Mutant, Page 2

[II]

  At the bottom of the hill Stoddard collapsed from heat exhaustion. He lay for over an hour in the direct rays of the Sun before one of the men from the station found him. It was a week before he was fully rational again. Large, stiff blisters encrusted the side of his face that had been exposed.

  “Feeling better?” asked Manji as he came into the Director’s bedroom. The room was almost dark, the blinds at the windows of the hut were drawn. The fans whirring loudly in the ceiling sent draughts of trapped heat rushing about the airless room.

  “You should have followed Miss Barnett’s example and stayed indoors. You Europeans are too fair skinned for this climate now. I swear it’s getting worse,” Manji said.

  Stoddard stayed flat on his back on the bed. What could get worse?

  “The Sun you mean?” Of course the Sun. What else did anyone ever talk about now? The words had come out awkwardly, one side of his face stiff, burning and immobile.

  “It’s just my imagination I expect.” Manji pulled a chair to the bedside and made himself comfortable.

  “Has Miss Barnett reported back to work?”

  “Don’t worry. We can manage without her. It’s crazy for her to try to make that trip every day."

  “She could move down here,” Stoddard said brusquely.

  Manji made a mock expression of horror in the gloom. “She’s a woman. She needs her privacy from us rough chaps. Haven’t you ever noticed how much more private women are in a hot climate? We never really integrated the sexes in India the way it used to be in Europe.”

  “Don’t you ever take anything seriously?" Stoddard asked irritably.

  "We Hindus are taught the material world is illusion. Nothing more. It may not be true, but it’s a comfort all the same.”

  Stoddard hauled himself up in the bed angrily. "I didn’t like the way you used the past tense about Europe either.”

  Manji stopped smiling. “A figure of speech. I’m just making conversation. India would go first.”

  “How are the men taking it?” As Director, Stoddard had never mixed much with the others on the island.

  “As before. Fatalistic. We're used to disaster.” Like Manji most of the staff were Indian nationals.

  “Not on this scale,” Stoddard said.

  ‘Big or small, if your family are probably all dead and you're waiting to die yourself what difference does it make?”

  “You’re not used to disaster at all, Manji. Your family always had enough money to protect itself.” The Mercedes contract in Mumbai he remembered.

  “Yet they lived in India, in close proximity to all those centuries of drought and famine and oppression. Something’s bound to rub off.”

  “Unless you were brought up and educated in England like you were. Are you inured to the end of the world?” Stoddard asked insistently.

  Manji shook off the seriousness and laughed lightly. “I suppose I retain a certain fatalism in my blood. It’s no use worrying about such things. Best to think of it all as illusion. How’s your face?”

  “Bloody sore.”

  “It’ll wear off. If you stay indoors.”

  “There’s too much to do. I’ll wear a hat.

  ‘Take it easy. Leave it to me. I have everything under control.”

  “The algae tanks?”

  “Coming along fine. We won’t starve.”

  Stoddard lapsed back onto his bed. It was true, Manji could look after things on his own. He was a better biologist than Stoddard had ever been. That was the reason Stoddard was Director, he’d been kicked upstairs out of the way of the workers. But there was nothing for a Director to do now that communications with the mainland were cut. No budgets to negotiate, no supplies to order, no-one to write reports for.

  Manji was attempting to farm algae in the abandoned fuel tanks under the old RAF base. Hopefully they were far enough underground to shield most of the high energy rays the Sun threw out. With luck the algae wouldn’t mutate and would remain edible. Manji was right, if anyone could keep them from starving, he could. There was still a few months’ supply of tins in store anyway.

  Manji evidently felt he’d stayed long enough. He stood up. “You’ll be all right then?” he inquired.

  “I’ll be fine. Thanks, Manji.”

  “I’ll send a man across with some food later.”

  “I’ll make it across to the canteen.” Stoddard said defiantly.