An Island Called Moreau (16 page)

Fortifying the outer door with old packing cases, I climbed the stair. It was difficult to see, and for a while I sweated and struggled under the roof, trying to pull back the bolts of a trapdoor. They gave at last. I pushed open the door and had a refreshing prospect of roofs, dark trees, moon, stars, and the lattices of power above me. I saw that night was sick and dawn near; bars of cloud drew across the eastern sky, the pallor of day radiated from behind them. The sun would soon come thundering out of the Pacific. It was an encouraging sign. Foxes prefer to hunt by night.

There was no way of locking the door behind me. I closed it and looked cautiously about. I was on a small platform. Solar heaters stood on the roof nearby. A ladder led up from the platform into the girders above. I was safe here only until I was noticed. All I could do was crouch, hoping that the Beast People would go away.

They showed no sign of doing that. Their bloody party with Warren was almost over. While some of the smaller creatures still scrabbled with his torso, the others, as I could hear, were barging about round the buildings. The voice of Foxy came to me: “Search out other Four Limbs Long, heroes!” I hoped that fear of human habitation would keep them out of the bungalows and eventually drive them back to the bush. Alternatively, I hoped that they might all break into Warren's bungalow, so that I could make good my escape then—the oncoming dawn should provide me with enough light to see my way downhill to Dart's fortress.

Now they were investigating the buildings. I could hear their thick grunts and voices. I crouched where I was, scarcely daring to breathe, the fate of Warren ever present in my mind.

They began to hammer on doors—whether mine or Warren's I could not tell, since the roof obscured my view. Glass shattered. That was a woof of pain. Idiot scampering feet. Yelps and exclamations, thick quarrelsome voices. More sudden smashing—clearly from inside—yells, snatches of mad song. Another crash, insane laughter. “The Shape you're given the day you're born/Is lost when we put you under earth.” Furious shouting, a blow, whimpering.

Then I saw one of the hideous Swine Women trotting across the broken ground, holding a can in one hand and her ripped trousers in the other. She was being pursued by a hairy creature resembling a bear. As she ran, she made a shrill noise—impossible to say if it was from fear or mirth. The bear caught her and, as they fell together, her can went flying. Liquor spilled from it.

They had broken into Warren's place without fear, and were at his beer supply. The knowledge gave me fresh heart. As they became drunk, they would fight among each other and forget me.

Relaxing slightly, I stood up to ease my limbs, turning to catch the dawn breeze as I did so. I found myself staring into a pair of eyes only a meter or so from me.

The nearest leg of the power grid rose beside the bungalow. Clinging to its diagonal spars was one of the ape-men, Alpha or Beta. There was no mistaking that misshapen head, with its baby skull and nose like a tapir's. It clung to the mast with both hands and held a beer can by the rim in its mouth.

Neither of us moved. I had no weapon. A fresh outbreak of screaming came from below. I let out a yell, flinging out my arms. The ape-man opened his mouth, letting the can drop but catching it economically with one hand. He did not fall as I had hoped. He let out a paralyzing answering yell, swarmed through the lattice of the mast, and hurled himself at me.

There was a thin guardrail round the platform. It formed a slight obstacle between him and me. As he landed and clung to it, I thrust my right arm out and caught him a tremendous jolt under the chin with the heel of my open palm. Then I kicked the paw that clutched the guardrail.

He fell back on to the roof, roaring. On the margins of my vision, I glimpsed the Swine Woman and bear creature stand up, point at me, and scream with rage. It was time to escape. In any case, I did not fancy myself in a fight with Alpha or Beta, whichever he was, and he was already picking himself up.

Throwing open the door in the roof, I saw in the pale wash of light below that my room was already invaded. One of the Beast People walked there alone, beer can to mouth, his free hand making airy circles above his head as he staggered silently round the room. I slammed the door. Nothing for it but to jump from the roof.

I went to the edge and peered down. The madmen were about, laughing and running, but this was no time to make any sort of a choice. The ape-man was coming up behind me. I jumped, staggered, and fell to the ground.

As I pulled myself up, the ape-man landed beside me, taking the fall better than I. He wasted time bellowing his discovery, so that I started to run even as the others responded and came up. I went to double round the buildings, away from the sea. My way was blocked.

A vile creature with bloody visage stood there, swaying slightly and waving some sort of weapon in his right hand. He had been eating from it. The unsteady light was sufficient to illumine one of Jed Warren's forearms.

Others were there, figures out of a hitherto undiscovered representation of the nether world. My heart quailed within me. The ape-man seized me from behind, grasping my shoulder.

I turned to evade his other hand. The Rhino Man who had crushed Warren came bursting up behind and barged him out of the way in crazed eagerness to get at me. It was my chance. I dashed between them and ran for the nearest bushes.

I was in the open. On the extreme margins of my vision—I dared not look to left or right for fear of falling—a gaunt figure rose and aimed a gun at me with a hunter's deliberation. I dived into the bush as the carbine went off. The bullet plunged away harmlessly.

Pulling myself up, I saw that the pursuit was now on. Ill organized as they were, some of them drunk on Warren's beer, they could nevertheless hunt me down and destroy me. I was human quarry, by my very shape marked out as one of the enemy. They would tear me apart until that hated shape was no more. They would rend my flesh and eat my tenderest parts.

As I ran through the bush, I could think of only one hope—to catch Foxy unawares and take the carbine from him. With the leader disarmed, the rest of the mob would come to heel. My best hope was to climb a tree and wait. But there were no trees here that could possibly be climbed. They were either lofty palms or small thorns and bamboos. To hide in the bush was impossible—these creatures would unhesitatingly smell me out.

Some dreadful being, heavy and insensate, was plunging along in the bush to my left. I stopped for a moment, and he stopped too. Was he pacing me, simply for the pleasure of the hunt?

Sudden hope filled me. “Bernie?” No reply.

“George?” No reply. I began to run again, and the hidden thing began to run too. For him, this was a game, and I was game. As in a trance, I plunged through the colorless jungle of dawn, not heeding how I scratched or tore myself in my flight.

Like a clear, clean vision came the thought of that high eastern cliff and the jutting rock from which Warren had tried to push me the day before.

I would jump!

Even if I never survived that terrible fall, at least I would be free of a far worse death. There was no other escape for me, as the shouts and yelps all about me made clear. The pack was closing in.

I bounded through the bush in what I believed to be the direction of the cliff. The creature on my left kept pace with me. Occasionally, I saw its monstrous form through the swinging foliage.

Noises sounded ahead—shouting and crashing. Again I swerved, and in a moment arrived at a clearer patch of ground. The ocean glinted ahead. With one sweep of vision, I took in a far glimpse of sun—a chip of it merely, only the merest segment of it cutting above the horizon and sending a dazzle across the ocean in the very instant of its rising. Dark cloud piled above it, but that first ray lit me—and lit two of the Beast People plunging up from my right flank.

Only a few meters lay between me and the rock on which I had fought Warren. I knew my one hope of making that leap was to plunge forward without pause or hesitation, or my courage might fail me. I had stepped from spaceships into the gulfs of space, but this was a challenge of a different order.

What finally spurred me was the bestial face of a Swine Man who came bursting out from my left. He it was who had paced me, who now moved in with smiling yellow teeth for the kill. Swine he was, but I read vulpine ancestry there as well in the sweep of his fangs and cut of jaw under that piggish snout. He stretched out his arms, and I ran like madness itself for the high cliff.

The Swine Man screamed with fury. Seabirds burst from underfoot. The universe wheeled about my head. I saw the cliff, the supine sea, the jut of rock, saw my death on the rocks beneath, ran even faster.

My courage had fled. But it was too late. I bounded along the jutting rock as if it were a diving board above a pool, shouted with all my strength, jumped. The Swine Man tried to stop too late, toppled, fell with a great cry. Lucifer without grace.

As I plummeted, all fear left me. I fell with arms and legs outstretched, performing slow cartwheels in the air. I saw the place I had left, the cliff wall, the expanse of sky, the sea, the creature who fell some distance from me. I fell, and a muddle of thoughts coursed through my brain. I even recalled the old idea that one relives one's past in such moments before death; yet I could recollect nothing but the terrors of my days adrift at sea and the secrets of Moreau's researches—even in this extremity, I was not free of the island.

By bracing my body and getting control of my limbs, I was able to stop tumbling and plunge down feet first. The drop seemed to last for ever—yet equally the ocean came rushing up to meet me at incredible speed. As I closed with it, I saw that I was free of the rocks. The tumbling creature who kept me company at some distance did not look so lucky.

Just as I hit the waves, the sun appeared to sink back below the horizon. It was as if I had traveled back in time—on the level of the ocean, sunrise was still an instant away. The water was dark. It struck me hard and swallowed me.

Everything became confused. I had not fallen straight. The breath was battered out of me. Beneath the water, dark shapes of rock loomed, or so I thought. I tried to find my way to the surface, became lost, saw red and green streamers of light explode about me, lost consciousness.

Not entirely. One rarely loses all awareness. But my senses became detached, and I could do nothing effective. Except drown.

Yet I did not drown. The muddle and pain that saturated my being finally receded like a tide. I was aware of people about me, of a thatched roof overhead. Hands were on my naked body. A remote but sensuous pleasure had roused me. I closed my eyes in extreme languor, only opening them again with an effort.

I lay in a rough hut. Two Seal Men knelt to one side, smiling and nodding when they saw my eyelids flutter. Over me, her lank hair trailing against my skin, was a Seal Woman. She performed a kind of kiss of life upon me, although her lips were not fixed on my lips. I gave a great cry as realization dawned on me, and all my limbs trembled in a bout of rapture. Then I sank back into a deeper oblivion.

10

After the Fall

Of my four-day stay on Seal Rock, I prefer to say as little as possible. Some acts which seem beautiful and natural and profound at the time of their doing are distasteful in memory. And one person's pleasure can arouse disgust in another. Perhaps this is particularly so among Western nations, where sexuality is even today regarded more ambivalently than in the East.

Emotions that move us most deeply often undergo metamorphosis after the event.

The name of the Seal Woman was Lorta. There were four Seal Men of roughly her age over whom she had complete sway. They doted upon Lorta, and it was easy to see why; she gave herself to them with an inexhaustible abandon, with such joy that even I, at the time, felt no shame in accepting her loving. She ruled them completely because they ruled her; she could not resist them because she was irresistible. And such was her bounty that those Seal Men felt no jealousy of each other, or even of me, a stranger. Theirs was a good fortune, and they had the wit to know it.

The names of the Seal Men were Saito, Harioshi, Halo, and Yuri. Between our games of love, we swam and played in the ocean. And we conversed—conversation for them was also a game. My comprehension of what they were saying grew fast, and perhaps they spoke more comprehensibly from having to talk to me. I learned that the Swine Man who had fallen from the cliff top with me had plunged to his death on the rocks. Crabs and sharks had devoured him. Since crab formed a considerable part of the seals' diet, this was particularly good news to my friends.

I learned also that it was the Seal Men who had dived in the lagoon and retrieved Maastricht's carbine. They had given it to Foxy in exchange for a gift of berries and stolen canned syrup.

They knew of the submarine. But their time sense was deficient, so that they had no idea of when it might visit Moreau Island again, or of how long it was since it last called. In many respects they were like children, and their charming child-faces puckered with laughter as they confessed their ignorance.

No, I betray them by expressing it so. When I was with them, it was otherwise—I am back to my old stiff self again. Of course, they knew about the regular visits of the submarine. It was a treat to them, the arrival of that fabulous unfeeling monster out of the ocean depths where they could not go. They used to follow it into the lagoon and sport beside it, making obscene gestures and playing intimately with each other—which made them very popular with the crew.

They did not know when the vessel had last arrived, or when it would come again. Why should they? It had no significance for them. They laughed heartily at the idea that I should wish to climb into and be shut away in the submarine, and would not accept that I was serious when I spoke. As for confessing their ignorance—they were not burdened with our guilts about knowledge or the lack of it.