by Basil Copper
He told me something of the situation as we put off. There was an oily swell running now, with what would have been whitecaps in years gone by, before poisons clogged the earth, and I sat on a bench in the charthouse with him while he steered. Rort was definitely uneasy but when I questioned him, he shrugged it off as an indefinable something. One concrete occurrence had rattled him though, which was partly a cause of his unease. Unloading the group's equipment a few weeks before, he had slipped on the slime-covered landing and a case of radio energy cells—their only supply—had gone to the bottom.
That meant the sending of test data over the transmitter to base was strictly limited, to conserve energy; and fuel for the launch was short. The relief helicopter was not due for a month; in another week or two there might be difficulties in communications. I asked Rort about the island; he cleared his throat with a rasping noise, a sign of dislike with him, but I was surprised when I heard there was actually some sort of settlement, on the lines of the old-style village, in a cove on the seaward side, somewhere over the other shoulder of the flinty hill which was beginning to climb up the dark sky as we approached the shore.
Rort said there were about sixty people; fifty men and a few breeders, and they had a miserable existence growing vegetables on imported unsoured soil and fishing far out; cleansing and sterilizing conditions were fantastic, of course, but I gathered they had worked out a satisfactory and safe system. Their rations were supplemented by the Central Committee at various times of the year, and I remembered seeing somewhere that the experiment was one likely to be encouraged in various places.
At all events they had welcomed the group and had been pathetically eager to provide labour and materials from their own scanty stores; they felt that the survey, even though organized only to carry out research on conditions, would improve their lot immediately, though there was something in their reasoning when looked at as a long-term policy. Research groups set up by the Central Committee were constantly on the move as the cloud moved round, and though we still got the same reaction, there were hopes in higher circles that the effects might wear off in our lifetime.
But most of this would not, of itself, have been enough to cause this uneasiness. It sprang from something other than the sombre environment into which every pulse of the boat's progress was bearing us. When I put this thought into the form of a direct statement Rort did not immediately reply. Then his tall body uncoiled itself from over the wheel.
"I don't know," he said. "But there's something deadly in the wind. You can laugh, but you haven't been here these weeks like the rest of us. Later, you'll know what I mean."
I was still chewing over this infuriatingly vague answer when we began the run into the jetty. The shingle was harsh, black clinker, something like volcanic ash, and the vessel grated unpleasantly against it as Rort let the water slowly take us in. He steadied the boat, holding a corroded handrail that jutted out from the concrete slipway, and after we had unloaded we pulled the craft farther up the shore.
Back from the beach the wind suddenly plucked at one, as though it were buffeting down from the black bulk of the hill which rose into the misty dusk above us; we slipped and floundered on the yellow clay pathway that wound through black, slippery rocks, covered with sickly smelling encrustations, and once a shimmering, black and yellow creature like a toad flopped away soggily down the hillside, leaving a trail of crimson slime behind it.
I was winded long before we had reached the lower shoulder of the hill; the air seemed calmer here and looking down I could see the faint smudge of the launch beside the jetty and farther out, the tired, grey wrinkle of the sea, changing to the ghostly green glow it always assumed after dark. To my relief Rort suddenly turned aside from the pathway, and went through two sloping wet shoulders of stone that breasted across the face to the right.
Hesitantly I followed; it was an oppressive place, wet underfoot, the encrusted walls exuding moisture and overhead the sweep of rock toppling forward until it met in a dizzy arch. We were using our flashes now but presently the walls fell away, and we walked across an undulating upland slashed with the gentian, scarlet and black of the parasitical fungi that sometimes grew to two or three feet across. Along a gully and up another slope and then Rort halted. He pointed through a gap between groups of stunted trees. I was looking at K4 Research Station.
II
K4 had been constructed some two years before, at a time when the drive for economy and the need for a chain of observation stations had been at the height of conflict; the result was an amalgam of extravagances and sterilities. The Central Committee had felt that the scientific needs of establishments overrode those of expediency and comfort so that at K4 primitive concrete constructions like the old-fashioned blockhouses had been left without proper proofing and finish, while the expensive and elaborate equipment housed within began to deteriorate for want of protection and proper maintenance.
The life there was a peculiar blend of crowded discomfort and brooding loneliness; the days were given over to exhaustive examination of the content of the soil, the air, and the sea surrounding the island, while the evenings were spent in writing up notebooks, in conducting analytical experiments among the crazy cackle of geiger counters in the tall, lighthouse-like building overlooking the rocky coast, and in limited social intercourse among our colleagues.
Of these some are worthy of more than passing mention: Dr. Fritzjof, a Swede who had lost an arm as a result of nuclear experiments; Masters, the Director of the station, a tall, handsome-looking man in his late forties with hair inclining to silver; sober, careful-minded, and good-humoured, a pleasant man to work with; Professor Lockspeiser, a young, tawny-bearded Australian who had done astonishing work on the degeneration of atomized structures and the causes of sterility in contaminated females; Pollock, despite his name, a West Indian physicist; and a breeder, officially C2147, but known to us as Karla.
A tall, blonde girl with a well-made body and prominent breasts and buttocks, she was ostensibly there as laboratory assistant, but really to be near Fitzwilliams, one of the physicists, by whom she was pregnant. This made no difference to the usual emergency regulations then in force and she was still expected to carry out her obligations to other members of the staff, which she did with energy. It was my turn to enjoy her on the third or fourth evening after my arrival and a very fine experience it was, she being, as I said, a very passionate, well-built girl, most willing and inventive and with a most attractive smile and white teeth; Polish, I think. We all thought Fitzwilliams a lucky man as permanent possession of her was vested in him; he showed me the papers he had taken out on one occasion in which C2147 was specifically mentioned. I knew then it was correct as I had seen the same symbols, branded in the usual place for all breeders of her class.
If I record this in some detail it was because the monotony and aridity of the life made such occurrences assume the emotional and significant impact of a sunburst on a person blind from birth; it irradiated a glow that lasted for days and certainly Karla's presence and the amenities she afforded lent the little garrison some degree of contentment.
It was about a week after my arrival that the first of a long procession of events occurred, which were later to assume a quite disproportionate significance when they began to fall into place. It had been a day of storm and violence; shards of rain beat savagely at the transparent slits of the observation tower, almost drowning the discontented chatter of the instruments.
I had been out in the early afternoon, the weather abating, to draw off fluid from a particular form of fungi whose formation rather interested us, and when I turned up along the cliff, my cases full of specimens and cuttings, I was suddenly struck by the fact that since my arrival I had seen so little of the island. The clouds were still lowering and the harsh chumble of the sea on the slimy rocks did not form a background of any great charm, but a beam of sickly, dusty "sunlight''—an archaic term I use for want of a better word—suddenly pricked out a path to
the sea's edge and against this metallic sheen I saw the filigree work of a pier and what looked like a cluster of huts and buildings.
I assumed this was the village Rort had spoken of and having some time in hand thought I would take a look, but an hour's stumble among foul rocks and dripping, cave-like formations along the shore made me realize that I could not hope to regain K4 before darkness. The afternoon was already deepening to early dusk when I came out on a primitive path and found myself near the spot. Though the greenish twilight and the slop of the waves among the pebbles of the foreshore gave the place a somewhat eerie aspect, I could not say I was particularly conscious of this, interested as I was to see the village.
I say village, but it was little more than the most primitive kind of settlement, framed in two gigantic spits of rock which made a sort of notch in the black sand. The wind had risen and the stench of decay was in the twilight. Dead matter and poisonous dribbles of spume whirled about the dark strand.
The green luminosity of the sea bathed the area in its pale, unearthly light though it had not yet assumed the intensity it would reveal with the coming of full darkness. I felt like a creature as unsubstantial as mist as I drifted, like a lost soul in a latter-day inferno. I was minded of a reproduction—on the vision-tube, of course—of an ancient illustration; one of the mimes on the celluloid strips I believe it was. It concerned the legend of the vampire and the scene depicted a man in a broad-brimmed hat and cloak wandering, much as I did tonight, through a landscape of mist and nightmare, to what strange adventure I never discovered, for the remainder of the strip was beyond preserving and some had been lost.
What did seem strange here was the lack of any life; a light, a figure, a footfall, an electric signal—anything would have broken that blank aridity. Now I was among the round, dome-like dwellings these people had improvised for themselves, and the bulbous openings were, I hazarded, some form of double air-lock in which they would remove their polluted clothing before going inside.
I could not help thinking that they had made the best of their bleak conditions though; unless one were completely underground, there was very little difference where one lived on the surface of the world today. Having completed a circuit of the buildings without seeing any sign of life and the darkness now being almost total, I decided to return along the shore the way I had come. As I swung round, shifting my cases to my left hand to ease my cramped fingers, I was conscious out of the corner of my eye, of a blurred shadow that seemed to flit across the dim phosphorescence of the water and flicker behind a boulder.
I am not a particularly courageous man but my curiosity was aroused. I had come a long way to set eyes on the people of this place and though I did not want to disturb them in their houses—a formal visit would have taken up too much of my time that night—I would have liked to establish relations, preparatory to returning another day.
Among the boulders the atmosphere was foetid and the overhanging rocks and moss-like creepers made it dark. I soon began to regret my decision, but I had to go on as I could not now see properly to return and it was all uphill. The place appeared to be some sort of tunnel and I hoped it would lead towards the sea again.
Ahead of me there was a slight scratching noise that might have been metal-shod feet on rock, but I could not be certain. I paused to listen but the sound was not repeated. The place was beginning to get on my nerves. The walls were getting narrower and then the rocky, overhanging cliffs began to split into different passages and alleyways which made consistent direction impossible.
This was confusing, but as I stopped again for breath I felt a faint stirring of the hairs on my spine as there was another furtive movement—this time behind me. Then there followed a noise that I didn't particularly like. It was a sort of slithering, scratching sound, and I had the unpleasant simile of a blind person spring suddenly into my mind. I was in a cleft of rock by the side of the track, a nasty place in which to be trapped, and there was little time to lose.
Whoever—or whatever it was, could barely be a dozen feet away. I ducked down and with a quick flash of wild fear slithered, as quietly as I could, out of the blind alley and round the next corner which was about six feet away. I paused a few feet back from the entrance of another gully; here at least, I had a clear line of retreat. Nothing happened for a few moments and I thought that perhaps my imagination had been too much.
But the tapping began again after a bit and now it was much nearer. A pause and more sounds, another pause then a few more steps. There was a long period of hesitation as the thing gained the entrance to the passage where I crouched with the flash I had hastily eased out of my hip-pocket.
It would serve both to see the creature I faced and also as a weapon if need be. As the seconds went past I resolved on a bold move. Without wasting any more time I gave a loud and somewhat quavery shout which sounded deafening in the confined, echoing space, sprang out into the main gully, and stabbed on my flashlight.
A great shadow crept across the rock, my scream was echoed by a high, shrill cry, even louder than mine, and I fell down in a blind panic mixed up with some soft, yielding shape that blundered against me. The saviour of both was the flashlight which fortunately fell upwards, spreading its beams evenly and illuminating both faces. Which of us was the more frightened I cannot tell. It was a breeder from the village who had seen me prowling about and had come to investigate, at first thinking it was one of her own community.
We laughed in sickly relief and then she put me on the right road for home, glad of some company in those dark ravines. I was the first man of the outside world she had ever seen, and she was pathetically eager for knowledge; it was evident that she regarded the Central Committee and its scientific officers and other employees as the only hope for mankind, and she made me promise to visit the village again in the daylight and do what I could for its people.
This I readily agreed and noted down her number for future reference. Visits to the village and additional research here would give some variety to life on the island, and I was interested to see how these people made out in their hard and lonely struggle. This girl—she was little more than nineteen—was not unattractive but her hair was already going grey and she appeared to be suffering from debilitation. She stumbled many times along the track but always declined my assistance. When we gained the open shore again she was plainly exhausted and I stayed with her a bit after she had put me on my road; I offered to accompany her back to her people but she would not hear of this.
Her dark eyes seemed to have a world of experience in them and she was always looking first seaward and then over her shoulder, but I put this down to the strange environment and the hard life she led. As I waved her good-bye and set off along the stony track, she called me back. The thin cry in the wind again caused me some uneasiness, I could not say why, and when I reached her the dark eyes were closed and the hollows under them seemed full of pain.
Then she beckoned and urged me towards the shore where the baleful light from the sea was beating on the dark sand and against the worn white boulders of the cove. I had told her of my qualifications coming down the ravine, but I could not at first grasp what she wanted of me. But in broken sentences she at last made me understand her needs.
Before I could stop her she had unbuttoned the smock-like overall she was wearing and stood stripped to the waist. I had seen many strange things in my thirty-five years and was inured to most sights that have become a commonplace of these times, but I could not resist an exclamation.
The girl had what would have been a magnificent figure under normal circumstances. But across her abdomen and over her breasts were only what I could describe as a mass of devilish green fungi; beneath it the skin glowed faintly luminous, cicatriced and crisscrossed with vein-like cuts and striations. The whole mass seemed to have a life of its own, independent of the girl's body, and I felt it must be a trick of the twilight when I saw the growth—I can call it nothing else—begin to stir and twitch, sluggishl
y at first, and then almost imperceptibly to expand, flowing outwards gently but inexorably, a fraction of an inch before it settled down to a slow pulsation—or was it the girl's own breathing?
Fear settled on me as I looked at this. I could do nothing for the wretched child then, but as she dressed I told her I would do what I could. I would bring medicines, instruments, the next time I came...perhaps injections would help. She seemed infinitely relieved at this and clung to my arm for a moment as though I were her benefactor and she already cured.
She would not, or could not, tell me how she had contracted this malignant condition, but I gathered that hers was not the only case in the village. I was not disposed to linger; my encounter with the girl, the atmosphere of the island, and now this last shock had put a blight on my spirits, and I was eager to be off. As I went up the path I was almost inclined to break into a run. There was something else—something that defied analysis and yet gave me the greatest foreboding of all. For as I had crouched over the girl, attempting to diagnose something entirely outside my experience, there had been a strange perfume from her body.
I am, of course, familiar with the odours given off by the human body under various conditions of illness and decay, but I use the term perfume in its true sense. Whether it emanated from the girl herself or from the thing from which she suffered, I did not know. For a few moments, as I stood on that lonely shore, my mind was drenched with images; the drowned face of a girl I had once known, a melody playing somewhere long ago—something that I recalled as a treasured, recorded fragment of the past, on old archaic instruments by people playing together; what was it? Violins—that was it; violins and the perfume seemed somehow to symbolize all these things and above all the wild despair of regret.
