J. Ballard - The Drought

The noise drew nearer, the sounds of men running. Ransom went back to the mattress and lay down. The footsteps raced past the warehouse, and the group of ten or so fishermen reached the wharf and one after the other crossed the wooden gangway to the bridge deck. Between them they carried a large bundle in their nets. They leaned over the rail and lowered it down into the hold, steering it over the mattress. Then they released the nets and tipped a halfconscious man onto the mattress.

The bosun in charge of the hunting party came to the rail and peered down at their latest catch. A stocky broadshouldered man of about thirty, he was distinguished from the others by the mop of blond hair over his plump face. Ransom let his jaw hang slackly and fixed his eyes on one of the beams. Two feet from him an old gray-haired tramp snuffled and coughed, moaning to himself.

The blond man nodded to his men. They hauled up their nets and slung them over their shoulders.

A door opened in the bridge-house, revealing the light of a lantern. A tall man with a dark wasted face stepped slowly onto the deck, looking around him with a strong gaze. His black suit was buttoned to the neck, emphasizing the length of his arms and chest.

"Jonas-!" The blond man strode across the deck and reached out to the open door.

"Don't fear the light, Saul." The tall man pushed the arm away. After a pause he slowly closed the door, then moved forward among his men. He nodded to each of them in turn, as if approving their presence on his quarterdeck. In turn they glanced up at him with deferential nods, fingering the nets on their shoulders as if aware that they should be about some useful task. Only the blond-haired Saul seemed to resent his authority. He hung about irritably behind Jonas, tapping the rail as if looking for something else to complain about.

Jonas crossed the bridge and stood by the fore-rail. His slow movements along the deck were full of a kind of deliberate authority, as if this were the largest vessel he had ever commanded and he was carefully measuring himself against it, taking no chances that a sudden swell might not topple him from his bridge. His face had the tanned hardness of beaten leather, drained of all moisture by sun and wind. As he looked into the hold, his long arms reaching out to the rail, Ransom immediately recognized the marked slope of his forehead and the sharp arrowlike cheekbones. His eyes had the overintense look of some halfeducated migrant preacher constantly distracted by the need to find food and shelter.

He nodded at the supine figures of Ransom and the drunken tramp. "Good. Two more to join us in the search. Now back to your nets and sweep the streets. There'll be good catches f or the next two nights."

The men clambered to their feet, but the blond-haired bosun shouted: "Jonas! We don't need the old men now!" He waved contemptuously at the hold. "They're dead bait, they'll just weigh us down!" He launched into a half-coherent tirade, to which Jonas listened impassively, head bowed as if trying to control some inner compulsive nervousness. The men sat down again, grumbling to each other, some agreeing with Saul's complaints with forceful nods, others shifting about uncertainly. The loyalties of the group swerved from one man to the other, held together only by the unstated elements that they all sensed in Jonas' isolated figure.

"Saul!" The tall captain silenced him. He had huge, long hands, which he used like an actor. Watching him, Ransom noticed the calculation in all his movements, stepping about on the high stage of the bridge. "Saul, we reject no one. They need our help now. Remember, there is nothing here."

"But, Jonas-!"

"Saul!"

The blond bosun gave up, nodding to himself with a ticlike jerk. As the men shuffled along the deck and climbed down the gangway, he gave Jonas a bitter backward glance.

Left alone, Jonas gazed across the darkening streets, watching the men go off, nets over their shoulders, with the narrow compassion of a man born into a hard, restricted world. He paced the bridge of his skeleton ship, looking up at the smoke billows rising from the city as if debating whether to trim his sails before a storm.

The old tramp moaned on the mattress beside Ransom, blood running from one ear. His overcoat was stained by some pink fluid that Ransom guessed to be antifreeze. Now and then he woke for a brief, lucid interval, and then sank off again, gazing at the sky with wild, sad eyes.

Ransom stood up and groped across the hold. Above him Jonas came to the rail and beckoned him forwards, smiling at Ransom as if he had been waiting for him to wake. He called the look-out, and a ladder was lowered into the hold.

Painfully, Ransom managed to climb halfway to the rail. Jonas' strong hands reached down and seized his arms. He lifted Ransom onto the deck, then pressed him to sit down.

Ransom pointed to the tramp. "He's injured. Can you bring him up here? I'm a doctor, I'll do what I can."

"Of course." Jonas waved a long arm at the look-out. "Go down and we'll lift him out." As he held the ladder he said to Ransom: "A doctor, good. You'll come with us, we need everyone we can find for the search."

Ransom leaned on the rail, feeling his head slowly clear. "Search for where? What are you looking for?"

"For a new river." Jonas gestured with a sweep of his long arms, encompassing the fading skyline and half the land. "Somewhere there. My bosun tells them to laugh at me, but I have _seen_ it!" He seemed to half-believe his own boast.

The sounds of running feet came from the distant streets. Ransom listened to them approach. He waited as the lookout climbed down into the hold, a net over one shoulder. Within a minute any chance of escape would have gone. Ten feet away was the gangway. Beside the warehouse a small alley led away into the nearby streets.

Jonas leaned over the rail, his long body bent like a gallows. The tramp lay in the cradle of the net, and Jonas' huge arms lifted him slowly into the air, like a fisherman hauling in an immense catch.

Ransom stood up, as if offering to help, then turned and ran for the gangway. As the boards sprang below his feet Jonas cried out, as if trying to warn him of his error, but Ransom was across the wharf and racing up the alley.

Behind the warehouse he saw the fishermen coming down the street, a struggling man caught in the oustretched nets between them. At their head was the blond-haired bosun. He saw Ransom and broke into a run, his short hooked arms flashing in front of him.

Ransom ran on past the houses, but within thirty yards Saul was at his shoulder, his feet kicking at Ransom's as they swerved in and out of the cars.

Suddenly two brown whirling forms leapt out from behind a wall, with a flash of teeth hurled themselves on the bosun. Out of breath, Ransom ran forward for another fifty yards, then stopped behind a car as the two Alsatians snarled and jumped at Saul's head, tearing at his swinging fists.

"Doctor! This way!"

Ransom turned to see the bright-eyed figure of Quilter, the peacock hanging from his waist, waving at him further along the road. Leaving the yelping dogs, Ransom limped forward after the youth as he ran on, the tail speckling at his heels.

Lost in a maze of dusty streets, he followed Quilter across the fences and gardens, sometimes losing sight of the faunlike figure as it leapt through the drifting smoke of the refuse fires. Once, searching about in a walled garden into which he had blundered, he found the youth gazing down at the half-burned carcass of a large dog lying across a heap of embers, his face staring at it with childlike seriousness.

Finally they stepped over a low parapet on to the bank of the river, the distant span of the motorbridge on their left. Below them, across the white bed of the channel, Philip Jordan stood in the stern of his skiff, leaning watchfully on his pole. Quilter strode down the bank, sinking to his knees through the dry crust, the peacock's tail brushing the dust up into Ransom's face.