The Terminal Beach, page 1
Penguin Books
The Terminal Beach
j. 13. Ballard was born in Shanghai of English parents in I93O and lived there until he was fifteen. During the war he was interned by the Japanese in a civilian prison camp. He was repatriated in 946, and after leaving school read medicine at King's College, Cambridge. His first science fiction story was published in I956. From the start he pioneered a new form of science fiction, and was the originator of the so-called
'New Wave' that challenged the American science fiction of the 95os. He believes that science fiction is the authentic literature of the Twentieth Century.
His books published in Penguim are The Drought, The Drowned Worm and The Wind From Nowhere.
His other books include Crash and The Atrocity Exhibition.
j. G. Ballard
The Terminal Beach
Penguin Books
Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworttb
Middesex, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,
Victoria, Australia
First published by Victor Gollancz x96
Published in Penguin Books x 966
Reprinted 974
Copyright ©J. G. Ballard, 964
Made and printed in Great Britain by
Hunt Bamard Printing Ltd, Aylebury, Bucks
Set in Monotype Baskerville
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it ia published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser
Contents
A Question of Reentry
7
The Drowned Giant
40
End-Game '
52
The Illuminated Man
75
The Reptile Enclosure
x 07
The Delta at Sunset
x x 9
The Terminal Beach
36
Deep End
58
The Volcano Dances
7
Billennium
77
The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon
94
The Lost Leonardo
2o4
A Question of Reentry
All day they had moved steadily upstream, occasionally pausing to raise the propeller and cut away the knots of weed, and by three o'clock had covered some seventy-five miles.
Fifty yards away, on either side of the patrol launch, the high wall's of the jungle river rose over the water, the unbroken massif of the mato grosso which swept across the Amazonas from Campos Buros to the delta of the Orinoco. Despite their progress - they had set off from the telegraph station at Tres Buritis at seven o'clock that morning- the river showed no inclination to narrow or alter its volume. Sombre and unchanging, the forest followed its course, the aerial canopy shutting off the sunlight and cloaking the water along the banks with a black velvet sheen. Now and then the channel would widen into a flat expanse of what appeared to be stationary water, the slow oily swells which disturbed its surface transforming it into a sluggish mirror of the distant, enigmatic sky, the islands of rotten baha logs refracted by the layers of haze like the drifting archipelagos of a dream. Then the channel would narrow again and the cooling jungle darkness enveloped the launch.
Although for the first few hours Connolly had joined Captain Pereira at the rail, he had become bored with the endless green banks of the forest sliding past them, and since noon had remained in the cabin, pretending to study the trajectory maps. The time might pass More slowly there, but at least it was cooler and less depressing. The fan hummed and pivoted, and the clicking of the cutwater and the whispering plaint of the current past the gliding hull soothed the slight headache induced by the tepid beer he and Pereira Had shared after lunch.
This first encounter with the jungle had disappointed Connolly. His previous experience had been confined to the Dredging Project at Lake Maracaibo, where the only forests 7
consisted of the abandoned oil rigs built out into the water.
Their rusting h, lks, and the huge draglines and pontoons of the dredging teams, were fauna of a man-made species. In the Amazonian jungle he had expected to see the full variety Of nature in its richest and most colourful outpouring, but instead it was nothing More than a moribund tree-level swamp, unweeded and overgrown, if anything More dead than alive, an example of bad husbandry on a continental scale. The margins of the river were rarely well-defined; except where enough rotting trunks had gathered to form a firm parapet, there were no formal banks, and the shallows ran off among the undergrowth for a hundred yards, irrigating huge areas of vegetation that were already drowning in moisture.
Counolly had tried to convey his disenchantment to Pereira, who now sat under the awning on the deck, placidly smoking a cheroot, partly to repay the captain for his polite contempt for Connolly and everything his mission implied.
Like all the officers of the Native Protection Missions whom Counolly had met, first in Venezuela and now in Brazil, Pereira maintained a proprietary outlook towards the jungle and its mystique, which would not be breached by any number of fresh-faced investigators in their crisp drill uniforms.
Captain Pereira had not been impressed by the us flashes on Cormolly's shoulders with their orbital monogram, nor by the high-level request for assistance cabled to the Mission three weeks earlier from Brasilia. To Pcreira, ob-vionsly, the office suites in the white towers at the capital were as far away as New York, London or Babylon.
Superficially, the captain had been helpful enough, supervising the crew as they stowed Connolly's monitoring equipment iboard, checking his Smith & Wesson and exchanging a pair of defective mosquito boots. As long as Connolly had wanted to, he had conversed away amiably, pointing out this and that feature of the landscape, identifying an unusual bird or lizard on an overhead bough.
But his indifference to the real object of the mission - he had given a barely perceptible nod when Connolly described it - soon became obvious. It was this neutrality which irked Connolly, implying that Pereira spent all his time ferrying 8
uN investigators up and down the rivers after their confounded lost space capsule like so many tourists in search of some non-existent E1 Dorado. Above all there was the suggestion that Cormolly and the hundreds of other investigators deployed around the continent were being too persistent.
When all was said and done, Pereira implied, five years had elapsed Since the returning lunar space-craft, the Goliath 7, had plummeted into the South American land mass, and to
prolong the search indefinitely was simply bad form, even, perhaps, necrophilic. There was not the faintest chance of the pilot still being alive, so he should be decently forgotten, given a statue outside a railway station or airport car park and left to the pigeons.
Connolly would have been glad to explain the reasons for the indefinite 'duration of the search, the overwhelming moral reasons, apart from the political and technical ones.
He would have liked to point out that the lost astronaut, Colonel Francis Spender, by accepting the immense risks of the flight to and from the Moon, was owed the absolute discharge of any assistance that could be given him. He would have liked to remind Pereira that the successful landing on the Moon, after some half-dozen fatal attempts,- at least three of the luckless pilots were still orbiting the Moon in their dead ships - was the culmination of an age-old ambition with profound psychological implications for mankind, and that the failure to find the astronaut after his return might induce unassuageable feelings of guilt and inadequacy.
(If the sea was a symbol of the unconscious, was space perhaps an image of unfettered time, and the anablity to penetrate it a tragic exile to one of the limbos of eternity, a symbolic death in life ?)
But Captain Pereira was not interested. Calmly inhaling the scented aroma of his cheroot, he sat imperturbably at the rail, surveying the fetid swamps that moved past them.
Shortly before noon, when they had covered some forty miles, Cormolly pointed to the remains ora bamboo landing stage elevated on high poles above the bank. A threadbare rope bridge trailed off among the mangroves, and through an embrasure in the forest they could see a small rearing 9
where a clutter of abandoned adobe huts dissolved like refuse heaps in the sunlight.
'Is this one of their camps ?'
Pereira shook his head. 'The Espirro tribe, closely related to the Nambikwaras. Three years ago one of them carried influenza back from the telegraph station, an epidemic broke out, turned into a form of pulmonary edema, within forty-eight hours three hundred Indians had died. The whole group disintegrated, only about fifteen of the men and their families are still alive. A great tragedy.'
They moved forward to the bridge and stood beside the tall Negro helmsman as the two other members of the crew began to shackle sections of fine wire mesh into a cage over the deck.
Pereira raised his binoculars and scanned the river ahead.
'Since the Espirros vacated the area the Nambas have begun to forage down this far. We won't see any of them, but it's as well to be on the safe side.'
'Do you mean they're hostile ?' Connolly asked.
'Not in a conscious sense. But the various groups which comprise the Nambikwaras are permanently feuding with each other, and this far from th e settlement we might easily be involved in an opportunist attack. Once we get to the settlement we'll be all right - there's a sort of precarious equilibrium there. But even so, have your wits about you. As you'll see, they're as nervous as birds.'
'How does Ryker manage to keep out of their way ? Hasn't he been here for years ?'
'About twelve.' Pereira sat down on the gunwale and eased his peaked cap off his forehead. 'Ryker is something of a special case. Temperamentally he's rather explosive - I meant to warn you to handle him carefully, he might easily whip up an incident- but he seems to have manoeuvred himself into a position of authority with the tribe. In some ways he's become an umpire, arbitrating in their various feuds.
How he does it I haven't discovered yet; it's quite uncharacteristic of the Indians to regard a white man in that
way. However, he's useful to us, we might eventually set up a mission here. Though that's next to impossible - we tried it once and the Indians just moved 5oo miles away.'
IO
Connolly looked back at the derelict landing stage as it disappeared around a bend, barely distinguishable from the jungle, which was as dilapidated as this sole mournful artifact.
'What on earth made Ryker come out here ?' He had heard something in Brasilia of this strange figure, sometime journalist and man of action, the self-proclaimed world citizen who at the age o£forty-two, after a life spent venting his spleen on civilization and its gimcrack gods, had suddeniy
,disappeared into the Amazonas and taken up residence with one of the aboriginal tribes. Most latter-day Gauguins were absconding confidence men or neurotics, but Ryker seemedto be a genuine character in his own right, the last of a rae off true individualists retreating before the barbed-wire fences and regimentation of' twentieth century life. But his chosen paradise seemed pretty scruffy and degenerate, Counolly reflected, when one saw it at close quarters.
However, as long as the man could organize the Indians into a few search parties he would serve his purpose. 'I can't unde-rstand why Ryker should pick the Amazon basin. The South Pacific yes, but from all I've heard - and you've confirmed just now- the Indians appear to be a pretty diseased and miserable lot, hardly the noble savage.'
Captain Pereira shrugged, looking away across the oily water, his plump sallow f'aee motfied by the lace-like shadow of the wire netting. He belched disereefiy to himself, and then adjusted his holster belt. 'I don't know the South Pacific, but I should guess it's also been oversentimentalized.
Ryker didn't come here for" scenic tour. I suppose the Indians are diseased and, yes, reasonably miserable. Within fifty years they'll probably have died out. But for the time being they do represent a certain form of untamed, natural existence, which after all made us what we are. The hazards facing them are immense, and they survive.' He gave Connolly a sly smile. 'But you must argue it out with Ryker.'
They lapsed into silence and sat by the rail, watching the river unfurl itself. Exhausted and collapsing, the great trees crowded the banks, the dying expiring among the living, jostling each other aside as fi for a last despairing assault on I
the patrol boat and its passengers. For the next half an hour, until they opened their lunch packs, Connolly searched the tree-tops for the giant bifurcated parachute which should have carried the capsule to earth. Virtually impermeable to the atmosphere, it would still be visible, spreadeagled like an enormous bird over the canopy of leaves. Then, after drinking a can of Pereira's beer, he excused himself and went down to the cabin.
The two steel cases containing the monitoring equipment had been stowed under the chart table, and he pulled them out and checked that the moisture-proof seals were still intact.
The chances of making visual contact with the capsule were infinitesimal, but as long as it was intact it would continue to transmit both a sonar and radio beacon, admittedly over little More than twenty miles, but sufficient to identify its whereabouts to anyone in the immediate neighbourhood.
However, the entire northern half of the South Americas had been covered by successive aerial sweeps, and it seemed unlikely that the beacons were still operating. The disappearance of the capsule argued that it had sustained at least minor damage, and by now the batteries would have been corroded by the humid air.
Recently certain of the un Space Department agencies had begun to circulate the unofficial view that Colonel Spender had failed to select the correct attitude for reentry and that the capsule had been vaporized on its final descent, but Connolly guessed that this was merely an attempt to pacify world opinion and prepare the way for the resumption of the space programme. Not only the Lake Maracaibo Dredging Project, but his own presence on the patrol boat, indicated that the Department still believed Colonel Spender to be alive, or at least to have survived the landing. His final re-entry orbit should have brought him down into the landing zone 5oo miles to the east of Trinidad, but the last radio contact before the ionization layers around the capsule severed transmission indicated that he had under-shot his'
trajectory and come down somewhere on the South American land-mass along a line linking Lake Maracaibo with Brasilia.
Footsteps sounded down the companionway, and Captain Pereira lowered hirnselfinto the cabin. He tossed his hat on to the chart table and sat with his back to the fan, letting the air blow across his fading hair, carrying across to Connolly a sweet unsavoury odour of garlic and cheap pomade.
'You're a sensible man, Lieutenant. Anyone who stays up on deck is crazy. However,' - he indicated Connolly's pallid face and hands, a memento of a long winter in New York 'in a way it's a pity you couldn't have put in some sunbath-lng.
That metropolitan pallor will be quite a curiosity to the Indians.' He smiled agreeably, showing the yellowing teeth which made his olive complexion even darker. 'You may well be the first white man in the literal sense that the Indians have seen.'
'What about Ryker ? Isn't he white ?'
'Black as a berry now. Almost indistinguishable from the Indians, apart from being seven feet tall.' He pulled over a collection of cardboard boxes at the far end of the seat and began to rummage through them. Inside was a collection of miscellaneous oddments - balls of thread and raw cotton, lumps of wax and resin, urucu paste, tobacco and seed-beads.
'These ought to assure them of your good intentions.'
Cormolly watched as he fastened the boxes together. 'How many search parties will they buy ? Are you sure you brought enough ? I have a fifty-dollar allocation for gifts.'
'Good,' Pereira said matter-of-facfiy. 'We'll get some More beer. Don't worry, you can't buy these people, Lieutenant.
You have to rely on their good-will; this rubbish will put them in the right frame of mind to talk.'
Connolly smiled dourly 'I'm 'fiaore keen on getting them off their hunkers and out into the bush. How are you going to organize the search parties ?'
'They've already taken place.'
'What ?' Connolly sat forward. 'How did that happen ? But they should have waited' - he glanced at the heavy monitor-lng equipment - 'they can't have known what -'
Pereira silenced him with a raised hand. 'My dear Lieutenant.
Relax, I was speaking figuratively. Can't you understand, these people are nomadic, they spend all their lives continually on the move. They must have covered every square x3
foot of this forest a hundred times in the past five years. There's no need to send them out again. Your only hope is that they may have seen something and then persuade them to talk.'
Connolly considered this, as Pereira unwrapped another parcel. 'All right, but I may want to do a few patrols. I can't just sit around for three days.'
'Naturally. Don't worry, Lieutenant. If your astronaut came down anywhere within 5oo miles of here they'll know about it.' He unwrapped the parcel and removed a small teak cabinet. The front panel was slotted, and lifted to reveal the face of a large ormolu table clock, its Gothic hands and numerals below a gilded belldome. Captain Pereira compared its time with his wrist-watch. 'Good. Running perfectly, it hasn't lost a second in forty-eight hours. This should put us in Ryker's good books.'
Connolly shook his head. 'Why on earth does he want a clock? I thought the man had turned his back on such things.'
Pereira packed the tooled metal face away. 'Ah, well, whenever we escape from anything we always carry a memento of it with us. Ryker collects clocks; this is the third I've bought for him. God knows what he does with them.'
