The Complete Short Stories

by J. G. Ballard

  'It sounds to me like a great feat of seamanship,' she complimented him. 'The crew who abandoned ship - as it happens, they reported that she went down near Barbados. One of them, Galloway I think he was called, claimed they'd spent a month in an open boat.'

  'Galloway?' Johnson assumed the pursed lips of the Nassau schoolmarms. 'One of my less reliable men. So no one is looking for the ship?'

  'No. Absolutely no one.'

  'And they think she's gone down?'

  'Right to the bottom. Everyone in Barbados is relieved there's no pollution. Those tourist beaches, you know.'

  'They're important. And no one in Puerto Rico thinks she's here?'

  'No one except me. This island is my research project,' she explained. 'I teach biology at San Juan University, but I really want to work at Harvard. I can tell you, lectureships are hard to come by. Something very interesting is happening here, with a little luck..

  'It is interesting,' Johnson agreed. There was a conspiratorial note to Dr Christine's voice that made him uneasy. 'A lot of old army equipment is buried here - I'm thinking of building a house on the beach.'

  'A good idea... even if it takes you four or five months. I'll help you out with any food you need. But be careful.' Dr Christine pointed to the weal on his arm, a temporary reaction against some invading toxin in the vine sap. 'There's something else that's interesting about this island, isn't there?'

  'Well...'Johnson stared at the acid stains etching through the Prospero's hull and spreading across the lagoon. He had tried not to think of his responsibility for these dangerous and unstable chemicals. 'There are a few other things going on here.'

  'A few other things?' Dr Christine lowered her voice. 'Look, Johnson, you're sitting in the middle of an amazing biological experiment. No one would allow it to happen anywhere in the world - if they knew, the US Navy would move in this afternoon.'

  'Would they take away the ship?'

  'They'd take it away and sink it in the nearest ocean trench, then scorch the island with flame-throwers.'

  'And what about me?'

  'I wouldn't like to say. It might depend on how advanced...'She held his shoulder reassuringly, aware that her vehemence had shocked him. 'But there's no reason why they should find out. Not for a while, and by then it won't matter. I'm not exaggerating when I say that you've probably created a new kind of life.'

  As they unloaded the stores Johnson reflected on her words. He had guessed that the chemicals leaking from the Prospero had set off the accelerated growth, and that the toxic reagents might equally be affecting himself. In Galloway's cabin mirror he inspected the hairs on his chin and any suspicious moles. The weeks at sea, inhaling the acrid fumes, had left him with raw lungs and throat, and an erratic appetite, but he had felt better since coming ashore.

  He watched Christine step into a pair of thigh-length rubber boots and move into the shallow water, ladle in hand, looking at the plant and animal life of the lagoon. She filled several specimen jars with the phosphorescent water, and locked them into the cabinet inside the tent.

  'Johnson - you couldn't let me see the cargo manifest?'

  'Captain... Galloway took it with him. He didn't list the real cargo.'

  'I bet he didn't.' Christine pointed to the vermilion-shelled crabs that scuttled through the vivid filaments of kelp, floating like threads of blue electric cable. 'Have you noticed? There are no dead fish or crabs - and you'd expect to see hundreds. That was the first thing I spotted. And it isn't just the crabs - you look pretty healthy...'

  'Maybe I'll be stronger?' Johnson flexed his sturdy shoulders.

  '... in a complete daze, mentally, but I imagine that will change. Meanwhile, can you take me on board? I'd like to visit the Prospero.'

  'Dr Christine...' Johnson held her arm, trying to restrain this determined woman. He looked at her clear skin and strong legs. 'It's too dangerous, you might fall through the deck.'

  'Fair enough. Are the containers identified?'

  'Yes, there's no secret.' Johnson did his best to remember. 'Organo..

  'Organo-phosphates? Right - what I need to know is which containers are leaking and roughly how much. We might be able to work out the exact chemical reactions - you may not realise it, Johnson, but you've mixed a remarkably potent cocktail. A lot of people will want to learn the recipe, for all kinds of reasons..

  Sitting in the colonel's chair on the porch of the beach-house, Johnson gazed contentedly at the luminous world around him, a fever-realm of light and life that seemed to have sprung from his own mind. The jungle wall of cycads, giant tamarinds and tropical creepers crowded the beach to the waterline, and the reflected colours drowned in swatches of phosphoresence that made the lagoon resemble a cauldron of electric dyes.

  So dense was the vegetation that almost the only free sand lay below Johnson's feet. Every morning he would spend an hour cutting back the flowering vines and wild magnolia that inundated the metal shack. Already the foliage was crushing the galvanised iron roof. However hard he worked - and he found himself too easily distracted - he had been unable to keep clear the inspection pathways which Christine patrolled on her weekend visits, camera and specimen jars at the ready.

  Hearing the sound of her inflatable as she neared the inlet of the lagoon, Johnson surveyed his domain with pride. He had found a metal card-table buried in the sand, and laid it with a selection of fruits he had picked for Christine that morning. To Johnson's untrained eye they seemed to be strange hybrids of pomegranate and pawpaw, cantaloupe and pineapple. There were giant tomato-like berries and clusters of purple grapes each the size of a baseball. Together they glowed through the overheated light like jewels set in the face of the sun.

  By now, four months after his arrival on the Prospero, the one-time garbage island had become a unique botanical garden, generating new species of trees, vines and flowering plants every day. A powerful life-engine was driving the island. As she crossed the lagoon in her inflatable Christine stared at the aerial terraces of vines and blossoms that had sprung up since the previous weekend.

  The dead hulk of the Prospero, daylight visible through its acid-etched plates, sat in the shallow water, the last of its chemical wastes leaking into the lagoon. But Johnson had forgotten the ship and the voyage that had brought him here, just as he had forgotten his past life and unhappy childhood under the screaming engines of Nassau airport. Lolling back in his canvas chair, on which was stencilled 'Colonel Pottle, US Army Engineer Corps', he felt like a plantation owner who had successfully subcontracted a corner of the original Eden. As he stood up to greet Christine he thought only of the future, of his pregnant bride and the son who would soon share the island with him.

  'Johnson! My God, what have you been doing?' Christine ran the inflatable onto the beach and sat back, exhausted by the buffetting waves. 'It's a botanical mad-house!'

  Johnson was so pleased to see her that he forgot his regret over their weekly separations. As she explained, she had her student classes to teach, her project notes and research samples to record and catalogue.

  'Dr Christine...! I waited all day!' He stepped into the shallow water, a carmine surf filled with glowing animalcula, and pulled the inflatable onto the sand. He helped her from the craft, his eyes avoiding her curving abdomen under the smock.

  'Go on, you can stare -..' Christine pressed his hand to her stomach. 'How do I look, Johnson?'

  'Too beautiful for me, and the island. We've all gone quiet.'

  'That is gallant - you've become a poet, Johnson.'

  Johnson never thought of other women, and knew that none could be so beautiful as this lady biologist bearing his child. He spotted a plastic cooler among the scientific equipment.

  'Christine - you've brought me ice-cream..

  'Of course I have. But don't eat it yet. We've a lot to do, Johnson.'

  He unloaded the stores, leaving to the last the nylon nets and springmounted steel frames in the bottom of the boat. These bird-traps were the on
e cargo he hated to unload. Nesting in the highest branches above the island was a flock of extravagant aerial creatures, sometime swallows and finches whose jewelled plumage and tail-fans transformed them into gaudy peacocks. He had set the traps reluctantly at Christine's insistence. He never objected to catching the phosphorescent fish with their enlarged fins and ruffs of external gills, which seemed to prepare them for life on the land, or the crabs and snails in their baroque armour. But the thought of Christine taking these rare and beautiful birds back to her laboratory made him uneasy - he guessed that they would soon end their days under the dissection knife.

  'Did you set the traps for me, Johnson?'

  'I set all of them and put in the bait.'

  'Good.' Christine heaped the nets onto the sand. More and more she seemed to hurry these days, as if she feared that the experiment might end. 'I can't understand why we haven't caught one of them.'

  Johnson gave an eloquent shrug. In fact he had eaten the canned sardines, and released the one bird that had strayed into the trap below the parasol of a giant ycad. The nervous creature with its silken scarlet wings and kite-like tail feathers had been a dream of flight. 'Nothing yet - they're clever, those birds.'

  'Of course they are - they're a new species.' She sat in Colonel Pottle's chair, photographing the table of fruit with her small camera. 'Those grapes are huge - I wonder what sort of wine they'd make. Champagne of the gods, grand cru...'

  Warily, Johnson eyed the purple and yellow globes. He had eaten the fish and crabs from the lagoon, when asked by Christine, with no ill effects, but he was certain that these fruits were intended for the birds. He knew that Christine was using him, like everything else on the island, as part of her experiment. Even the child she had conceived after their one brief act of love, over so quickly that he was scarcely sure it had ever occurred, was part of the experiment. Perhaps the child would be the first of a new breed of man and he, Johnson, errand runner for airport shoe-shine boys, would be the father of an advanced race that would one day repopulate the planet.

  As if aware of his impressive physique, she said: 'You look wonderfully well, Johnson. If this experiment ever needs to be justified..

  'I'm very strong now - I'll be able to look after you and the boy.'

  'It might be a girl - or something in between.' She spoke in a matterof-fact way that always surprised him. 'Tell me, Johnson, what do you do while I'm away?'

  'I think about you, Dr Christine.'

  'And I certainly think about you. But do you sleep a lot?'

  'No. I'm busy with my thoughts. The time goes very quickly.'

  Christine casually opened her note-pad. 'You mean the hours go by without you noticing?'

  'Yes. After breakfast I fill the oil-lamp and suddenly it's time for lunch. But it can go more slowly, too .1f f look at a falling leaf in a certain way it seems to stand still.'

  'Good. You're learning to control time. Your mind is enlarging, Johnson.'

  'Maybe I'll be as clever as you, Dr Christine.'

  'Ah, I think you're moving in a much more interesting direction. In fact, Johnson, I'd like you to eat some of the fruit. Don't worry, I've already analysed it, and I'll have some myself.' She was cutting slices of the melon-sized apple. 'I want the baby to try some.'

  Johnson hesitated, but as Christine always reminded him, none of the new species had revealed a single deformity.

  The fruit was pale and sweet, with a pulpy texture and a tang like alcoholic mango. It slightly numbed Johnson's mouth and left a pleasant coolness in the stomach.

  A diet for those with wings.

  'Johnson! Are you sick?'

  He woke with a start, not from sleep but from an almost too-clear examination of the colour patterns of a giant butterfly that had settled on his hand. He looked up from his chair at Christine's concerned eyes, and at the dense vines and flowering creepers that crowded the porch, pressing against his shoulders. The amber of her eyes was touched by the same overlit spectrum that shone through the trees and blossoms. Everything on the island was becoming a prism of itself.

  'Johnson, wake up!'

  'I am awake. Christine... I didn't hear you come.'

  'I've been here for an hour.' She touched his cheeks, searching for any sign of fever and puzzled by Johnson's distracted manner. Behind her, the inflatable was beached on the few feet of sand not smothered by the vegetation. The dense wall of palms, lianas and flowering plants had collapsed onto the shore. Engorged on the sun, the giant fruits had begun to split under their own weight, and streams of vivid juice ran across the sand, as if the forest was bleeding.

  'Christine? You came back so soon...?' It seemed to Johnson that she had left only a few minutes earlier. He remembered waving goodbye to her and sitting down to finish his fruit and admire the giant butterfly, its wings like the painted hands of a circus clown.

  'Johnson - I've been away for a week.' She held his shoulder, frowning at the unstable wall of rotting vegetation that towered a hundred feet into the air. Cathedrals of flower-decked foliage were falling into the waters of the lagoon.

  'Johnson, help me to unload the stores. You don't look as if you've eaten for days. Did you trap the birds?'

  'Birds? No, nothing yet.' Vaguely Johnson remembered setting the traps, but he had been too distracted by the wonder of everything to pursue the birds. Graceful, feather-tipped wraiths like gaudy angels, their crimson plumage leaked its ravishing hues onto the air. When he fixed his eyes onto them they seemed suspended against the sky, wings fanning slowly as if shaking the time from themselves.

  He stared at Christine, aware that the colours were separating themselves from her skin and hair. Superimposed images of herself, each divided from the others by a fraction of a second, blurred the air around her, an exotic plumage that sprang from her arms and shoulders. The staid reality that had trapped them all was beginning to dissolve. Time had stopped and Christine was ready to rise into the air.

  He would teach Christine and the child to fly.

  'Christine, we can all learn.'

  'What, Johnson?'

  'We can learn to fly. There's no time any more - everything's too beautiful for time.'

  'Johnson, look at my watch.'

  'We'll go and live in the trees, Christine. We'll live with the high flowers...'

  He took her arm, eager to show her the mystery and beauty of the sky people they would become. She tried to protest, but gave in, humouring Johnson as he led her gently from the beach-house to the wall of inflamed flowers. Her hand on the radio-transmitter in the inflatable, she sat beside the crimson lagoon as Johnson tried to climb the flowers towards the sun. Steadying the child within her, she wept for Johnson, only calming herself two hours later when the siren of a naval cutter crossed the inlet.

  'I'm glad you radioed in,' the US Navy lieutenant told Christine. 'One of the birds reached the base at San Juan. We tried to keep it alive but it was crushed by the weight of its own wings. Like everything else on this island.'

  He pointed from the bridge to the jungle wall. Almost all the overcrowded canopy had collapsed into the lagoon, leaving behind only a few of the original palms with their bird traps. The blossoms glowed through the water like thousands of drowned lanterns.

  'How long has the freighter been here?' An older civilian, a government scientist holding a pair of binoculars, peered at the riddled hull of the Prospero. Below the beach-house two sailors were loading the last of Christine's stores into the inflatable. 'It looks as if it's been stranded there for years.'

  'Six months,' Christine told him. She sat beside Johnson, smiling at him encouragingly. 'When Captain Johnson realised what was going on he asked me to call you.'

  'Only six? That must be roughly the life-cycle of these new species. Their cellular clocks seem to have stopped - instead of reproducing, they force-feed their own tissues, like those giant fruit that contain no seeds. The life of the individual becomes the entire life of the species.' He gestured towards the impass
ive Johnson. 'That probably explains our friend's altered time sense - great blocks of memory were coalescing in his mind, so that a ball thrown into the air would never appear to land...'

  A tide of dead fish floated past the cutter's bow, the gleaming bodies like discarded costume jewellery.

  'You weren't contaminated in any way?' the lieutenant asked Christine. 'I'm thinking of the baby.'

  'No, I didn't eat any of the fruit,' Christine said firmly. 'I've been here only twice, for a few hours.'

  'Good. Of course, the medical people will do all the tests.'

  'And the island?'

  'We've been ordered to torch the whole place. The demolition charges are timed to go off in just under two hours, but we'll be well out of range. It's a pity, in a way.'

  'The birds are still here,' Christine said, aware of Johnson staring at the trees.

  'Luckily, you've trapped them all.' The scientist offered her the binoculars. 'Those organic wastes are hazardous things - God knows what might happen if human beings were exposed to long-term contact. All sorts of sinister alterations to the nervous system - people might be happy to stare at a stone all day.'

  Johnson listened to them talking, glad to feel Christine's hand in his own. She was watching him with a quiet smile, aware that they shared the conspiracy. She would try to save the child, the last fragment of the experiment, and he knew that if it survived it would face a fierce challenge from those who feared it might replace them.

  But the birds endured. His head had cleared, and he remembered the visions that had given him a brief glimpse of another, more advanced world. High above the collapsed canopy of the forest he could see the traps he had set, and the great crimson birds sitting on their wings. At least they could carry the dream forward.

  Ten minutes later, when the inflatable had been winched onto the deck, the cutter set off through the inlet. As it passed the western headland the lieutenant helped Christine towards the cabin. Johnson followed them, then pushed aside the government scientist and leapt from the rail, diving cleanly into the water. He struck out for the shore a hundred feet away, knowing that he was strong enough to climb the trees and release the birds, with luck a mating pair who would take him with them in their escape from time.