Читать книгу Moreau’s Other Island - Brian Aldiss - Страница 8

One of my reasons for believing in God has been the presence in my life of emotions and understandings unsusceptible to scientific method. I have met otherwise scientific men who believe in telepathy whilst denying God. To me it makes more sense to believe in God than telepathy; telepathy seems to me to be unscientific mumbo-jumbo like astrology (although I have met men working prosaically on the Moon who held an unshakeable belief in astrology), while God can never be unscientific because he is the Prime Mover who contains science along with all the other effects of our universe. Or so I had worked it out, to my temporary satisfaction. God is shifting ground.

Directly I faced the Master, I felt some of those emotions – call them empathic if you will – which I have referred to as being unsusceptible to scientific method. Directly he spoke, I knew that in him, as in his creatures, aggression and fear were mixed. God gave me understanding.

This could not be a robot.

I looked up at it. Once I had got a grip of myself, I saw that the Master, although indeed a fearsome figure, was not as tall as I had estimated in my near-panic. He stood perhaps two and a quarter metres high, which is to say just over a head taller than I.

Beneath his helmet was a pale face which sweated just like mine did.

‘Who are you, and where did you spring from?’ he demanded.

I am trained to understand men, to cut through their poses. I understand tough men, and men who have merely tough façades. Despite the truculence of this man’s voice, I thought I detected uncertainty in it. I moved forward from the rock where I had been leaning.

He shuffled awkwardly in order to remain facing me, at the same time swinging his gun up to aim it at my stomach. Once my attention was thus directed to it, I recognized the gun as a kind issued to Co-Allied Invasion and Occupation Forces. It was a Xiay 25A, cheaply manufactured by our Chinese allies, capable of multiple-role usage, firing ordinary bullets, CS gas bullets, nailbombs, and other similar devices. The robot-like man carried a whip and a revolver in his belt. He was well armed if he was out for a morning walk.

He repeated his question.

I faced him squarely, fighting down my weakness.

‘I’m American, which I believe is more than you can claim. My name is Calvert Madle Roberts, and I am an Under-Secretary of State in the Willson Administration. I was returning from state business when my plane was shot down in the Pacific. Your employees brought me ashore. I have to get in touch with Washington immediately.’

‘My employees? You must mean Maastricht. What the devil was he playing at landing you here? This isn’t a funfair I’m running. Why didn’t he bring you round to the lagoon?’

‘I’ve been nine days adrift. I’m about all in and I need to contact my department soonest, OK? If you’re in charge, I hold you responsible for looking after me.’

He uttered a grunt which might have represented laughter. ‘I am in charge here, that’s for sure … And I can’t very well have you thrown back into the ocean.’

‘That’s big of you. I’ve told you my name. Roberts. What’s your name?’

His lip curled slightly. ‘You call me Master, same as the rest of them do.’ He swung himself about with a violent bodily motion and began striding back the way he had come. I followed.

We made our way along what served as a wretched street for the native village. The natives, having gathered their courage, had returned to peer at us. They uttered apotropaic phrases as their Master went by.

‘His is the Hand that Maims …’

‘His is the Head that Blames …’

‘His is the Whip that Tames …’

Beyond the little ragged village lay the lagoon. The road skirted it, winding past its tranquil green waters to buildings glimpsed through trees. Beyond everything was a steep hill, its grey cliffs looming above the forest. However mean the affairs of men, nature had added a note of grandeur.

It was impossible to keep up with the great mechanical strides of the self-styled Master. I lagged farther and farther behind. There was a gang of natives working on the far side of the lagoon, where I observed a mobile crane; they stopped work to stare at us.

My vision began to waver as I moved uphill. A stockade of tall and rusty metal posts stood here. The top of the stockade was decorated with barbed wire, strand after entangled strand of it. The Master halted at a narrow gate in the wall, stooping awkwardly to unlock it. I heard tumblers click back. He turned a wheel, the gate swung open, and he passed in. As soon as I had followed him, he pushed the gate shut and locked it from the inside.

Weakness overcame me. I fell to one knee.

‘Bella!’ he called, ignoring me.

I rose again, making my way forward as a strange figure came out of a building towards us. It was wearing a dress. It – no, she, Bella – had the short deformed legs common to most of the other islanders. Her skin was a dull pink. Her face was as hideous as George’s and his fellows’, although her eyes were curiously – lambent, I believe the word is. They seemed to glow and had an oriental cast. She would not look directly at me, although she approached readily enough while listening to what the Master was telling her.

To my surprise she came straight up to me and attempted to lift me off my feet. I felt a sort of nervous thrill at her embrace. Then I collapsed.

My senses never entirely left me. I was aware of strange faces about, and of being carried into a shadowy room. Something cool was placed on my forehead. Water was poured into my mouth; I could hardly swallow, and the cup was taken away. Then my eyes were bandaged. I lay without volition as expert hands ran over my body and I was given a thorough examination. These were things that hardly registered at the time, although they came back to me afterwards.

When I finally roused myself, the bandage was off my eyes. I lay naked under a sheet and felt refreshed. As I propped myself up on one elbow, I saw that an ointment to soothe my sunburns had been applied to my chest and face. The woman called Bella sat hunched in one corner of the room. Her eyes flashed greenly at me as she turned her head.

‘You – feel OK now?’

‘I think so.’

‘You like whisky?’

‘Thanks, but I don’t drink.’

‘No drink? You drink water.’

‘I meant that I don’t drink whisky.’

She stared motionlessly at me. She had short dark hair. I wondered if it was a wig. She had a nose that resembled a cat’s muzzle.

‘Thanks for seeing me through, Bella. I was in a bad way. Just reaction.’

‘I tell Master.’ She slunk away, hardly opening the door enough to get through, closing it directly she was through it. Decidedly feline.

The room took on new proportions as soon as she had gone. My body felt extremely light. Well, I said to myself, that’s how it is, here on the Moon. You mustn’t expect reality. Reality here is only one-sixth of what it is on Earth.

Without any sense of effort, I climbed out of bed and found it was easy to stand on my two feet if I stretched out my arms for balance. Being naked made things much easier. I floated over to my one unglazed window. No glass: but of course there were no minerals on the Moon.

‘M for Moon,’ I told myself aloud.

There was music, played close by, music and the strong heat of a tropical day. The music was Haydn’s, that composer who had come to dominate all the others, even Bach and Beethoven, in the last decade. I believed it was his Fifty-Fourth Symphony being played. Haydn and heat …

By some trick of the mind, I remembered who Moreau was.

I was gazing out at an untidy courtyard. Cans of paint were stacked there, sheets of wood, and panels of metal. Maastricht, still clutching his bottle, crossed my line of sight. I had forgotten he was on the Moon.

I heard the Master shouting at him. ‘Why the hell did you dump that politician where you did? It was asking for trouble – this is no funfair! Suppose George had—’

‘I didn’t bother to take him round to the harbour because I was in a haste to get to the fish nets, like you told me,’ Maastricht’s voice replied. I’ve had enough shouting at for one day. George brought him in safely, didn’t he?’

‘I had to go and rescue the man. They were about to tear him apart, just to put you in the picture.’

‘Pfhuh! I don’t believe you. Anyway, what do we do with the guy now he’s here?’

‘You know he can’t be allowed to stay. Hypothesize, man. Suppose he took it into his head to team up with Warren?’

‘Jeez, don’t mention Warren … Let it ride a while, Master. It’s time I had a drink.’

There was more, but strange waves were radiating through my head, bringing darkness. I staggered back to the bed, tucked a hand under the pillow and fell into a deep, troubled sleep. Over and over again, I was half-roused by the terrors of my dreams, in which the recurrent motif was a gigantic letter M, black, carved sometimes from rock, sometimes from flesh. Occasionally I roused to find the woman Bella ministering to me, or clumsily mopping my brow.

Since I was on the Moon, things were pleasant that would otherwise have been unpleasant. In her cat-like fashion Bella pressed herself against me. Her mouth, with its sharp incisors, lay against mine. I enjoy power, and the wielding of it; in any given situation I will manoeuvre until I am in control; but with Bella against me, fawning yet predatory, I relished the weakness in which I floated. Things go like that on Luna.

At last a time came when I sat up and was absolutely clear in my head. My internal clocks told me I had been in a fever for two or more days. Neatly pressed clothes lay by my bed. I climbed out and stood. My shanks looked thinner than before. I tested my balance, and a faint heaving still lingered, a phantom of the days adrift in the boat; but I took command of myself and had no trouble walking across to the window.

There lay Moreau Island, soaking in the unending daily dosage of sun, with the Pacific waiting as always on the horizon, a vat of energy. In the untidy courtyard, a bird swooped. All else was motionless. The Moon had set below my psychic horizon. I returned to the bed and sat down.

A while later Bella slunk into the room.

‘You – are better?’ she asked.

I beckoned her closer. She stayed where she was, one hand on the door. Scrutinizing her, I reassembled the mixed feelings I had towards her during my fever. She wore an ankle-length drab gold dress. It was torn. The tear, and her general demeanour, conveyed an impression of wretchedness; yet there was in her regard, in her hunched shoulder, a defiance which I admired. By the same token she was ugly enough, yet there was an animality about her which had made some kind of appeal to my more carnal instincts.

‘I appreciate your attentions to me while I was sick, Bella,’ I said. ‘Now I have to work. Where’s your shower? I sure can use a shower.’

‘The Master wish to speak to you.’ Maybe she understood, maybe not.

She led me down a short corridor and into another room. Music was playing – Haydn again. I had expected to see the Master towering over me, but he was not there. It was quite a pleasant room, but almost bare of furniture. There was a long window which gave a view over the top of the palisade – almost a seductive view, you might say, if it were not for the sinister nature of the surroundings.

I could see part of a placid lagoon, where the water was almost turquoise and sheltered from the blue Pacific beyond by a spine of land which almost enclosed it. On the curve of the lagoon was a harbour, with a battered landing stage and a boat moored to it. Tall palms leaned across to the water, overshadowing some huts. Behind them was jungle, climbing up a slope, the top of which was lost behind the building in which I stood.

It was such a typical view that I wondered if I had seen it before, perhaps in some previous reincarnation. Then I recalled that this vista embodied one of the favourite early twentieth-century dreams of escape from civilization: the retreat in the South Seas where the steamer came from Europe once a month and the girls wore grass skirts. And I reflected, as I turned away to observe the Master’s room, that I had a great deal for which to be thankful. Like life itself.

On one wall was a 3V screen: I was looking into a vast and ornate chamber, part perhaps of some German palace, in which an orchestra sat giving of their best to the soul of Joseph Haydn. I recognized the channel instantly as World Third; it beamed music out from Chicago for twenty-four hours every day and was available by satellite anywhere, even in this remote spot on the ocean. They could pick it up in Moon Base too. One of the good things that the war had not yet put a stop to.

Then the Master’s voice cut in over the music, the orchestra dimmed, and he said, ‘I’m coming in to speak to you, Roberts. Are you prepared?’

‘Certainly. What now?’

‘You may be surprised.’

‘At that, a side door opened, and someone entered from the next room. Maastricht followed, but I scarcely noticed him.

I was too busy looking at the person who had preceded him.

It was the Master. I recognized the pallid face. He was about thirty-five years old. He was cut down to size since I last saw him swaggering along. He came rapidly forward in a mechanized wheelchair and halted in front of me. I backed away and sat down on a relaxer. He had no legs. A looseflowing garment covered his body.

‘This is where it’s at, Mr Roberts. Now you see me like this, we both know where we stand.’ He was full of old-fashioned slangy phrases from some decade back, and used this one without a hint of humour. ‘In any event, I can’t take prosthetic limbs for very long in this heat. Now, you and I are going to have a little talk while Bella brings you in something to eat.’

Peeled out of his armour, and decked out in that looseflowing garment, the self-styled Master looked weak and female on first impression. But in the pallid face with its sheer cheeks and narrow pale mouth I saw a remorseless quality that would have to be taken into anyone’s account: either respected or circumvented.

As he turned to say something to the Netherlander, who hovered by, I was busy estimating him.

‘Tough luck about your accident,’ I said, indicating the elaborate wheelchair. ‘How come you’re living on an island in the Pacific War Zone? You’re a Britisher, aren’t you, to judge by that accent of yours?’

He regarded me unblinkingly.

‘It does so happen I was born in England. So what? I care no more for England than it ever cared for me. Damn England. I’m stateless – as simple as that. Follow me?’

I let that go unanswered. Bella entered, wheeling a trolley which she set in front of me. The trolley held an assortment of alcoholic drinks which I ignored and some fresh lime juice which I drank avidly. The food was Korean, served straight from deep-freeze lunch trays and very palatable, especially to a man who had had nothing solid in his stomach for days.

‘Do you know something about construction works, Mr Roberts?’ Hans asked.

‘That’s not important,’ the Master told him. ‘Go away and let me speak to Roberts alone. Get back to the harbour. Why are you hanging about here, anyway?’

‘First you want me to paint signs, then you want me to work at the harbour—’

‘Hans, this is no funfair. There’s work to be done. Get down to that harbour when I tell you. You know the scum don’t work well without you.’

‘You think I care?’ Maastricht said, but he backed out all the same, casting black looks at the man in the chair.

When we were alone, the Master said dismissively, ‘I try to run a tight little ship. Now then, Mr Calvert Roberts, we can have a talk, since you are here, however unwelcomely.’

‘Food’s good … after a week and more in an open boat, I tell you, a man is more than glad when Providence delivers him to terra firma, and to water, food and human company – however unfriendly.’

‘Nobody has ever thanked Providence for being on this rock before.’

‘Maybe they should have tried it … I want to discuss what you call this rock with you—’

He shook his head. ‘I want to discuss you. Never mind what you want. First things first. I have my priorities.’

‘Look, friend, you come on pretty heavy. You haven’t even introduced yourself. You don’t own me, remember. I’m not addressing you as “Master” – what’s your name?’

‘“Master” is my name here.’

‘You’ll gain nothing by persisting in that attitude, I promise you. Your presence here, in the middle of a War Zone, is probably against military law, and carries severe penalties.’ I continued to eat while the orchestra continued to play and he wheeled himself fast about the room.

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!’

He was far from subdued by my action. His face was a study in malice. Moreover, I had by no means disarmed him by wrenching his whip away. He seemed to be literally well armed. Whatever disaster had struck him, I saw now that he had his arms as well as his legs replaced, though the loose-fitting garment he wore made this hard to discern. Three pairs of arms were clamped on both sides of his chair, making him look somewhat like a plastic-and-metal spider. Some of these six interchangeable appendages ended in very odd hands indeed; at least two of them looked like lethal weapons.

But he mastered his wrath and said, ‘Just be warned. Come back inside; I wish to finish speaking to you. Da Silva, back to the labs.’

His chair bore him speedily back into the room we had left, and I followed.

Dart flipped off the vision on his huge screen. Only music flowed through the room – a quartet by Shostakovich.

‘These people have to be kept under stern control – as you will understand when you have been here a little longer.’ He spoke without looking at me.

I was still angry and would not reply. When Dart spoke again, it was again in a vein of explanation, although the tone of his voice gave no hint of apology.

‘The truth is, Roberts, that I’m vexed to be interrupted in my work by you or anyone else. My researches have gone through three stages. The first stage was merely to duplicate McMoreau’s original experiments, the second – well, never mind that. Suffice it to say, cutting the cackle, that I’m now into the culminating third stage. All the early crudities of approach have been set aside, junked – finished. I’m beyond all that. I’m discovering … I’m discovering the relativity of flesh …

‘The phrase means nothing to you, Roberts. But, believe me, all these years of pain – and pained thought – suffering is nothing unless you learn from it – I am the Einstein of a revolutionary biology …’

He darted a look at me.

‘I’m listening,’ I said.

He laughed. I saw again that dark and troubled thing in him. ‘I know you’re listening, man. Mr Roberts, I want you on my side and don’t know how to get you there. I’m not another Moreau. Not by a long chunk of chalk. You’ve decided already you hate me, haven’t you?’

‘I didn’t take to the way you treated Bella.’

‘Listen, I’m not another Moreau. He was a monster in many ways, a tyrant. I’m a victim. Try and dig that concept. A victim. Look!’

With a quick movement of his chin, he struck at a button on his right shoulder. So far as I had noticed it, I regarded it as a button securing his loose-flowing tunic. It was more than that. There was a sharp snap, a whir of servo-mechanisms, and Dart’s right arm slid off and clamped itself against the side of the chair.

Another brusque chin movement, and he pushed the tunic from his shoulder so that it fell away.

I saw his real arm.

It was not an arm. It was scarcely a hand. Four flexible digits like fingers sprouted from the shoulder joint. He swerved the chair so that I could see the detail, and the puckering of flesh where a shape almost like a hand had formed under the smooth nub of shoulder.

‘On the other side it’s a bit more grotesque. And my phalanges and metatarsal bones grow out of deformed femurs – that’s what I’ve got for legs. And I have a penile deformity.’

His voice as he spoke was throaty and the eyes of this Einstein of a revolutionary biology were bright with moisture.

Although I regarded him stolidly, my face unmoving, I had to fight an unexpected urge to apologize. ‘Why the healthy body should apologize to the defective I do not know. That’s not part of my philosophy.

‘Why are you so anxious to gain my pity?’

He leant sideways. The little fingers pressed a button inside the artificial arm. It moved back into place again, snapping when it was correctly positioned. The tiny sound provoked him to nod to himself almost complacently.

He was in control of himself, as his voice showed when he spoke again. ‘Back in all those crummy years when I was a kid, I used to go on reading jags, Mr Roberts. All sorts of crap I read. Not old H. G. Wells, I don’t mean. Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and a lot more, as well as technical books. A French writer called Gide compares Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. He finds them very alike, and do you know what he puts on about them? He says that Nietzsche was jealous of Jesus Christ, envied him to the point of madness, whereas Dostoevsky was struck with humility and regarded Jesus as a superman. You know what? As those two writers regarded Jesus Christ, so I regarded ordinary human beings – holding both attitudes at the same time. Because I was born monstrous and deformed, Mr Roberts. I was a thalidomide kid. Remember thalidomide?’

I remembered the thalidomide scandal well. The drug had been manufactured as a tranquilliser by a German company and licensed by chemical firms all over the world. The side-effects of the drug had not been properly researched; its teratogenicity had only become apparent when babies were born deformed. When the drug was administered to women in the early stages of pregnancy, it had the power of passing through the placental barrier and malforming the growth of the foetus. From eight to ten thousand children were born defective in various parts of the globe.

What made me recall the case so clearly was that over twenty years ago, when there was a court case in Canada regarding the amount of compensation to be paid one of the thalidomide children, my mother had said to me, ‘Cal, you were born at the time when thalidomide was available all round the world. We are just lucky that the States has sane laws about testing drugs – so that when I went to Doc Harris for a tranquilliser during pregnancy, he prescribed something safe, or otherwise you might have been born without your proper limbs like other babies your age in England and elsewhere.’

I said to Dart, ‘That whole case was a piece of criminal negligence.’ I could but stare at him, ashamed to move my eyes away.

‘My mother was prescribed Distaval, as thalidomide was called in England, and used it for a week only. One week! That week covered the forty-eighth day of her pregnancy. When I was born, I had these severe abnormalities on which you now gaze with such pleasure.

‘If the doctors had had any sense, they would never have let me live.’