Yale 01 - The Circulation Of The Blood Read online

  As the day grew hotter, the bustle of preparation for departure increased. Yale and his wife were invited aboard the trawler for a farewell lunch, which was eaten under the deck canopy. Although Yale tried to talk to Philip, his son had retired behind his morose mood and would not be drawn; Yale comforted himself by reflecting that they would meet again in the U.K. in a very few days.

  The ship sailed shortly after noon, sounding its siren when it moved through the narrow mouth of the reef as it had done when it entered. Yale and Cat waved for a while from the shade of the palms, and then turned away.

  'Poor Philip! I hope his holiday did him good. That troubled adolescent phase is hard to deal with. I went through just the same thing, I remember!'

  'Did you, Clem? I doubt it.' She looked about her desperately, at her husband's gentle face, at the harsh sea on which the trawler was still clearly visible, up at the heavy leaves of palm above them. In none of these elements, it seemed, could she fund help. She burst out, 'Clem, I can't keep it a secret, I must tell you now, I don't know what you'll say or what it'll do to you, but, these last few weeks, Philip and I have been lovers!'

  He looked at her in a puzzled way, eyes narrow behind his lenses, as if he could not understand the expression she had used.

  'That's why he went off the way he did! He couldn't bear to be around when you were. He begged me never to tell you… He… Clem, it was all my fault, I should have known better.' She paused and then said, 'I'm old enough to be his mother.'

  Yale stood very still, and expelled one long noisy gasp of breath.

  'You - you couldn't, Caterina! He's only a boy!'

  'He's as adult as you are!'

  'He's a boy! You seduced him!'

  'Clem, try to see. It was the fräulein originally. She did it to him - or he started it. I don't know which way it was. But it's a small island. I came on them one afternoon, both naked, inside the old fort. I sent her away but somehow the poison spread. I… After I'd seen him…'

  'Oh, God, it's incest!'

  'You use these stupid old-fashioned terms!'

  'You cow! How could you do it with him?' He turned away. He started walking. She did not stop him. She could not stand still herself. Swinging about in misery, she burst weeping into the house and flung herself on to her unmade bed.

  For three hours, Yale stood on the north-west edge of the island, staring paralysed into the sea. In that time, he hardly moved, except once to unhook his spectacles and wipe his eyes. His heart laboured and he glared out at the immensity before him as if challenging it.

  She came up quietly behind him, bringing him a glass of water in which she had dissolved lemon crystals.

  He took the glass, thanked her quietly, and drank its contents, all without looking at her.

  'If it makes any difference, Clement, I love and admire you very much. I'm not fit to be your wife, I know, and I think you are a saint. Much as I hurt you, your hurt was all for what I might have done to Philip, wasn't it?'

  'Don't be silly! I shouldn't have left you all these months. I exposed you to temptation.' He looked at her, his face stern. 'I'm sorry for what I said - about incest. You are not related to Philip, except by marriage. In any case, man is the only creature that puts a ban on incest. Most other creatures, including the higher apes, find no harm in it. You can define man as the species that fears incest. Some psycho-analysts define all mental illness as incest-obsessions, you know. So I'm -'

  'Stop!' It was almost a scream. For a moment she fought with herself, then she said, 'Look, Clem, talk about us, for God's sake, not about what the psycho-analysts say or what the higher apes do! Talk about us! Think about us!'

  'I'm sorry, I'm a pedant, I know, but what I meant -'

  'And don't, don't, don't apologize to me! I should be apologizing to you, kneeling, begging for forgiveness! Oh, I feel so awful, so guilty, so desperate! You have no idea what I've been through!'

  He seized her painfully and held her, looking for the moment very like his son. 'You're getting hysterical! I don't want you kneeling to me, Cat, though thank heavens it has always been one of your dearest traits that you acknowledge your errors in a way I can never manage with mine. You can see what you've done was wrong. I've thought it all over, and I can see the fault was largely mine. I shouldn't have left you isolated here on Kalpeni for so long. This won't make any difference between us, once I've got over the shock. I've thought it over and I think I must write to Philip and tell him that you've told me everything, and that he is not to feel guilty.'

  'Clem - how can you - have you no feeling? How can you have forgiven me so easily?'

  'I didn't say I'd forgiven you.'

  'You just said it!'

  'No, I said - let's not quibble over words. I must forgive you. I have forgiven you.'

  She clung to him. 'Then tell me you've forgiven me!'

  'I just did.'

  'Tell me! Please tell me!'

  In a sudden fury, he flung her away from him, crying, 'Damn and blast you, I tell you I have forgiven you, you crazy slut! Why go on?' She fell, sprawling in the sand. Penitently, he stooped to help her up, apologizing for his violence, saying over and over that he had forgiven her. When she was on her feet, they made their way back to the coral-built house, leaving an empty glass lying in the sand. As they went, Caterina said, 'Can you imagine the pain of having to live for a thousand years?'

  It was the day after she asked that question that Theodore Devlin arrived on the island.

  IV

  Almost the entire population of Kalpeni turned out to see the helicopter land on the round chopperport in the centre of the island. Even Vandranasis closed down his little store and followed the thin trickle of spectators northwards.

  The great palm leaves clapped together as the machine descended, its WWO insignia gleaming on its black hull. As the blades stopped rotating, Devlin jumped down, followed by his pilot.

  Devlin was two or three years Yale's senior, a stocky man in his late forties, well-preserved, and as trim in his appearance as Yale was straggling and untidy. He was a man sharp of face and brain, respected by many, loved by few. Yale, who was wearing nothing but jeans and canvas shoes, strolled over and shook hands with him.

  'Fancy seeing you here, Theo! Kalpeni is honoured.'

  'Kalpeni is bloody hot! For God's sake, get me in the shade, Clement, before I fry. How you stick it here, I don't know!'

  'Gone native, I guess. It's a home from home for me. See my two penguins swimming in the lagoon?'

  'Uh.' Devlin was in no mood for small talk. He walked briskly along in a neat light suit, a head shorter than Yale, his muscular movements tight and controlled even over the shifting sand.

  At the door of his house, Yale stood aside to let his guest and the pilot, a lanky Indian, enter. Caterina stood inside the room, her face unsmiling. If Devlin was embarrassed at meeting his ex-wife, he gave no sign of it.

  'I thought Naples got hot enough. You're living in a damned oven here. How are you, Caterina? You look well. Haven't seen you since you were weeping in the witness box. How does Clement treat you? Not in the style to which you were once accustomed, I hope?'

  'You've obviously not come to make yourself pleasant, Theo. Perhaps you and your pilot would care for a drink. Perhaps you were going to introduce him to us?'

  After this initial shot across his bows, Devlin pursed his mouth and behaved less pugnaciously. His next remark might even have been construed as an apology. "Those natives out there annoy me, plastering their fingerprints all over the 'copter. They haven't taken one elementary step forward since mankind began. They're parasites in every sense of the word! They owe their little all to the fish and the wonderful coconut, both brought to their doorstep by the courtesy of the tides - even their damned island was built for them by countless coral insects!'

  'Our culture owes the same sort of debt to other plants and animals, and to the earthworm.'

  'At least we pay our debts. However, that's neither here
nor there. I just don't share your sentimental attachment to desert islands.'

  'We didn't invite you to come here, Theo,' Caterina said. She was still suppressing surprise and anger at seeing him.

  Joe appeared and served beer to them all. The pilot stood by the open door to drink his, nervously watching his boss. Devlin, Yale, and Caterina sat down facing each other.

  'I gather you got my report?' Yale said. "That's why you're here, isn't it?'

  'You're blackmailing me. Thomas!' Devlin snapped his fingers as he spoke, and his pilot produced a pistol fitted with what Yale recognized as a silencer; it was the first time he had ever seen one in real life. The pilot stood holding his beer glass in his left hand, sipping casually, but his glance was far from casual. Yale stood up.

  'Sit down!' Devlin said, pointing at him. 'Sit down and listen to me, or it will appear later that you had a misunderstanding with a shark while out swimming. You're up against a tough organization, Clement, but you may come to no harm if you behave. What are you after?'

  Yale shook his head. 'You're in trouble, Theo, not I. You'd better explain this whole situation.'

  'You're always so innocent, aren't you? I'm well aware that that report you sent me, with your assurance that you had let nobody else know the facts, was a thinly camouflaged piece of blackmail. Tell me how I buy your silence.'

  Yale looked at his wife; he read in her face the same bafflement he himself felt. Anger with himself grew in him to think that he could not understand Devlin. What was the fellow after? His report had been merely a scientific summary of the cycle by which the Baltic virus had been carried from the Tyrrhenian Sea down to the Antarctic. Dumbly, he shook his head and dropped his eyes to his folded hands. 'I'm sorry, Theo; you know how terribly naive I am. I just don't get what you are talking about, or why you should think it necessary to point a gun at us.'

  'This is more of your paranoia, Theo!' Caterina said. She got up and walked towards Thomas with her hand out. He put the beer down hastily and levelled the pistol at her. 'Give it to me!' she said. He faltered, his gaze evaded her, she seized the weapon by the barrel, took it from him, and flung it down in one corner of the room.

  'Now get out! Go and wait in your helicopter! Take your beer!'

  Devlin made a move towards the gun, then stopped. He sat down again, obviously nonplussed. Choosing to ignore Caterina as the only way of saving his dignity, he said, 'Clement, are you serious? You really are such a fool that you don't know what I'm talking about?'

  Caterina tapped him on the shoulder. 'You'd better go home. We don't like people to threaten us on this island.'

  'Leave him, Cat, let's get out of him whatever extraordinary idea he is nursing. He comes here all the way from Naples, risking his reputation in order to threaten us as if he were a common crook…' Words failed him.

  'What do you want, Theo? It's some horrible thing about me, isn't it?'

  That restored his humour and some of his confidence. 'No, Caterina, it's not! It's nothing at all to do with you. I lost all interest in you a long, long time ago, long before you ran off with this fisherman!' He got up and crossed to the map of the world hanging dark and fly-spotted, on the wall.

  'Clement, you'd better come and lookat this. Here's the Baltic. Here's the Med. You tracked the immortality virus all the way from the Baltic right down to the Antarctic. I thought you'd had the wit to grasp how the missing link between the Baltic and Mediterranean was forged; I assumed you were suggesting that your silence could be bought on that score. I over-estimated you! You still haven't got it, have you?'

  Yale frowned and stroked his face. 'Don't be so superior, Theo. That area was right beyond my bailiwick. I only started in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Of course, if you know what the link is, I'd be tremendously interested… Presumably it's brought from one sea to the other by a pelagic species. A bird seems a likely agent, but as far as I know nobody has established that the Baltic virus - the immortality virus, you call it - can survive in the body of a bird… except the Adelie penguin, of course, but there are none of those in the northern hemisphere.'

  Taking his arm, Caterina said, 'Darling, he's laughing at you!'

  'Ha, Clement, you are a true man of science! Never see what's under your nose because you're sunk up to your eyes in your own pet theories! You gangling fathead! The vital agent was human -me! I worked on that virus on a ship in the Baltic, I took it back with me to Naples to WWO. H.Q. I worked on it in my own private laboratory, I -'

  'I don't see how I was supposed to know - Oh!… Theo, you've found it - you've found a way to infect human beings with the virus!'

  The expression on Devlin's face was enough to confirm the truth of that. Yale turned to Caterina. 'Darling, you're right and he's right. I really am a short-sighted idiot! I should have guessed. After all, Naples is situated on the Tyrrhenian Sea - it's just that one never thinks of the term and speaks of it always as the Med.'

  'You got there at last!' Devlin said. 'That's how the virus leaked into your Devlin Current. There is a small colony of us in Naples with the virus in our veins. It passes out through the body in inert form, and survives the sewage processing, so that it is carried out to sea still living - to be digested by the copepods, as you managed to discover.'

  'The circulation of the blood!'

  'What?'

  'No matter. A metaphor.'

  'Theo - Theo, so you are now… you have it, do you?'

  'Don't be afraid to say it, woman. Yes, I have immortality flowing in my veins.'

  Tugging at his beard, Yale went and sat down and took a long drink at his beer. He looked from one to the other of them for a long while. At last he said, 'You are something of the true man of science yourself, Theo, aren't you, as well as a career man? You couldn't resist telling us what you know! But leaving that aside, we of course realized that an inoculation of man with the virus was theoretically possible. Cat and I were discussing it until late last night. Do you know what we decided? We decided that even if it were possible to acquire immortality, or shall we say longevity, we should refuse it. We should refuse it because neither of us feels mature enough to bear the responsibility of our emotional and sexual lives for a span of maybe several hundred years.'

  'That's pretty negative, isn't it?' Devlin strolled over to the far corner and retrieved the pistol. Before he could slip it into his pocket, Yale stretched out his hand. 'Until you leave, I'll keep it for you. What were you planning to do with it, anyway?'

  'I ought to shoot you, Yale.'

  'Give it to me! Then you won't be exposed to temptation. You want to keep your little secret, don't you? How long do you think it will be before it becomes public property anyhow? A thing like that can't be kept quiet indefinitely.'

  He showed no sign of giving up the gun. He said, 'We've kept our secret for five years. There are fifty of us now, fifty-three, men with power and some women. Before the secret comes into the open, we are going to be even more powerful: an Establishment. We only need a few years. Meanwhile, we make investments and alliances. Take a look at the way brilliant people have been attracted to Naples these last few years! It's not been just to the WWO. or the European Government Centre. It's been to my clinic! In another five years, we'll be able to step in and rule Europe - and from there it's just a short step to America and Africa.'

  'You see,' Caterina said, 'he is mad, Clem, that sort of sane madness I told you about. But he daren't shoot! He daren't shoot, in case they locked him up for life - and that's a long time for him!'

  Recognizing the wild note in his wife's voice, Yale told her to sit down and drink another beer. 'I'm going to take Theo round to see the whales. Come on, Theo! I want to show you what you're up against, with all your fruitless ambitions.'

  Theo gave him a sharp look, as if speculating whether he might yield useful information if humoured, evidently concluded that he would and rose to follow Yale. As he went out, he looked back towards Caterina. She avoided his glance.

  It was dazzling
to be out in the bright sun again. The crowd was still hanging about the helicopter, chatting intermittently with the pilot, Thomas. Ignoring them, Yale led Devlin past the machine and round the lagoon, blinding in the glare of noon. Devlin gritted his teeth and said nothing. He seemed diminished as they exposed themselves to a lansdcape almost as bare as an old bone, walking the narrow line between endless blue ocean and the green socket of lagoon.

  Without pausing, Yale led on to the north-west strip of beach. It sloped steeply, so that they could see nothing of the rest of the island except the old Portuguese fort, which terminated their view ahead. Grim, black, and ruinous, it might have been some meaningless tumescence erupted by marine forces. As the men tramped towards it, the fort was dwarfed by the intervening carcasses of whales.

  Five whales had died here, two of them recently. The giant bodies of the two recently dead still supported rotting flesh, though the skulls gleamed white where the islanders had stripped them for meat and cut out their tongues. The other three had evidently been cast up here at an earlier date, for they were no more than arching skeletons with here and there a fragment of parched skin flapping between rib bones like a curtain in the breeze.

  'What have you brought me here for?' Theo was panting, his solid chest heaving.

  'To teach you humility and to make you sweat. Look on these works, ye mighty, and despair! These were blue whales, Theo, the largest mammal ever to inhabit this planet! Look at this skeleton! This chap weighed over a hundred tons for sure. He's about eighty feet long.' As he spoke, he stepped into the huge rib cage, which creaked like an old tree as he braced himself momentarily against it. 'A heart beat right here, Theo, that weighed about eight hundredweight.'

  'You could have delivered Fifty Amazing Facts of Natural History, or whatever you call this lecture, in the shade.'

  'Ah, but this isn't natural history, Theo. It's highly unnatural. These five beasts rotting here once swallowed krill far away in Antarctic waters. They must have gulped down a few mouthfuls of copepod at the same time - copepods that had picked up the Baltic virus. The virus infected the whales. By your admission, that can only have been five years ago, eh? Yet it is long enough to ensure that more blue whales - they were practically extinct from over-fishing as you know - survived the hazards of immaturity and bred. It would mean too that the breeding period of older specimens was extended. Yet five years is not enough to produce a glut in whales as it is in herrings.'