Brian Aldiss - The Complete Short Stories - The 1950s

‘Of course not,’ my half-brother said scornfully. ‘Surely you must see the implications of it? Something highly unprecedented has occurred.’

‘But surely a mere three inches of water …’

At that he laughed briefly. Even J-Casta permitted himself a snort.

‘Lake Victoria is an inland sea,’ Jubal said grimly. ‘It’s as big as Tasmania. Three inches all over that means many thousands of tons of water. Casta, I think we’ll get down to Mokulgu; it won’t do any harm to alert the first aid services, just in case they’re needed. Got your tracer?’

‘Yes, boss. I’m coming.’

Jubal patted Sloe’s arm, nodded to me and left without relaxing his worried look. He and J-Casta shortly appeared outside. They bundled into a float, soared dangerously close to a giant walnut tree and vanished into the night.

Nervously, Sloe put down her cheroot and did not resume it. She fingered a dial and the windows opaqued.

‘There’s an ominous waiting quality out there I don’t like,’ she said, to explain our sudden privacy.

‘Should I be feeling alarmed?’ I asked.

She flashed me a smile. ‘Quite honestly, yes. You don’t live in our world, Rog, or you would guess at once what has happening at Lake Victoria. They’ve just finished raising the level again; for a long time they’ve been on about more pressure, and the recent heavy rains gave them their chance. It seems to have been the last straw.’

‘And what does this three-inch drop mean? Is there a breach in the dam somewhere?’

‘No. They’d have found that. I’m afraid it means the bed of the lake has collapsed somewhere. The water’s pouring into subterranean reservoirs.’

The extreme seriousness of the matter was now obvious even to me. Lake Victoria is the source of the White Nile; if it ceased to feed the river, millions of people in Uganda and the Sudan would die of drought. And not only people: birds, beasts, fish, insects, plants.

We both grew restless. We took a turn outside in the cool night air, and then decided we too would go down to the town. All the way there a picture filled my head: the image of that great dark lake emptying like a wash-basin. Did it drain in sinister silence, or did it gargle as it went? Men of action forget to tell you vital details like that.

That night was an anticlimax, apart from the sight of the full moon sailing over Mount Kangosi. We joined Jubal and his henchman and hung about uneasily until midnight. As if an unknown god had been propitiated by an hour’s sleep sacrificed, we then felt easier and retired to bed.

The news was bad next morning. Jubal was already back in town; Sloe and I breakfasted alone together. She told me they had been informed that Victoria had now dropped thirteen and a half inches; the rate of fall seemed to be increasing.

I flew into Mokulgu and found Jubal without difficulty. He was just embarking on one of the Dam Authority’s survey floats with J-Casta.

‘You’d better come, too, Rog,’ he shouted. ‘You’ll probably enjoy the flight more than we shall.’

I did enjoy the flight, despite the circumstances. A disturbance on Lake Tanganyika’s eastern fringes had been observed on an earlier survey, and we were going to investigate it

‘You’re not afraid the bed will collapse here, too, are you?’ I asked.

‘It’s not that,’ Jubal said. ‘The two hundred miles between us and Victoria is a faulty region, geologically speaking. I’ll show you a map of the strata when we get back. It’s more than likely that all that runaway subterranean water may be heading in our direction; that’s what I’m afraid of. The possibility has been known for a long while.’

‘And no precautions taken?’

‘What could we do but cross our fingers? The possibility exists that the Moon will spiral to Earth, but we don’t all live in shelters because of it.’

‘Justifying yourself, Jubal?’

‘Possibly,’ he replied, looking away.

We flew through a heavy rain shower, which dappled the grey surface of the lake. Then we were over the reported disturbance. A dull brown stain, a blot on a bright new garment, spread over the water, from the steep eastern shore to about half a mile out.

‘Put us down, pilot,’ Jubal ordered.

We sank, and kissed the lake. Several hundred yards away rose the base of Mount Kangosi. I looked with admiration up the slope; great slabs of rock stood out from the verdure; crouching at the bottom of this colossus was a village, part of it forced by the steepness of the incline to stand out on piles into the lake.

‘Leave everything to me, boss,’ J-Casta said, grabbing a hand asdic from the port locker and climbing out on to the float. We followed. It seemed likely that the disturbance was due to a slight subsidence in the side of the lake basin. Such subsidences, Jubal said, were not uncommon, but in this case it might provide a link with Lake Victoria. If they could pin-point the position of the new fault, frogmen would be sent down to investigate.

‘We’re going to have company,’ Jubal remarked to me, waving a hand over the water.

A dozen or so dugouts lay between us and the shore. Each bore two or three shining-skinned fishermen. The two canoes nearest us had swung round and were now being paddled towards our float.

I watched them with more interest than I gave to the asdic sweep. Men like these sturdy fishermen had existed here for countless generations, unchanged: before white men had known of them, before Rome’s legions had destroyed the vineyards of Carthage, before – who knows if not before the heady uprush of civilisation elsewhere? – such men had fished quietly in this great lake. They seem not to have advanced at all, so rapidly does the world move; but perhaps when all other races have fallen away, burnt out and exhausted, these steady villages will come into a kingdom of their own. I would elect to live in that realm.

A man in the leading canoe stood up, raising his hand in greeting. I replied, glancing over his shoulder at the curtain of green behind him. Something caught my eye.

Above some yards of bare rock, a hundred feet up the slope, two magnificent Mvules – African teak trees – grew. A china blue bird dipped suddenly from one of the trees and sped far and fast away over the water, fighting to outpace its reflection. And the tree itself began to cant slowly from the vertical into a horizontal position.

Jubal had binoculars round his neck. My curiosity aroused, I reached to borrow them. Even as I did so, I saw a spring of water start from the base of the Mvules. A rock was dislodged. I saw it hurtle down into bush below, starting in turn a trail of earth and stones which fell down almost on to the thatched roofs of the village. The spring began to spurt more freely now. It gleamed in the sun: it looked beautiful but I was alarmed.

‘Look!’ I pointed.

Both Jubal and the fisherman followed the line of my outstretched arm. J-Casta continued to bend over his metal box.

Even as I pointed, the cliff shuddered. The other Mvule went down. Like an envelope being torn, the rock split horizontally and a tongue of water burst from it. The split widened, the water became a wall, pouring out and down.

The sound of the splitting came clear and hard to our startled ears. Then came the roar of the water, bursting down the hillside. It washed everything before it. I saw trees, bushes and boulders hurried down in it. I saw the original fissure lengthen and lengthen like a cruel smile, cutting through the ground as fast as fire. Other cracks started, running uphill and across: every one of them began to spout water.

The fishermen stood up, shouting as their homes were swept away by the first fury of the flood.

And then the entire lower mountainside began to slip. With a cumulative roar, mud, water and rock rolled down into the lake. Where they had been, a solid torrent cascaded out, one mighty wall of angry water. The escaping flow from Lake Victoria had found its outlet!