The Drowned World

The Drowned World Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: The Drowned World Read Online Free PDF
Author: J. G. Ballard
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, SciFi-Masterwork
distant roof of the apartment house. "I'm glad to hear you say so, Doctor," he ventured noncommittally, but Kerans was unable to decide if his scepticism was directed at Beatrice or himself.
    Whether or not they finally stayed behind, Kerans had resolved to maintain the pretense that they were leaving—every spare minute of the next three days would be needed to consolidate their supplies and steal whatever extra equipment they required from the base stores. Kerans had still not made up his mind—once away from Beatrice his indecision returned (ruefully he wondered if she was deliberately trying to confuse him, Pandora with her killing mouth and witch's box of desires and frustrations, unpredictably opening and shutting the lid)—but rather than stumble about in a state of tortured uncertainty, which Riggs and Bodkin would soon diagnose, he decided to postpone a final reckoning until the last moment possible. Much as he loathed the base, he knew that the sight of it actually sailing off would act as a wonderful catalyst for emotions of fear and panic, and any more abstract motives for staying behind would soon be abandoned. A year earlier, he had been accidentally marooned on a small key while taking an unscheduled geomagnetic reading, the departure siren muffled by his headphones as he crouched over his instruments in an old basement bunker. When he emerged ten minutes later and found the base six hundred yards away across a widening interval of flat water he had felt like a child parted forever from its mother, barely managed to control his panic in time to fire a warning shell from his flare pistol.
    "Dr. Bodkin asked me to call you as soon as you arrived, sir. Lieutenant Hardman hasn't been too happy this morning."
    Kerans nodded, glancing up and down the empty deck. He had taken lunch with Beatrice, knowing that the base was deserted in the afternoons. Half the crew were away with either Riggs or the helicopter, the rest asleep in their bunks, and he had hoped to carry out a private tour of the stores and armoury. Now unluckily, Macready, the Colonel's ever-alert watch-dog, was hanging about at his heels, ready to escort him up the companionway to the sick-bay on B-Deck.
    Kerans studiously examined a pair of Anopheles mosquitos which bad slipped through the wire hatch behind him. "They're still getting in," he pointed out to Macready. 'What's happened to the double screening you were supposed to be putting up?"
    Swatting at the mosquitos with his forage cap, Macready looked around uncertainly. A secondary layer of screening around the wire mesh enclosing the base had long been one of Colonel Riggs' pet projects. At times he would tell Macready to detail a squad to carry out the work, but as this involved sitting on a wooden trestle in the open sunlight in the centre of a cloud of mosquitos only a few token sections around Riggs' cabin had been completed. Now that they were moving northward the utility of the project had. faded, but Macready's Presbyterian conscience, once roused, refused to let him rest.
    "I'll get the men on to it this evening, Doctor," he assured Kerans, pulling a ball-pen and note-book from his hip pocket.
    "No hurry, Sergeant, but if you've nothing better to do, I know the Colonel's very keen." Kerans left him squinting along the metal louvres and walked off along the deck. As soon as he was out of sight he stepped through the first doorway.
    C-Deck, the lowest of the three decks comprising the base, contained the crew's quarters and galley. Two or three men lay about among their tropical gear in the cabins, but the recreation room was empty, a radio playing to itself by the table-tennis tournament board in the corner. Kerans paused, listening to the strident rhythms of the guitar music, overlayed by the distant blare of the helicopter circling over the next lagoon, then made his way down the central stair-well which led to the armoury and workshops housed in the pontoon.
    Three-quarters of the
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