The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s. Brian Aldiss

here,’ I said gingerly. ‘A thousand ecological factors are swept by the board just so that you can grind these waters through your turbines. And the same thing’s happened at Owen Falls over on Lake Victoria … But on Venus there’s no such balance. It’s just a clean page waiting for man to write what he will on it. Under that CO₂ blanket, there’s been no spark of life: the mountains are bare of moss, the valleys lie innocent of grass; in the geological strata, no fossils sleep; no amoebae move in the sea. But what you’re doing here …’

      ‘People!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve got people to consider. Babies need to be born, mouths must be fed. A man must live. Your sort of feelings are all very well – they make good poems – but I consider the people. I love the people. For them I work …’

      He waved his hands, overcome by his own grandiose visions. If the passion for Progress was his strength, the fallacy inherent in the idea was his secret weakness. I began to grow warm.

      ‘You get good conditions for these people, they procreate forthwith. Next generation, another benefactor will have to step forward and get good conditions for the children. That’s Progress, eh?’ I asked maliciously.

      ‘I see you so rarely, Rog; don’t let’s quarrel,’ he said meekly. ‘I just do what I can. I’m only an engineer.’

      That was how he always won an altercation. Before meekness I have no defence.

      The sun had finished another day. With the sudden darkness came chill. Jubal pressed a button, and glass slid round the veranda, enclosing us. Like Venus, I thought; but here you could still smell that spicy, bosomy scent which is the breath of dear Africa herself. On Venus, the smells are imported.

      We poured some more wine and talked of family matters. In a short while his wife, Sloe, joined us. I began to feel at home. The feeling was only partly psychological; my glands were now beginning to readjust fully to normal conditions after their long days in space travel.

      J-Casta also appeared. Him I was less pleased to see. He was the boss type, the strong arm man: as Jubal’s underling, he pandered wretchedly to him and bullied everyone else on the project. He (and there were many others like him, unfortunately) thought of the Massacre as man’s greatest achievement. This evening, in the presence of his superiors, after a preliminary burst of showing off, he was quiet enough.

      When they pressed me to, I talked of Venus. As I spoke, back rushed that humbling – but intoxicating – sense of awe to think I had actually lived to stand in full possession of my many faculties on that startling planet. The same feeling had often possessed me on Mars. And (as justifiably) on Earth.

      The vision chimed, and an amber light blinked drowsily off and on in Jubal’s tank. Even then, no premonition of catastrophe; since then, I can never see that amber heartbeat without anxiety.

      Jubal answered it, and a man’s face swam up in the tank to greet him. They talked; I could catch no words, but the sudden tension was apparent. Sloe went over and put her arm round Jubal’s shoulder.

      ‘Something up,’ J-Casta commented.

      ‘Yes,’ I said.

      ‘That’s Chief M-Shawn on the Vision – from Owenstown, over on Lake Victoria.’

      Then Jubal flashed off and came slowly back to where we were sitting.

      ‘That was M-Shawn,’ he said. ‘The level of Lake Victoria has just dropped three inches.’ He lit a cheroot with clumsy fingers, his eyes staring in mystification far beyond the flame.

      ‘Dam OK, boss?’ J-Casta asked.

      ‘Perfectly. They’re going to phone us if they find anything …’

      ‘Has this happened before?’ I asked, not quite able to understand their worried looks.

      ‘Of course not,’ my half-brother said scornfully. ‘Surely you must see the implications of it? Something highly unprecedented has occurred.’

      ‘But surely a mere three inches of water …’

      At that he laughed briefly. Even J-Casta permitted himself a snort.

      ‘Lake Victoria is an inland sea,’ Jubal said grimly. ‘It’s as big as Tasmania. Three inches all over that means many thousands of tons of water. Casta, I think we’ll get down to Mokulgu; it won’t do any harm to alert the first aid services, just in case they’re needed. Got your tracer?’

      ‘Yes, boss. I’m coming.’

      Jubal patted Sloe’s arm, nodded to me and left without relaxing his worried look. He and J-Casta shortly appeared outside. They bundled into a float, soared dangerously close to a giant walnut tree and vanished into the night.

      Nervously, Sloe put down her cheroot and did not resume it. She fingered a dial and the windows opaqued.

      ‘There’s an ominous waiting quality out there I don’t like,’ she said, to explain our sudden privacy.

      ‘Should I be feeling alarmed?’ I asked.

      She flashed me a smile. ‘Quite honestly, yes. You don’t live in our world, Rog, or you would guess at once what has happening at Lake Victoria. They’ve just finished raising the level again; for a long time they’ve been on about more pressure, and the recent heavy rains gave them their chance. It seems to have been the last straw.’

      ‘And what does this three-inch drop mean? Is there a breach in the dam somewhere?’

      ‘No. They’d have found that. I’m afraid it means the bed of the lake has collapsed somewhere. The water’s pouring into subterranean reservoirs.’

      The extreme seriousness of the matter was now obvious even to me. Lake Victoria is the source of the White Nile; if it ceased to feed the river, millions of people in Uganda and the Sudan would die of drought. And not only people: birds, beasts, fish, insects, plants.

      We both grew restless. We took a turn outside in the cool night air, and then decided we too would go down to the town. All the way there a picture filled my head: the image of that great dark lake emptying like a wash-basin. Did it drain in sinister silence, or did it gargle as it went? Men of action forget to tell you vital details like that.

      That night was an anticlimax, apart from the sight of the full moon sailing over Mount Kangosi. We joined Jubal and his henchman and hung about uneasily until midnight. As if an unknown god had been propitiated by an hour’s sleep sacrificed, we then felt easier and retired to bed.

      The news was bad next morning. Jubal was already back in town; Sloe and I breakfasted alone together. She told me they had been informed that Victoria had now dropped thirteen and a half inches; the rate of fall seemed to be increasing.

      I flew into Mokulgu and found Jubal without difficulty. He was just embarking on one of the Dam Authority’s survey floats with J-Casta.

      ‘You’d better come, too, Rog,’ he shouted. ‘You’ll probably enjoy the flight more than we shall.’

      I did enjoy the flight, despite the circumstances. A disturbance on Lake Tanganyika’s eastern fringes had been observed on an earlier survey, and we were going to investigate it

      ‘You’re not afraid the bed will collapse here, too, are you?’ I asked.

      ‘It’s not that,’ Jubal said. ‘The two hundred miles between us and Victoria is a faulty region, geologically speaking. I’ll show you a map of the strata when we get back. It’s more than likely that all that runaway subterranean water may be heading in our direction; that’s what I’m afraid of. The possibility has been known for a long while.’

      ‘And no precautions taken?’

      ‘What could we do but cross our fingers? The possibility exists that the Moon will spiral to Earth, but we don’t all live in shelters because of it.’

      ‘Justifying yourself, Jubal?’

      ‘Possibly,’