J. Ballard - Hello America

However, it soon became clear that their reasons for joining the expedition had little to do with its scientific mission, and that the real contraband was their collective fantasy of America. The discovery of the young stowaway, Wayne, had acted as the catalyst – all these private escapees had soon come out into the open, united by their shared dream of ‘freedom’ (the last great illusion of the twentieth century), the same conviction that they would make a new life and fulfil themselves that must have been felt by their distant forbears when they were herded through the immigration pens of Ellis Island.

Yet what could they conceivably find in that landscape of ash and clinker, in those empty cities that required more fuel to run them in a day than the whole planet now consumed in a month? Probably none of them knew – with the single exception of Steiner, standing on the bridge of his sinking ship with his quiet, good-humoured smile. No real captain tried to sink his ship, and Orlowski was sure that Steiner had deliberately ruptured the bows of the Apollo across the submerged statue. The scattered American communities in Western Europe still offered a small reward for the whereabouts of the statue, but Steiner’s motives would be more complex.

Orlowski thought of the hours which the Captain and his young stowaway spent going through the old Time and Look magazines, almost drugged by the lavish advertisements. Then there had been the embarrassing matter of the christening of the ship – officially Survey Vessel 299. Orlowski had proposed the E. F. Schumacher, but far from supporting him everyone had howled him down. At Steiner’s prompting they unanimously accepted Wayne’s suggestion, the Apollo. A sentimental gesture, an invitation to think big instead of small, to shoot for the moon, which Orlowski had tolerated, slightly moved himself by the thought that in a way they were duplicating Armstrong’s voyage. But the terrain of America would be as desolate as the Moon’s. He would have to watch everything, all kinds of psychological mischief could be hatched up here.

Yes, he decided, they would quickly establish the source of the nuclear leaks, radio the full findings to the monitoring station at Stockholm and then return to Europe at the first opportunity, leaving to a larger and better-equipped expedition the task of neutralising the danger.

Meanwhile he would make the most of the enforced time here, collect a few souvenirs (through the strange gold light over the Brooklyn shore he could actually see an old Exxon gasoline sign, worth a good few roubles) for Valentina and the girls. And travellers’ tales, useful at Ministry cocktail parties. This brooding, ancient landscape with its dead cities—for a moment Orlowski imagined himself being colonial administrator of New York, pro-consul of thousands of miles of arid wilderness. The prospect steadied him as he prepared to step ashore. This was a large land, waiting for a large man to rule it…

As he wiped the soot from his elegant hands on to the midship’s rail, Dr Paul Ricci was thinking: So this is New York – or was. Greatest city of the twentieth century, here you heard the heart-beat of international finance, industry and entertainment. Now it’s as remote from the real world as Pompeii or Persepolis. It’s a fossil, my God, preserved here on the edge of the desert like one of those ghost towns in the Wild West. Did my ancestors really live in these vast canyons? They came on a cattle boat from Naples in the 1890s, and a century later went back to Naples on a cattle boat. Now I’m making another stab at it.

Still, the place has possibilities, all sorts of dormant things might be lying here, waiting to be roused. Like the beautiful Professor Summers. She’s standoffish now in her moody way, but once we hit the expedition trail, the dust on our bronzed bodies, the smell of horses between our thighs, the hint of danger as we track down this radiation leak (no doubt a ruptured reactor core, they were in such a hurry to get out they didn’t pack enough concrete around them), she’ll behave a little differently…

But it’s hot here, all right, I can see the heat shimmering off the dunes. Better, though, than being back in Turin, that small scandal over the Institute Library Fund was about to explode. I would have had to testify at the inquiry, my own role would have been difficult to conceal…professional disgrace, imagine spending the next ten years as a factory chemist at the fishmeal processing plant in Trieste, a shared room in a dormitory, the stink of dried squid. No, even this empty city is preferable. Whatever else you might say about these people, they had size and style. Maybe great-grandfather Ricci did come from here. I can see him in a big car cruising down Broadway, what did they call that huge chrome beast – yes, a Cadillac.

For Professor Summers, her first impressions of Manhattan were still confused by the Apollo’s mad dash across the wreck-strewn bay and their collision with the submerged statue. What was Steiner playing at, this curious man with his intense, unsettling eyes, forever gazing at her? The empty metropolis now only a stone’s throw away had the same disconcerting effect, it already seemed to be trying to provoke her. There was an undeniable abrasive glamour about New York even now, a whiff of the energy and enterprise of the ruthless men of affairs who had erected these skyscrapers. She had been brought up in the American ghetto in Berlin (Anna Sommer was her Germanised name, which on a strange impulse she had re-Anglicised back to Anne Summers after her first night in Plymouth), and New York occupied a special place in the expatriate memory. There was even a cocktail called a Manhattan, a confection of whiskey and vermouth. Native Europeans were always chiding their American-descended cousins for their forbears’ vulgar tastes, but Anne loved the elusive flavour of the Manhattan, with its dark memories of glamorous hotels, limousines and gangsters…

But back to business, this ‘cocktail’ in front of her might contain as one of its mystery ingredients a dangerous radioactive isotope. Fortunately she had kept her scientific work up to scratch during the voyage, five hours a day in the laboratory despite Ricci’s protests and seasickness. Clearly the Apollo would be in no position for some time to evacuate them in an emergency. The latest reports from Stockholm suggested that the fall-out vectors in the North American airstream emanated from somewhere south of the Great Lakes – Cincinnati and Cleveland. Curiously, although she had not confided this to Ricci, the isotopes involved were barium and lanthanum, those released by old-fashioned atomic weapons, the war-heads of tactical artillery shells, for example. Perhaps the corrosion of a century had cut its way into one of the old nuclear arsenals.

Meanwhile she would rigorously carry out the thrice-daily seismographic and radiation measurements, keep an eye on Ricci (far too slapdash, and clearly prepared to steal any credit), and protect her immaculate white skin from this barbarous sun. Why had she volunteered in the first place? – leaving the small but comfortable flatlet in Spandau; her attractive if earnest lover, a middle-aged pharmacologist at the State Veterinary Collective; the extra meat ration once a month. But despite all these, she needed to breathe, to extend herself, even to dream. Avoiding Steiner’s eyes, she looked up at the huge, raw buildings, with their brute strength. She knew that she had come to the last place on earth, where dreams could still take wing.

As for Captain Steiner, he stood alone on his bridge, pressing his tired back against the spokes of the helm. Out of curiosity he had been watching the behaviour of his crew and passengers, trying to guess how they would react in the next few minutes. It had been a long voyage, a confidence trick of a special kind, with many risky decisions to be made. But he had beached the leaking Apollo as planned on the silt bank beside the Cunard pier, in the very space once occupied by the great Queens. Here she would sit long enough for him to carry out the rest of his private quest.