James Ballard: Dream Cargoes

"A good idea … even if it takes you four or five months. I'll help you out with any food you need. But be careful." Dr. Christine pointed to the weal on his arm, a temporary reaction against some invading toxin in the vine sap. "There's something else that's interesting about this island, isn't there?"

"Well . . . " Johnson stared at the acid stains etching through the Prospero's hull and spreading across the lagoon. He had tried not to think of his responsibility for these dangerous and unstable chemicals. "There are a few other things going on here."

"A few other things?" Dr. Christine lowered her voice. "Look, Johnson, you're sitting in the middle of an amazing biological experiment. No one would allow it to happen anywhere in the world – if they knew, the U.S. Navy would move in this afternoon."

"Would they take away the ship?"

"They'd take it away and sink it in the nearest ocean trench, then scorch the island with flamethrowers."

"And what about me?"

"I wouldn't like to say. It might depend on how advanced . . " She held his shoulder reassuringly, aware that her vehemence had shocked him. "But there's no reason why they should find out. Not for a while, and by then it won't matter. I'm not exaggerating when I say that you've probably created a new kind of life."

As they unloaded the stores Johnson reflected on her words. He had guessed that

the chemicals leaking from the Prospero had set off the accelerated growth, and that the toxic reagents might equally be affecting himself. In Galloway's cabin mirror he inspected the hairs on his chin and any suspicious moles. The weeks at sea, inhaling the acrid fumes. had left him with raw lungs and throat, and an erratic appetite, but he had felt better since coming ashore. He watched Christine step into a pair of thigh-length rubber boots and move into the shallow water, ladle in hand, looking at the plant and animal life of the lagoon. She filled several specimen jars with the phosphorescent water and locked them into the cabinet inside the tent. "Johnson – you couldn't let me see the cargo manifest?"

"Captain … Galloway took it with him. He didn't list the real cargo."

"I bet he didn't." Christine pointed to the vermilion-shelled crabs that scuttled through the vivid filaments of kelp, floating like threads of blue electric cable. "Have you noticed? There are no dead fish or crabs-and you'd expect to see hundreds. That was the first thing I spotted. And it isn't just the crabs-you look pretty healthy . . . "

"Maybe I'll be stronger?" Johnson flexed his sturdy shoulder. ". . . . in a complete daze, mentally, but I imagine that will change. Meanwhile, can you take me onboard? I'd like to visit the Prospero."

"Dr. Christine Johnson held her arm, trying to restrain this determined woman. He looked at her clear skin and strong legs.

"It's too dangerous, you might fall through the deck."

"Fair enough. Are the containers identified?"

"Yes, there's no secret." Johnson did his best to remember. "Organo . . . "

"Organophosphates? Right what I need to know is which containers are leaking and roughly how much. We might be able to work out the exact chemical reactions-you may not realize it, Johnson, but you've mixed a remarkably potent cocktail. A lot of people will want to learn the recipe, for all kinds of reasons ……

Sitting in the colonel's chair on the porch of the beach house, Johnson gazed contentedly at the luminous world around him, a jever-realm of light and life that seemed to have sprung from his own mind. The jungle wall of cycads, giant tamarinds, and tropical creepers crowded the beach to the waterline, and the reflected colors drowned in swaths of phosphorescence that made the lagoon resemble a caldron of electric dyes.

So dense was the vegetation that almost the only free sand lay below Johnson's feet. Every morning he would spend an hour cutting back the flowering vines and wild magnolia that inundated the metal shack. Already the foliage was crushing the galvanized iron roof. However hard he worked-and he found himself too easily distracted-he had been unable to keep clear the r inspection pathways which Christine patrolled on her weekend visits, camera and specimen jars at the ready. Hearing the sound of her inflatable as she neared the inlet of the lagoon, Johnson surveyed his domain with pride. He had found a metal card table buried in the sand and laid it with a selection of fruits he had picked for Christine that morning. To Johnson's untrained eye they seemed to be strange hybrids of pomegranate and pawpaw, cantaloupe and pineapple. There were giant tomatolike berries and clusters of purple grapes each the size of a baseball. Together they glowed through the overheated light like jewels set in the face of the sun.

By now, four months after his arrival on the Prospero, the onetime garbage island had become a unique botanical garden, generating new species of trees, vines, and flowering plants every day. A powerful life engine was driving the island. As she crossed the lagoon in her inflatable, Christine stared at the aerial terraces of vines and blossoms that had sprung up since the previous weekend. The dead hulk of the Prospero, daylight visible through its acid-etched plates, sat in the shallow water, the last of its chemical wastes leaking into the lagoon. But Johnson had forgotten the ship and the voyage that had brought him here, just as he had forgotten his past life and unhappy childhood under the screaming engines of Nassau airport. Lolling back in his canvas chair, on which was stenciled COLONEL POTTLE. U.S. ARMY ENGINEER CORPS, he felt like a plantation owner who had successfully subcontracted a corner of the original Eden. As he stood up to get Christine he thought only of the future, of his pregnant bride and the son who would soon share the island with him.

"Johnson! My God, what have you been doing?" Christine ran the inflatable onto the beach and sat back, exhausted by the buffeting waves. "It's a botanical madhouse!"

Johnson was so pleased to see her that he forgot his regret over their weekly separations. As she explained, she had her student classes to teach, her project notes and research samples to record and catalog.

"Dr. Christine . . . ! I waited all day!" He stepped into the shallow water, a carmine surf filled with glowing animalcula, and pulled the inflatable onto the sand. He helped her from the craft, his eyes avoiding her curving abdomen under the smock.

"Go on, you can stare …… Christine pressed his hand to her stomach. "How do I look, Johnson?"

"Too beautiful for me, and the island. We've all gone quiet."

"That is gallant-you've become a poet, Johnson."

Johnson never thought of other women and knew that none could be so beautiful as this lady biologist bearing his child. He spotted a plastic cooler among the scientific equipment. "Christine – you've brought me ice cream ……

"Of course I have. But don't eat it yet. We've a lot to do, Johnson,"

He unloaded the stores, leaving to the last the nylon nets and spring-mounted steel frames in the bottom of the boat. These bird traps were the one cargo he hated to unload. Nesting in the highest branches above the island was a flock of extravagant aerial creatures, sometimes swallows and finches whose jeweled plumage and tail fans transformed them into gaudy peacocks. He had set the traps reluctantly at Christine's insistence. He never objected to catching the phosphorescent fish with their enlarged fins and ruffs of external gills, which seemed to prepare them for life on the land, or the crabs and snails in their baroque armor. But the thought of Christine taking these rare and beautiful birds back to her laboratory made him uneasy-he guessed they would soon end their days under the dissection knife.

"Did you set the traps for me, Johnson?"