by John Wyndham
“When I told my father I was coming, he gave it about three years,” she remarked.
“To fail, you mean?”
“This isn’t the first time it’s been tried,” he said. “After about three or four years, or even less, they usually peter out.’”
“If you believe that, why did you come?”
“Because I wanted to get away, and, as I told you, because I thought it would be an interesting place. Why did you come?”
I told her. She looked at me consideringly.
“You are still a romantic,” she said, in a wondering way. “You can still dream dreams.”
“While you, at twenty-six is it, are old and disillusioned?”
“Yes,” she said. Then, after a pause, she added. “I don’t want to believe again. I have been hurt enough. But hope doesn’t have to be so committed. One can hope from outside. It would be all the more fascinating to see one’s hopes taking form – less painful if they did not.”
“Just a well-wisher?” I suggested.
“And a well-worker, I hope. But faith…no, I’m not putting that up in the crockery-smashing stall again. ‘Men like gods’ is too tempting a target for the opposition.”
“All right,” I told her. “Come to think of it, there’s many a valuable piece of work done without faith – only it’s less rewarding.”
In subsequent conversations I learnt more about her. That she held a D.Sc, and was thus entitled to be called Doctor. (Though she never used the title other than officially, partly because the English have a feeling of masquerade about any doctor who is not a medical man, and partly because she felt it to sit intimidatingly on a woman.) After taking her degree she had worked for some time in a Government Research Laboratory on various branches of pestology. Later, for reasons which she did not specify, she had elected to take up field-work. This had taken her first to West Africa to look into the habits and lifecycle of yet another menace to the cocoa crop there; then, to an island of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean to investigate a form of blight which was affecting the breadfruit trees – both the true Antocarpus Incisa and, oddly enough, the Encephdartos Coffer too, she explained. Following that, she had spent a year at home, about which she said nothing. Now, I gather, she was looking forward to seeing what interesting pests and blights might have developed on an island left twenty years in isolation.
Talking to her, I began to understand why, in spite of her dubiety about the success of the Project, Walter had taken her on. When she talked on her own subject the faraway look disappeared altogether, and one was left with little doubt of her knowledge and capability.
♦
Our last port of call was Uijanji (We-yan-ye), the capital, and the only port in the Midsummers. We stayed there a couple of days, and when we sailed took on board a party of some twenty Islanders recruited locally to help with the landing of our supplies on Tanakuatua.
Camilla was surprised that they had been willing to come. She had spent the time at Uijanji ashore, finding out all she could about Tanakuatua, both generally, and in her own field. It had given her plenty to think about.
“From what I’ve heard, the place is under a very comprehensive curse indeed,” she told me. “Any native who is willing to risk setting foot in the place must either be very sophisticated – or very sure of some kind of protection.”
“Or possibly decadent?” I suggested.
“I included that under ‘sophisticated’,” she replied. “It will be interesting to see how far they’ve managed to outgrow the primitive when we actually get there.”
Two days later we arrived.
At first sight Tanakuatua was like romantic tourist literature come to life. Photographs had prepared me for the shape of it, but not for the colour. That was dazzling. The blue of the sky, enhanced by scattered white clouds, was reflected in the shifting blues and greens of the sea. The island was a slash across the middle to separate them. A line of white beach, a vivid band of green above it, and beyond, the expected shape of the twin hills, but now green for two thirds of their height, and blue-brown for the rest. My first feeling was of disbelief that such a gem of an island could have been left deserted. My second, a twinge of misgiving: it looked too good to be true.
We made the passage of the reef without difficulty, and moved slowly across the lagoon. Then the engines went astern. Presently the anchor chain rattled through the hawse-pipe, shattering the silence and echoing back and forth across the lagoon. A few birds rose from the islets in the reef, and circled with harsh cries.
Camilla, at the rail beside me, looked at them, and then back towards the shore. She frowned, and murmured, more to herself than to me:
“Strange, so few birds…I’d have expected thousands of birds…”
The work of getting ashore began.
Soon after we left Uijanji, a derrick had begun hoisting parcels of nested containers from the hold, and dumping them on the deck. The first job now was to separate them, fix an airtight lid on each, and drop it over the side. There, the Islanders, swimming as if water were their native element, manoeuvred them together, and joined them by links on their sides. The result, in a surprisingly short space of time, was a large, articulated, very buoyant raft.
Walter deserves full credit for the idea, for the quite astonishing numbers of cases, drums, bales, bags, and bundles that the hold now began to disgorge would have needed innumerable boat trips to get them ashore, and several of the larger crates could not have been handled by that method at all.
In a couple of hours or so the loaded raft, towed by a fibre-glass boat with a powerful outboard engine, began to move slowly away from the ship’s side. Those of us left on board raised a scattered cheer, and waved down to those on the raft.
The stately progress must have taken almost half an hour before the raft actually touched the shore, and then as it did, an entirely unexpected thing happened. All the Islanders who had crowded to its forepart leapt off, splashed through the shallow water, and ran up the beach. We could see Walter and Charles, left on the raft, waving to them to come back, but they took not the least notice. They kept on running without a backward glance until, just short of the bordering trees, one of those in the lead stopped, and raised his arm. The rest stopped, too, and formed a semi-circle around him.
The leader spoke, paused, then made a gesture with his hand. They all went down on their knees, arms upstretched, then, at another sign, they bent forward and remained, faces to the sand, in an attitude of supplication. Presently the man in the middle got to his feet again, raised his arms, and stood motionless. His face was turned inland, his back towards us, so that it was impossible to see whether he was speaking or not.
Through the glasses one could see Walter and Charles in argument, still aboard the raft. It was evident that Walter wanted to go after the Islanders. Charles, with a hand on his arm was dissuading him – and successfully, for after a few moments Walter shrugged, and resigned himself to wait.
Beside me, on deck, Charles’ son Peter inquired of Jennifer Deeds:
“What are they doing that for, Jenny?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “People have different ways in different places. Perhaps they think it’s the polite thing to do when you arrive on an island.” After a pause she added: “It rather looks as if it might be some kind of propitiation ceremony.”
“What’s a proppy – what you said?” Peter asked.
“Oh, dear. Well, you see, simple people think the world is inhabited by lots of spirits, as well as by men and women,” she explained. “So it might be that they are afraid that the spirits here won’t like us landing on their island uninvited. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they are praying to the island spirits not to be annoyed with them – and perhaps asking their permission to stay for a day or two. It’s a bit like – well, like the way some people touch wood just to be on the safe side; only we don’t take that sort of thing very seriously any more, and these people do.”
; “He’s turned round. Now he’s making a speech to them,” Peter said.
He appeared to be doing just that, and at some length. After that he, too, prostrated himself again, with the rest. Several times the whole party rose upright on its knees, and went down again.
“Could well be,” I agreed. “From the little I’ve read a tabu-breaker has need of all the spiritual sanction he can get. Let’s hope they feel satisfied that they’ve got it. If not, I can see us with a strike on our hands, and a lot of heavy work to be done.”
Apparently they were. The ceremony, whatever it was, lasted about twenty minutes, and then broke up. The Islanders drifted down the beach back to the raft, and began unloading as if there had been no interlude.
Charles Brinkley acted as beachmaster, supervising the construction and arrangement of dumps, and organizing the stacking of conveniently sized cases in such a way that they could be covered with canvas sheets to make sleeping quarters until the pre-fabricated huts should be assembled.
Mrs Brinkley, too, revealed herself as a capable organizer and efficiently directed the construction of a field kitchen. Jamie McIngoe supervised the layout of the machinery and constructional materials dump, and got one tractor uncrated to move the larger cases. The rest of us did as instructed to the best of our ability as long as the light lasted. Then we returned on the raft to the Susannah Dingley.
After dinner I went out on deck where I presently discovered Camilla regarding the island’s black bulk by the light of innumerable stars and a rising moon.
On the foredeck the Islanders were holding a kind of singsong. A single voice alternated with choruses. The voice would chant or declaim to the accompaniment or rhythm strummed out on a tumpy-sounding drum, then the rest would join in. The choruses were not repetitive; sometimes the song would be plaintive with the quality of a lament; occasionally it would be louder and hold an undoubtable tone of triumph; once or twice it was simply a cheerful tune; but it was the note of lamentation that predominated. After each song the rhythm of the drum would change again and the single voice would take up its saga. I wished I could understand the tale it was telling.
We listened in silence until it came to an end, and the voices broke into chatter.
Camilla nodded her head towards the island.
“Well, what do you think of it?” she asked. “Is it what you expected?”
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “But it’s intimidating. So much growth – with so much vigour. All those plants fighting one another for existence. And we’ve got to fight them. A great neglected tangle that will have to be cleared by sheer hard work – and then kept clear.”
“More raw than you thought?”
“Yes, I suppose so – insofar as I did think. I don’t remember going into details. In fact I’ve rather skipped over the beginnings. I’ve tended to see it in later stages.”
She glanced at me.
“Ah, yes. A kind of Arcady. A wide, rolling, tree-dotted scene with flocks of sheep grazing on Downs turf watched by contented, pipe-playing shepherds, with, here and there, a small city, all white, severe and beautiful.”
“Come, come,” I said. “My romanticism is at least this century’s.”
“I’d not be too sure of that,” she replied. “And anyway, one of the troubles of this century is that people have learnt to patronize Nature. That’s perhaps preferable to the last century’s guff about Mother Nature, but it’s just as unrealistic. It probably does one good to be brought up against the facts of life now and then – at least it makes one realize that there is a struggle going on; that you have to do more than wave a cheque-book to create ‘men like gods’.”
I wasn’t going to argue about men like gods. I asked her:
“How do you find it? Is it what you expected?”
“Yes, I think so. Mind you I’ve only been a few yards from the landing-place, so far. The secondary growth is perhaps a little denser than I’d looked for, but generally speaking it is much what one had expected. Except for the birds…I don’t understand that. There ought to be millions of birds…” She paused, considering. “There seem to be fewer flowers, too – still, that could be due to a number of causes. Might be purely local.”
“Apart from that it’s much as you’d expect to find a place without any men to upset the balance of nature?” I suggested.
She did not reply immediately. Then she said:
“If I were given to thinking in phrases of that kind; I’d not be in my job.”
I was puzzled for a moment until I perceived what she must mean.
“The balance of nature? That’s a common enough expression, surely?”
“It’s common, as you say – and mischievous.”
“I don’t see why. After all, we’ve been upsetting it enough to change half the world in the last generation or two.”
She said, patiently:
“It is mischievous because it is ill-considered, and entirely misleading. To begin with, the idea that man can upset what you call the balance of nature is a piece of arrogance. It assumes him to be outside the natural processes – the ‘man like god’ theme again. Man is a product of nature – its most advanced and influential specimen perhaps, but evoked by a natural process. He is part of that process. Whatever he does, it must be part of his nature to do – or he could not do it. He is not, and cannot be, unnatural. He, with his capacities, is as much the product of nature as were the dinosaurs with theirs. He is an instrument of natural processes.
“Secondly, there is no such thing as the ‘balance of nature’. It does not exist, and never did. It is a myth. An offshoot of the desire for stability – of the attempt to reduce the world to a tidy, static, and therefore comprehensible and predictable place. It is part of the conception of a divinely appointed order in which everything had its place and purpose – and every man had his place and task. The idea of natural balances goes right back to the origins of magic – left balanced by right, white by black, good by evil, the heavenly host by the legions of Satan. It was an article of faith set out in the Zohar that ‘unbalanced forces perish in the void’. The attempt to reduce an apparently chaotic world to order, of a kind, by the conception of balanced forces has gone on since earliest history – and it still goes on. Our minds look for reasons because reason, and balance, give us the illusion of stability – and in the thought of underlying stability there is comfort. The search for stability is the most constant – and the most fruitless, quest of all.”
I was taken aback. I had evidently trodden on a tender corn, or at least introduced a hobby-horse for her to ride. I did not care for her lecturing manner, particularly from one young enough to be my daughter, but she had not finished yet. She went on:
“Nature is a process, not a state – a continuous process. A striving to keep alive. No species has a right to exist; it simply has the ability, or the inability. It survives by matching its fecundity against the forces that threaten it with destruction. It may appear for a time to have struck a balance, a fluctuating balance, but it has not. All the time there is a change – change of competitors, change of environment, change of evolution – and sooner or later any species will prove inadequate, and be superseded.
“The reptiles after dominating the world for millions of years were superseded by the mammals. The mammals have recently been dominated by the super-mammal, man. And yet people talk glibly about ‘preserving the balance of nature’. It is impossible – and if it were possible, why should it not have been the Mesozoic ‘balance’ of the giant reptiles just as much as any other period that stood in need of ‘preservation’? Why should the existing state be so much more valuable than the past – or the future?”
“Surely,” I said, taking my opportunity to break in, “surely the crux of the present concern is the improved methods of destruction – insecticides, and so on, and the inability to determine the side-effects of their use. Isn’t it due to the speed of everything nowadays? – when you can exterminate a species in a year or
so, and only begin to perceive the secondary effects when it is too late? It seems to me that is another way to the dustbowl.”
“It could be,” she agreed. “But the discretion in their use needs to be intelligent, not sentimental. Behind most of this talk of ‘balance’ I perceive the old idea that ‘Mother Nature’ knows best. Leave everything to her, don’t interfere, and she’ll look after us. Which is, of course, complete rubbish. It is a concept that could only have arisen in a comfortable, well-fed society which has forgotten what it is to struggle for existence. Nature is not motherly, she is red in tooth and claw, she ravens for food – and she has no favourites. For the time being we are sitting pretty – but not for long. The same laws that operate for every species that outbreeds its food supply will operate for us. When that happens we shall hear no more of this benevolent Mother Nature. Without the knowledge we have of manipulating Nature for our own ends our present population would already be going hungry – if, indeed, it had come into existence at all. The only difference between us and other species is that we have superior equipment for preying on them, and for coercing Nature for our own benefit. Beyond that the same rules apply. There is no warrant whatever for supposing one can ‘preserve the balance of nature’ – with man comfortably in the saddle, which is what the whole concept implies.”
We looked across the water to the dark bulk of the island.
“Well,” I said, “if one takes a long enough view, I suppose all existence can look futile. A planet is born, it cools, it brings forth life, it dies. So what?”
“So what, indeed?” she replied. “There is only the life-force, the patriotism of species. And that is blind. It is shared by the highest organisms and the lowliest…and understood by neither…”
