Split by an immense roar, the early morning silence over the lagoon shattered abruptly, and a tremendous blare of noise battered past the windows of the hotel suite. With an effort Kerans pulled his reluctant body from his bed and stumbled across the books scattered on the floor. He kicked back the mesh door on to the balcony in time to see a huge white-hulled hydroplane speed by around the lagoon, its two long stepped planes cleaving perfect slices of glittering spray. As the heavy wash slapped against the wall of the hotel, breaking up the colonies of water spiders and disturbing the bats nesting among the rotting logs, he caught a glimpse of a tall, broad-shouldered man in the c.o.c.kpit, wearing a white helmet and jerkin, standing upright at the controls.
He drove the hydroplane with an easy nonchalant swagger, accelerating the two powerful propeller turbines mounted in front of him as the craft hit the broad swells across the lagoon, so that it plunged and dived like a power-boat wrestling through giant rollers, throwing up gales of rainbowing spray. The man rolled with the surging motion of the craft, his long legs supple and relaxed, like a charioteer completely in command of a spirited team.
Hidden by the calamites which now spilled across the balcony-the effort of cutting them back had long seemed pointless-Kerans watched him un.o.bserved. As the craft sped by on its second circuit, Kerans had a glimpse of a rakish profile, bright eyes and teeth, an expression of exhilarated conquest.
The silver studs of a cartridge belt flashed around his waist, and when he reached the far side of the lagoon there was a series of short explosions. Signal sh.e.l.ls burst over the water into ragged red umbrellas, the fragments spitting down across the sh.o.r.e.
In a final lunge of energy, its engines screaming, the hydroplane swerved out of the lagoon and gunned away down the ca.n.a.l to the next lagoon, its wash thrashing at the foliage. Kerans gripped the balcony rail, watching the disturbed restless water of the lagoon trying to re-settle itself, the giant cryptograms and scale trees along the sh.o.r.e tossed and flurried by the still surging air. A thin pall of red vapour drifted away to the north, fading with the diminishing sounds of the hydroplane. The violent irruption of noise and energy, and the arrival of this strange white-suited figure, momentarily disconcerted Kerans, jerking him roughly from his la.s.situde and torpor.
In the six weeks since Riggs" departure he had lived almost alone in his penthouse suite at the hotel, immersing himself more and more deeply in the silent world of the surrounding jungle. The continued increase in temperature-the thermo-alarm on the balcony now registered a noon high of one hundred and thirty degrees-and the enervating humidity made it almost impossible to leave the hotel after ten o"clock in the morning; the lagoons and the jungle were filled with fire until four o"clock, by then he was usually too tired to do anything but return to bed.
All day he sat by the shuttered windows of the suite, listening from the shadows to the shifting movement of the mesh cage, as it expanded and contracted in the heat. Already many of the buildings around the lagoon had disappeared beneath the proliferating vegetation; huge club mosses and calamites blotted out the white rectangular faces, shading the lizards in their window lairs.
Beyond the lagoon the endless tides of silt had begun to acc.u.mulate in enormous glittering banks, here and there over-topping the sh.o.r.eline, like the immense tippings of some distant gold-mine. The light drummed against his brain, bathing the submerged levels below his consciousness, carrying him downwards into warm pellucid depths where the nominal realities of time and s.p.a.ce ceased to exist. Guided by his dreams, he was moving backwards through the emergent past, through a succession of ever stranger landscapes, centered upon the lagoon, each of which, as Bodkin had said, seemed to represent one of his own spinal levels. At times the circle of water was spectral and vibrant, at others slack and murky, the sh.o.r.e apparently formed of shale, like the dull metallic skin of a reptile. Yet again the soft beaches would glow invitingly with a glossy carmine sheen, the sky warm and limpid, the emptiness of the long stretches of sand total and absolute, filling him with an exquisite and tender anguish.
He longed for this descent through archaeopsychic time to reach its conclusion, repressing the knowledge that when it did the external world around him would have become alien and unbearable.
Sometimes he restlessly made a few entries in his botanical diary about the new plant forms, and during the first weeks called several times on Dr. Bodkin and Beatrice Dahl. But both were increasingly preoccupied with their own descents through total time. Bodkin bad become lost in his private reverie, punting aimlessly around the narrow creeks in search for the submerged world of his childhood. Once Kerans came across him resting on an oar in the stern of his small metal scow and gazing vacantly at the unyielding buildings around him. He had stared straight through Kerans, failing to acknowledge his call.
However, with Beatrice, despite their superficial estrangement, there was an intact underlying union, a tacit awareness of their symbolic roles.
More signal sh.e.l.ls burst over the distal lagoon, containing the station and Beatrice"s apartment house, and Kerans shielded his eyes as the bright fire-b.a.l.l.s studded the sky. A few seconds later, several miles away among the silt banks to the south, there was a series of answering bursts, faint puffs that soon dispersed.
So the stranger driving the hydroplane was not alone. At the prospect of this imminent invasion Kerans pulled himself together. The distance separating the answering signals was wide enough to indicate that there was more than one group, and that the hydroplane was merely a scout vehicle.
Sealing the mesh door behind him, he stepped back into the suite, pulling his jacket off the chair. Out of habit he went into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, absently feeling the week-old stubble on his face. The hair was white as pearl, and with his ebony tan and introspective eyes gave him the appearance of a refined beachcomber. A bucket-full of dingy water had leaked in from the wrecked still on the roof, and he scooped some out and splashed his face, a token toilet performed, as far as he could see, solely out of habit.
Using the metal-tipped boathook to drive away two small iguanas idling on the jetty, he slid the catamaran into the water and cast off, the little outboard carrying him steadily through the sluggish swells. Huge clumps of algae stirred below the craft, and stick-beetle and water spider raced around its prows. It was a few minutes after seven o"clock, and the temperature was only eighty degrees, comparatively cool and pleasant, the air free of the enormous clouds of mosquito which would later be roused from their nests by the heat.
As he navigated the hundred-yard-long creek leading into the southern lagoon, more signal rockets were exploding overhead, and he could hear the hydroplane zooming to and fro, occasionally glimpse the white-suited figure at its controls as it flashed past. Kerans cut the outboard at the entrance to the lagoon and glided quietly through the overhanging fern fronds, watching for water snakes disturbed from the branches by the surging wash.
Twenty-five yards along the sh.o.r.e he berthed the catamaran among the horse-tails growing on the shelving roof of a department store, waded up the sloping concrete to a fire escape on the side of the adjacent building. He climbed the five storeys to the flat rooftop and lay down behind a low pediment, glancing up at the nearby bulk of Beatrice"s apartment house.
The hydroplane was circling noisily by an inlet on the far side of the lagoon, the driver plunging it backwards and forwards like a horseman reining his steed. More flares were going up, some only a quarter of a mile away. As he watched Kerans noticed a low but mounting roar, a harsh animal sound not unlike that emitted by the iguanas. It drew nearer, mingled with the drone of engines, followed by the noise of vegetation being torn and buffeted. Sure enough, along the course followed by the inlet, the huge fern trees and calamites were flung down one after the other, their branches waving as they fell like vanquished standards. The whole jungle was being torn apart. Droves of bats erupted into the air and scattered frantically across the lagoon, their screeching masked by the accelerating turbines of the hydroplane and the exploding star-sh.e.l.ls.
Abruptly, the water in the mouth of the inlet rose several feet into the air, what seemed to be an enormous log-jam crushed down it, tearing the vegetation away, and burst out into the lagoon. A miniature niagara of foaming water cascaded outwards, impelled by the pressure of the tidal bore behind it, on which rode several square black-hulled craft similar to Colonel Riggs" cutter, paint peeling from the giant dragon eyes and teeth slashed across their bows. Manned by a dozen dusky-skinned figures in white shorts and singlets, the scows jockeyed out towards the centre of the lagoon, the last of the star-sh.e.l.ls still going up from their decks in the general melee and excitement.
Half-deafened by the noise, Kerans stared down at the vast swarm of long brown forms swimming powerfully through the seething water, their ma.s.sive tails lashing the foam. By far the largest alligators he had seen, many of them over twenty-five feet long, they jostled together ferociously as they fought their way into the clear water, churning in a pack around the now stationary hydroplane. The white-suited man was standing in the open hatchway, hands on hips, gazing exultantly at this reptilian brood. He waved lazily at the crews of the three scows, then gestured in a wide circle at the lagoon, indicating that they would anchor there.
As his negro lieutenants re-started their engines and drifted off towards the bank, he surveyed the surrounding buildings with a critical eye, his strong face raised almost jauntily to one side. The alligators congregated like hounds around their master, the wheeling cries of the dense cloud of sentinel birds overhead, nile plover and stone curlew, piercing the morning air. More and more of the alligators joined the pack, cruising shoulder to shoulder in a clockwise spiral, until at least two thousand were present, a ma.s.sive group incarnation of reptilian evil.
With a shout, the pilot swung back to his controls, the two thousand snouts lifting in recognition. The propellers kicked into life and lifted the hydroplane forward across the water. Its sharp planes ploughing straight across the hapless creatures in their path, it drove away towards the communicating creek into the next lagoon, the great ma.s.s of alligators surging along behind it. A few detached themselves and cruised off in pairs around the lagoon, ferreting among the submerged windows and driving off the iguanas who had come out to watch. Others glided among the buildings and took up their positions on the barely covered rooftops. Behind them, in the centre of the lagoon, the beaten water churned uneasily, occasionally throwing up the snow-white belly of a dead alligator crushed by the hydroplane.
As the advancing armada headed towards the creek on his left, Kerans scrambled down the fire escape and splashed down the sloping roof to the catamaran. Before he could reach it the heavy wash set up by the hydroplane had rocked the craft adrift, and it floated off into the oncoming ma.s.s. Within a few seconds it was engulfed, up-ended by the press of alligators fighting to get into the creek and cut to pieces in their snapping jaws.
A large caiman bringing up the rear spotted Kerans waist-deep among the horse-tails and veered towards him, its eyes steadying. Its rough scaly back and the crest along its tail flexed powerfully as it surged through the water. Quickly Kerans retreated up the slope, slipping once to his shoulders, reached the fire escape as the caiman lumbered out of the shallows on its short hooked legs and lunged at his leaping feet.
Panting, Kerans leaned on the rail, looking down at the cold unblinking eyes which regarded him dispa.s.sionately.
"You"re a well-trained watchdog," he told it ungrudgingly. He eased a loose brick from the wall and launched it with both hands at the k.n.o.b on the end of the caiman"s snout, grinning as it bellowed and backed off, snapping irritably at the horse-tails and a few drifting spars of the catamaran.
After half an hour, and a few minor duels with the retreating iguanas, he managed to cross the intervening two hundred yards of sh.o.r.eline and reach Beatrice"s apartment house. She met him as he stepped out of the elevator, wide-eyed with alarm.
"Robert, what"s happening?" She put her hands on his shoulders and pressed her head against his damp shirt. "Have you seen the alligators? There are thousands of them!"
"Seen them-I was d.a.m.n nearly eaten by one on your doorstep." Kerans released himself and hurried over to the window, pushed back the plastic vanes. The hydroplane had entered the central lagoon and was circling it at speed, the shoal of alligators following in its wake, those at the tail breaking off to station themselves at points around the sh.o.r.e. At least thirty or forty had remained in the lagoon below, and were cruising about slowly in small patrols, occasionally swerving on a careless iguana.
"Those devilish things must be their watch-guards," Kerans decided. "Like a tame troupe of tarantulas. Nothing better, when you come to think of it."
Beatrice stood beside him, nervously fingering the collar of the jade silk shirt she wore over her black swimsuit. Although the apartment was beginning to look ramshackle and untidy, Beatrice continued to tend her own appearance devotedly. On the few occasions when Kerans called she would be sitting on the patio or before a mirror in her bedroom, automatically applying endless layers of patina like a blind painter forever retouching a portrait he can barely remember for fear that otherwise he will forget it completely. Her hair was always dressed immaculately, the make-up on her mouth and eyes exquisitely applied, but her withdrawn, isolated gaze gave her the waxen, glace beauty of an inanimate mannequin. At last, however, she had been roused.
"But who are they, Robert? That man in the speed-boat frightens me. I wish Colonel Riggs was here."
"He"ll be a thousand miles away by now, if he hasn"t already reached Byrd. Don"t worry, Bea. They may look a piratical crew, but there"s nothing we can give them."
A large three-decker paddle-boat, paddles set fore and aft, had entered the lagoon, and was slowly moving over to the three scows drawn up a few yards from where Riggs" base had been moored. It was loaded with gear and cargo, decks crammed with large bales and canvas-swathed machinery, so that there was only six inches of freeboard amidships.
Kerans guessed that this was the group"s depot ship, and that they were engaged, like most of the other freebooters still wandering through the Equatorial lagoons and archipelagoes, in pillaging the drowned cities, reclaiming the heavy specialised machinery such as electrical power generators and switchgear that had been perforce abandoned by the government. Nominally such looting was highly penalised, but in fact the authorities were only too eager to Payagenerous price for any salvage.
"Look!"
Beatrice gripped Kerans" elbow. She pointed down at the testing station, where the rumpled, s.h.a.ggy-haired figure of Dr. Bodkin stood on the roof, waving slowly at the men on the bridge of the paddle-boat. One of them, a bare-chested negro in white slacks and a white peaked cap, began to shout back through a hailer.
Kerans shrugged. "Alan"s right. We"ve everything to gain by showing ourselves. If we help them they"ll soon push off and leave us alone."
Beatrice hesitated, but Kerans took her arm. The hydroplane, now free of its entourage, was crossing the central lagoon on its return, leaping lightly through the water on a beautiful wake of foam.
"Come on, if we get down to the jetty in time he"ll probably give us a lift."
8 - The Man with the White Smile
His handsome saturnine face regarding them with a mixture of suspicion and amused contempt, Strangman lounged back under the cool awning that shaded the p.o.o.p deck of the depot ship. He had changed into a crisp white suit, the silk-like surface of which reflected the gilt plate of his high-backed Renaissance throne, presumably dredged from some Venetian or Florentine lagoon, and invested his strange personality with an almost magical aura.
"Your motives seem so complex, Doctor," he remarked to Kerans. "But perhaps you"ve given up hope of understanding them yourself. We shall label them the total beach syndrome and leave it at that.
He snapped his fingers at the steward standing in the shadows behind him and selected an olive from the tray of small chow. Beatrice, Kerans and Bodkin sat in a semi-circle on the low couches, alternately chilled and roasted as the erratic air-conditioner above them varied its perimeter. Outside, half an hour before noon, the lagoon was a bowl of fire, the scattered light almost masking the tall apartment house on the opposite bank. The jungle was motionless in the immense heat, the alligators hiding in whatever shade they could find.
Nonetheless several of Strangman"s men were messing about in one of the scows, unloading some heavy diving equipment under the direction of a huge hunchbacked negro in a pair of green cotton shorts. A giant grotesque parody of a human being, now and then he took off his eye-patch to bellow abuse at them, and the mingled grunts and curses drifted across the steaming air.
"But tell me, Doctor," Strangman pressed, apparently dissatisfied with Kerans" answers, "when do you finally propose to leave?"
Kerans hesitated, wondering whether to invent a date. After waiting an hour for Strangman to change, he had offered their greetings to him and tried to explain why they were still there. However, Strangman seemed unable to take the explanation seriously, swinging abruptly from amus.e.m.e.nt at their naivety to sharp suspicion. Kerans watched him carefully, reluctant to make even the smallest false move. Whatever his real ident.i.ty, Strangman was no ordinary freebooter. A curious air of menace pervaded the depot ship, its crew and their master. Strangman in particular, with his white smiling face, its cruel lines sharpening like arrows when he grinned, disturbed Kerans.
"We haven"t really considered the possibility," Kerans said. "I think we all hope to stay on indefinitely. We have small stocks of supplies."
"But my dear man," Strangman remonstrated, "the temperature will soon be up to nearly two hundred degrees. The entire planet is rapidly returning to the Mesozoic Period."
"Precisely," Dr. Bodkin cut in, rousing himself for a moment from his introspection. "And insofar as we are part of the planet, a piece of the main, we too are returning. This is our zone of transit, here we are re-a.s.similating our own biological pasts. That"s why we have chosen to remain here. There is no ulterior motive, Strangman."
"Of course not, Doctor, I completely respect your sincerity." Shifts of mood seemed to cross and re-cross Strangman"s face, making him look in turn irritable, amiable, bored and abstracted. He listened to an air-line pumping from the scow, then asked: "Dr. Bodkin, did you live in London as a child? You must have many sentimental memories to recapture, of the great palaces and museums." He added: "Or are the only memories you have pre-uterine ones?"
Kerans looked up, surprised at the ease with which Strangman had mastered Bodkin"s jargon. He noticed that Strangman was not only watching Bodkin shrewdly, but also waiting for any reaction from himself and Beatrice.
But Bodkin gestured vaguely. "No, I"m afraid I remember nothing. The immediate past is of no interest to me."
"What a pity," Strangman rejoined archly. "The trouble with you people is that you"ve been here for thirty million years and your perspectives are all wrong. You miss so much of the transitory beauty of life. I"m fascinated by the immediate past-the treasures of the Tria.s.sic compare pretty unfavourably with those of the closing years of the Second Millennium."
He leaned around on one elbow and smiled at Beatrice, who sat with her hands discreetly covering her bare knees, like a mouse observing a particularly fine cat. "And what about you, Miss Dahl? You look a little melancholy. A touch of time-sickness, perhaps? The chronoclasmic bends?" He chuckled, amused by this sally, and Beatrice said quietly: "We"re usually rather tired here, Mr. Strangman. By the way, I don"t like your alligators."
"They won"t hurt you." Strangman leaned back and surveyed the trio. "It"s all very strange." Over his shoulder he rapped a short command at the steward, then sat frowning to himself. Kerans realised that the skin of his face and hands was uncannily white, devoid altogether of any pigmentation. Kerans" heavy sunburn, like that of Beatrice and Dr. Bodkin, made him virtually indistinguishable from the remainder of the negro crew, and the subtle distinctions between the mulattos and quadroons had vanished. Strangman alone retained his original paleness, the effect emphasised by the white suit he had chosen.
The bare-chested negro in the peaked cap appeared, sweat rolling across his powerful muscles. He was about six feet in height, but the rolling breadth of his shoulders made him seem stocky and compact. His manner was deferential and observant, and Kerans wondered how Strangman managed to maintain his authority over the crew, and why they accepted his harsh, callous tone.
Strangman introduced the negro curtly. "This is the Admiral, my chief whip. If I"m not around when you want me, deal with him." He stood up, stepping down from the dais. "Before you leave, let me take you on a brief tour of my treasure ship." He extended an arm gallantly to Beatrice, who took it timorously, his eyes glinting and rapacious.
At one time, Kerans surmised, the depot ship had been a gambling steamer and floating vice den, moored beyond the five-mile limit outside Messina or Beirut, or in the shelter of some estuarine creek under the binder, more tolerant skies south of the equator. As they left the deck a squad of men were lowering an ancient ornamental gangway to the water"s edge, its banisters of peeling gilt shaded by a white clapboard marquee painted with gold ta.s.sels and drapery, creaking about on its pulleys like a funicular gazebo. The interior of the ship was decorated in a similar pastiche baroque. The bar, now dark and closed, at the forward end of the observation deck was like the stern castle of a ceremonial galleon, naked gilt caryatids supporting its portico. Semi-columns of fake marble formed little loggias that led away to the private alcoves and dining rooms, while the divided central stairway was a bad film set of Versailles, an aerial riot of dusty cupids and candelabra, the grimy bra.s.s overlayed with mould and verdigris.
But the former roulette wheels and chemin de fer tables had gone, and the scarred parquet flooring was covered with a ma.s.s of crates and cartons, piled up against the wire mesh windows so that only a faint reflection of the light outside seeped through. Everything was well packed and sealed, but on an old mahogany chart table in one corner Kerans saw a collection of bronze and marble limbs and torsos, fragments of statuary waiting to be sorted.
Strangman paused at the bottom of the staircase, tearing off a strip of fading tempera from one of the murals. "The place is falling to bits. Hardly up to the standard of the Ritz, Doctor. I envy your good sense."
Kerans shrugged. "It"s a low-rent area now." He waited as Strangman unlocked a door, and they entered the main storehold, a dim stifling cavern packed with large wooden crates, the floor strewn with sawdust. They were no longer in the refrigerated section of the ship, and the Admiral and another sailor followed them closely, continually hosing them with ice-cold air from a faucet on the wall. Strangman snapped his fingers and the Admiral quickly began to pull away the canvas wrappings draped between the crates.
In the thin light Kerans could just see the glimmering outline of a huge ornamented altarpiece at the far end of the hold, fitted with elaborate scroll-work and towering dolphin candelabra, topped by a neo-cla.s.sical proscenium which would have covered a small house. Next to it stood a dozen pieces of statuary, mostly of the late Renaissance, stacks of heavy gilt frames propped against them. Beyond these were several smaller altarpieces and triptychs, an intact pulpit in panelled gold, three large equestrian statues, a few strands of sea-weed still entwined in the horses" manes, several pairs of enormous cathedral doors, embossed in gold and silver, and a large tiered marble fountain. The metal shelves around the side of the hold were loaded with smaller bric a brac: votive urns, goblets, shields and salvers, pieces of decorative armour, ceremonial inkstands and the like.
Still holding Beatrice"s arm, Strangman gestured expansively a few yards ahead. Kerans heard him say "Sistine Chapel" and "Medici Tomb" but Bodkin muttered: "Aesthetically, most of this is rubbish, picked for the gold content alone. Yet there"s not much of that. What is the man up to?"
Kerans nodded, watching Strangman in his white suit, the barelegged Beatrice beside him. Suddenly he remembered the Delvaux painting, with its tuxedoed skeletons. Strangman"s chalk-white face was like a skull, and he had something of the skeleton"s jauntiness. For no reason he began to feel an intense distaste for the man, his hostility more generalised than personal.
"Well, Kerans, what do you think of them?" Strangman pivoted at one end of the aisle and swung back, barking at the Admiral to cover the exhibits again. "Impressed, Doctor?"
Kerans managed to take his eyes off Strangman"s face and glanced at the looted relics.
"They"re like bones," he said flatly.
Baffled, Strangman shook his head. "Bones? What on earth are you talking about? Kerans, you"re insane! Bones, Good G.o.d!"
As he let out a martyred groan, the Admiral took up the refrain, first saying the word quietly to himself as if examining a strange object, then repeating it more and more rapidly in a sort of nervous release, his broad face gibbering with laughter. The other sailor joined in, and together they began to chant it out, convulsed over the fire hose like snake dancers.
"Bones! Yes, man, dem"s all bones! Dem bones dem bones dem...!"
Strangman watched them angrily, the muscles of his face locking and unlocking like manacles. Disgusted with this display of rudeness and bad temper, Kerans turned to leave the hold. In annoyance Strangman rushed after him, pressed the palm of his hand in Kerans" back and propelled him along the aisle out of the hold.
Five minutes later, as they drove off in one of the scows, the Admiral and half a dozen other members of the crew lined the rail, still chanting and dancing. Strangman had regained his humour, and stood coolly in his white suit, detached from the others, waving ironically.
9 - The Pool of Thanatos
During the next two weeks, as the southern horizon became increasingly darkened by the approaching rain-clouds, Kerans saw Strangman frequently. Usually he would be driving his hydroplane at speed around the lagoons, his white lounge suit exchanged for overalls and helmet, supervising the work of the salvage teams. One scow, with six men, was working in each of the three lagoons, the divers methodically exploring the sunken buildings. Occasionally the placid routines of descent and pump would be interrupted by the sounds of rifle fire as an alligator venturing too near the divers was dispatched.
Sitting in the darkness in his hotel suite, Kerans was far away from the lagoon, content to let Strangman dive for his loot as long as he would soon leave. More and more the dreams had begun to encroach on his waking life, his conscious mind becoming increasingly drained and withdrawn. The single plane of time on which Strangman and his men existed seemed so transparent as to have a negligible claim to reality. Now and then, when Strangman came to call on him, he would emerge for a few minutes on to this tenuous plane, but the real centre of his consciousness was elsewhere.
Curiously, after his initial irritation, Strangman had developed a sneaking liking for Kerans. The biologist"s quiet, angular mind was a perfect target for Strangman"s dry humour. At times he would subtly mimic Kerans, earnestly taking his arm during one of their dialogues and saying in a pious voice: "You know, Kerans, leaving the sea two hundred million years ago may have been a deep trauma from which we"ve never recovered..."
On another occasion he sent two of his men over in a skiff to the lagoon; on one of the largest buildings on the opposite bank they painted in letters thirty feet high: TIME ZONE.
Kerans took this banter in good part, ignoring it when the divers" lack of success made it more severe. Sinking backwards through the past, he waited patiently for the coming of the rain.
It was after the diving party arranged by Strangman that Kerans first realised the true nature of his fear of the man.
Ostensibly the party had been devised by Strangman as a social function to bring the three exiles together. In his laconic, off-hand way Strangman had begun to lay siege to Beatrice, deliberately cultivating Kerans as a means of securing an easy entree to her apartment. When he discovered that the members of the trio rarely saw each other he evidently decided on an alternative approach, bribing Kerans and Bodkin with the promise of his well-stocked cuisine and cellar. Beatrice, however, always refused these invitations to luncheon and midnight breakfast-Strangman and his entourage of alligators and one-eyed mulattos still frightened her-and the parties were invariably cancelled.
But the real reason for his "diving gala" was more practical. For some time he had noticed Bodkin punting around the creeks of the former university quarter-often the old man, much to his amus.e.m.e.nt, would be trailed around the narrow ca.n.a.ls by one of the dragon-eyed scows, manned by the Admiral or Big Caesar and camouflaged with fern fronds, like a lost carnival float-and attributing his own motives to others, a.s.sumed that Bodkin was searching for some long-buried treasure. The focus of his suspicions finally became fixed on the submerged planetarium, the one underwater building to which there was easy access. Strangman posted a permanent guard over the little lake, some two hundred yards to the south of the central lagoon, which contained the planetarium, but when Bodkin failed to appear at the dead of night in flippers and aqualung Strangman lost patience and decided to antic.i.p.ate him.
"We"ll pick you up at seven tomorrow morning," he told Kerans. "Champagne c.o.c.ktails, cold buffet, we"ll really find out what old Bodkin has got hidden down there."
"I can tell you, Strangman. Just his lost memories. They"re worth all the treasure in the world to him."
But Strangman had let out a peal of skeptical laughter, roared away in the hydroplane and left Kerans hanging helplessly to the switchblading jetty.
Promptly at seven the next morning the Admiral had come for him. They collected Beatrice and Dr. Bodkin and then repaired to the depot ship, where Strangman was completing his preparations for the dive. A second scow was filled with diving equipment-both aqualung and suit-pumps and a telephone. A diving cage hung from the davit, but Strangman a.s.sured them that the lake was free of iguanas and alligators and there was no need to remain in the cage underwater.
Kerans was skeptical of this, but for once Strangman was as good as his word. The lake had been cleared completely. Heavy steel grilles had been lowered into the water at the submerged entrances, and armed guards sat with harpoons and shotguns astride the booms. As they entered the lake and moored against a shaded waterside balcony on the eastern side the last of a series of grenades was being tossed into the water, the sharp pulsing explosions spewing up a flotsam of stunned eels, shrimp and somasteroids, which were promptly raked away to one side.
The cauldron of submerged foam dispersed and cleared, and from their seats by the rail they looked down at the wide domed roof of the planetarium, wreathed in strands of fucus, as Bodkin had said like a giant sh.e.l.l-palace from a childhood fairy tale. The circular fan light at the apex of the dome was covered by a retractable metal screen, and an attempt had been made to lift one of the sections, but to Strangman"s chagrin they had long since rusted into place. The main entrance of the dome was at the original street level, too far down to be visible, but a preliminary reconnaissance had revealed that they would be able to enter without difficulty.
As the sunlight rose across the water Kerans gazed down into the green translucent depths, at the warm amnionic jelly through which he swam in his dreams. He remembered that despite its universal superabundance he had not fully immersed himself in the sea for ten years, and mentally recapitulated the motions of the slow b.r.e.a.s.t.stroke that carried him through the water while he slept.
Three feet below the surface a small albino python swam past, searching for a way out of the enclosure. Watching its strong head swerve and dart as it evaded the harpoons, Kerans felt a momentary reluctance to entrust himself to the deep water. On the other side of the lake, behind one of the steel grilles, a large estuarine crocodile was wrestling with a group of sailors trying to drive it off. Big Caesar, his great legs clamped to the narrow sill of the boom, kicked savagely at the amphibian, which snapped and lunged at the spears and boathooks. Over thirty feet long, it was well over ninety years old, and measured six or seven feet in chest diameter. Its snow-white under-belly reminded Kerans that he had seen a curiously large number of albino snakes and lizards since Strangman"s arrival, appearing from the jungle as if attracted by his presence. There had even been a few albino iguanas. One had sat on his jetty the previous morning, watching him like an alabaster lizard, and he had automatically a.s.sumed that it bore a message from Strangman.
Kerans looked up at Strangman, who stood in his white suit in the bows of the vessel, watching expectantly as the crocodile thrashed and slammed against the grille, almost toppling the giant negro into the water. Strangman"s sympathies were all too obviously with the crocodile, but not for any reasons of sportsmanship or from a s.a.d.i.s.tic desire to see one of his princ.i.p.al lieutenants gored and killed.
Finally, amid a confusion of shouts and curses, a shotgun was pa.s.sed to Big Caesar, who steadied himself and discharged both barrels into the hapless crocodile below his feet. With a bellow of pain, it backed away into the shallows, its tail smacking the water.
Beatrice and Kerans looked away, waiting for the coup de grace to be administered, and Strangman swarmed along the rail in front of them, eager for a better vantage point.
"When they"re trapped or dying they smack the water as an alarm signal to each other." He put a forefinger on Beatrice"s cheek, as if trying to make her face the spectacle. "Don"t look so disgusted. Kerans! d.a.m.n it, show more sympathy for the beast. They"ve existed for a hundred million years, they"re among the oldest creatures on the planet."
After the animal had been dispatched he still stood elatedly by the rail, bouncing on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, as if hoping that it would resuscitate itself and make a come-back. Only when the decapitated head was hoisted away on the end of a boathook did he turn with a spasm of irritation to the business of the dive.