The burning world, p.5
The Burning World, page 5
Ransom opened his valise. "All right, let's have a look. Perhaps I'll find a pearl."
When Lomax settled himself, he examined the ear and syringed it, then pronounced it sound.
"I'm so relieved, Charles, it's your neutral touch. Hippocrates would have been proud of you." He eyed Ransom for a moment, and then continued, his voice more pointed: "While you're here there's another little matter I wanted to raise with you. I've been so busy recently with one thing and another, I haven't had a chance until now." Steadying himself with the cane, he lowered his short legs to the floor, accepting Ransom's hand with a flourish of thanks.
Despite Lomax's pose as an elderly invalid, Ransom could feel the hard muscles tightening under the smooth silk suiting, the supple ease with which he moved off on his dapper feet across the floor. What exactly had kept him busy Ransom could only guess. The white shoes and spotless suit indicated a fairly insulated existence during the previous weeks. Perhaps Lomax saw an opportunity to settle some old scores--although responsible for a concert hall and part of the university in Mount Royal, examples of his Japanese, pagoda-ridden phase some years earlier, Lomax had long been _persona non grata_ with the local authorities. No doubt he had been brooding over his revenge for the way they had allowed a firm of commercial builders to complete the second of these projects after local conservative opinion, outraged by the glass minarets and tiled domes rising over their heads, had marched on the city hall. But the officials concerned would by now be safely at the coast, well out of Lomax's reach.
"What's on your mind?" Ransom asked, as Lomax sprayed the air with a few puffs of scent from a gilt plunger on his dressing table.
"Well, Charles . . ." Lomax gazed out at the obscured skyline of the city, from which the smoke rose more and more thickly. To his right the bleached white bed of the river, the channel down its center little wider than a canal, wound its way between the riverside villas. "What's going on out there? You know more about these things than I do."
Ransom gestured at the windows. "It's plain enough. You really must have been busy if you haven't noticed. The entire balance of nature has--"
Lomax snapped his fingers irritably. "Charles, don't talk to me about the balance of nature! If it wasn't for people like myself we'd all be living in mud huts." He peered darkly at the city. "A good thing, too, judging by that monstrous heap. I meant what's happening over there, in Mount Royal? I take it most people have left by now?"
"Nine out of ten. Probably more. There can't be much future for them there."
"That's where you're wrong. There's a great deal of future there, believe me." He walked toward Ransom, surveying him with his head on one side, like a couturier inspecting a suspect mannequin, about to remove a single pin and expose the whole shabby pretense. "And what about you, Charles? Why are you still hanging around? I can't understand why you haven't set off for the coast with everyone else."
"Can't you, Richard? I think you probably can. Perhaps we both have some unfinished business to clear up."
Lomax nodded sagely. "Well put, with your usual tact and discretion. Of course I understand. I hate to pry, but I care for you in a strange sort of way. You began with so many advantages in life--advantages of character, I mean-- and you've deliberately ignored them. There's true nobility, the Roman virtue. Unlike myself; _I_ haven't a moral notion in my head." Thoughtfully, he added: "Until now, that is. I feel I may at last be coming into my own.
Still, what are you actually going to do? You can't just sit on the mud in your little houseboat."
"As a matter of fact I haven't been there for three or four days,"
Ransom said. "The roads are rather crowded, I felt I could better come to terms with certain problems here. I'll have to leave eventually."
"You really think you will?" Lomax drawled. "Perhaps. Certainly everything is going to be very changed here, Charles."
Ransom lifted his valise off the floor. "I've grasped that much." He pointed to the dusty villas along the river. "They look like mud huts already.
We're moving straight back into the past."
Lomax shook his head. "You've got your sense of direction wrong, my boy.
It's the future each of us has to come to terms with now." He straightened up.
"Why don't you come and live here?"
"Thank you, Richard, no."
"Why not?" Lomax pressed. "Let's be honest, you don't intend to leave--I can see that in your face a mile off. The servants will be back soon, for one damn good reason, if no other--" his eyes flashed knowingly at Ransom
"--they're going to find the sea isn't quite so full of water as they think.
Back to old Father Neptune, yes. They'll look after you, and Quilter's a willing lad, full of strange notions, though a bit tiresome at times. You'll be able to moon around, come to terms with Judith--"
Ransom walked to the door. "Richard, I already have done. A long time ago. It's you who's missing the point now."
"Wait!" Lomax scurried after him. "Those of us who stay behind have got to rally together, Charles. I'm damned if I'm going to the sea. All that water--a material I despise, utterly unmalleable, fit only for fountains.
Also, you'll be able to help me with a little project of mine."
"What's that?"
"Well. . . ." Lomax turned his face slyly to the city. "A slight divertissement I've been toying over for some time. Rather spectacular, as a matter of fact. I'd like to tell you, Charles, but it's probably best to wait until we're more committed to each other."
"Very wise." Ransom watched Lomax pivoting on his white shoes, obviously delighted with the idea and only just managing to keep it to himself. The red smoke billows rose from the city, reflected in Lomax's suit and pale puckish face, and for a moment transforming him into a dapper grinning Mephistopheles.
"What are you planning to do?" Ransom asked. "Burn the city down?"
"Charles. . . ." A smile crossed Lomax's face like a slow crack around a vase. "That's a suggestion worth bearing in mind. What a pity Quilter isn't here, he adores ideas like that."
"I daresay." Ransom went over to the door.
This time Lomax made no attempt to stop him. "You know, your idea _does_
have a noble sweep, it's touched my imagination! Great fires have always been the prelude to even greater futures. What a phoenix!"
Ransom left him rhapsodizing on this notion. At the bottom of the staircase he began to cross the hall. The last sucking sounds of the tanker's pump came from the swimming pool.
"Quilty! Is that you, Quilty?" A woman's voice called sleepily from the veranda overlooking the swimming pool.
Ransom hesitated, recognizing the sharp, childlike tone. Trying to disguise his footsteps, he walked on toward the door.
"Quilty! What are you creeping around for--oh, who the hell are you?"
Ransom turned and looked back. Miranda Lomax, the architect's sister, her white hair falling like a shawl around her robe, stood barefoot in the entrance to the hall, scrutinizing Ransom with her small eyes. Although twenty years younger than Lomax--though was she really his sister, Ransom sometimes speculated, or a distant cousin, the castoff partner in an ambiguous _ménage a deux_--her face was an almost perfect replica of Lomax's, with its puckish cheeks, its hard eyes, and the mouth of a corrupt cupid. Her long hair, white as the ash now settling on the lawn outside, made her look prematurely aged, and she was in fact like a wise, evil child. On their occasional meetings, when she arrived, chauffeur-driven, at the hospital on some unspecified errand, he always felt a sharp unease, although superficially she was attractive enough. Perhaps this physical appeal, the gilding of the diseased lily, was what warned him away from her. Lomax's eccentricities were predictable in their way, but Miranda was less self-immersed, casting her eye on the world like a witch waiting for the casual chance.
"Dr. Ransom. . . ." She seemed visibly let down, and turned to go back to the veranda. Then, out of boredom, she beckoned him across the hall. "You look tired, doctor." She slouched off into the veranda, the soiled beachrobe trailing behind her.
The double windows were sealed to keep out the dust, and obscured the green hull of the tanker at the far end of the pool. Despite its length the veranda was claustrophobic, the air dead and unoccupied. A peculiar scent hung about, coming from the foliage of the half dead tropical plants suspended from the wall, their limp fronds outstretched as if trying to reach Miranda on their last gasp.
Miranda slumped back on one of the wicker divans. A basket of fruit spilled across a glass-topped table. She munched half a grape, peering critically at the pip, then waved Ransom in.
"Come on, doctor, don't stand there trying to look enigmatic. I won't compromise you or anything. Have you seen Quilter?"
"He's hunting your houseboy with a couple of dogs," Ransom said. "You may need me later. I'll be at home." Miranda flicked the grapeskin across the floor. He tapped his valise. "I've got to go."
"Where?" She waved his objections aside contemptuously. "Don't be damn silly, there's nowhere to go. Tell me, doctor, what exactly are you up to in Larchmont?"
"Up to?" Ransom echoed. "I'm trying to hold what's left of my practice together."
As she poked among the half-eaten fruit, Ransom looked down at the dirty cuffs and collar of the beachrobe, and at the soiled top of the slip she wore loosely around her breasts. Already she was beginning to look as derelict and faded as her plants--once she ceased to serve Lomax's purposes he would lose interest in her. Yet her skin was of an almost albino whiteness, unmarked by any freckle or blemish.
She noticed him gazing down at her and gave him an evil smirk, pushing back her hair with one wrist in an almost comically arch gesture. "What's the matter, doctor? Do you want to examine me or something?"
"Most definitely not," Ransom said evenly. He pointed to the tanker by the pool. The mechanic was winding the hose onto its winch. "Is Lomax selling his water?"
"Like hell. I wanted him to pour it into the ground near the highway!"
She glanced up sharply. "Has Lomax told you about his plan? I suppose he couldn't contain himself with laughing like a small boy?"
"Do you mean his bonfire party? He invited me to take part."
"Doctor, you should." Miranda looked around with a flourish, the white hair veiling her face like a medusa's crown. "Let me tell you, though, I have a little plan of my own."
"I'm sure you have," Ransom said. "But I'll be leaving for the coast soon."
With a weary shake of the head, Miranda dismissed him. "The coast," she repeated scornfully. "There isn't any coast now. There's only _here_, you'd better face that." When he reached the door she called after him: "Doctor, have you ever seen an army of ants try to cross a stream?"
From the steps Ransom looked out across the dusty rooftops. The smoke pall hung over the distant city, but the air was brighter, reflected off the white ash that covered the chalklike bed of the river.
The mechanic opened the door of the tanker and climbed in. He pulled a rifle from the locker behind the seat and propped it in the window. A small stooped man with a patch over one eye, he glanced suspiciously at Ransom.
Ransom walked over to him. "Are you with the army?" he asked. "Have they started to requisition water now?"
"This is a private gift." The driver glanced up at Lomax's suite, as if unsure of his motives. "For Mount Royal Zoo."
Ransom recognized the green overalls. "Who's in charge now? Dr. Barnes?"
"He's gone. Flown like a bird. Only two of us are left."
"Do you mean that some of the animals are still alive?" Ransom asked. "I thought they'd all been destroyed by now."
"Why?" The driver peered down sharply. "Why should they be?"
Surprised by his aggressive tone, Ransom said: "Well, for their sake, if not for ours. This water won't last forever."
The driver leaned on the sill, pointing a sharp finger at Ransom.
Although obviously not a man given to argument, he seemed to have been irritated by Ransom's remarks.
"They're all right," he said. He gestured at the dusty landscape around them. "This is what they like. A few weeks from now and maybe we'll be able to let them _out!_"
His one eye gleamed in his twisted face with a wild misanthropic hope.
Chapter 4 -- The Drowned Aquarium
For half an hour they drove on toward Mount Royal Zoo, winding in and out of the deserted streets, making detours across the gardens and tennis courts when their way was blocked. Ransom sat forward on the seat beside Whitman, trying to remember the maze of turnings. The zoo was three miles from the center of the city, in what had once been a neighborhood of pleasant, well-tended homes, but the whole area now had the appearance of a derelict shanty town. The husks of trees and box hedges divided the houses from one another, and in the gardens the smoldering incinerators added their smoke to the ash-filled air. Abandoned cars lay by the roadside, or had been jerked out of the way onto the sidewalks, their doors open. They passed an empty shopping center. The storefronts had been boarded up or sealed with steel grilles, and a few lean dogs with arched backs picked among the burst cartons.
The abrupt transition from Larchmont, which still carried a faint memory of normal life, surprised Ransom. Here, within the perimeter of the city, the exodus had been violent and sudden. Now and then a solitary figure hurried head down between the lines of cars. Once an ancient truck crammed with an entire family's furniture and possessions, parents crowded into the driving cabin with three or four children, jerked across an intersection a hundred yards in front of them and disappeared into the limbo of sidestreets.
Half a mile from the zoo, the main avenue was blocked by a dozen cars jammed around a large articulated truck that had tried to reverse into a narrow drive. Whitman swore and glanced briefly to left and right, and without hesitating swung the tanker off the road into the drive of a small singlestory house. They roared past the kitchen windows, crushing a dustbin with the fender, and Ransom saw the startled faces of a gray-haired old couple, a man and his wife, watching them with terrified eyes.
"Did you see them?" Ransom shouted, casting his mind two or three weeks ahead, when the couple would be alone in the abandoned city. "Is no one helping them?"
Whitman ignored the question. Ransom had persuaded the one-eyed driver, against his better judgment, to take him to the zoo, on the pretext that he would be able to add an anti-rabies vaccine to the water. Obsessed with his animals, Whitman seemed to have lost all interest in anyone else.
A white picket fence separated the end of the alley from the drive of the house on the parallel street. A car had stalled between the gates on the edge of the sidewalk. Barely reducing speed, Whitman drove on and flattened the fence. The brittle sticks splintered like a row of matches. Carrying a section on the bumper, they moved past the windows of the house, then slowed fractionally before the impact with the car. Its doors slamming, it was catapulted out mto the road, denting the grille of a small truck, then rolled across the camber and buried its bonnet in the side of an empty convertible.
The windscreen frosted and the windows splintered and fell into the roadway.
Somewhere a dog barked plaintively.
"Look out!" Ransom warned.
Fifty yards away two silent figures watched them from behind the corner of a house. Their black shawls, streaked with white ash, covered their squat, broadcheeked faces. They gazed at Ransom with stony eyes, like the members of some primitive monastic order.
"Fishermen's wives," Ransom said. "They're coming down from the lake."
"Forget them," Whitman said. "You can worry when they start moving in packs."
Ransom sat back, realizing for the first time that even if this grim prospect were ever to materialize he himself would not be there. This change of heart had received its impetus from his meeting with Lomax and his sister.
There he had accepted that the role of recluse and solitary, meditating on his past sins of omission like a desert hermit on the fringes of an abandoned city, would not be viable. The blighted landscape and its empty violence, its loss of time, would summon its own motives.
These latent elements in Lomax and Miranda were already appearing.
Curiously, Lomax was far less frightening than Miranda. Her white hair and utter lack of pity reminded him of the specter that appeared at all times of extreme exhaustion--the yellow-locked, leprous-skinned lamia who had pursued the Ancient Mariner. Perhaps this phantom embodied certain archaic memories of a time, whether past or future, when fear and pain were the most valuable emotions, and their exploitation into the most perverse forms the sole imperative.
It was this sense of remorseless caprice, with its world of infinite possibilities unrestrained by any moral considerations, which had its expression in the figure of the white-haired witch. As he watched the abandoned houses stretching along the ash-covered streets, and heard the restive cries of the animals in the zoo as they skirted its wall, he saw an image of Miranda squatting in her filthy robe by some hearth among the smoking rubble, her old crone's face like a perverted cherub's.
Yet Lomax's references to the future, and his own confusion of the emerging landscape with the past, tantalized him. These last days in Larchmont seemed to offer him a choice of direction, but already he sensed that Lomax had been right. If the future, and his whole sense of time, were haunted by images of his own death, by the absence of identity beyond both his birth and grave, why did these chimeras not coincide more closely with the terrifying vision of Miranda Lomax? He listened to the baying of the animals, deep raucous cries like tearing fabric, thinking to himself: they'll wake the dead.
They approached the gates of the zoo. Whitman stopped the tanker at the metal barrier lowered across the service entrance. Ransom climbed out and raised the boom, and the tanker drove on behind the cages to the pumphouse.
