An Island Called Moreau (11 page)

When he appeared in the doorway, Dart had shed his armor and was back in the chair.

“This is a miserable turn of events, to be sure! Well, that's what life's all about. Always some fresh misery.”

“I notice you try to inculcate religion into your people, even if you don't believe in God yourself!”

“You can cook without eating the food yourself. You mean that business about ‘Big Master underground'? We'll have more of that at the funeral tomorrow—which we'll hold at three p.m., the same time as your fictitious funeral. There's bloody hypocrisy—but you didn't object to that, did you?”

“Hans is unmistakably dead. At least give him a proper burial.”

“It's a good chance to rub in the Big Master stuff. It does no harm—it's designed to keep them in order, to worry them that someone invisible with an even bigger whip than mine might be watching them when I'm not about. Isn't that how all religions started?”

“You're bitter about your country, your name, your religion—I can see you have your reasons, but, after all this while, can't you come to terms with your disabilities? You've done well in that respect physically; why cripple yourself spiritually?”

He gave a cold smile. “If I believed in your bloody Christian God, then I'd have to believe that he made me in his image. Neither you nor I would want a God who looked like that, so that's all there is about it. Now, give up trying to rile me. Enough's enough for one day. Come and have a whisky with me, like a man. A sundowner.”

“A cordial will do me.”

Bella brought us in two plastic trays of lunch and we ate together in the control room, with Bella leaning behind Dart's chair. I gathered she ate in whatever served as the kitchen. Looking at her, I shuddered; the mixture of woman and beast in her seemed so complex; in her slinking attitude was something seductive, yet her face was terrifyingly ugly under its dark wig.

In the manner of one making conversation, Dart said, “A little drink does a man no harm. It's a custom that goes with civilization. Too much drink is another matter; you lose control. That was poor Hans' trouble. His grandmother was a Malay. He drank too much and today it finished him off.”

“No. He may have drunk too much, but what finished him off was the rotten way the harbor was built. The concrete collapsed.”

“He was boozed and drove over the side.”

“Not so! The wall collapsed and the crane tipped over. It wasn't Hans' fault. The lousy setup here on Moreau Island killed him.”

“It was drink, I tell you—I've known Hans for years. He had colored blood in him. I always said booze would kill him.”

I grew angry. “What if booze
did
kill the poor guy? Why did he take to the bottle? Just to blot out the shame of living here with these mutilated creatures, these parodies of human beings.”

Looking down at his plate, Dart said, “I knew him best. You don't understand, Roberts. You're only a bloody politician. I was fond of Hans. I'm going to miss him.… Oh, confound the whole damned rotten human setup!” He struck the table with a metal fist. The violence of the gesture soothed him. He looked up at me and said, in a perfectly calm manner, “We were on good terms, Hans and me. He had had a rough deal from life, right since he was a kid. This island was a sanctuary for him—for once he wasn't on the receiving end. So he understood how I felt and I understood how he felt. Now you and I …”

He let the sentence hang there. When I refused to say anything, he started again.

“You and I—could we ever be on good terms? You're a man of power, you've been around, you are probably on good terms with everyone you meet. You don't even know what ‘good terms' means—it's something you take for granted. I can never have that relationship because of what I am. A thalidomide freak. I have to rule or go under. Does that sound like megalomania to you? Well, it's not. It's the result of experience, and you don't buck experience. Not that I've any ideas about ruling anything but this little blob in the ocean—that's all I want. But I don't know what you're thinking, do I? For all I know, you're thinking you ought to wipe me out.”

I looked out of the window.

“I don't think in those terms. I can see you are determined to force me into opposition to you, whether you realize it or not, but that's a result of your paranoia, not my behavior.”

“My paranoia! What old cant are you handing me? Do you know—have you any idea what paranoia is? It's a rational reaction to surrounding circumstances. Why shouldn't you be thinking about wiping me out? There's a war going on all around the world, which you're part of and I'm not. Who's fighting that war, ask yourself! Not freaks like me, Mr. Roberts, no, but normals like you! War's your idea! Wiping out's your idea.”

He was trembling now, and I could feel anger rising in me.

“You aren't exempt from guilt, Dart. Listen to what you're saying. You're talking to me as if I were a multitude, not an individual. You know very well war was not my idea, but if you can see me as a force rather than a person, then it's easier for you to hate me. That's how wars begin. Your deformities don't give you any monopoly over right.”

In speaking, I was leaning forward, pointing a finger at him. He seized on the gesture and starting shouting before I could finish.

“I don't want to hear your crap! Take a look at yourself! You are instinctively aiming a gun at me now, only all you have is a finger. So watch it, because I am armed, remember!”

He brought up the automatic and aimed it at my stomach.

“Now who's thinking about wiping out?” I asked. “You're right, Dart—only when you've got that thing in your claw can you be on equal terms with another man. I wonder you dared let poor Maastricht carry a gun.”

Although he remained pointing the gun at me, his gaze left mine. He gazed down at the floor with little darting glances and began to bite on his lower lip.

When he looked up at me again, he put the automatic back in a clip on the inside of his chair, and said, “I have a hasty temper, Mr. Roberts, and you deliberately tried making me shirty. All I was trying to tell you was that I wanted us to be on good terms. I want you to do something for me. I've just remembered that we haven't got Hans' carbine. Where is it? Down on the bed of the lagoon?”

“It's safe there. The Beast People don't dare enter the water.”

“You must get that gun for me, Mr. Roberts. If you don't, they will.” He hitched himself up in the chair in agitation. “They mustn't have firearms. Try and imagine the havoc they'd cause.”

“I'm not going diving again, Dart, that's final. You saw George and the rest of them. They are afraid of water.”

“It's the Seal People, Roberts. The Seal People! They'll dive down and get the carbine. They might give it to the villagers, to Foxy, or one of the others. They're all in league together. We'd have a full-scale uprising on our hands. Will you please go and get that gun—now, before sunset.”

Privately, I doubted whether the seals would be able to find the carbine, even if they went looking for it. I shook my head, waiting to see if Dart would draw his gun on me again. Instead, he pressed a button on his chair arm.

Bella appeared.

“Fetch Heather here,” Dart commanded.

He gave me as unpleasant a smile as I had ever seen but remained silent.

In a minute, Bella returned with the dark American girl. She walked springily over to Dart's side and stood there attentively, nibbling an index finger. Bella stood behind me, by the door.

“Heather is a remarkable young lady, Mr. Roberts. My admiration of her is almost unbounded. She is very kind and very beautiful. Heather, my pet, would you kindly remove your clothes so that Mr. Roberts can see how beautiful you are? Bella, put a light on.”

Heather was wearing the same costume she had worn earlier. She moved to one side so that she had plenty of room; and then she began to undress. She bent and removed her sandals, placing them together. Smiling remotely at me, she set her head on one side and unknotted the incongruous scarf. She pulled it from her neck and, extending her arm, let the material float to the floor. It was clear that she was expert at provocation. Next, she slowly undid the buttons of her saffron tunic, working from collarbone to navel, until the garment opened, revealing the flesh beneath it. With delicacy, she peeled the tunic from her narrow shoulders, casting it to the floor over the scarf, shaking her hair free as she did so. The movement emphasized the beauty of her breasts, which were not particularly full; she caressed the left one with her hand, running one of the nipples between her fingers as she did so.

A furtive movement elsewhere caught my eye. Bella was slinking from the room.

Now Heather walked round the pile of her clothes in a circle, maybe to emphasize the springiness of her breasts. Then she paused, facing us again, and began meditatively to unzip her trousers. She undid a hook at the top and they fell about her knees. She wore nothing underneath them. As she bent to pick the trousers up, I was given a glimpse of perfect buttocks and thighs. When she turned to face us again, her cheeks slightly flushed, the smile slightly more lascivious, the dark hair on her mons veneris was invitingly revealed. She came two steps nearer to me before covering it slyly with both hands. She ran her tongue across her lips, then suddenly threw up her arms and ran to the other end of the room.

“Thank you, Heather,” Dart said, his voice thick. “You would be happy to spend the night with Mr. Roberts if he did me a little favor, wouldn't you?”

“It would be a pleasure,” she said. “Wouldn't it, Calvert?”

Dart said, “It's time we were more hospitable to you, Mr. Roberts. But first, please, that carbine.”

“You're up to your old tricks, Dart—you are using us both as your objects. Like I said, no dice. Thanks for the strip-tease, Heather. You should develop it—and get a better job elsewhere.”

“Men who attain positions of power frequently do so by suppressing their sexual drive,” Dart said, flatly. He added after a moment, “That's what you call a tradeoff …”

Outside, darkness had fallen. The ocean, beyond which war lived and thrived, was no longer visible. Only its sound could be heard, like continuous cannon.

7

The Funeral Was Well Attended

When dawn came, I was praying.

I still clung, despairingly perhaps, to a belief in the idea of a God. The conception of a deity who was judge between good and evil was fundamental. In good and evil I did still believe, seeing them at war in society and in individuals every day of my life, and it made sense for men to worship anything that would help fortify the good in their natures. But that was an act of intellect, not faith. Such was my religion.

The expediency of war had blurred many issues, but Mortimer Dart served to remind me that basically I saw human existence as I had when a boy—a battle between good and evil. In the present war, the country I loved and served stood for the good.

Dart was an instance of how circumstances could mold human nature for the worst. He might have started as pitiably as Frankenstein's monster; but he had turned himself into a Frankenstein—a victor, not a victim.

He had to be rendered harmless. Yet the harm he did here was nothing compared with the harm being done in the world beyond the island.

But to remove Dart—and the seductive Heather—like a bad tooth. That would leave the island without control. I foresaw a general bloodbath, with the Beast People slaughtering each other wholesale. It would be best to gain control of the island and then summon help.

My duty was to return to work as soon as possible. But I had duties here too; I could not just seize a landing craft and set off with a compass into the wide blue yonder.

These meditations made me gloomy but determined, and it was in that mood that I ate breakfast when Bella brought it in.

“Shall you go to Hans' funeral, Bella?”

“Master bury Hans, dig in ground. Hans no more need air, go bury in ground.”

“It will happen to us all, Bella.”

The blank feline stare came then, and the wrinkled brow under the wig. I thought that if Dart were trying to create animals in the image of men, that he should perhaps start from the inside, not the outside. Could Bella ever comprehend that one day she also would need air no more?

She was human enough to lock the door after she left. Maybe Dart was right; any guy who could resist the seductions of Heather should not be trusted.…

I sat tight and was released after lunch. The Master had a weakness. He needed me. Da Silva drove up an antique American army truck from somewhere round the back of the premises and left it in the shade, close to piles of old lumber and gallon cans of paint. In the back of the truck lay a wooden coffin. A branch of hibiscus had been thrown across it. As I stood sunning myself, Heather appeared on the step.

She called out, “Hi, how are you this afternoon?”

Walking over to her, I asked where Dart was.

“You don't think I'm waiting for Warren, do you? The Master will be along when he's good and ready.”

“I'm sorry that he made you strip for me yesterday.”

“Don't make me laugh! I enjoyed it, and you did too, or else what kind of a guy are you? There are few enough men to strip to here, that's for sure. Come on, say you liked it!”

“You have a gorgeous body, Heather, but the performance demeaned us all. We're not animals.”

After a small silence, I said, “I've heard Warren mentioned before. Exactly who is this elusive fellow Warren? Does he live hereabouts?”

“We're not supposed to say anything about Warren. Relax, he isn't here.” She slid her arm through mine. “What's the matter with you, Cal? You were making come-hither remarks to me the first time we met.”