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Ransom leaned back against the column. He was debating when to leave the oasis
and take his chances with the lions when a stinging blow struck his left arm
above the elbow.
He looked up into the grimacing, powdered mask of Richard Lomax, silvertopped
cane in one hand.
"Ransom. . . !" he hissed. "Get out. . . !" His suit was puffed up, the lapels
flaring like the gills of an angry fish. "Stealing my water! Get
_out!_"
"Richard, for God's sake--" Ransom stood up. There was a soft clatter among
the stones, and the child reappeared. In his hands he carried a small white
gull, apparently dead, its wings neatly furled.
Lomax gazed down at the child, a demented Prospero examining the offspring of
his violated daughter. He looked around at the dusty garbage-strewn oasis, as
if stunned by the horror of this island infested by nightmares. He raised his
cane to strike the child. It stepped back, eyes suddenly still, and opened its
hands. With a squawk the bird rose into the air and flashed past Lomax's face.
There was a shout across the dunes. The stilted figure of Quilter came
striding over the rubble a hundred yards away, furs lifting in the hot
sunlight. Beside him with the dogs was Whitman, pushing along the broken
figure of Jonas, the dogs tearing at the rags of his trousers.
Ignoring Ransom, Lomax spun on his white shoes and raced off across the sand.
The dogs broke leash and ran after him, Quilter at their heels, the stilts
carrying him in sixfoot strides. Whitman fumbled with the leash, and the
bending figure of Jonas straightened up and swung a fist at the back of his
neck, felling him to the ground. Whitman scrambled to his feet, and Jonas
unfurled a net from his waist and with a twist of his hands rolled Whitman
into the dust again. Retrieving the net, he leapt away on his long legs.
Halfway to the pavilion, Lomax turned to face the dogs. From his pockets he
pulled out handfuls of firecrackers, and hurled them down at their feet.
The thunderfiashes burst and flared, and the dogs broke off as Quilter charged
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through them.
He reached one hand toward Lomax. There was a gleam of silver in the air and a
long blade appeared from the shaft of Lomax's cane. He darted forwards on one
foot and pierced Quilter's shoulder. Before Quilter could recover, he danced
off behind the safety of the doors.
Gazing at the blood on his hand, Quilter walked slowly back to the swimming
pool, the gongs beating from the pavilion behind him. Glancing at
Ransom, who was holding his child, he shouted to Whitman. The two men called
the dogs together, and set off along the river in pursuit of Jonas.
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
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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
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