Moreau’s Other Island

He returned to swerve in front of me, confronting me, and said. ‘If you find it so damned important, my name was Dart. Mortimer Dart – though I’m now as nameless as I am stateless. As I am formless. There is no place for you on this island unless you submit to my authority.’

‘Why not cool it, Mr Dart? I’m not challenging your authority, and I certainly don’t require one slice of your little island. My intention is simply to get back to the States as soon as possible. My presence is required. ASASC – that’s the Allied Space and Aerospace Corps, if you’re out of touch – will be searching this whole area for survivors of the shuttle crash. I must use your radio to get in touch with ASASC HQ in San Diego, to have a message relayed to the President, letting him know I’m functional and pinpointing my present position. You will be compensated for any inconvenience.’

He looked at me over one malformed shoulder, his lips compressed.

‘According to you, you’re an Under-Secretary of State. A buddy of the President’s, eh? Quite a big wheel. Important. It’s not a tale I find likely – you washed up here half-dead. Prove you’re who you claim.’

‘All my papers were lost in the Leda crash. Get on to ASASC, ask them if Under-Secretary Roberts is missing. Or I can raise my own department on confidential wavelength – they’ll be glad to identify me. You can also check the names of the other guys in the crash. I can give them to you. I’m real enough. The news I carry to the President is real enough.’

He regarded me suspiciously. ‘What news?’

I looked at my watch and calculated. The war moved fast, even in its rather phoney opening stages. Military movements which had been secret ten days ago on the Moon would be common knowledge on Earth by now.

‘You follow the events of the war?’

He gestured towards the orchestra without moving his angry eyes from mine. ‘This I prefer. If men kill each other, so what?’

‘Soviet ground, sea and air forces are about to occupy Hokkaido and neighbouring islands of Japan. They will thus command the Sea of Japan and sever sea links between the United States and China. I was returning from a conference on the Moon to decide the future conduct of war in the Japanese theatre; it is essential I report back at once. Too much time has been lost to the enemy already.’

Dart considered this sullenly. Then he spoke in a more conciliatory tone. ‘I saw a bulletin this morning. A tremendous strike against Japanese cities and ports has just started … Give me some details about yourself, just to put me in the picture.’

I clutched my knees. The nightmare, the closing agony of the twentieth century, was unrolling, and here I sat humouring some petty madman … Briefly I gave him a few details. Born on a farm in Connecticut, only son. Ambitious father of German descent, mother Scottish Presbyterian. Both sides of the family affluent. Father’s connections enabled me to go into politics straight from university. A minor post in the Ammader Administration enabled me to go on a mission to Peking when the Russo-Chinese campaign along the Ussuri flared up. Was in Helsinki at the time of the Helsinki Incident marking the start of active Soviet expansionism. Escaped Finland and Europe with certain vital memory discs from NAPA HQ. Given governmental post shortly after, under President Wilson.

To this account Dart listened intently, head on one side. I felt that he was struggling to decide whether or not to believe my story. What I said was convincing and near enough to the truth.

‘You’ve been adventurous. Managed to move round the world, despite all the travel restrictions, East-West, North-South, all that red tape… . Your years have been active, according to you, up to the hilt. Real value for money, if you’re not making it up.’ He sighed. ‘Just for the record, how old are you, Mr Roberts?’

I took care not to let my growing impatience show.

‘I’m thirty-five, getting a bit long in the tooth. Born 24th May, 1961. Married four times, divorced four times. No offspring. Anything else you want to know? I don’t need a passport for Moreau Island, I guess?’

He made another circuit of the room, the machine taking a wide sweep and bringing him back before me with an abrupt halt. Dart’s face was grim, his brow wrinkled with a scowl.

‘We are the same age, Mr Roberts. Born on the same day of the same month. Is that a coincidence, a bad joke or a frame-up of some kind? While you’ve lived your life to the full – cities, women, that stuff – I’ve had to drag myself through existence on crutches, or in this cart, or worse. Some day. Glory for you, humiliation for me …’

‘Glory …’

‘You don’t know the half of it, you four-limbed bastard.’ The words were spoken almost without emphasis; it was just something he habitually thought when confronted by ordinary people. He looked me in the eye as he said it. I dropped my gaze. Dart’s face, under its puffiness, was striking. He had a heavy formidable skull with plenty of jaw and nose, and a pair of deep-set malignant eyes with which to look out at the world. His hair was dark and carelessly but rather elegantly tumbled about his forehead. Maybe he was going to run to fat.

‘As you must have anticipated, I feel uncomfortable, Mr Dart. So our lives have been very different. Don’t imagine mine has not had its problems. Everyone’s has. You don’t need me to explain how mysterious are the ways of God, who communicates through suffering very often.’

‘God!’ he echoed, and made a blasphemous remark. ‘Although not only weak men swear, I consider the trait a sign of weakness. That’s your mother’s Presbyterian upbringing, I suppose …’

It was time to change the subject. The orchestra had embarked on the last movement of Haydn’s symphony, and Bella almost surreptitiously wheeled the food trolley away.

I said to Dart, ‘I consider myself conversant with most islands in the Pacific. Moreau Island I have not heard of. How come? Who gave it its name?’

He countered with another question.

‘Does the name Moreau ring any familiar bells with you?’

I rubbed my chin.

‘So happens, yes. I used to be a great admirer of the scientific romances of H. G. Wells, who wrote First Men in the Moon and The Time Machine. Wells also wrote a novel about a Pacific island, nameless as I recall, on which a Dr Moreau practised some unpleasant experiments on animals of various kinds. Any connection?’

‘You are on Dr Moreau’s island. This is that same island.’

I laughed – a little uneasily, I have to admit.

‘Come on, Dart. Moreau’s is a purely fictitious island. Wells was writing an allegory. I can distinguish between reality and imagination, thanks.’

‘An ignorant boast, Mr Roberts. Wells may have been writing an allegory, but his island was firmly based on a real one – just as the island on which Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked was based on a real one. You know Robinson Crusoe? Just as there was a real-life equivalent of Crusoe so there was a Moreau. The real Moreau was a gentleman of some distinction at the Edinburgh Academy of Surgery, by name Mr Angus McMoreau. He was a pupil of Thomas Huxley – Wells met him. His life is well documented. Wells did very little to camouflage the real situation, beyond some over-dramatizing. In fact McMoreau brought a lawsuit.’

‘All of which must have been over a century ago.’ Dart evidently harboured some dangerous illusions. I disbelieved all he said, but thought it best to conceal my scepticism.

‘Right, it was over a century ago, right,’ said Dart, laughing sourly. ‘What difference does that make? McMoreau’s experiments are still of relevance to research today. He was probing the borderland between human and animal nature, where the springs of modern man’s behaviour lie. Territorial imperatives, to name but one example I expect you’re au fait with. Questions the scientific world tries to answer today by resort to piddling disciplines like palaeontology and archaeology, McMoreau tried to resolve through surgery. His methods were primitive but his ideas were valid … He was a cute old nut-case and no mistake.

‘After McMoreau’s death, an assistant not mentioned in Wells’s novel carried on his work for several years. Then he passed on as well, and the inhabitants of the island were left on their own to survive as best they could. It can’t have been much of a picnic. As you know they were hybrid stock, but some offspring were born, and they form the basis of the population as you see it today. They can trace their ancestry right back to McMoreau’s times.’

The symphony finished. The orchestra bowed. Dart sat in his chair, staring out towards the lagoon as he finished speaking.

‘In the Second World War, Japanese forces invaded most of the Pacific, including this island. No permanent detachment was based here. Then, after the Japanese surrender, knowledge of the island came into American hands. Its native name is Narorana, by the way. Which means private. A scientific detachment was sent to investigate and—’

He paused. Something in the courtyard outside had caught his eye. He bowled over to the window. I also went to look, so impressed was I by the expression of absolute fury on his face.

Bella alone was to be seen. She stood against the palisade. For a moment I thought she was talking to herself; then it became apparent that she must be speaking to someone on the other side of the fortification.

‘How many times have I told her—’

Dart was moving again, charging through the door and along the corridor. ‘Da Silva! Da Silva!’ he called. His chair had a turn of speed to match his anger. He appeared outside, closely followed by a slender, dark-complexioned man in a lab coat who I guessed was the hastily summoned Da Silva. I saw Dart reach for a whip clamped to the outside of his chair. Then I started running myself.

When I got outside, it was to see him striking the wretched Bella repeatedly across her shoulders. She cowered under the lash but made no attempt to run away until I shouted, whereupon she showed a good turn of speed and ran inside by a farther door.

The man in the white coat grasped my arm without a great deal of conviction and I easily brushed him aside. I grabbed Dart’s whip and flung it to the far end of the compound.

‘You dare interfere – this is my island—’ Dart’s face turned a patchy yellow.

‘They aren’t your people to do what you like with—’

‘They are my people—’

‘You don’t own their souls—’

‘They have no souls, they’re animals—’

‘Animals deserve better than that. You and I are going to quarrel, Dart, unless you keep your temper in check. I can see you feel you have reason to hate the world, and I’m sorry, but I will not stand by and see you—’

‘You fool, I’ll throw you out of here if you speak to me like that! You dare attack me!’