J. Ballard - The Drought

An hour later, when they had not returned, Ransom carried the child down into the pool.

"Doctor, do come in," Miranda greeted him, as he pushed back the flaps of the inner courtyard. "Have I missed another of Richard's firework displays?"

"Probably the last," Ransom said. "It wasn't meant to amuse."

Miranda gestured him into a chair. In a cubicle beyond the curtain the old woman was crooning herself to sleep over the children. Miranda sat up on one elbow. Her sleek face and giant body covered by its black negligee made her look like a large seal reclining on the floor of its pool. Each day her features seemed to get smaller, the minute mouth with its cupid's lips subsiding into the overlaying flesh in the same way that the objects in the drained river had become submerged and smoothed by the enveloping sand.

"Your brother is obsessed by the water in the reservoir," Ransom said. "Have you any influence with Quilter? If Richard goes on provoking him there may be a bloodbath."

"Don't worry." Miranda fanned herself with a plump hand. "Quilter is still a child. He wouldn't hurt a thing."

"Miranda, I've seen him crush a sea gull to death in one hand."

Miranda waved this aside. "That's just to show he understands it. In a way, it's a sign he loves the bird."

"That's a fierce love," Ransom commented.

"What love isn't?"

Ransom looked up, noticing the barely concealed question in her voice. Miranda lay on the divan, watching him with her bland eyes, her face composed. She seemed unaware of the dunes and dust around her. Ransom stood up and went over to her. Taking her hands, he sat down on the divan. "Miranda…" he began. Looking at her great seal-like waist, he thought of the dead fishermen whose bodies had helped to swell its girth, drowned here in its warm seas, unnamed Jonahs reborn in the strange idiot-children. He remembered Quilter and the long knives in the crossed shoulder-straps under his furs, but the danger seemed to recede. The blurring of everything during his journey from the coast carried with it the equation of all emotions and relationships. Simultaneously he would become the children's father and Quilter's brother, Mrs. Quilter's son, and Miranda's husband. Only Lomax, the androgyne, remained isolated.

As he watched Miranda's smile form itself, the image of a river flowed through his mind, a clear stream that broke and illuminated the sunlight.

"Doctor!" He looked up to see Mrs. Quilter's frightened face through the tenting. "There's water leaking!"

Ransom pulled back the canopy. Spilling on to the floor of the pool was a steady stream of water, pouring off the concrete verge above. The water swilled along the floor, soaking the piles of bedding, and then ran to the fireplace in the center where the tiles had been removed.

"Mrs. Quilter, take the children!" Ransom turned to Miranda, who was sitting upright on the divan. "There's water running past the house, it must come from the reservoir! I'll see if I can head Lomax off."

As he climbed the stairway out of the pool the figures of Quilter and Whitman raced past, the dogs at their heels.

Winding between the dunes were a dozen arms of silver water, pouring across the bleached earth from the direction of the reservoir. Ransom splashed across the streams, feeling the pressure of the water as it broke and spurted. Beyond the next line of dunes there was a deeper channel. Three feet deep, the water slid away among the ruined walls, spilling into the cracks and mine-holes, sucked down by the porous earth.

Quilter flung himself along on his stilts. Whitman was pulled by the dogs, hunting bayonet clasped in his teeth. They splashed through the water, barely pausing to watch its progress, and then reached the embankment. Quilter shouted as the long-legged figure of Jonas, kneeling by the water with his net, took off like a startled hare around the verges of the reservoir. The dogs bounded after him, kicking the wet sand into a damp spray.

Ransom leaned against a chimney stump. The reservoir was almost drained, the shallow pool in the center leaking out in a last quiet glide. At four or five points around the reservoir large breaches had been cut in the bank, and the water had poured out through these. The edges of the damp basin were already drying in the sunlight.

Quilter stopped by the bank and gazed down blankly at the vanishing mirror of blue light. His swan's hat hung over one ear. Absentmindedly he pulled it off and let it fall onto the wet sand.

Ransom watched the chase around the opposite bank. Jonas was halfway around the reservoir, arms held out at his sides as he raced up and down the dunes. The dogs gained on him, and began to leap up at his back. Once he stumbled, and a dog tore the black shirt from his shoulders. Knocking the animal away, he ran on, the dogs all around him.

Then two more figures appeared, running out of the dunes across the dog's path, and Ransom heard the roaring of the white lions.

"Catherine!" As he shouted, she was running beside the lions, driving them on with her whip. Behind her was Philip Jordan, a canteen strapped to his back, spear in one hand. He feinted with it at Whitman as the dogs veered and scuttled away from the lions, scrambling frantically across the empty basin of the reservoir. Catherine and the lions ran on, disappearing across the dunes as suddenly as they had come. Still running, Philip Jordan took Jonas' arm, but the older man broke free and darted left and right between the dunes.

A dog crossed the empty pool, tail between its legs, and sped past Ransom. As he and Quilter turned to follow it they saw the tottering figure of Richard Lomax on the bank fifty yards away. The sounds of ffight and pursuit faded, and Lomax's helpless laughter crossed the settling air.

"Quilter, you bloody fool…!" he managed to get out, choking in a paroxysm of mirth. The pleated trousers of his gray silk suit were soaked to the knees, and the ruffs of his jacket were spattered with wet sand. A long-handled spade lay on the bank behind him.

Ransom looked back toward the house. Beyond the bank, where only a few minutes earlier deep streams of water had raced along, the wet channels were drained and empty. The water had sunk without trace into the cracks and holes, and the air was blank and without sparkle.

"I did warn you, didn't I, Quilter?" Lomax called.

Quilter strode slowly along the bank, his eyes on Lomax.

"Now, Quilter, don't get any ideas." Lomax flashed a warning smile at Quilter, then backed away up the slope. On his left, Whitman moved along the far side of the bank to cut him off. "Quilter!" Lomax stopped, putting on a show of dignity. "This is my water, and I do what I choose with it!"

They cornered him among the ruins thirty yards from the reservoir. Behind him, among the dunes, Miranda had appeared with Mrs. Quilter and the children. They sat down on one of the crests to watch.

Lomax began to straighten his sleeves, pulling out the ruffs. Quilter waited ten yards from him, while Whitman crept up slowly with the bayonet, his stump raised. Lomax sidestepped awkwardly, and then the sword-stick flashed in Whitman's face.

"Richard!"

Lomax turned at his sister's voice. Before he could recover, Whitman lunged forward and slashed the blade from his hand, then stabbed him in the midriff like a drover piercing a pig. With a squeal of pain, Lomax tottered backwards against a low wail, and Whitman dropped the bayonet and bent down. With a shout he jerked Lomax's heels into the air and tossed him backwards into an old mineshaft filled with dust. A huge cloud of white talcum shot into the air, churned up by the flailing Lomax, stuck upside-down in the narrow shaft.

Ransom listened as the shouts became more and more muffled. For five minutes the dust continued to rise in small spurts, like the gentle boiling of a lava vent in an almost dormant volcano. Then the movement subsided almost completely, now and then sending up a faint spume.