The Drowned World Part 8

As the long knives lanced through the air after him Kerans turned and raced around the paddle, trying to reach the area behind the s.h.i.+p. Then his feet slipped in one of the foetid pools, before he could catch himself he fell heavily. He scrambled to his knees, one arm raised helplessly to ward off the circle of raised machetes, then felt something seize him from behind and pull him backwards roughly off balance.

Recovering his foothold on the damp cobbles, he heard Strangman shout in surprise. A group of brown-uniformed men, rifles at their hips, stepped rapidly from the shadows behind the depot s.h.i.+p where they had been hiding. At their head was the trim, brisk figure of Colonel Riggs. Two of the soldiers carried a light machinegun, a third man two boxes of belt ammunition. They quickly set it up on its tripod ten feet in front of Kerans, leveled the perforated, air-cooled barrel at the confused mob backing away from them. The rest of the soldiers fanned out in a widening semi-circle, prodding the slower of Strangman's men with their bayonets.

Most of the crew were shambling backwards in the general melee across the square, but a couple of them, still holding their pangas, attempted to break through the cordon. Instantly there was a short decisive volley of shots over their heads, and they dropped their knives and fell back mutely with the rest.

"Okay, Strangman, that will do very nicely." Riggs rapped his baton across the Admiral's chest and forced him back.

Completely disconcerted by all this, Strangman gaped blankly at the soldiers swarming past him. He searched the depot s.h.i.+p helplessly, as if expecting some large siege cannon to be wheeled forward and reverse the situation. Instead, however, two helmeted soldiers appeared on the bridge with a portable searchlight, swiveled its beam down into the square.

Kerans felt someone take his elbow. He looked around at the solicitous beak-like face of Sergeant Macready, a submachine-gun in the crook of his arm. At first he almost failed to identify Macready, only with an effort managed to place his aquiline features, like a face dimly remembered across the span of a lifetime.

"You all right, sir?" Macready asked softly. "Sorry to jerk you about like that. Looks as if you've been having a bit of a party here."

13 - Too Soon, Too Late

By eight o'clock the next morning Riggs had stabilised the situation and was able to see Kerans informally. His headquarters were in the testing station, with a commanding view over the streets below, and particularly of the paddle-s.h.i.+p in the square. Stripped of their weapons, Strangman and his crew sat around in the shade under the hull, supervised by the light machine-gun manned by Macready and two of his men.

Kerans and Beatrice had spent the night in the sick-bay aboard Riggs' patrol cruiser, a well-armed 30-ton PT boat which was now moored against the hydroplane in the central lagoon. The unit had arrived shortly after midnight, and a reconnaissance patrol reached the testing station on the perimeter of the drained lagoon at about the time Kerans entered Strangman's suite in the depot s.h.i.+p. Hearing the ensuing gunfire, they descended immediately into the square.

"I guessed Strangman was here," Riggs explained. "One of our aerial patrols reported seeing the hydroplane about a month ago, and I reckoned you might have a little trouble with him if you were still hanging on. The pretext of trying to reclaim the testing station was a fair one." He sat on the edge of the desk, watching the helicopter circle the open streets. "That should keep them quiet for a bit."

"Daley seems to have found his wings at last," Kerans commented.

"He's had a lot of practice." Riggs turned his intelligent eyes on Kerans, asked casually: "By the way, is Hardman here?"

"Hardman?" Kerans shook his head slowly. "No, I haven't seen him since the day he disappeared. He'll be a long way off by now, Colonel."

"You're probably right. I just thought he might be around." He flashed Kerans a sympathetic smile, evidently having forgiven him for scuttling the testing station, or sensible enough not to press the matter so soon after Kerans' ordeal. He pointed to the streets below glowering in the sunlight, the dry silt on the rooftops and walls like caked dung. "Pretty grim down there. d.a.m.n shame about old Bodkin. He really should have come north with us."

Kerans nodded, looking across the office at the machete scars sliced into the woodwork around the door, part of the damage gratuitously inflicted on the station after Bodkin's death. Most of the mess had been cleaned up, and his body, lying among the bloodstained programme charts in the laboratory below, flown out to the patrol cruiser. To his surprise Kerans realised that callously he had already forgotten Bodkin and felt little more than a nominal pity for him. Riggs' mention of Hardman had reminded him of something far more urgent and important, the great sun still beating magnetically within his mind, and a vision of the endless sandbanks and blood-red swamps of the south pa.s.sed before his eyes.

He went over to the window, picking a splinter from the sleeve of his fresh uniform jacket, and stared down at the men huddled under the depot s.h.i.+p. Strangman and the Admiral had gone forward towards the machine-gun, and were remonstrating with Macready, who was shaking his head impa.s.sively.

"Why don't you arrest Strangman?" he asked.

Riggs laughed shortly. "Because there's absolutely nothing I can hold him on. Legally, as he full well knows, he was absolutely ent.i.tled to defend himself against Bodkin, kill him if necessary." When Kerans looked round over his shoulder in surprise he continued: "Don't you remember the Reclaimed Lands Act and the d.y.k.es Maintenance Regulations? They're still very much in force. I know Strangman's a nasty piece of work-with that white skin and his alligators-but strictly speaking he deserves a medal for pumping out the lagoon. If he complains, I'll have a job explaining that machine-gun down there. Believe me, Robert, if I'd arrived five minutes later and found you chopped to bits Strangman could have claimed that you were an accomplice of Bodkin's and I'd have been able to do nothing. He's a clever fellow."

Tired out after only three hours' sleep, Kerans leaned against the window, smiling wanly to himself as he tried to resolve Riggs' tolerant att.i.tude towards Strangman with his own experiences of the man. He was conscious that an even wider gulf now divided Riggs and himself. Although the Colonel was only a few feet away from him, emphasising his argument with brisk flourishes of the baton, he was unable to accept wholly the idea of Riggs' reality, almost as if his image were being projected into the testing station across enormous distances of time and s.p.a.ce by some elaborate three-dimensional camera. It was Riggs, and not himself, who was the time-traveler. Kerans had noticed a similar lack of physical validity about the rest of the crew. Many of the original members had been replaced-all those, among them Wilson and Caldwell, who had begun to experience the deep dreams. For this reason, perhaps-and partly because of their pallid faces and weak eyes, in so marked contrast to Strangman's men, the present crew seemed flat and unreal, moving about their tasks like intelligent androids.

"What about the looting?" he asked.

Riggs shrugged. "Apart from a few trinkets filched from an old Woolworths he's taken nothing that couldn't be put down to natural exuberance on the part of his men. As for all the statues and so on, he's doing a valuable job reclaiming works of art that were perforce abandoned. Though I'm not sure what his real motives are." He patted Kerans on the shoulder. "You'll have to forget about Strangman, Robert. The only reason he's sitting quiet now is that he knows he's got the law on his side. If he hadn't there'd be a battle royal going on." He broke off. "You look all in, Robert. Are you still getting these dreams?"

"Now and then." Kerans shuddered. "The last few days have been insane here. It's difficult to describe Strangman-he's like a white devil out of a voodoo cult. I can't accept the idea that he'll go scot free. When are you going to re-flood the lagoon?"

"Re-flood the-?" Riggs repeated, shaking his head in bewilderment. "Robert, you really are out of touch with reality. The sooner you get away from here the better. The last thing I intend to do is re-flood the lagoon. If anybody tries I'll personally blow his head off. Reclaiming land, particularly an urban area like this right in the centre of a former capital city, is a Cla.s.s A 1 priority. If Strangman is serious about pumping out the next two lagoons he'll not only get a free pardon but a governor-generals.h.i.+p to boot." He looked down through the window, as the metal rungs of the fire escape rang in the sunlight. "Here he comes now, I wonder what's on his evil little mind?"

Kerans went over to Riggs, averting his eyes from the maze of festering yellow rooftops. "Colonel, you've got to flood it again, Jaws or no laws. Have you been down in those streets, they're obscene and hideous! It's a nightmare world that's dead and finished, Strangman's resurrecting a corpse! After two or three days here you'll-"

Riggs swung away from the desk, cutting Kerans off. An element of impatience crept into his voice. "I don't intend to stay here for three days," he snapped curtly. "Don't worry, I'm not suffering from any crazy obsessions about these lagoons, flooded or otherwise. We're leaving first thing tomorrow, all of us."

Puzzled, Kerans said: "But you can't leave, Colonel. Strangman will still be here."

"Of course he will! Do you think that paddle-boat has got wings? There's no reason for him to leave, if he thinks he can take the big heat waves coming and the rain-storms. You never know, if he gets a few of these big buildings refrigerated he may be able to. In time, if he reclaims enough of the city, there might even be an attempt to re-occupy it. When we get back to Byrd I'll definitely put in a recommendation, anyway. However, at present there's nothing for me to stay for-I can't move the station now, but it's a fair loss. Anyway, you and the Dahl girl need a rest. And a brain-lift. Do you realise how lucky she is to be in one piece? Good G.o.d!" He nodded sharply at Kerans, standing up as a firm rap sounded on the door. "You should be grateful that I came here in time."

Kerans walked over to the side door into the galley, eager to avoid Strangman. He paused for a moment to look up at Riggs. "I don't know about that, Colonel. I'm afraid you came too late."

14 - Grand Slam

Crouched down in a small office two floors above the barrage, Kerans listened to the music playing amid the lights on the top deck of the depot s.h.i.+p. Strangman's party was still in full swing. Propelled by two junior members of the crew, the big paddles rotated slowly, their blades dividing the coloured spot lights and swinging them up into the sky. Seen from above, the white awnings resembled the marquee of a fairground, a brilliant focus of noise and festivity in the darkened square.

As a concession to Strangman, Riggs had joined him at this farewell party. A bargain had been struck between the two leaders: earlier the machine-gun had been withdrawn and the lower level placed out of bounds to the Colonel's men, while Strangman agreed to remain within the perimeter of the lagoon until Riggs had left. All day Strangman and his pack had roved the streets, and the random sounds of looting and firing echoed to and fro. Even now, as the last guests, the Colonel and Beatrice Dahl, left the party and climbed the fire escape to the testing station, fighting had broken out on deck and bottles were being hurled down into the square.

Kerans had put in a token appearance at the party, keeping well away from Strangman, who made little attempt to talk to him. At one point, between cabaret turns, he had swept past Kerans, deliberately brus.h.i.+ng his elbow, and toasted him with his goblet.

"I hope you're not too bored, Doctor. You look tired." He turned a wicked smile on Riggs, who was sitting erectly on a ta.s.seled silk cus.h.i.+on with a circ.u.mspect expression on his face like a district commissioner at a pasha's court. "The parties Dr. Kerans and I are used to are very different affairs, Colonel. They really go with a bang."

"So I believe, Strangman," Riggs replied mildly, but Kerans turned away, unable, like Beatrice, to mask his revulsion for Strangman. She was looking over her shoulder across the square, a small frown for a moment hiding the mood of torpor and self-immersion to which she was again returning.

Watching Strangman from the distance as he applauded the next cabaret turn, Kerans wondered whether in some way he had pa.s.sed his peak, and was beginning to disintegrate. He now looked merely loathsome, like a decaying vampire glutted with evil and horror. The sometime charm had vanished, in its place a predatory gleam. As soon as he could, Kerans feigned a mild attack of malaria, and made his way out into the darkness and up the fire escape to the testing station.

Now determined on the only solution available, Kerans' mind felt clear and coordinated again, extending outwards beyond the perimeter of the lagoon.

Only fifty miles to the south, the rain-clouds were packed together in tight layers, blotting out the swamps and archipelagoes of the horizon. Obscured by the events of the past week, the archaic sun in his mind beat again continuously with its immense power, its ident.i.ty merging now with that of the real sun visible behind the rain-clouds. Relentless and magnetic, it called him southward, to the great heat and submerged lagoons of the Equator.

a.s.sisted by Riggs, Beatrice climbed up on to the roof of the testing station, which also served as the helicopter landing stage. When Sergeant Daley started his engine and the rotors began to spin, Kerans quickly made his way down to the balcony two floors below. Separated by a hundred yards or so on either side, he was directly between the helicopter and the barrage, the continuous terrace of the building linking the three points.

Behind the building was an enormous bank of silt, reaching upwards out of the surrounding swamp to the railings of the terrace, on to which spilled a luxurious outcrop of vegetation. Ducking below the broad fronds of the fern trees, he raced along to the barrage, fitted between the end of the building and the shoulder of the adjacent office block. Apart from the exit creek on the far side of the lagoon where the pumping scows had been stationed, this was the only major entry point for the water that had pa.s.sed into the lagoon. The original inlet, once twenty yards wide and deep, had shrunk to a narrow channel clogged with mud and fungi, its six foot-wide mouth blocked by a rampart of heavy logs. Initially, once the rampart was removed, the rate of flow would be small, but as more and more of the silt was carried away the mouth would widen again.

From a small cache below a loose flagstone he withdrew two square black boxes, each containing six sticks of dynamite lashed together. He had spent all afternoon searching through the nearby buildings for them, confident that Bodkin had raided the armoury of the base at the same time that he had stolen the compa.s.s, sure enough finally found the trove in an empty lavatory cistern.

As the helicopter engine began to fire more loudly, the exhaust spitting brightly into the darkness, he lit the short 30-second fuse, straddled the rail and ran out towards the centre of the barrage.

There he bent down and suspended the boxes from a small peg he had driven into the outer row of logs earlier that evening. They hung safely out of view, about two feet from the water's edge.

"Dr. Kerans! Get away from there, sir!"

Kerans looked up to see Sergeant Macready at the further end of the barrage, standing at the rail of the next roof. He leaned forward, suddenly spotting the flickering end of the fuse, then rapidly unslung his Thompson gun.

Head down, Kerans raced back along the barrage, reached the terrace as Macready shouted again and then fired a short burst. The slugs tore at the railings, gouging out pieces of the cement, and Kerans fell as one of the cup.r.o.nickel bullets struck his right leg just above the ankle. Pulling himself over the rail, he saw Macready shoulder the gun and jump down onto the barrage.

"Macready! Go back!" he shouted to the Sergeant, who was loping along the wooden planks. "It's going to blow!"

Backing away among the fronds, his voice lost in the roar of the helicopter as it carried out its take-off check, he helplessly watched Macready stop in the centre of the barrage and reach down to the boxes.

"Twenty-eight, twenty-nine..." Kerans concluded automatically to himself. Turning his back on the barrage, he limped away down the terrace, then threw himself onto the floor.

As the tremendous roar of the explosion lifted up into the dark sky, the immense fountain of erupting foam and silt briefly illuminated the terrace, outlining Kerans' spreadeagled form. From an initial crescendo, the noise seemed to mount in a continuous sustained rumble, the breaking thunder of the shock wave yielding to the low rush of the bursting cataract. Clods of silt and torn vegetation spattered on the tiles around Kerans, and he stumbled to his feet and reached the rail.

Widening as he watched, the water jetted down into the open streets below, carrying with it huge sections of the silt bank. There was a concerted rush to the deck of the depot s.h.i.+p, a dozen arms pointing up at the water pouring out of the breach. It swilled into the square, only a few feet deep, blotting out the fires and splas.h.i.+ng against the hull of the s.h.i.+p, still rocking slightly from the impact of the explosion.

Then, abruptly, the lower section of the barrage fell forwards, a brace of a dozen twenty-foot logs going down together. The U-shaped saddle of silt behind collapsed in turn, exposing the full bore of the inlet creek, and what appeared to be a gigantic cube of water fifty feet high tipped into the street below like a flopping piece of jelly. With a dull rumbling roar of collapsing buildings the sea poured in full flood.

"Kerans!"

He turned as a shot whipped overhead, saw Riggs running forward from the helicopter landing stage, pistol in hand. His engine stalled, Sergeant Daley was helping Beatrice out of the cabin.

The building was shaking under the impact of the torrent sweeping past its shoulder. Supporting his right leg with his hand, Kerans hobbled into the lee of the small tower which had held his previous observation window. From his trouser belt he pulled the.45 Colt, held the b.u.t.t in both hands and fired twice around the corner at the approaching hatless figure of Riggs. Both shots went wild, but Riggs stopped and backed off a few feet, taking cover behind a bal.u.s.trade.

Feet moved quickly towards him and he looked around as Beatrice raced along the terrace. Reaching the corner as Riggs and Daley shouted after her, she sank down on her knees beside Kerans.

"Robert, you've got to leave! Now, before Riggs brings more of his men! He wants to kill you, I know."

Kerans nodded, getting painfully to his feet. "The Sergeant-I didn't realise he was patrolling. Tell Riggs I'm sorry-" He gestured helplessly, then took a last look at the lagoon. The black water surged across it through the buildings, level with the top line of their windows. Upended, its paddles stripped away, the depot s.h.i.+p drifted slowly towards the far sh.o.r.e, its hull sticking up into the air like the belly of an expiring whale. Spurts of steam and foam erupted from its exploding boilers, bursting out through the gashes in the hull as it was driven across the sharp reefs of the half-submerged cornices. Kerans watched it with a quiet contained pleasure, savouring the fresh tang that the water had brought again to the lagoon. Neither Strangman nor any members of his crew were visible, and the few fragments of splintered bridge and funnel swept away by the water were swallowed and regurgitated by the boiling undercurrents.

"Robert! Hurry!" Beatrice pulled his arm, glancing back over her shoulder at the darting figures of Riggs and the pilot only fifty yards away. "Darling, where are you going? I'm sorry I can't be with you."

"South," Kerans said softly, listening to the roar of the deepening water. "Towards the sun. You'll be with me, Bea."

He embraced her, then tore himself from her arms and ran to the rear rail of the terrace, pus.h.i.+ng back the heavy fern fronds. As he stepped down onto the silt bank Riggs and Sergeant Daley appeared around the corner and fired into the foliage, but Kerans ducked and ran away between the curving trunks, sinking up to his knees in the soft mud.

The edge of the swamp had receded slightly as the water poured away into the lagoon, and he painfully dragged the bulky catamaran, home-made from four fifty-gallon drums arranged in parallel pairs, through the thick rasp-weeds to the water. Riggs and the pilot emerged through the ferns as he pushed off.

While the outboard kicked into life he lay exhausted on the planking, the shots from Riggs'.38 cutting through the small triangular sail. Slowly the interval of water widened to a hundred and then two hundred yards, and he reached the first of the small islands that grew out of the swamp on the roofs of isolated buildings. Hidden by them, he sat up and reefed the sail, then looked back for the last time at the perimeter of the lagoon.

Riggs and the pilot were no longer visible, but high up on the tower of the building he could see the lonely figure of Beatrice, waving slowly towards the swamp, changing tirelessly from one arm to the other, although she was unable to distinguish him among the islands. Far to her right, rising up above the encompa.s.sing silt banks, were the other familiar landmarks he knew so well, even the green roof of the Ritz, fading into the haze. At last all he could see were the isolated letters of the giant slogan Strangman's men had painted, looming out of the darkness over the flat water like a concluding epitaph: TIME ZONE.

The opposing flow of water slowed his progress, and fifteen minutes later, when the helicopter roared over, he had still not reached the edge of the swamp. Pa.s.sing the top floor of a small building, he glided in through one of the windows, waited quietly as the aircraft roared up and down, machine-gunning the islands.

When it left he pushed on again, within an hour finally navigated the exit waters of the swamp and entered the broad inland sea that would lead him to the south. Large islands, several hundred yards in length, covered its surface, their vegetation crowding out into the water, their contours completely altered by the rising water in the short period that had elapsed since their search for Hardman. s.h.i.+pping the outboard, he set the small sail, made a steady two or three miles an hour tacking across the light southerly breeze.

His leg had begun to stiffen below the knee, and he opened the small medical kit he had packed and washed the wound in a penicillin spray, then bandaged it tightly. Just before dawn, when the pain became unbearable, he took one of the morphine tablets and fell off into a loud, booming sleep, in which the great sun expanded until it filled the entire universe, the stars themselves jolted by each of its beats.

He woke at seven the next morning, lying back against the mast in bright sunlight, the medical kit open in his lap, the bows of the catamaran rammed lightly into a large fern tree growing off the edge of a small island. A mile away, flying fifty feet above the water, the helicopter raced along, machine-gun fire flickering from its cabin at the islands below. Kerans s.h.i.+pped the mast and glided in under the tree, waiting until the helicopter left. Ma.s.saging his leg, but fearful of the morphine, he made a small meal of a bar of chocolate, the first of ten he had been able to collect. Luckily the petty officer in charge of stores aboard the patrol boat had been instructed to give Kerans free access to the medical supplies.

The aerial attacks were resumed at half-hour intervals, the aircraft once flying directly overhead. From his hiding place in one of the islands Kerans clearly saw Riggs looking out from the hatchway, his small jaw jutting fiercely. However, the machine-gun fire became more and more sporadic, and the flights were finally discontinued that afternoon.

By then, at five o'clock, Kerans was almost completely exhausted. The noon temperature of a hundred and fifty degrees had drained the life out of him, and he lay limply under the moistened sail, letting the hot water drip down onto his chest and face, praying for the cooler air of the evening. The surface of the water turned to fire, so that the craft seemed to be suspended on a cloud of drifting flame. Pursued by strange visions, he paddled feebly with one hand.

15 - The Paradises of the Sun

The next day, by good luck, the storm-clouds moved overhead between himself and the sun, and the air grew markedly cooler, falling to ninety-five degrees at noon. The ma.s.sive banks of black c.u.mulus, only four or five hundred feet above, dimmed the air like a solar eclipse, and he revived sufficiently to start the outboard and raise his speed to ten miles an hour. Circling between the islands, he moved on southwards, following the sun that pounded in his mind. Later that evening, as the rain-storms lashed down, he felt well enough to stand up on one leg by the mast, letting the torrential bursts rain across his chest and strip away the ragged fabric of his jacket. When the first of the storm-belts moved off the visibility cleared, and he could see the southern edge of the sea, a line of tremendous silt banks over a hundred yards in height. In the spasmodic sunlight they glittered along the horizon like fields of gold, the tops of the jungle beyond rising above them.

Half a mile from the sh.o.r.e the reserve tank of the outboard ran dry. He unbolted the motor and threw it into the water, watched it sink through the brown surface in a faint wreath of bubbles. He furled the sail and paddled slowly against the head-breeze. By the time he reached the sh.o.r.e it was dusk, the shadows sweeping across the huge grey slopes. Limping through the shallows, he beached the craft, then sat down with his back against one of the drums. Staring out over the immense loneliness of this dead terminal beach, he soon fell into an exhausted sleep.

The next morning he dismantled the craft, ported the sections one by one up the enormous sludge-covered slopes, hoping for a southward extension of the water-way. Around him the great banks undulated for miles, the curving dunes dotted with cuttlefish and nautiloids. The sea was no longer visible, and he was alone with these few lifeless objects, like the debris of a vanished continuum, one dune giving way to another as he dragged the heavy fifty-gallon drums from crest to crest. Overhead the sky was dull and cloudless, a bland impa.s.sive blue, more the interior ceiling of some deep irrevocable psychosis than the storm-filled celestial sphere he had known during the previous days. At times, after he had dropped one burden, he would totter down into the hollow of the wrong dune, find himself stumbling about the silent basins, their floors cracked into hexagonal plates, like a dreamer searching for an invisible door out of his nightmare.

Finally he abandoned the craft and trudged on ahead with a small parcel of supplies, looking back as the drums sank slowly below the surface. Carefully avoiding the quicksands between the dunes, he moved on towards the jungle in the distance, where the green spires of the great horsetails and fern trees reached a hundred feet into the air.

He rested again below a tree on the edge of the forest, carefully cleaning his pistol. Ahead of him he could hear the bats screech and dive among the dark trunks in the endless twilight world of the forest floor, the iguanas snarl and lunge. His ankle had begun to swell painfully; the continual extension of the damaged muscle had spread its original infection. Cutting a branch off one of the trees, he hobbled forwards into the shadows.

By evening the rainfall started, slas.h.i.+ng at the huge umbrellas a hundred feet above, the black light only broken when phosph.o.r.escent rivers of water broke and poured down on him. Frightened of resting for the night, he pressed on, shooting off the attacking iguanas, darting from the shelter of one ma.s.sive tree-trunk to the next. Here and there he found a narrow breach in the canopy overhead, and a pale light would illuminate a small clearing where the ruined top floor of a sunken building loomed through the foliage, the rain beating across it. But the evidence of any man-made structures was increasingly scanty, the towns and cities of the south swallowed by the rising silt and vegetation.

For three days he pushed ahead sleeplessly through the forest, feeding on giant berries like cl.u.s.ters of apples, cutting a heavier branch as a crutch. Periodically, to his left, he glimpsed the silver back of a jungle river, its surface dancing in the rain-storms, but ma.s.sive mangroves formed the banks and he was unable to reach it.

So his descent into the phantasmagoric forest continued, the rain sweeping relentlessly across his face and shoulders. Sometimes it would stop abruptly, and clouds of steam filled the intervals between the trees, hanging over the waterlogged floor like diaphanous fleeces, only dispersing when the downpour resumed.

It was during one of these intermissions that he climbed a steep rise in the centre of a broad clearing, hoping to escape the drenching mists, found himself in a narrow valley between wooded slopes. Crowded with vegetation, the hills rolled around the valley like the dunes he had crossed earlier, enclosing him in a green dripping world. Occasionally, as the mists swirled and lifted, he caught a glimpse of the jungle river between the peaks half a mile away. The wet sky was stained by the setting sun, the pale crimson mists tracing the hill crests in the distance. Pulling himself over the wet clay-like soil, he stumbled into what seemed to be the remains of a small temple. Tilting gate posts led towards a semi-circle of shallow steps, where five ruined columns formed a ragged entrance. The roof had collapsed, and only a few feet of the side walls still stood. At the far end of the nave the battered altar looked out over an uninterrupted view of the valley, where the sun sank slowly from sight, its giant orange disc veiled by the mists.

Hoping to shelter there during the night, Kerans walked down the aisle, pausing listlessly as the rain renewed itself. Reaching the altar, he rested his arms on the chest-high marble table, and watched the contracting disc of the sun, its surface stirring rhythmically like the slag on a bowl of molten metal.

"Aaa-ah!" A faint almost inhuman cry sounded thinly into the wet air, like the groan of a stricken animal. Kerans looked around him quickly, wondering if an iguana had followed him into the ruin. But the jungle and the valley and the whole place of stones were silent and motionless, the rain streaming across the cracks in the collapsing walls.

"Aah-ah!" This time the sound came from in front of him, somewhere towards the fading sun. The disc had pulsed again, apparently drawing forth this strangled response, half in protest, half in grat.i.tude.

Wiping the moisture from his face, Kerans stepped cautiously around the altar, drew back with a start when he almost tripped over the ragged remains of a man sitting with his back to the altar, head propped against the stone. The sounds had obviously come from this emaciated figure, but it was so inert and blackened that Kerans a.s.sumed it must be dead.

The man's long legs, like two charred poles of wood, stuck out uselessly in front of him, sheathed in a collection of tattered black rags and bits of bark. His arms and sunken chest were similarly clothed, strung together with short lengths of creeper. A once luxuriant but now thinning black beard covered most of his face, and the rain poured across his hollowed but jutting jaw, which was raised to the fading light. Fitfully the sun shone on the exposed skin of his face and hands. One of the latter, a skeletal green claw, suddenly rose like a hand from a grave and pointed at the sun as if identifying it, then fell limply to the ground. As the disc pulsed again the face showed some slight reaction. The deep recesses around the mouth and nose, the hollowed cheeks that encroached so deeply over the broad jaw that they seemed to leave no s.p.a.ce for the buccal cavity within, filled for a moment as if a single breath of life had pa.s.sed momentarily through the body.

Unable to advance, Kerans watched the huge emaciated figure on the ground before him. The man was no more than a resurrected corpse, without food or equipment, propped against the altar like someone jerked from his grave and abandoned to await the Day of Judgement.

Then he realised why the man had failed to notice him. The dirt and raw sun-blistered skin around the deep eye sockets turned them into blackened funnels, at the base of which a dull festering gleam reflected faintly the distant sun. Both eyes were almost completely occluded by corneal cancers, and Kerans guessed that they would be able to see little more than the dying sun. As the disc fell away behind the jungle in front of them and the dusk swept like a pall through the grey rain, the man's head raised itself painfully, as if trying to retain the image that had burnt itself so devastatingly upon his retinas, then slumped to one side against his stone pillow. Flies began to swarm across the ground and buzzed over his streaming cheeks.

Kerans bent down to speak to the man, who seemed to sense his movement. Blindly, the hollowed eyes searched the dull nimbus beside him.

"Hey, fellow." His voice was a feeble rasp. "You there, soldier, come here! Where have you come from?" His left hand scuttled around the wet stony clay like a crab, as if looking for something. Then he turned back to the vanished sun, oblivious of the flies settling on his face and beard. "It's gone again! Aa-aah! It's moving away from me! Help me up, soldier, we'll follow it. Now, before it goes for ever."

He held his claw out to Kerans, like a dying beggar. Then his bead slumped back again and the rain poured over his black skull.

Kerans knelt down. Despite the effects of the sun and rain, the remnants of the man's uniform trousers showed him to be an officer. His right hand, which had remained closed, now opened feebly. In his palm was a small silver cylinder with a circular dial, a pocket compa.s.s carried in aircrew rescue kits.

"Hey, soldier!" The man had revived abruptly, his eyeless head turning towards Kerans. "I order you, don't leave me! You can rest now, while I keep watch. Tomorrow we'll move on."

Kerans sat down beside him, undid his small parcel and began to wipe the rain and dead flies from the man's face. Taking the ravaged cheeks in his hands like a child's, he said carefully: "Hardman, this is Kerans-Doctor Kerans. I'll go with you, but try to rest." Hardman showed no response to the name, his brows creasing slightly in puzzlement.

While Hardman lay back against the altar, Kerans began to dig up some of the cracked flagstones from the aisle with his clasp knife, carried the pieces back through the rain and built a crude stone shelter around the supine figure, covering the cracks with creeper torn from the walls. Although s.h.i.+elded from the rain, Hardman became slightly restless in the dark alcove, but soon fell into a shallow sleep, now and then breaking into stertorous breaths. Kerans went back through the darkness to the jungle edge, picked an armful of edible berries from the trees, then returned to the shelter and sat beside Hardman until the dawn broke over the hills behind them.