a cable from the village. Or so I told myself, making a grave error of judgment.

I started optimistically toward the village. I had gone half a dozen paces when a figure leaped from the bushes. It ran across my path and stopped beside me, panting and laughing.

It was Bernie the Dog Man, showing his teeth in nothing but an amiable way and pushing his face with its large moist eyes toward mine. He tapped his chest as when we first met and said, “Your name Bernie—good boy, good man. Speak only with speech. Never eat filth, no, no!”

“Hello, Bernie. You still remember me, do you?”

His whole body wriggled with pleasure and he moved as close to me as he could. “Ha, many nighttimes! You Four Limbs Long, well made. Good boy, good man, take out of the big waters all wet. Like fish, yes, good. Use the hands, speak only with speech. Don't be bad or need Whip any more.”

As I began to move on, he kept pace with me, still talking, giving me watchful sideways glances which reminded me of the hulking George, although there was none of George's menace in Bernie's evasive stare.

“Are you coming with me to the village, Bernie?”

“Are you coming with you, Bernie, yes! Good speech, many nighttimes! Good, Bernie good, good boy—got little hands and arms like Master. I come with you in my body, good. Not need Whip any more, you'll see. One, two, three, five.… Green, yellow, plate. You Bernie, you not Master, you friend, you good boy …”

With such conversation to enlighten us, we came down to the harbor.