The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes (15 page)

             
"Suddenly, sooner than I had hoped, the house was before us. We tore into it, through the open back door, and into the dark living room. Here I caught her by the arm. The hue and cry was a bit further back now, and I had an idea. I have mentioned that there were kerosene lamps about on the tables.

             
"I struck a match and grabbed one, which looked full.

             
I lighted it and quickly looked for more. 'Kerosene,' I gasped, 'pour it about as fast as you can.'

             
"She got the idea finally and began sloshing the lamp contents over the room as fast as
I
.
I
smashed the one lighted lamp into the biggest pile of papers I could see, some of her late husband's unpublished discoveries, I expect, and serve him right. The house was full of bamboo stuff, and even in this damp climate that would burn. Also, the house itself was only wet on the outside and had had time to dry out a lot since the months in which it had first been built. The room went up like a bonfire behind us, and I shoved her out the
frontdoor
and onto the veranda. With any luck, this blaze should delay our pursuers for a moment, and that might be enough. At the very least, they would have to take the other track around, the one that came in higher up the hill.

             
"We had got halfway across the path which ran between the
sinkpools
when I saw we were going to need all the luck we could get
.
All the islanders were not behind us. Clearly visible in the light from the burning house behind us, there now stood one of what I shall call for want of a better word, the 'elders.' He was waiting for us on a narrow place between two of the boggy patches, and his whole attitude was more than plain. As we caught sight of him, I pushed Mrs. S. behind me.

             
"The creature, for it hardly looked human any longer, stood, crooked arms outstretched, his eyes glittering in the light. His visible skin was cracked and leathery, almost like dun-colored scales, and the neck was obscenely long and twisting. He was hairless, and his ears had shrunk or rotted to mere stubs, while the shining dome of his back rose far up behind his shoulders. It seemed to me also that the feet and fingers had nails of extraordinary length and sharpness, but I may have been mistaken in this. He was quite nude, not even the island wraparound, and his whole body
looked damp in the firelight
.
As I advanced slowly, the mouth opened, and I saw that the disease had caused him to lose his teeth as well. There was an uncanny resemblance to the monster I had dealt with up on the higher reaches. No doubt why they called the thing the 'Father.' No doubt.

             
"At ten paces, I fired. I shot steadily, and I could see the awful body shake from the impact of the heavy bullets. But though it staggered, it still came on. I shot carefully, for the
midbody
, not trying out anything fancy. The blank dark eyes never changed expression, though that toothless mouth opened and closed.

             
"Behind me, I could hear Mrs. Strudwick whimpering. Couldn't say I blamed her.

             
"At the fourth, and last, shot, I dropped the gun, pulled out my knife and waited. Incredible though it may sound, the man, or perhaps what had once been a man, lurched on and closed with me. The fetid breath of that ghastly mouth came into mine, as I drove the knife home again and again, meeting a queer resistance, as if the skin were actually a sort of armor or something similar.

             
"But it was dying. There was no strength to its grapple, only a kind of post-mortem will, as if the big nerve centers were actuating the body even after the brain had died. I hurled it aside, and it slid into the nearest muck pool, much as its giant forerunner had a few minutes earlier.

             
"We could hear the cry of the pack behind us somewhere, even over the roaring of the
flames from the house. This was now totally ablaze and sending sparks over the landscape. Curiously, the only physical harm I got on the whole happening (unless you count a possible something I'll get to later) came from one of these, which caught, unnoticed, in my shirt back and gave me a nasty burn.

             
"Again we ran downhill, this time through the village, which, I am happy to say, was deserted. I was perfectly prepared to swim out to the
prau
, if necessary, towing my
lady friend in my wake. The peril of sharks never entered my head, not after what we had just been through, and I feel certain she felt the same way.

             
"But it was not necessary. The shots and the blaze had got to old Ali, and though I am not sure he actually would have come ashore, he had fought down his fears and at least bully-damned some of his crew of family thugs to bring the small boat in to the landing place. There they were, armed to the teeth, and looking half petrified with fright. No more unsavory lot ever looked better to me. After the good folk of Pulau Tuntong, a squad of
Waffen
SS
would have looked reassuring.

             
"Well, that was that. We got out to the ship, up-anchored and were gone, despite night, reefs and all, in less than twenty minutes. By the time dawn came, Pulau Tuntong was not even in sight. I was barely able to note this fact, because I was burning up with a curious fever. Mrs. Strudwick was not only feverish, but totally unconscious in my cabin, shock no doubt playing some part in the matter.

             
"We made port in the
Sulas
next day and my old Norwegian trader behaved like a saint. He took us in and nursed us both tenderly, as well as a woman could, that hard-handed old swab. I was well enough to leave in a couple of days, but Mrs. Strudwick was a very sick woman. The old man promised to see that she was shipped to the Celebes in his own vessel, and turned over to the Dutch authorities, for transfer eventually to the States. Looking at her, I was not sure she would make it, since she was out of her head half the time and raving senselessly. I told the old man that she and her husband had provoked a native uprising, which in a certain sense you'll agree was true. I also told him to stop sending any boat whatever to Pulau Tuntong, since the people there were far better utterly avoided. I would file my own (discreetly edited) report with the Dutch. He agreed, and told me that though he had tried to find native women to help us, none would do so, not when they had heard whence
we came. He had done wonders, and I sent him a fattish check when I got back to Singapore, along with a gold watch I thought he might fancy. I know he got it because he wrote. Mrs. Strudwick had been shipped out also, and I never heard of her again.

             
"Now, before you fellows bombard me with questions, let me try to make a few things plain. First, I have never gone back there or checked up on the place, nor even bothered. I had too many other things on my mind until 1945. Never since met anyone who knew the area well enough to put a sensible question to, either. If anyone, either Jap or Allied ever landed there, I never heard of it. You are all welcome to inquire if you care to.

             
"As to what I ran into, in all its implications, I warned you, in the beginning, it was full of loose ends and unanswered questions. Most of the major things in life are, I find. But I have one thought that I will share, or rather some related thoughts.

             
"In 1940, beyond knowing vaguely that Madame Curie had died of radium poisoning, while doing experiments, the word 'radioactivity' meant literally nothing to me. Am I clear? Hiroshima, of course, changed all that
.
My current thought is this: the whole island, and especially around those seeps and sulfur springs,
could
, I think, have been rich in uranium or some such article. I say 'could,' since I know nothing of these matters, beyond what one reads in the tabloids.

             
"So, consider a possibility, nothing more. Consider an inbred, isolated fragment of humanity, constantly soaked in this stuff. Would it eventually not cause a mutation among those who survived and managed to breed? I don't know, nor I expect will anyone else, at least for a long time. Only a thought, mind you, and not clear in my own mind. But the turtles, now, according to Strudwick, who may have been loathsome morally, but was at least a good scientist the turtles were an extraordinarily odd mix, all sorts or strange
breeds on one tiny island, to use his words. Another matter is my strange fever, not like malaria at all. And I lost a lot of hair, though it later grew back. Radioactivity? It gives one to think.

             
"Thus we come to the village 'elders.' They looked awful, but may, just may have been on the road to something new, a new breed, if a most unpleasing one to our eyes. Remember, I saw no children. Could the race have been dying out? Again, I have no idea, no real answers.

             
"And finally, I suppose you want my ideas on the creature they called the 'Father.' My first thought, and one I clung to for a longish while, was simply that it was an enormous, deformed and very aged turtle, changed perhaps by the radioactive bath in which it had soaked and indeed may have done so for ages, for all that I know."

             
He paused, then rose and stood behind his chair, staring blankly at the mantelpiece.

             
Then he turned to leave, but his voice floated back as he went "There are, naturally, many other possibilities. The eyes, you know, were utterly human in their expression. Many other possibilities." We heard his feet on the stairs.

             
For once in his life, Mason Williams had nothing to say, not a word. It was an occasion.

-

             
"You certainly seem to like the tropics, sir," said a younger member. It was one of the dull summer evenings in the club. The outside fetor in New York City was unbelievable. Heat, accumulated off the sidewalks, hung in the air. Manhattan was hardly a Summer Holiday, despite the claims of its mayor. It was simply New York, The City, a place one had to work in or probably die in.

             
"I suppose you have a point there," Ffellowes answered. The library was air-conditioned, but all of us who recently had come in from the streets were sweating, with one exception. Our British member was utterly cool, though he had come in after most of us.

             
"Heat," said Ffellowes, as he took a sip of his Scotch, "is, after all, relative, especially in my case. Relates, I should say."

             
"But many of your tales, if you'll pardon me, in fact most of them, have been, well set in the tropics," the young member kept on.

             
Ffellowes stared coldly at him. "I was not aware, young man
,
that I had told any tales."

             
At this point, Mason Williams, the resident irritant, who could not let the Brigadier alone, exploded. "Hadn't told any tales! Haw-haw, haw-haw!"

             
To my amazement, and, I may add, to the credit of the new election committee, this piece of rudeness was quashed at once, and by the same younger fellow who had started the whole thing.

             
He turned on Williams, stared him in the eye, and said, "I don't believe you and I were speaking, sir. I was waiting for Brigadier Ffellowes to comment
.
" Williams shut up like a clam. It was beautiful.

             
Ffellowes smiled quietly. His feelings about Williams were well-known, if equally unexpressed. A man who'd been in all of Her Majesty's Forces, seemingly including all the intelligence outfits, is hardly to be thrown off gear by a type like Williams. But the defense pleased him.

             
"Yes," he confessed, "I do like the tropics. Always go there when I can. But and I stress this it was a certain hereditary bias. I acquired it, one might say, in the genes. You see, my father, and for that matter his, had it as well."

             
Again the young member stuck his neck out
.
Those of us, the old crowd, who were praying that we would get a story, simply kept on praying. Ffellowes was not mean, or petty, but he hated questions. But the boy plugged on.