The Drowned World. Martin Amis

and Riggs was content to let Kerans and Bodkin get on with their work in their own fashion, sufficiently busy himself with the jobs of mapping the shifting keys and harbours and evacuating the last inhabitants. In the latter task he often needed Kerans’ help, for most of the people still living on in the sinking cities were either psychopaths or suffering from malnutrition and radiation sickness.

      In addition to running the testing station, Kerans served as the unit’s medical officer. Many of the people they came across required immediate hospitalisation before being flown out in the helicopter to one of the large tank-landing craft ferrying refugees up to Camp Byrd. Injured military personnel marooned on an office block in a deserted swamp, dying recluses unable to separate their own identities from the cities where they had spent their lives, disheartened freebooters who had stayed behind to dive for loot—all these Riggs good humouredly but firmly helped back to safety, Kerans ready at his elbow to administer an analgesic or tranquilliser. Despite his brisk military front, Kerans found the Colonel intelligent and sympathetic, and with a concealed reserve of droll humour. Sometimes he wondered whether to test this by telling the Colonel about Bodkin’s Pelycosaur, but on the whole decided against it.

      The sergeant concerned in the hoax, a dour conscientious Scotsman called Macready, had climbed up on to the wire cage that enclosed the deck of the cutter and was carefully sweeping away the heavy fronds and vines strewn across it. None of the three other men tried to help him; under their heavy tans their faces looked pinched and drawn, and they sat inertly in a row against a bulkhead. The continuous heat and the massive daily doses of antibiotics drained all energy from them.

      As the sun rose over the lagoon, driving clouds of steam into the great golden pall, Kerans felt the terrible stench of the water-line, the sweet compacted smells of dead vegetation and rotting animal carcases. Huge flies spun by, bouncing off the wire cage of the cutter, and giant bats raced across the heating water towards their eyries in the ruined buildings. Beautiful and serene from his balcony a few minutes earlier, Kerans realised that the lagoon was nothing more than a garbage-filled swamp.

      “Let’s go up on to the deck,” he suggested to Riggs, lowering his voice so that the others would not hear. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

      “Good man. I’m glad to see you’ve really caught on to the grand manner.” Riggs shouted at Macready: “Sergeant, I’m going up to see if I can get the Doctor’s distillation unit to work.” He winked at Kerans as Macready acknowledged this with a sceptical nod, but the subterfuge was harmless. Most of the men carried hip-flasks, and once they secured the sergeant’s grudging approval they would bring them out and settle down placidly until the Colonel returned.

      Kerans climbed over the window-sill into the bedroom overlooking the jetty. “What’s your problem, Colonel?”

      “It’s not my problem. If anything, in fact, it’s yours.”

      They trudged up the staircase, Riggs slapping with his baton at the vines entwined around the rail “Haven’t you got the elevator working yet? I always thought this place was overrated.” However, he smiled appreciatively when they stepped into the clear ivory-cool air of the penthouse, and sat down thankfully in one of the gilt-legged Louis XV armchairs. “Well, this is very gracious. You know, Robert, I think you have a natural talent for beachcombing. I may move in here with you. Any vacancies?”

      Kerans shook his head, pressing a tab in the wall and waiting as the cocktail bar disgorged itself from a fake bookcase. “Try the Hilton. The service is better.”

      The reply was jocular, but much as he liked Riggs he preferred to see as little of him as possible. At present they were separated by the intervening lagoons, and the constant clatter of the galley and armoury at the base were safely muffled by the jungle. He had known each of the twenty men in the unit for at least a couple of years, but with the exception of Riggs and Sergeant Macready, and a few terse grunts and questions in the sick-bay, he had spoken to none of them for six months. Even his contacts with Bodkin he kept to a minimum. By mutual consent the two biologists had dispensed with the usual pleasantries and small-talk that had sustained them for the first two years during their sessions of cataloguing and slide preparation at the laboratory.

      This growing isolation and self-containment, exhibited by the other members of the unit and from which only the buoyant Riggs seemed immune, reminded Kerans of the slackening metabolism and biological withdrawal of all animal forms about to undergo a major metamorphosis. Sometimes he wondered what zone of transit he himself was entering, sure that his own withdrawal was symptomatic not of a dormant schizophrenia, but of a careful preparation for a radically new environment, with its own internal landscape and logic, where old categories of thought would merely be an encumbrance.

      He handed a large Scotch to Riggs, then took his own over to the desk, self-consciously removed some of the books stacked over the radio console.

      “Ever try listening to that thing?” Riggs asked, playfully introducing a hint of reproof into his voice.

      “Never,” Kerans said. “Is there any point? We know all the news for the next three million years.”

      “You don’t. Really, you should switch it on just now and then. Hear all sorts of interesting things.” He put his drink down and sat forward. “For example, this morning you would have heard that exactly three days from now we’re packing up and leaving for good.” He nodded when Kerans looked around in surprise. “Came through last night from Byrd. Apparently the water-level is still rising; all the work we’ve done has been a total waste—as I’ve always maintained, incidentally. The American and Russian units are being recalled as well. Temperatures at the Equator are up to one hundred and eighty degrees now, going up steadily, and the rain belts are continuous as high as the 20th parallel. There’s more silt too------”

      He broke off, watching Kerans speculatively. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you relieved to be going?”

      “Of course,” Kerans said automatically. He was holding an empty glass, and walked across the room, intending to put it on the bar, instead found himself absent-mindedly touching the clock over the mantelpiece. He seemed to be searching the room for something. “Three days, you said?”

      “What do you want—three million?” Riggs grinned broadly. “Robert, I think you secretly want to stay behind.”

      Kerans reached the bar and filled his glass, collecting himself. He had only managed to survive the monotony and boredom of the previous year by deliberately suspending himself outside the normal world of time and space, and the abrupt return to earth had momentarily disconcerted him. In addition, he knew, there were other motives and responsibilities.

      “Don’t be absurd,” he replied easily. “I simply hadn’t realised that we might withdraw at such short notice. Naturally I’m glad to be going. Though I admit I have enjoyed being here.” He gestured at the suite around them. “Perhaps it appeals to my fin de siècle temperament. Up at Camp Byrd I’ll be living in half a mess-tin. The nearest I’ll ever get to this sort of thing will be ‘Bouncing with Beethoven’ on the local radio show.”

      Riggs roared at this display of disgruntled humour, then stood up, buttoning his tunic. “Robert, you’re a strange one.”

      Kerans finished his drink abruptly. “Look, Colonel, I don’t think I’ll be able to help you this morning after all. Something rather urgent has come up.” He noticed Riggs nodding slowly. “Oh, I see. That was your problem. My problem.”

      “Right. I saw her last night, and again this morning after the news came through. You’ll have to convince her, Robert. At present she refuses point-blank to go. She doesn’t realise that this time is the end, that there’ll be no more holding units. She may be able to hang on for another six months, but next March, when the rain belts reach here, we won’t even be able to get a helicopter in. Anyway, by then no one will care. I told her that and she just walked away.”

      Kerans smiled bleakly, visualising the familiar swirl of hip and haughty stride. “Beatrice can be difficult sometimes,” he temporised, hoping that she hadn’t offended Riggs. It would probably take more