Moreau’s Other Island

‘I can try,’ I said.

‘You’re going to have to try, hero. This is where you get out! No ambulances here. I’ve got the fishing nets to see to, and that’s trouble enough to do. George here will take you along to HQ. Get that?’

Involuntarily I looked at George with suspicion.

‘He won’t hurt you,’ the blond man said. ‘If you drifted through the minefields OK then you will be safe by George.’

‘What sort of a place am I getting to? Are there other – white men there? I don’t even know your name.’

The blond man looked down at the deck and rubbed his soiled deck shoes against each other

‘You aren’t welcome here, hero, you ought better to face that fact. Moreau Island is not geared exactly to cater to the tourist trade. But we can maybe find a use for you.’

‘My work is elsewhere,’ I said sharply. ‘A lot of people will be looking for me right now. The ASASC shuttle I was in crashed in the Pacific some way from here. My name is Calvert Madle Roberts, and I hold down an important government post. What’s your name? You still haven’t told me.’

‘It’s not any damned business of yours, is it? My name is Hans Maastricht and I’m not ashamed of it. Now, get on shore. I have work to do or I will be into trouble.’

He turned to George, slapping the riot-gun over his shoulder to emphasize his words. ‘You take this man straight to HQ, get that? You go with him to Master. You no stop on the way, you no cause any trouble. OK? You no let other People cause any trouble, savvy?’

George looked at him, then at me, then back to the other man, swinging his head in a confused way.

‘Does he speak English?’ I aked.

‘This is what he savvies best,’ Maastricht said, slapping the riot-gun again. ‘Hurry it up, George. Help this man to HQ. I’ll be back when I’ve checked the fishing nets.’

‘Savvy,’ said George. ‘Hurry it up. Help this man HQ, come back when I check the nets.’

‘You just get him safe to HQ,’ Maastricht said, clouting him across the shoulders.

The hulking fellow jumped down into shallow water and put out a hand to help me. I say hand – it was a black leathery deformed thing he extended to me. There was nothing to do but take it. I had to jump down and fell practically into his arms, leaning for a moment against his barrel-chest. Again I felt in him the same revulsion as struggled in myself. He moved back a pace in one hop, catching me off balance, so that I fell on my hands and knees in the shallow waters.

‘Sort yourselves out!’ Maastricht shouted, with a laugh. Swinging the riot-gun round on its sling, he fired one shot into the air, presumably as a warning, then headed the landing-craft towards where the channel widened.

George watched him go, then turned to me almost timorously. His gaze probed mine; being nearly neckless, he hunched his shoulders to do so, as if he were short-sighted. At the same time he extended that maimed hand to me. I was still on my knees in the water. There was something poignant in the fellow’s gesture. I took his arm and drew myself up.

‘Thank you, George.’

‘Me George. You no call George?’

‘My name is Calvert Roberts – I’m glad of your help.’

‘You got Four Limbs Long. You glad of your help.’ He put his paw to his head as if trying to cope with concepts beyond his ability. ‘You glad me help. You glad George help.’

‘Yes. I’m feeling kind of shaky.’

He gestured towards the open water. ‘You – find in water, yes?’

It was as if he was striving to visualize something that happened long ago.

‘Which way to your HQ, George?’

‘HQ, yes, we go, no trouble. No stop on way, no cause any trouble.’ His voice held a curious clotted quality. We stood on the stony beach, with a fringe of palm trees and scrub to landward, while a comedy of misdirected intentions developed – or it might have been a comedy if I had had the strength to find the situation funny. George did not know whether he should walk before me or behind me or beside me. His shuffling movements suggested that he was reluctant to adopt any of the alternatives.

The surface amiability of our conversation (if it can be dignified by that word) in no way calmed my fear of George. He was monstrous, and his close physical presence remained abhorrent. Something in his posture inspired distrust. That jackal sneer on his face seemed at war all the time with a boarish element in his composition, so that I was in permanent doubt as to whether he was going to turn round and run away or charge at me; and a certain nervous shuffle in his step kept that doubt uppermost in my mind.

‘You lead, I’ll follow, George.’

I thought he was about to dash away into the bushes. I tried again.

‘All right. I’ll go ahead and you can follow me.’

I thought he was about to rush at me.

‘You no drive me?’

‘I want to get to HQ, George. I must have water. There’s no danger, is there?’

He shook his great head to and fro, saying, ‘Danger, yes. No. No stop on way, no cause any trouble. Go with him to Master.’

I began to walk. He darted forward immediately and remained exactly one pace behind, his little piggy eyes glaring into mine whenever I turned my head. Had I not felt so exhausted, I should have been more frightened or more amused than I was.

In my condition and in this company, I was not well equipped to appreciate scenery. It presented, however, an immediate solid impression to me, an impression formidable and silent. Underfoot was that broken marginal territory which marks the division between ocean and land, even on so precarious a wedge of land as this. Just ahead were bleached rocks and the sombre greens of palm and thorn bushes. The ocean was at its eternal stir; the foliage hung silent and waiting, and far from welcoming.

The undergrowth came down close to the water’s edge. I saw a track leading among the trees, and took it.

George had evidently summed me up by now, for he said, ‘He got Four Limbs Long. You got Four Limbs Long.’

‘That’s how it happens to be with mankind,’ I said sharply.

George said, or rather chanted, ‘Four Limbs Long – Wrong Kind of Song!’

‘Where did you get that idea from?’ I asked. But I did not stand and wait for his answer. I set off along the path, and he sprang to follow on my heels, one pace behind. It was a relief to be among trees again, in shade. After all the days in the boat, my walk was uncertain, although I felt strength returning as we proceeded.

My mind was preoccupied with many things, not least with my weakness and the contrasting strength of the moronic brute behind me. I was also puzzled by what Maastricht – whom I took for a Netherlander from his name and his accent – had said: ‘Welcome to Moreau Island.’ The name meant something to me, yet I could not place it at all. Moreau Island? Had some scandal been connected with it?

Despite these preoccupations, I took care to keep alert to my surroundings, for there had been something threatening in Maastricht’s warning to George. What or whom were we likely to meet?

This strip of the island had little to offer, apart from the singular virtue of being terra firma. The rock to our right hand, sculptured as if by water at some earlier period of history, harboured many scuttling things, though probably nothing more exotic than birds and lizards. Bamboos were all about us, growing from cavities in the rock and from the ground, which was littered with stones and large shells. They grew thickly enough to obstruct our passage, though thinly enough for a pattern of sunlight and shadow to be cast where we walked. Occasionally we caught glimpses of the bright sea to our left, through a trellis of leaves.

At one point, I almost tripped over one of the large shells. Kicking it aside, I observed that it was the whitened carapace of a tortoise. We seemed almost to be walking through a tortoise graveyard, so thick did the shells lie; there was never a sign of a live one.

Boulders lay close on either side, some of them as tall as we were. Then we had to thread our way between them, and George came uncomfortably close to my vulnerable neck. Two of these big boulders virtually formed a gateway; beyond them more of George’s uncouth breed of native were lurking.

I saw them among the thickets ahead and halted despite myself.

Turning to George, I said, ‘Why are they in hiding? What’s the matter with them?’

With a crafty look, at once furtive and menacing, George said, ‘Four Limbs Long – Wrong Kind of Song … Four Limbs Short – Right Kind of Sport!’ His feet began a kind of shuffle in the dust. His eyes would not meet mine.

There was no point in trying to make conversation with him. Now that his own kind were close, he looked more dangerous than ever.

‘George, you take me straight to HQ, savvy? You no stop, you no cause trouble, you no let anybody cause trouble, OK? You savvy?’

He began to pant in a doggy way, his tongue hanging out. ‘You no got carbine, Cal—.’ Perhaps he struggled to recall my surname; if so he failed, and his use of my given name carried an unwelcome familiarity.

I was remembering what Maastricht had said: ‘Master got carbine!’

He moved one burly shoulder at me, looking away, mumbling, ‘Yes, savvy Master got carbine …’

‘Come on, then!’ Advancing between the boulders, I called, ‘Stand back ahead. We are in a hurry.’

An amazing array of faces peered out of the bushes at me. They bore a family resemblance to George, although there was great variety in their deformity. Here were snouts that turned up and proboscises that turned down; mouths with no lips, mouths with serrated lips; hairless faces and faces covered almost completely with hair or stubble; eyes that glared with no visible lids, eyes that dreamed under heavy lids like horses’. All these faces were turned suspiciously towards me, noses twitching in my direction, and all managed to avoid my direct gaze by a hair’s breadth.

From some eyes in the deeper shadows, I caught the red or green blank glare of iridescence, as if I were confronted by animals from a ludicrous fairy tale.

Indeed, I recalled series of drawings by artists like Charles Le Brun and Thomas Rowlandson, in which the physiognomies of men and women merged through several transformations into the physiognomies of animals – bulls, lions, leopards, dogs, oxen and pigs. The effect was ludicrous as well as alarming. I moved forward, clapping my hands slowly, and slowly they gave way.

But they were calling to George, who still followed me.

‘Has he not Four Limbs Long?’

‘Is he from the Lab’raty?’

‘Where is the one with the bottle?’

‘Has he a carbine?’

And other things I could not understand, for I was soon to learn that George’s diction was a marvel of distinctness among his friends, and he a creature of genius among morons. He still followed stubbornly behind me, saying, or rather chanting – most of their sentences were in singsong – ‘He find in big water. He Four Limbs Long. He Five Fingers Long – Not Wise or Strong. No stop, no cause trouble. Plenty beat at HQ.’

He chanted. I staggered beside him. They fell back or hopped back, letting us through – but hands with maimed stubs of fingers, hands more like paws or hooves, reached out and touched me as I went by.

Now I caught a strong rank smell, like the whiff of a tiger cage in a zoo. The trees and bushes thinned, the sun beat down more strongly, and we came to the native village.

Near the first houses a rock on my right hand rose in a high wall. Climbers and vines, some brilliantly flowering, hung down the rock face, and among them fell a slender waterfall, splashing from shelf to shelf of the rock. It filled a small pool, where it had been muddied and fouled. But I ran to the rock, and let the blessed stuff fall direct on to my face, my lips, my parched tongue, my throat! Ah, that moment! In truth, the waterfall was not much more than a drip, but Niagara itself could not have been more welcome.

After a while I had to rest dizzily against the rock, letting the water patter on the back of my neck. I could hear the natives stealthily gather about me. But I offered a prayer of thanks for my deliverance before I turned to face them.

Their ungainly bodies were hidden under the same overalls that George wore; many an unseemly bulk was thus concealed from the world. One or two of them wore boots; most went barefoot. Some had made barbaric attempts to decorate themselves with shells or bits of bone in their hair or round their necks. Only later did I realize that these were the females of this wonderfully miscegenous tribe.

Fascinated as I was with them, I believe they were far more fascinated with me.

‘He laps water,’ one said, sidling up and addressing me without meeting my gaze.

‘I drink water, as I guess you must,’ I said. I was torn between curiosity and apprehension, not knowing whether to try to establish communication or make a break for it, but at least this creature who came forward looked as harmless as any of them. George resembled an outré blend of boar and hyena; this creature looked like a kind of dog. He had the fawning aspect of a mongrel which one sometimes notices in human beings even in more favoured parts of the world.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked, pointing at him to get the message home.

He slunk back a pace. ‘The Master’s is the Hand that Maims. The Master’s is the Voice that Names …’

‘What is your name?’

It touched its pouting chest humbly. ‘Your name Bernie. Good man, good boy.’

‘Yes, you’re a good man, Bernie.’ Weakness and a touch of hysteria overcame me. To find a Bernie here in this miserable patch of jungle on some forgotten rock in the Pacific – a Bernie looking so much like a stray pooch – was suddenly funny. Why, I thought, Bernie as in St Bernard! I began helplessly to laugh, collapsing against the rock. I still laughed when I found myself sitting in the mud. When they clustered nearer to me, staring down in a bovine way, I covered my face and laughed and wept.

I scarcely heard the whistle blow.

They heard. ‘The Master Knows! The Master Blows!’ They milled about uneasily. I looked up, afraid of being trampled on. Then one started to run and they all followed, stampeding as if they were a herd of cattle. George stood till last, looking at me with a great puzzlement from under his hat, muttering to himself. Then he too tried to flee.

He was too late. The Master appeared. George sank to the ground, covering his head with a humble slavish gesture. A whip cracked across his shoulders and then the Master passed him and strode towards me.

Climbing slowly to my feet, I stood with my back to the rock. I was tempted to imitate the natives and take to my heels.

The so-called Master was tremendously tall: I reckoned he was at least three metres high, impossibly tall for a human being.

I could see him among the trees and huts, marching along a wide track, and not much more than fifty metres from me. I had a glimpse of tranquil waters behind him, but all my attention was concentrated on him.

He carried a carbine in the alert position, ready to fire. It was aimed at me in a negligent sort of way. His stride was one of immeasurable confidence; there was about it something rigid and mechanical.

His face was concealed beneath a helmet. I could not see his eyes. As he came near, I saw that his arms and legs were of metal and plastic.

‘My God, it’s a robot!’ I said aloud.

Then it came round the corner of the rock and confronted me.

‘Where did you spring from?’ it demanded.

3

In the Hands of the Master

One of my reasons for believing in God has been the presence in my life of emotions and understandings unsusceptible to scientific method. I have met otherwise scientific men who believe in telepathy whilst denying God. To me it makes more sense to believe in God than telepathy; telepathy seems to me to be unscientific mumbo-jumbo like astrology (although I have met men working prosaically on the Moon who held an unshakeable belief in astrology), while God can never be unscientific because he is the Prime Mover who contains science along with all the other effects of our universe. Or so I had worked it out, to my temporary satisfaction. God is shifting ground.

Directly I faced the Master, I felt some of those emotions – call them empathic if you will – which I have referred to as being unsusceptible to scientific method. Directly he spoke, I knew that in him, as in his creatures, aggression and fear were mixed. God gave me understanding.

This could not be a robot.

I looked up at it. Once I had got a grip of myself, I saw that the Master, although indeed a fearsome figure, was not as tall as I had estimated in my near-panic. He stood perhaps two and a quarter metres high, which is to say just over a head taller than I.

Beneath his helmet was a pale face which sweated just like mine did.

‘Who are you, and where did you spring from?’ he demanded.

I am trained to understand men, to cut through their poses. I understand tough men, and men who have merely tough façades. Despite the truculence of this man’s voice, I thought I detected uncertainty in it. I moved forward from the rock where I had been leaning.

He shuffled awkwardly in order to remain facing me, at the same time swinging his gun up to aim it at my stomach. Once my attention was thus directed to it, I recognized the gun as a kind issued to Co-Allied Invasion and Occupation Forces. It was a Xiay 25A, cheaply manufactured by our Chinese allies, capable of multiple-role usage, firing ordinary bullets, CS gas bullets, nailbombs, and other similar devices. The robot-like man carried a whip and a revolver in his belt. He was well armed if he was out for a morning walk.

He repeated his question.

I faced him squarely, fighting down my weakness.

‘I’m American, which I believe is more than you can claim. My name is Calvert Madle Roberts, and I am an Under-Secretary of State in the Willson Administration. I was returning from state business when my plane was shot down in the Pacific. Your employees brought me ashore. I have to get in touch with Washington immediately.’

‘My employees? You must mean Maastricht. What the devil was he playing at landing you here? This isn’t a funfair I’m running. Why didn’t he bring you round to the lagoon?’

‘I’ve been nine days adrift. I’m about all in and I need to contact my department soonest, OK? If you’re in charge, I hold you responsible for looking after me.’

He uttered a grunt which might have represented laughter. ‘I am in charge here, that’s for sure … And I can’t very well have you thrown back into the ocean.’

‘That’s big of you. I’ve told you my name. Roberts. What’s your name?’

His lip curled slightly. ‘You call me Master, same as the rest of them do.’ He swung himself about with a violent bodily motion and began striding back the way he had come. I followed.

We made our way along what served as a wretched street for the native village. The natives, having gathered their courage, had returned to peer at us. They uttered apotropaic phrases as their Master went by.

‘His is the Hand that Maims …’

‘His is the Head that Blames …’

‘His is the Whip that Tames …’

Beyond the little ragged village lay the lagoon. The road skirted it, winding past its tranquil green waters to buildings glimpsed through trees. Beyond everything was a steep hill, its grey cliffs looming above the forest. However mean the affairs of men, nature had added a note of grandeur.

It was impossible to keep up with the great mechanical strides of the self-styled Master. I lagged farther and farther behind. There was a gang of natives working on the far side of the lagoon, where I observed a mobile crane; they stopped work to stare at us.

My vision began to waver as I moved uphill. A stockade of tall and rusty metal posts stood here. The top of the stockade was decorated with barbed wire, strand after entangled strand of it. The Master halted at a narrow gate in the wall, stooping awkwardly to unlock it. I heard tumblers click back. He turned a wheel, the gate swung open, and he passed in. As soon as I had followed him, he pushed the gate shut and locked it from the inside.

Weakness overcame me. I fell to one knee.

‘Bella!’ he called, ignoring me.

I rose again, making my way forward as a strange figure came out of a building towards us. It was wearing a dress. It – no, she, Bella – had the short deformed legs common to most of the other islanders. Her skin was a dull pink. Her face was as hideous as George’s and his fellows’, although her eyes were curiously – lambent, I believe the word is. They seemed to glow and had an oriental cast. She would not look directly at me, although she approached readily enough while listening to what the Master was telling her.

To my surprise she came straight up to me and attempted to lift me off my feet. I felt a sort of nervous thrill at her embrace. Then I collapsed.

My senses never entirely left me. I was aware of strange faces about, and of being carried into a shadowy room. Something cool was placed on my forehead. Water was poured into my mouth; I could hardly swallow, and the cup was taken away. Then my eyes were bandaged. I lay without volition as expert hands ran over my body and I was given a thorough examination. These were things that hardly registered at the time, although they came back to me afterwards.

When I finally roused myself, the bandage was off my eyes. I lay naked under a sheet and felt refreshed. As I propped myself up on one elbow, I saw that an ointment to soothe my sunburns had been applied to my chest and face. The woman called Bella sat hunched in one corner of the room. Her eyes flashed greenly at me as she turned her head.

‘You – feel OK now?’

‘I think so.’

‘You like whisky?’

‘Thanks, but I don’t drink.’

‘No drink? You drink water.’

‘I meant that I don’t drink whisky.’

She stared motionlessly at me. She had short dark hair. I wondered if it was a wig. She had a nose that resembled a cat’s muzzle.

‘Thanks for seeing me through, Bella. I was in a bad way. Just reaction.’

‘I tell Master.’ She slunk away, hardly opening the door enough to get through, closing it directly she was through it. Decidedly feline.

The room took on new proportions as soon as she had gone. My body felt extremely light. Well, I said to myself, that’s how it is, here on the Moon. You mustn’t expect reality. Reality here is only one-sixth of what it is on Earth.

Without any sense of effort, I climbed out of bed and found it was easy to stand on my two feet if I stretched out my arms for balance. Being naked made things much easier. I floated over to my one unglazed window. No glass: but of course there were no minerals on the Moon.

‘M for Moon,’ I told myself aloud.

There was music, played close by, music and the strong heat of a tropical day. The music was Haydn’s, that composer who had come to dominate all the others, even Bach and Beethoven, in the last decade. I believed it was his Fifty-Fourth Symphony being played. Haydn and heat …

By some trick of the mind, I remembered who Moreau was.

I was gazing out at an untidy courtyard. Cans of paint were stacked there, sheets of wood, and panels of metal. Maastricht, still clutching his bottle, crossed my line of sight. I had forgotten he was on the Moon.

I heard the Master shouting at him. ‘Why the hell did you dump that politician where you did? It was asking for trouble – this is no funfair! Suppose George had—’

‘I didn’t bother to take him round to the harbour because I was in a haste to get to the fish nets, like you told me,’ Maastricht’s voice replied. I’ve had enough shouting at for one day. George brought him in safely, didn’t he?’

‘I had to go and rescue the man. They were about to tear him apart, just to put you in the picture.’