The Drowned World

by J. G. Ballard

  In the darkness the sleek curved hull of the depot ship rose into the air like the velvet belly of a stranded whale. Kerans crouched down in the shadow of the stern paddle, his lean bronzed body merging him into the background. He hid in the narrow interval between two of the blades, each a rivetted metal slab fifteen feet wide and four feet deep, peering through the coconut-sized links of the drive chain. It was shortly before midnight, and the last of the foraging parties was leaving the gangway, the sailors, bottle in one hand and machete in the other, lurching off across the square. The cobbles were littered with burst cushions and bongo drums, bones and burnt-out embers, all kicked about in a careless melee.

  Kerans waited until the last of the group made their way off among the streets, then stood up and secured the Colt in his belt. Far away, on the opposite side of the lagoon, was Beatrice's apartment, its windows in darkness, the light on the pylon extinguished. Kerans had considered climbing the stairs to the top floor, but safely assumed that Beatrice would be aboard the depot ship, an unwilling house-guest of Strangman.

  Overhead a figure appeared at the rail, then withdrew. Distantly a voice shouted something, another replied from the bridge. A hatchway from the galley opened and a pail-full of filthy slops were tossed down into the square. Already a substantial pool of abyssal fluid had gathered under the ship, soon it would fill the lagoon and the ship would float away again on a sea of its own excrement.

  Ducking under the band of the drive chain, Kerans stepped up onto the lowest blade, quickly pulled himself hand over hand up this curved radial ladder. The paddle creaked slightly, rotating a few inches under his weight as the slack in the drive chain was taken in. At the top he transferred to the steel boom which carried the paddle axle. Steadying himself on the overhead guy-rope controlling the blade scraper, he crawled slowly along the foot-wide boom, then stood up and climbed over the passenger rail into the small well of the flag-deck. A narrow companionway led up diagonally to the observation deck. Kerans scaled it soundlessly, pausing as he passed the two intervening decks in case any sailor with a hangover was moon-gazing at the rail.

  Hiding in the lee of a white-painted gig berthed on the deck, Kerans moved forward, ducking from one ventilator to the next, reached a rusty winch which stood a few feet from the dining table where Strangman had entertained them. The table had been stripped, the divans and chesterfield drawn up in a row below the giant painting still propped against the funnels.

  Voices sounded below again, and the gangway creaked as a last departure stepped down into the square. In the distance, over the rooftops, a signal flare glowed briefly against the chimney stacks. As it faded Kerans stood up and walked past the painting towards the hatchway hidden behind it.

  Suddenly he stopped, hand reaching for the butt of the Colt. Little more than fifteen feet away from him, on the berthing wing of the bridge, the red end of a cheroot glowed in the darkness, apparently detached from any corporeal form. Poised on the balls of his feet, and unable to either move forward or withdraw, Kerans searched the darkness around the glow, then picked out the white brim of the Admiral's peaked cap. A moment later, as he inhaled contentedly on the cheroot, the gleam of his eyes reflected the glowing tip.

  While the men below crossed the square, the Admiral turned and surveyed the observation deck. Over the edge of the wooden rail Kerans could see the butt of a shotgun cradled loosely in his elbow. The cheroot swivelled to one side of his mouth and a cone of white smoke dispersed in the air like silver dust. For a full two or three seconds he looked straight at Kerans, silhouetted in the darkness against the mass of figures on the canvas, but he gave no hint of recognition, apparently assuming that Kerans was part of the composition. Then he strolled slowly into the bridge-house.

  Picking each footstep carefully, Kerans advanced to the edge of the painting, then ducked into the shadows behind it. A fan of light from the hatchway lay across the deck. Crouching down, the Colt steady in his hand, he slowly descended the steps onto the empty gaming deck, watching the doorways for any sign of movement, for a levelled gun barrel among the curtains. Strangman's suite was directly below the bridge, entered by a panel door in an alcove behind the bar.

  He waited by the door until a metal tray slammed in the galley, then leaned on the handle and eased the door off its latch, stepped silently into the darkness. For a few seconds he paused inside the door, adjusting his eyes to the dim light cast into the ante-room through a bead curtain hidden behind a chart cabinet on his right. In the centre of the room was a large map table, roll-maps under the glass top. His bare feet sank into the soft carpeting, and he stepped past the cabinet and peered through the beads.

  The room, twice the length, was Strangman's principal saloon, an oaklined chamber with leather couches facing each other down the side walls, a large antique globe on its bronze pedestal below the forward row of portholes. Three chandeliers hung from the ceiling, but only one was lit, over a high-backed Byzantine chair with stained glass inlays at the far end of the room, shining on the jewels which spilled from the metal gunboxes drawn up on a semi-circle of low tables.

  Head back against the chair, one hand touching the slender stem of a gold-lipped glass on a mahagony table at her elbow, was Beatrice Dahl. Her blue brocade dress was spread out like a peacock's tail, a few pearls and sapphires which had spilled from her left hand gleaming among the folds like electric eyes. Kerans hesitated, watching the door opposite which led into Strangman's cabin, then parted the curtain slightly so that the beads tinkled gently.

  Beatrice ignored this, obviously too-familiar with the sound of rustling glass. The chests at her feet were loaded with a mass of jewelled trash—diamante anklets, gilt clasps, tiaras and chains of zircon, rhinestone necklaces and pendants, huge earrings of cultured pearl, overflowing from one chest to another and spilling onto the salvers placed on the floor like vessels to catch a quicksilver rainfall.

  For a moment Kerans thought that Beatrice had been drugged—her expression was vacant and blank, like the mask of a wax dummy, her eyes on some distant focus. Then her hand moved, and she raised the wine glass perfunctorily to her lips.

  "Beatrice!"

  With a start she tipped the wine across her lap, looked up in surprise. Pushing back the beads, Kerans stepped quickly across the room, caught her elbow as she began to rise from the chair.

  "Beatrice, wait! Don't move yet!" He tried the door behind the chair, found it locked. "Strangman and his men are looting the streets, I think there's only the Admiral up on the bridge."

  Beatrice pressed her face to his shoulders, with her cool fingers traced the black bruises showing through his ebony tan. "Robert, be careful! What happened to you, Strangman wouldn't let me watch?" Her relief and pleasure at seeing Kerans gave way to alarm. She glanced anxiously around the room. "Darling, leave me here and get away. I don't think Strangman will harm me."

  Kerans shook his head, then helped her to her feet. He gazed at Beatrice's elegant profile, at her sleek carmine mouth and lacquered nails, almost bemused by the heady scent of perfume and the brocaded rustle of her gown. After the violence and filth of the past days he felt like one of the dust-begrimed discoverers of the tomb of Nefertiti stumbling upon her exquisite painted mask in the depths of the necropolis.

  "Strangman's capable of anything, Beatrice. He's insane, they were playing a sort of mad game with me, damn nearly killed me."

  Beatrice gathered the train of her skirt, brushing away the jewels that clung to its fabric. Despite the lavish assortment before her, her wrists and breast were bare, one of her own small gold clasps in a contoured twist around her neck. "But Robert, even if we get out–"

  "Quiet!" Kerans stopped a few feet from the curtain, watching the strands balloon faintly and then subside, trying to remember whether there was a porthole open in the ante-room. "I've built a small raft, it should carry us far enough. Later we'll rest and build a better one."

  He started to walk towards the curtain when two of the strands p
arted fractionally, something moved with snake-like speed and a whirling silver blade three feet long cleft the air and spun towards his head like an immense scythe. Wincing with pain, Kerans ducked and felt the blade skim past his right shoulder, tearing a shallow three-inch weal, then impale itself with a steely shudder in the oak panelling behind him. Voice frozen in her throat, Beatrice backed wild-eyed into one of the occasional tables, knocking a chest of jewels across the floor.

  Before Kerans could reach her the curtain was thrashed back by an enormous arm and a huge hunch-backed figure filled the doorway, his one-eyed head lowered like a bull's below the transom. Sweat poured from his huge muscled chest, staining his green shorts. In his right hand was a twelve-inch barb of gleaming steel, about to thrust upwards at Kerans' stomach.

  Sidestepping down the room, Kerans steadied the revolver in his hands, the huge negro's single cyclopean eye following him. Then he stepped on the open teeth of a necklace clasp, involuntarily stumbled back against a sofa.

  As he steadied himself against the wall Big Caesar launched himself through the air at Kerans, the knife driving through the air in a short arc like the tip of a propellor. Beatrice screamed, her voice abruptly drowned in the tremendous roar of the Colt. Jolted by the recoil, Kerans sat down in the sofa, watched the mulatto crash crookedly against the doorway, the knife spilling from his hand. A strangled bubbling grunt erupted from his throat, and with a cataclysmic wrench which summed up all his pain and frustration he tore at the bead curtain and ripped it from the transom. The bunching muscles of his torso contracted for the last time. Draped in the curtain, he fell forwards onto the floor, his vast limbs like a bloated giant's, the thousands of beads spilling around him.

  "Beatrice! Come on!" Kerans seized her arm, steered her past the prostrate body into the ante-room, his right hand and forearm numb from the jarring discharge of the Colt. They crossed the alcove, and raced past the deserted bar. Overhead a voice shouted from the bridge, and footsteps hurried across the deck to the rail.

  Kerans stopped, looking down at the voluminous folds of Beatrice's gown, then abandoned his plan to retrace his entry over the stern paddle.

  "We'll have to try the gangway." He pointed to the unguarded entrance by the starboard rail, the beckoning night-club cupids with flutes to their ruby lips dancing on either side of the steps. "It may look a little obvious, but it's just about the only way left now."

  Half-way down, the gangway began to rock in its davits, and they heard the Admiral bark down at them from the bridge. A moment later the shotgun roared out, the pellets slashing through the clapboard roof over their heads. Kerans ducked, at the mouth of the gangway craned up at the bridge, now directly overhead, saw the long barrel of the shotgun sticking into the air as the Admiral manoeuvred about.

  Kerans jumped down into the square, took Beatrice by the waist and swung her down. Together they crouched under the hull of the depot ship, then darted across the square to the nearest street.

  Half-way there Kerans looked over his shoulder as a group of Strangman's men appeared on the far side of the square. They shouted to and fro with the Admiral, then spotted Kerans and Beatrice a hundred yards away.

  Kerans started to run on, the revolver still clasped in his hand, but Beatrice held him back.

  "No, Robert! Look!"

  In front of them, stretched arm to arm across the full width of the street, another group approached, a white-suited man at its centre. He strolled along, one thumb hooked casually into his belt, the other signalling his men on, his fingers almost touching the tip of the machete brandished by the man next to him.

  Changing direction, Kerans pulled Beatrice diagonally across the square, but the first group had fanned out and cut them off. A starshell went up from the deck of the ship and illuminated the square in its roseate light.

  Beatrice stopped, out of breath, helplessly holding the broken heel of her gold slipper. She looked uncertainly at the men closing in on them. "Darling... Robert—what about the ship? Try to get back there yourself."

  Kerans took her arm and they backed into the shadows below the forward paddle, hidden by the blades from the shotgun on the bridge. The exertion of climbing aboard the ship and then running about the square had exhausted Kerans, and his lungs pumped in painful spasms, so that he could barely steady the revolver.

  "Kerans..." Strangman's cool, ironic voice drifted across the square. He advanced at a relaxed amble, just within range of the Colt but well screened by the men on either side of him. All carried machetes and pangas, their faces amiable and unhurried.

  "Finis, Kerans... finis." Strangman stopped twenty feet from Kerans, his sardonic lips wreathed in a soft smile, surveying him with almost kindly pity. "Sorry, Kerans, but you're being a bit of a nuisance. Throw away the gun or we'll kill the DahI girl too." He waited for a few seconds. "I mean it."

  Kerans found his voice. "Strangman–"

  "Kerans, this is no time for a metaphysical discussion." A note of annoyance crept into his voice, as if he were dealing with a fractious child. "Believe me, no time for prayers, no time for anything. I told you to drop the gun. Then walk forward. My men think you abducted Miss Dahl, they won't touch her." He added, with a touch of menace: "Come on, Kerans, we don't want anything to happen to Beatrice, do we? Think what a beautiful mask her face will make." He tittered insanely. "Better than that old alligator you wore."

  Phlegm choking his throat, Kerans swung around and handed the revolver to Beatrice, pressing her small hands around the butt. Before their eyes could meet he looked away, inhaling for the last time the musky perfume on her breasts, then began to walk out into the square as Strangman had ordered. The latter watched him with an evil smirk, then suddenly leapt forward with a snarl, whipping the others on.

  As the long knives lanced through the air after him Kerans turned and raced around the paddle, trying to reach the area behind the ship. Then his feet slipped in one of the foetid pools, before he could catch himself he fell heavily. He scrambled to his knees, one arm raised helplessly to ward off the circle of raised machetes, then felt something seize him from behind and pull him backwards roughly off balance.

  Recovering his foothold on the damp cobbles, he heard Strangman shout in surprise. A group of brown-uniformed men, rifles at their hips, stepped rapidly from the shadows behind the depot ship where they had been hiding. At their head was the trim, brisk figure of Colonel Riggs. Two of the soldiers carried a light machine gun, a third man two boxes of belt ammunition. They quickly set it up on its tripod ten feet in front of Kerans, levelled the perforated, air-cooled barrel at the confused mob backing away from them. The rest of the soldiers fanned out in a widening semi-circle, prodding the slower of Strangman's men with their bayonets.

  Most of the crew were shambling backwards in the general melee across the square, but a couple of them, still holding their pangas, attempted to break through the cordon. Instantly there was a short decisive volley of shots over their heads, and they dropped their knives and fell back mutely with the rest.

  "Okay, Strangman, that will do very nicely." Riggs rapped his baton across the Admiral's chest and forced him back.

  Completely disconcerted by all this, Strangman gaped blankly at the soldiers swarming past him. He searched the depot ship helplessly, as if expecting some large siege cannon to be wheeled forward and reverse the situation. Instead, however, two helmeted soldiers appeared on the bridge with a portable searchlight, swivelled its beam down into the square.

  Kerans felt someone take his elbow. He looked around at the solicitous beak-like face of Sergeant Macready, a submachine-gun in the crook of his arm. At first he almost failed to identify Macready, only with an effort managed to place his aquiline features, like a face dimly remembered across the span of a lifetime.

  "You all right, sir?" Macready asked softly. "Sorry to jerk you about like that. Looks as if you've been having a bit of a party here."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TOO SOON, TOO LATE
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  By eight o'clock the next morning Riggs had stabilised the situation and was able to see Kerans informally. His headquarters were in the testing station, with a commanding view over the streets below, and particularly of the paddle-ship in the square. Stripped of their weapons, Strangman and his crew sat around in the shade under the hull, supervised by the light machine-gun manned by Macready and two of his men.

  Kerans and Beatrice had spent the night in the sick-bay aboard Riggs' patrol cruiser, a well-armed 30-ton PT boat which was now moored against the hydroplane in the central lagoon. The unit had arrived shortly after midnight, and a reconnaissance patrol reached the testing station on the perimeter of the drained lagoon at about the time Kerans entered Strangman's suite in the depot ship. Hearing the ensuing gunfire, they descended immediately into the square.

  "I guessed Strangman was here," Riggs explained. "One of our aerial patrols reported seeing the hydroplane about a month ago, and I reckoned you might have a little trouble with him if you were still hanging on. The pretext of trying to reclaim the testing station was a fair one." He sat on the edge of the desk, watching the helicopter circle the open streets. "That should keep them quiet for a bit."

  "Daley seems to have found his wings at last," Kerans commented.

  "He's had a lot of practice." Riggs turned his intelligent eyes on Kerans, asked casually: "By the way, is Hardman here?"

  "Hardman?" Kerans shook his head slowly. "No, I haven't seen him since the day he disappeared. He'll be a long way off by now, Colonel."

  "You're probably right. I just thought he might be around." He flashed Kerans a sympathetic smile, evidently having forgiven him for scuttling the testing station, or sensible enough not to press the matter so soon after Kerans' ordeal. He pointed to the streets below glowering in the sunlight, the dry silt on the rooftops and walls like caked dung. "Pretty grim down there. Damn shame about old Bodkin. He really should have come north with us."