An Island Called Moreau (20 page)

I said heavily to Dart, “What sort of satisfaction do you feel now that your work is finished?”

“The work's far from finished, make no mistake. We have the SRSRs—and three of the best specimens are now in the States being studied—but they are not yet perfect. They have to be made to breed true, to reproduce their own kind and not monsters. At first they were infertile, but we've licked that one. Now one of the females is with child, and we have high hopes about that. But much has still to be done. Rome wasn't destroyed in a day, as they say.”

“Why are you doing this? Why should governments involved in total war countenance such inhuman experiments?” I asked him. “Of what use are your SRSRs—how do they increase our happiness?”

“You're not so smart as I took you for. I thought you would have grasped that, pal. Right, you mention total war—what's the outcome going to be? The Co-Allies will win in the end, but they're going to win at a hell of a cost in lives lost. You think I don't care about such things, but I do. A world of want is going to result—that's the cost of victory, and that's where it's at. The human race will be decimated, air and ground will be radioactive.”

He sat up more positively in bed and clasped his thin chest.

“But if we can breed up the SRSRs, they can take over the enormous tasks of reconstruction. They are already receiving indoctrination in Co-Allied aims. They will be less vulnerable to radiation than the rest of us, will propagate faster, will consume less supplies because of their smaller bulk. They are, in fact, our survival kit into the future; they may even replace us. And even if the picture isn't as gloomy as I have painted it, then we'll find other uses for them. Waste not, want not. The SRSRs would be ideal as crews for spaceships. You may yet see them go out and explore the stars while poor old mankind stays at home—what's left of it.…”

If this monster was to be believed, then I was witnessing the culmination of the Frankenstein process. The first tentative steps that Victor Frankenstein had taken, as recorded by Mary Shelley, toward making one life that stood outside the natural order of creation, had led to this; that a time could be visualized in the near future when the natural order would be entirely supplanted by the unnatural. The arguments of logic, with appeals to progress and the necessity of survival, were employed by Mortimer Dart much as they had been by Frankenstein and, for that matter, by McMoreau.

In this spectacle of perverted propagation, I was lost. There was no possible dialogue I could have with a man like Dart.

“Things have got out of hand,” Dart said to Heather, groaning. She laid a hand against his cheek in a sympathetic gesture. They exchanged eye signals which I could not interpret. I stood where I was, thinking fast. I was horrified by what I had seen and learned, and I would act as soon as I was in Washington. Dart's experiments might be valuable to the war effort, or they might not. But they were certainly grossly mismanaged; none of the killings need have happened in a properly run organization. Dart was no better at ordering his affairs than Wells' Moreau had been.

Reflecting on the rundown state of the island and, in particular, on the lack of staff—why was there no American nursing personnel on duty with the SRSRs?—I understood, from long experience of similar projects, that Operation Moreau was being wound down. The fact might not yet have dawned on Dart, but his grand schemes had already received a thumbs down back home. He had been superseded. Maybe the old cloning programs of the eighties had been dusted off and given new life; his researches had already been written off or superseded. However that might be, I suddenly knew in my bones that Dart was through as far as funding went.

And wouldn't he be mad when he found out!

It was likely that he would kill the SRSRs. And me too, if I was still around. He might be pathetic; he was also deadly.

Dart and the girl had finished their silent communication. As he struggled into his harness, he looked fixedly at me.

“Did you take in what I said? You see the sort of things that are going on here, Mr. Undersecretary of State Roberts—big things. Bigger than your bureaucratic mind can encompass. We're changing the future,
I'm
changing the future here on Moreau Island. Things aren't going to be as they have been. There'll be radical differences. Humans don't have to stay that same antique shape. Change shape, you get changes in function, thinking.… It's big, all right.…”

As he spoke, his face grew uglier, his mouth more set. His eyes evaded mine. He was sweating.

I turned. Heather was there, pointing the gun at me. When someone holds a gun at you, you look first in their eyes, to see if they mean it—and she did—and then at the weapon, to see what sort of mechanism is going to finish you, if it comes to that. She was using the hypodermic gun she had used before. It was a heavy model, obviously well suited to dropping big brutes like George at a moment's notice.

“Sorry, Roberts,” she said. “We have trouble enough. You're bona fide, we grant you that, but we don't need you prowling around at this particular time.”

“We're shutting you up for a few hours, Mr. Roberts,” Dart said.

I stood by the bed, looking from one to the other. Heather was willing enough to let me have it, but she was nervous about missing. She moved in closer.

“Tie him up,” Dart ordered, leaning forward. I heard his harness creak.

That presented her with a problem. She did not want to lay the gun aside. She glanced at a long woven Chinese-type belt that hung behind the door. I jumped at her.

Heather's impulses were fast. With one continuous movement she dropped the gun on the bed, swung about, and brought the edge of her hand up toward my windpipe. But I was moving too. Her blow hit me harmlessly under the arm, and I struck her glancingly across the temple with my fist.

Almost simultaneously, I dived for the gun.

Dart was wearing his prosthetic arms. A metal and plastic hand grasped my wrist and started to squeeze. I doubled up with the pain—Dart's prosthetic limbs were motor-assisted. When the pressure relaxed, the gun was back with Heather, and she lashed my wrists expertly together. She had avoided the full force of my blow.

“Good girl,” Dart said. “Not really hurt, are we? You must get me into the chair and we'll go and see what has to be done in the lab. Let's hope Da Silva is managing.”

“Do we leave Roberts behind?” Her voice was perfectly calm.

“Certainly not! He comes with us, where we can keep an eye on him. Roberts, I'm genuinely sorry about this, but you've been a bloody pain in the neck if ever I saw one, and we are not going to let you go back to Washington to make trouble.”

“You dirty little amputee, you'd better let me loose or you'll be in even deeper trouble. You know that helicopter is on its way, and it certainly won't leave without me, even if they have to put you in cold storage first!”

As Heather shifted him tenderly off the bed into his wheelchair, he said—looking not at me, but at some distant corner of the room—“
We're
going to put
you
in cold storage, Roberts. I'll remind you of something you should already know; now you can apply it to the present situation. Hatreds between nations are nothing to interdepartmental hatreds. We're going to put you in cold storage for the duration!”

He had a digital clock by his bed. “Better hurry,” I said. “Your rule here lasts precisely five and three-quarter more hours.”

But he had me worried. I didn't know what he meant. And I didn't like the way they walked me out of the room, round the corner, and through the other entrance into that accursed lab.

Da Silva was working with an air of silent complaint, slowly mopping up the bloodstains with an electric floor washer. He had already removed the corpses of the dead SRSRs—I suppose I must call them that—as well as Bella's corpse.

The surviving SRSRs, male and female, stood about silently, watching him. They made no attempt to escape from the lab; nor did they make any of the half-fawning, half-threatening obeisances at the entrance of the Master that the Beast People would have done. They looked at him somewhat coldly, and one of the women said, with her perfect diction and uninflected voice, “Bella didn't do you as much harm as we were led to believe.”

“Harm enough,” he said, patting his turban.

“The Master will probably be permanently blind in one eye,” Heather said, addressing herself mainly to the female. “He needs loving care.”

“He will have to make do with you,” she replied, witheringly.

“Er—well, we shall survive,” Dart said. “Sorry for all the trouble. This isn't a fun-fair, you know.”

The female SRSR said, “You have a diminished sense of responsibility if that is all you have to say. Eleven of us have been killed, including 415, who was pregnant, as you are well aware. We have all been frightened. As far as we can establish, it was purely through your carelessness that Bella broke in here. We had already warned you about her potential danger and told you to get rid of her.”

I could see how uncomfortable Dart was under this peremptory tone, and it was Heather who answered sharply, “We hear too many of your complaints, 402. You know how short of staff we are here. Why don't you do something for a change? Why aren't you helping Da Silva to clear up?”

“We were not responsible for the mess in the first place.”

“Through into the Examination Room, the lot of you,” Dart said. “I wish to give you all an examination, besides the normal blood check.”

At this they protested strongly, but they went, and Heather followed behind Dart's chair, keeping her dark eye on me. When we were all in the Examination Room, which was a glorified surgery, extensively equipped, she shut the door behind us.

The gnome she had referred to as 402 looked up at me and said, “What's this human doing here? Is he on the Program? If so, I don't recognize him. I desire to be better informed concerning him.”

“If he was on the Program, he wouldn't be tied up,” Dart said. “He is captive, and we're keeping our eye on him till the sub arrives later. Then we ship him out of here.”

He put his head down as he spoke; I could not see his facial expression.

“If he's not on the Program, then we are not being examined with him in the room,” 402 was saying, gazing at me with fishy distaste. “It's written into our Charter, and we haven't forgotten the fight we had to establish that.”

The argument went on, but I lost track of it. The Master, ruffled by the sharp tongues of his SRSRs, had let slip a word not exactly intended for my ears. The supply submarine!

In the general brouhaha, I had forgotten about the sub and the imminence of its visit. They were planning to put me on it as their captive, and presumably it was due to arrive soon. Since they knew that the helicopter would be here by midnight, could it be they expected the sub before that? It seemed likely. Otherwise, they could have thrown me into that cell again and forgotten about me while attending to more urgent matters.

I was aware that to be delivered captive to the submarine commander would put me out of action for some while. That was what Dart meant by his remark, “Hatreds between nations are nothing to interdepartmental hatreds.” Once the U.S. Navy had me (and Dart would get me properly signed for to clear himself with the officer i/c of the Search-Rescue helicopter), they would be reluctant to relinquish me to the State Department, and months of obfuscation could pass before I was cleared. Months or years. Certainly long enough for Dart to lodge other complaints against me and render any move against him invalid.

Once I was on the sub, my cause was lost.

The SRSRs took a firm stand on my presence in the room.

“Oh, very well, if you insist on being difficult,” Dart said. “Heather, take Roberts right through to the animal pens at the far end and lock him in there, will you? Leave him tied up.”

“Okay,” she said. “Although I think you give in to these project people far too readily.”

Taking me by the arm in cordial fashion, she led me further into the lab complex. The lights were off here, but I could see that planning had been on a generous scale. Scathingly though Dart had spoken of experimental animals, like mice and guinea pigs, there were plenty of them here, sitting in their cages. A monkey chittered at us as we passed, reaching out a hand in appeal.

“You really are a slave to our crippled friend,” I said. “You work for him, cook for him, strip for him—what else do you do?”

“The lot,” she said. “I was trained for this job and I take pride in doing it well. And I'll take pride in kicking you in the balls if you try anything with me again.” She gave me a hard scowling look.

“You must get a great buzz out of the SRSRs! You're going to have to cook and clean for them, and scrape out the bottom of their cage, now that Bella's dead.”

“I hate the little bastards, if you must know. But they happen to be part of my job. As for that submarine—mention of which made you prick up your ears so eagerly—we applied for more staff and guards long ago, and they will be aboard this trip. Worry about yourself, not me. I can look after myself.”

“And sexy with it,” I said, as she locked me in.

“A hell of a lot you care about that!”

Heather held up the key for my inspection, slipped it in a pocket of her tunic, and walked off, buttocks jolting.

I was left in a small bare cell, one of six adjoining each other. The cells were constructed of fifty-millimeter-thick metal rods. They were veritable cages, with bars front, back, and sides, and top and bottom. They had been secured in place by massive bolts bonded into the concrete floor. It was possible for a jailer to walk round the back of the cages and fill the troughs there provided for water and food. My troughs were empty, although old caked meal still lined one of them.