J. Ballard - The Drought

Ransom followed him down the slope, pausing by a stranded lighter. The sun was now half-hidden by the western horizon, and the smoke plumes overhead were darker and more numerous, but the basin of the river gleamed with an almost spectral whiteness.

"Ransom! Come on, doctor! You can rest later."

Surprised by this brusque call, Ransom looked round at Philip Jordan, uneasy at this association between Quilter, the grotesque Caliban of all his nightmares, and the calm-eyed Ariel of the river. He walked down to the skiff, his feet sinking in the damper mud by the water's edge. As the evening light began to fade, the burnt yellow of the old lion's skin shone in Philip Jordan's arrowlike face. Impatient to leave, he watched Ransom with remote eyes.

Quilter sat alone in the stern, a water-borne Buddha, the shadows of the oily surface mottling his face. As Ransom stepped aboard, he let out two piercing whistles. They echoed away across the bank, reflected against the concrete parapet. One of the dogs appeared. Tail high, it sprang down onto the bank, in a flurry of dust raced to the skiff, leaping aboard over Ransom's shoulder. Settling itself between Quilter's feet, it whined at the dusk. Quilter waited, watching the parapet. A frown briefly crossed his face. The Alsation whined again softly. Quilter nodded to Philip Jordan, and the craft surged away across the darkening mirror of the surface, the peacock's tail sweeping above the water like a jeweled sail.

Three miles away, the intervals in its skyline closed by the dusk, the dark bulk of Mount Royal below the smoke plumes like a somber volcano.

The next morning, after a night of uproar and violence, Ransom began his preparations for departure. Shortly before dawn, when the sounds of gunfire finally subsided, he fell asleep on the settee in the sitting room, the last embers of the burnt-out house across the avenue spurting into the air like clouds of fireflies.

He had reached home at seven o'clock, exhausted after his escape from Jonas and the fishermen. The lakeside town was quiet, a few torches glowing as the Reverend Johnstone's militia patrolled the darkened streets, methodically closing the doors of the abandoned cars and putting out the refuse fires in the gardens. Only Lomax's house showed any lights from its windows.

After taking off his suit, Ransom filled the bath, then knelt over the edge and drank slowly from his hands, massaging his face and neck with the tepid water. He thought of Philip Jordan, swinging the long prow of the skiff between the stranded hulks, the reflection of his narrow face carried away in the dark water like the ghosts of all the other illusions that had sustained Ransom during the previous weeks. The unspoken link between Philip Jordan and the ambiguous figure of Quilter, brooding over his lost dog as he fingered the luminous fan of the peacock's tail, seemed to exclude him from Larchmont even more than the approaching fishermen with their quest for a lost river. All this made him wonder what his own role might become, and the real nature of the return of the desert to the land. As Ransom stepped from the boat he had tried to speak to Philip, but the youth avoided his eyes. With a guttural noise in his throat, he had leaned on his pole and pivoted the boat away into the darkness, leaving Ransom with a last image of Quilter smiling at him like a white idol, his ironic call drifting across the oily water.

For an hour Ransom lay in the bath, resolving to leave as soon as he had recovered. Soothed by the warm water, he was almost asleep when there was a muffled explosion in the distance, and an immense geyser of flame shot up into the night sky. The shaft of glowing air illuminated the tiles in the darkened bathroom, throwing Ransom's shadow across the door as he climbed from the water. For the next few minutes he watched the fire burning strongly like a discharging furnace. As it subsided, the softer light reflected the outbuildings of a small paint factory half a mile from the zoo.

An unsettled silence followed. Dressing himself in a clean suit, Ransom watched from the window. The Reverend Johnstone's house remained quiet, but Lomax's mansion was a hive of activity. Lights flared in the windows and moved up and down the verandas. Someone carried a huge multiple-armed candlestick on to the roof and lifted it high into the air overhead as if inspecting the stars. Torches flickered across the lawn. More and more oil-lamps were lit, until the white rotunda of the house seemed to be bathed by rows of spotlights.

Ransom was preparing a small meal for himself in the kitchen when a brilliant firework display began in Lomax's garden. A score of rockets rose over the house and exploded into colored umbrellas, catherine wheels spun frantically, bursting into cascades of sparks. Roman caidles tied to the trees around the garden poured a pink mushy light into the darkness, setting fire to part of the hedge. In the swerving light Ransom could see the white figures of Lomax and his sister moving about on the roof.

After the initial crescendo, the display continued for ten minutes, the rockets falling away into the darkness toward the city. Whatever Lomax's exact motives, the timing and extravagance of the show convinced Ransom that he was trying to draw attention to himself, that the display was some sort of challenge to anyone still hiding in the deserted outskirts of the city.

Listening to the rockets explode and fall, their harsh sighs carried away over the rooftops, Ransom noticed that the retorts were louder, mingled with hard cracking detonations that rocked the windows with the impact of real explosives. Immediately the firework display ended, and the lights in Lomax's house were smothered. A few cannisters burned themselves out on the lawn.

The whine and crack of the gunfire continued. The shots approached Larchmont, coming at ten-second intervals, as if a single weapon were being used. Ransom went out into the drive. A bullet whipped fifty feet overhead with a thin whoop, lost across the river. The Reverend Johnstone's jeep sped past down the avenue, its lights out, then stopped at the first corner. Three men jumped down and ran between the trees toward the church.

Five minutes later, as he followed them down the road, Ransom could hear the sounds of the organ above the gunfire. The faint chorale droned and echoed, interrupted by the fusillade of shots. Ransom crouched behind the trees, watching as two of Johnstone's men knelt by an overturned car, firing at the porch of the church. As they were driven back, Ransom crossed the road and hid himself in one of the empty houses. The organ continued to play above the sporadic gunfire, and Ransom saw the blond-haired Saul, rifle in hand, looking back uncertainly as he beckoned his men between the cars None of the other fishermen were armed, and they carried staves torn from the fences along the sidewalk.

Ransom waited until they had gone past, and then worked his way between the houses. He slipped through the narrow alleys behind the garages, climbing in and out of open windows until he reached the house facing the church. From the edge of the road he could see through the open doors. The music had stopped, and the tall figure of Jonas leaned from the pulpit, his long arms gesturing to the three men hunched together in the front pew. In the light of the single oil-lamp, his face ffickered as if in some high fever, his hoarse voice trying to shout down the gunfire in the streets.

One of the men stood up and left him, and Ransom saw the spire of the church illuminated against the night sky. Smoke raced along the eaves, and thin bright tongues of flame furled themselves around the tower. Jonas looked up, halted in the middle of his sermon, his hands clutching at the flames racing among the vaulting. The two remaining men turned and ran out, ducking their heads below the smoke.