Free An Island Called Moreau by Brian W. Aldiss Page B

to think about, don’t it, hero?” Maastricht called.
    I made no answer.
    â€œDon’t think about it, Cal,” he called. Without looking back, I could imagine him upending the bottle in his fleshy mouth.

5
    A Chance to Think Things Over
    In my troubled state of mind, I had to keep walking—walking away from Maastricht and his unhappy preoccupations. I needed somewhere where I could think straight, in peace. I headed eastward, which soon entailed going uphill. Bernie scampered by my side, making consoling noises. Birds hopped before us into the pale undergrowth.
    When I came to consider it, I realized that I knew few details about the administration of the Pacific; the subject lay outside my department; but I felt convinced that the setting up of the United Oceans Consortium in the eighties to conserve and control the world hydrosphere precluded anyone from establishing his own private hell as Dart had done. Was the island never visited by UOC patrols? Had the U.S. Navy never investigated?
    On a deeper level, I contemplated the political realities that hid behind fancy labels like the United Oceans Consortium. For the UOC had been established by the United States, China, and Japan, together with several satellite states such as Singapore, to contain spreading Soviet domination of Pacific waters. The Soviets, with their reluctant but vital allies in the Middle East, now controlled the Mediterranean (traditional base of sea power), the North Sea, and the Atlantic. The war was being fought to a great extent over the last free ocean. That both Chinese and Japanese companies were extracting vital oil from coastal oil fields only accentuated the bitterness of the struggle.
    Moreau Island, without U.S. or UOC protection, could provide an ideal supply base for the giant Soviet nuke subs, situated as it was within strike distance of Australia and not all that far from the important base of Singapore.
    As soon as I returned to Washington, I would see that the matter of Moreau Island was thoroughly investigated. And that, I perceived, was precisely what Dart expected me to do. Would he then send my radio message? Or would he attempt to detain me here, either keeping me as a kind of prisoner, or seeing that something far more permanent happened to me, as Maastricht had suggested?
    The answer to such questions depended on the extent of Dart’s ruthlessness, and on the extent to which his experiments went beyond the bounds of normal human conduct. My state of health had been more enfeebled than I had realized until now; it had led me to pretend that very little was the matter—that for instance the wretched “village” was an ordinary village in which facilities for cabling, rooms to let, and so on were available. No one had attempted to mislead me in these matters; I had unknowingly misled myself.
    The account I have so far given of myself shows me, I realize, in a poor light. Normally, I can rely on myself to behave with perception, command, and decision. Since I had been dragged half dead into Maastricht’s boat, my actions had been feeble in every way. In particular, I had managed to ignore the dreadful realities round me.
    I sat on a boulder in the speckled shade and Bernie settled beside me, gazing up at my face. After a moment, he put a hand on my knee and uttered some of his propitiatory nonsense. I stared down at his stunted limb in pity and horror, forcing myself, now that I was back to my senses, to experience the full realization of what Bernie was. He was a welding of animal and human, the grotesque result of laboratory experiment. Similar specimens inhabited the island, and I walked among them. An intense shaking took my limbs, a belated reaction to the truth. I forced myself to jump up and walk again.
    Of course, the island might be something more than a private torture chamber. If Dart were brought to trial (that was how my mind worked), he could possibly provide some rationale for his