The Drowned World

The sergeant concerned in the hoax, a dour conscientious Scotsman called Macready, had climbed up on to the wire cage that enclosed the deck of the cutter and was carefully sweeping away the heavy fronds and vines strewn across it. None of the three other men tried to help him; under their heavy tans their faces looked pinched and drawn, and they sat inertly in a row against a bulkhead. The continuous heat and the massive daily doses of antibiotics drained all energy from them.

As the sun rose over the lagoon, driving clouds of steam into the great golden pall, Kerans felt the terrible stench of the water-line, the sweet compacted smells of dead vegetation and rotting animal carcases. Huge flies spun by, bouncing off the wire cage of the cutter, and giant bats raced across the heating water towards their eyries in the ruined buildings. Beautiful and serene from his balcony a few minutes earlier, Kerans realised that the lagoon was nothing more than a garbage-filled swamp.

“Let’s go up on to the deck,” he suggested to Riggs, lowering his voice so that the others would not hear. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Good man. I’m glad to see you’ve really caught on to the grand manner.” Riggs shouted at Macready: “Sergeant, I’m going up to see if I can get the Doctor’s distillation unit to work.” He winked at Kerans as Macready acknowledged this with a sceptical nod, but the subterfuge was harmless. Most of the men carried hip-flasks, and once they secured the sergeant’s grudging approval they would bring them out and settle down placidly until the Colonel returned.

Kerans climbed over the window-sill into the bedroom overlooking the jetty. “What’s your problem, Colonel?”

“It’s not my problem. If anything, in fact, it’s yours.”

They trudged up the staircase, Riggs slapping with his baton at the vines entwined around the rail “Haven’t you got the elevator working yet? I always thought this place was overrated.” However, he smiled appreciatively when they stepped into the clear ivory-cool air of the penthouse, and sat down thankfully in one of the gilt-legged Louis XV armchairs. “Well, this is very gracious. You know, Robert, I think you have a natural talent for beachcombing. I may move in here with you. Any vacancies?”

Kerans shook his head, pressing a tab in the wall and waiting as the cocktail bar disgorged itself from a fake bookcase. “Try the Hilton. The service is better.”

The reply was jocular, but much as he liked Riggs he preferred to see as little of him as possible. At present they were separated by the intervening lagoons, and the constant clatter of the galley and armoury at the base were safely muffled by the jungle. He had known each of the twenty men in the unit for at least a couple of years, but with the exception of Riggs and Sergeant Macready, and a few terse grunts and questions in the sick-bay, he had spoken to none of them for six months. Even his contacts with Bodkin he kept to a minimum. By mutual consent the two biologists had dispensed with the usual pleasantries and small-talk that had sustained them for the first two years during their sessions of cataloguing and slide preparation at the laboratory.

This growing isolation and self-containment, exhibited by the other members of the unit and from which only the buoyant Riggs seemed immune, reminded Kerans of the slackening metabolism and biological withdrawal of all animal forms about to undergo a major metamorphosis. Sometimes he wondered what zone of transit he himself was entering, sure that his own withdrawal was symptomatic not of a dormant schizophrenia, but of a careful preparation for a radically new environment, with its own internal landscape and logic, where old categories of thought would merely be an encumbrance.

He handed a large Scotch to Riggs, then took his own over to the desk, self-consciously removed some of the books stacked over the radio console.

“Ever try listening to that thing?” Riggs asked, playfully introducing a hint of reproof into his voice.

“Never,” Kerans said. “Is there any point? We know all the news for the next three million years.”

“You don’t. Really, you should switch it on just now and then. Hear all sorts of interesting things.” He put his drink down and sat forward. “For example, this morning you would have heard that exactly three days from now we’re packing up and leaving for good.” He nodded when Kerans looked around in surprise. “Came through last night from Byrd. Apparently the water-level is still rising; all the work we’ve done has been a total waste—as I’ve always maintained, incidentally. The American and Russian units are being recalled as well. Temperatures at the Equator are up to one hundred and eighty degrees now, going up steadily, and the rain belts are continuous as high as the 20th parallel. There’s more silt too------”

He broke off, watching Kerans speculatively. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you relieved to be going?”

“Of course,” Kerans said automatically. He was holding an empty glass, and walked across the room, intending to put it on the bar, instead found himself absent-mindedly touching the clock over the mantelpiece. He seemed to be searching the room for something. “Three days, you said?”

“What do you want—three million?” Riggs grinned broadly. “Robert, I think you secretly want to stay behind.”

Kerans reached the bar and filled his glass, collecting himself. He had only managed to survive the monotony and boredom of the previous year by deliberately suspending himself outside the normal world of time and space, and the abrupt return to earth had momentarily disconcerted him. In addition, he knew, there were other motives and responsibilities.

“Don’t be absurd,” he replied easily. “I simply hadn’t realised that we might withdraw at such short notice. Naturally I’m glad to be going. Though I admit I have enjoyed being here.” He gestured at the suite around them. “Perhaps it appeals to my fin de siècle temperament. Up at Camp Byrd I’ll be living in half a mess-tin. The nearest I’ll ever get to this sort of thing will be ‘Bouncing with Beethoven’ on the local radio show.”

Riggs roared at this display of disgruntled humour, then stood up, buttoning his tunic. “Robert, you’re a strange one.”

Kerans finished his drink abruptly. “Look, Colonel, I don’t think I’ll be able to help you this morning after all. Something rather urgent has come up.” He noticed Riggs nodding slowly. “Oh, I see. That was your problem. My problem.”

“Right. I saw her last night, and again this morning after the news came through. You’ll have to convince her, Robert. At present she refuses point-blank to go. She doesn’t realise that this time is the end, that there’ll be no more holding units. She may be able to hang on for another six months, but next March, when the rain belts reach here, we won’t even be able to get a helicopter in. Anyway, by then no one will care. I told her that and she just walked away.”

Kerans smiled bleakly, visualising the familiar swirl of hip and haughty stride. “Beatrice can be difficult sometimes,” he temporised, hoping that she hadn’t offended Riggs. It would probably take more than three days to change her mind and he wanted to be sure that the Colonel would still be waiting. “She’s a complex person, lives on many levels. Until they all synchronise she can behave as if she’s insane.”

They left the suite, Kerans sealing the air-locks and setting the thermostat alarms so that the air would be a pleasant eighty degrees in two hours’ time. They made their way down to the landing-stage, Riggs pausing occasionally to savour the cool gilded air in one of the public drawing-rooms overlooking the lagoon, hissing at the snakes which glided softly among the damp, fungus-covered settees. They stepped into the cutter and Macready slammed the door of the cage behind them.

Five minutes later, the catamaran gliding and swirling behind the cutter, they set off from the hotel across the lagoon. Golden waves glimmered up into the boiling air, and the ring of massive plants around them seemed to dance in the heat gradients like a voodoo jungle.

Riggs peered sombrely through the cage. “Thank God for that signal from Byrd. We should have got out years ago. All this detailed mapping of harbours for use in some hypothetical future is absurd. Even if the solar flares subside it will be ten years before there’s any serious attempt to reoccupy these cities. By then most of the bigger buildings will have been smothered under the silt. It’ll take a couple of divisions to clear the jungle away from this lagoon alone. Bodkin was telling me this morning that already some of the canopies—of non-lignified plants, mark you—are over two hundred feet high. The whole place is nothing but a confounded zoo.”

He took off his peaked cap and rubbed his forehead, then shouted across the mounting roar of the two outboard diesels: “If Beatrice stays here much longer she will be insane. By the way, that reminds me of another reason why we’ve got to get out.” He glanced across at the tall lonely figure of Sergeant Macready at the tiller, staring fixedly at the breaking water, and at the pinched haunted faces of the other men. “Tell me, Doctor, how do you sleep these days?”

Puzzled, Kerans turned to look at the Colonel, wondering whether the question obliquely referred to his relationship with Beatrice Dahl. Riggs watched him with his bright intelligent eyes, baton flexed between his neat hands. “Very soundly,” he replied carefully. “Never better. Why do you ask?”

But Riggs merely nodded and began to shout instructions at Macready.

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