An Island Called Moreau

by Brian W Aldiss

  The mind indulges in strange tricks. As soon as Warren began to tell me—no, just before he began to tell me—my mind released the truth to my consciousness. I had known for some while. It was impossible to believe that this island would remain unvisited and unsupervised. Yet I had managed to believe it because it was better than believing that Dart’s unhallowed experiments had the backing of any nation, particularly a Co-Allied nation like the United States.

  “Why should they support Dart?” I could hardly speak.

  Warren laughed. “You can’t have seen into his laboratories down there, or you wouldn’t ask such a question. I ain’t going to tell you. But I’ll tell you this much—if you’re aiming to let out word of what goes on on this island to the media, then you’re the one who’s going to be in trouble when the sub calls again. Oh boy, will you be in trouble! One word and you’ll be behind bars for the duration. You’d better see the error of your ways, friend, and pretty soon, because that old sub’ll be calling in a few days.”

  I cleared my throat and looked at the scenery for a moment or two, while he stood and looked at me.

  “Mr. Warren, I must tell you that I’m desperately appalled by what you tell me. You’re claiming that all that goes on on this island is okayed—subsidized—by some government department?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.” He put the wrench down on the step to study me more comfortably. “There’s a war on, as you know. What goes on here has been taken over as vital wartime research.”

  “Mr. Warren, you seem a decent enough man—do you think the war is sufficient excuse for the cruelty and misery inflicted on the creatures here? Aren’t we supposed to be fighting against just such hellish injury to life and spirit? Are you out of your mind up here?”

  To do myself justice, I must say how empty my words sounded even to myself, even in that time of shock. As a trusted servant of my country, I was in a position to know how many projects were subsidized by the taxpayer and had to be kept secret from him, because of their dreadful nature. On a smaller scale, the same thing applied in my own government department; endless confidential projects were afoot, and I knew them only by code name, if at all. In war or peace, it makes no difference. I was one of the few people who knew of the dreadful weapons being stockpiled on the Moon, some of them destined for use in the Pacific theater. Yet one evil never canceled out another.

  He dropped his gaze, saying nothing.

  “Come on, Mr. Warren, tell me how you like being a part of this organized torture! You may reckon that I’m in a tricky position. Don’t you think your own position is a whole lot nastier?”

  He straightened up angrily, sticking out his bony chest.

  “See here, I’m not a part of anything, so don’t get any wrong ideas. You don’t know my history, any more than I know yours. We’re strangers, and strangers have no right to pry—”

  “Speak to the point. What are you doing here? If what you say is true, then you’re part of the payroll of Moreau Island, aren’t you?”

  “Look, mister, I never had no affection for society in any way. I was born in a big city, and, just so soon as I could read the signs, I lit out of there for the country as fast as I could get. I was a dropout, like so many others back then. A hippie, I was. Only most of my buddies got married or got a job or something and dropped back in again. Me, I stayed out. But they got me when the war came and conscription come in. I was so blamed antisocial in the Navy that they gave me a posting to work for Dart. I quarreled with him the very first week I was set down on the island, and I’ve lived solitary up here ever since. So you can’t say I’m a part of anything that happens down below in his place. Am I now?”

  “You maintain his power supply, you remain on the payroll. You’re implicated all the way.”

  He wiped his hand on his mouth. “You shouldn’t say those things to me. I hate what goes on, same as you do. Only I seen lives being crushed out of shape everywhere, as long as I been around to see.… You better come inside. I need a drink. Maybe you could use one, too.”

  “Thanks. I could. Any fruit juice would be fine.”

  “You’ll have to have what I got, Mr. Roberts.”

  We went in. Everything went on in one cramped but neat room; Warren lived, slept, ate, and cooked there. He brought two beers from an old fridge. We pried open the cans, raised them to each other, and drank. I did not tell him how long it was since I had swallowed beer. It tasted wonderful.

  “I agree that many aspects of human life have always been wretched. Sometimes it seems that the most promising advances of science merely leave us with more problems—just as the lowering of the infant mortality rate landed us with world overpopulation—but you have thrown your lot in with an experiment which promised nothing but misery from the outset. How can you possibly defend that?”

  “Don’t I keep telling you? I ain’t defending anything. I opted out. Besides, what can one guy on his own possibly do?”

  “I don’t imagine anyone ever heard Jesus say that.”

  “Well, so happens I ain’t Jesus, mister, so let’s leave him out of it! I do the best I can, and that’s enough. I’m keeping out of the war, I ain’t killing no one. If you want my opinion, the world’s gone mad.”

  “You could sabotage Dart’s power supply.”

  “He’d come up here with the Beasts and kill me, and the power would be working again within a week. Drink up, and you better be on your way. I’m sorry I ain’t more hospitable, but you make me feel bad.”

  “It’s not me, it’s your conscience.”

  “No, it ain’t. It’s you and remarks like that one you just uttered. When I’m on my own, I’m perfectly dandy.”

  Again, silence fell between us. I felt his resentment. My hand holding the beer can trembled. My thoughts were wild and troubled. So contaminated was I that it seemed as if I had lived all my life on Moreau Island, my initiative—despite my efforts—perpetually taken from me, as if I were no more than one of the Beast People. And I said to myself that when I returned to so-called civilization I would have to resign my government post and live privately. Of course, there was still the question of returning …

  “Mr. Warren, you say a supply submarine calls here every two months. Tell me more about that.”

  “I told you. It calls regular, leaves stores and anything special Dart has ordered. Brings mail. It’s due again in four or five days.”

  “Dart drove off, leaving me to fend for myself. He cannot be sure whether I am dead or alive. Is it possible for you to radio from here?”

  “I got no radio, not even a receiver. All that kind of tackle is down the hill.”

  “Then I want you to let me stay here until the sub comes. I will not get in your way. I won’t even talk, if you want it that way. Just let me wait in safety for the sub. Dart will think the Beast People killed me and will not come searching for me.”

  “Nobody on that sub’s likely to agree with your line of talk. They’ll tell you there’s a war on, same as I tell you.”

  “Mr. Warren, you aren’t on anyone’s side, are you? You aren’t on Dart’s side, and you certainly aren’t on mine.”

  He wiped his lips on the back of his hand before replying.

  “Goddammit, Mr. Roberts, I’m on my own side. Dart’ll never rest till he finds what happened to you. All I want is a peaceful life, and a man has to strive hard to get that. You’re just the latest in a long, long line of people been interfering with me and trying to make me change my tack. I ain’t having any, so that’s final.”

  “Are you afraid of what might happen to you?”

  “There you go, another of them snide remarks! No, I ain’t afraid. I’m just my own man, that’s all. I believe in nature and beautiful things, which somehow don’t include my fellow men. Besides—let me tell you, there’s reason to be afraid here, if you happen to be disposed that way. You come on out the back before you get on your way, and I’ll show you something to make your hair curl!”

  This
was a surprising break in his increasingly surly mood. I followed him out past the unfinished sculpture, and beyond the power lattice. He picked up a metal strut on the way, looking about as he did so, and saying that he never knew when he was being watched.

  “The Beast People would not attack you unless provoked,” I said.

  He made no answer.

  The track narrowed, rising slightly, and we walked through a stand of bamboo, the leaves of which moved continually in a slight breeze. Then we were through them. Confronting us was a stupendous view.

  Warren had led me to the extreme eastern tip of Moreau Island. We stood on a shoulder of rock from which we could survey uninterruptedly the eternal ocean, the compass of the horizon, and the great dome of sky overhead. The little top-knot of Seal Island was also visible, almost at our feet. The antique noise of ocean pounding on rock dulled in our ears.

  Because the afternoon was far advanced, the sun was moving toward the western sky. It flooded the empty world with its radiance, and lit the sails of a ship far out to sea. My heart leaped at the sight: the vessel resembled an old sailing ship—yet that was mainly because the naked ocean allowed little hint of scale. The ship I watched was almost a mile long, its hull sectioned plastic, its sails metal foil. Those sails and their rig were controlled by computers, and the computers were checked out occasionally by a crew of two trade unionists.

  I had sailed on one of those beautiful cargo vessels, years ago. My third wife’s family owned a shipping line; the voyage had formed part of our honeymoon. That marriage had long been dissolved and was a thing of the past, like many of my personal friendships.

  I became aware of a tension in Warren, and turned to find him staring fixedly at me.

  He wet his lips. “You ain’t feeling any compulsion to jump, by any chance?” he asked.

  “To remember, but not to jump.”

  He shrugged and looked away from me.

  “Only a month back, one of Dart’s experimental creatures escaped and headed up here same as you done,” Warren said. “Dart and Hans and George and some of the others come up in pursuit with guns and nets. I hid out in the bushes.”

  “What happened to the creature?”

  “Why it ran right to this very spot and then it stopped—’cause it couldn’t get no further, could it? It was a cross between an ape and a man. The others closed in on it and—you know what it done? Rather than be captured, it threw itself right off the rock and down into the ocean. If you go out on to this promontory of rock, you’ll see the cliff’s so steep that a man might dive clear from here and end up safe in the ocean, given a bit of luck. Take a look for yourself.”

  I worked my way along the narrow promontory, feeling that mixed dread and fascination for heights of which even space travel had never managed to cure me. The rock outcropped. As Warren said, it would be possible to take a leap and fall clear of the cliff into deep water. But that fall was all of a hundred meters; I would not have liked to try it.

  “What happened to the creature that jumped?”

  “Drowned. Hadn’t got no arms to speak of.”

  I turned, and he was coming at me with the strut raised, mouth set in a line.

  He moved at the crouch, ready to strike. When our eyes met, he paused momentarily.

  “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 h
imself 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.”