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‘Philip, Don't blame yourself.’
Ransom watched him as he paddled off, his strong arms sweeping the skiff across the river. Standing in the stern with his legs astride, his back bending, the outstretched wings of the dying bird dipping into the water from the bows, he reminded Ransom of a land-locked mariner and his stricken albatross, deserted by the sea.
In the sunlight the white carcasses of the fish hung from their hooks in drying sheds, rotating in the warm air. The boat-houses were deserted, and the untended fishing craft were beached side by side in the shallows, their nets lying across the dust. Below the last of the wharfs two or three tons of smaller fish had been tipped out on to the bank, and the slope was covered with the silver bodies.
Turning his face from the stench, Ransom looked up at the quay. In the shadows at the back of the boat-house two of the fishermen watched him, their eyes hidden below the peaks of their caps. The other fishermen had gone, but this pair seemed content to sit there unmovingly, separated from the draining river by the dusty boat across their knees, like two widows with a coffin.
Ransom stepped through the fish, his feet sliding on their jellied skins. Fifty yards ahead he found an old dinghy on the bank that would save him the effort of crossing the motor-bridge. Pushing off, he reached the opposite shore and then retraced his steps along the bank towards Hamilton.
Across the surface of the lake the pools of evaporating water stirred in the sunlight. Along its southern margins, where the open water had given way before the drought to the creeks and marshes of Philip Jordan's water-world, the channels of damper mud wound among the white beaches. The tall columns and gantries of an experimental distillation unit operated by the municipal authorities rose above the dunes. At intervals along the shore the dark plumes of reed fires lifted into the sky from the deserted settlements, like the calligraphic signals of a primitive desert folk.
At the outskirts of the town Ransom climbed the bank and left the river, crossing an empty waterfront garden to the road behind. Unwashed by the rain, the streets were covered with dust and scraps of paper, the pavement strewn with garbage. Tarpaulins had been draped over the swimming pools, and the tattered squares lay about on the ground like ruined tents. The trim lawns shaded by willows and plane trees, the avenues of miniature palms and rhododendrons had vanished, leaving a clutter of ramshackle gardens. Most of Ransom's neighbours had joined the exodus to the coast. Already Hamilton was a desert town, built on an isthmus of sand between a drained lake and a forgotten river, sustained by a few meagre water-holes.
Two or three months beforehand many of the residents had built wooden towers in their gardens, some of them thirty or forty feet high, equipped with small observation platforms to give them an uninterrupted view of the southern horizon. From this quadrant alone were any clouds expected to appear, generated from moisture evaporated off the surface of the sea.
Halfway down Columbia Drive, as he looked up at the deserted towers, a passing car swerved in front of Ransom, forcing him on to the pavement. It stopped twenty yards ahead.
‘Ransom, is that you? Do you want a lift?’
Ransom crossed the road, recognizing the grey-haired man in a clerical collar – the Reverend Howard Johnstone, minister of the Presbyterian Church at Hamilton.
Johnstone opened the door and moved a shot-gun along the seat, peering at Ransom with a sharp eye.
‘I nearly ran you down,’ he told Ransom, beckoning him to shut the door before he had seated himself. ‘Why the devil are you wearing that beard? There's nothing to hide from.’
‘Of course not, Howard,’ Ransom agreed. ‘It's purely penitential. Actually, I thought it suited me.’
‘It doesn't. Let me assure you of that.’
A man of vigorous and stubborn temper, the Reverend Johnstone was one of those muscular clerics who intimidate their congregations not so much by the prospect of divine justice at some future date but by the threat of immediate physical retribution in the here and now. Well over six feet tall, his strong head topped by a fierce crown of grey hair, he towered over his parishioners from his pulpit, eyeing each of them in their pews like a bad-tempered headmaster obliged to take a junior form for one day and determined to inflict the maximum of benefit upon them. His long twisted jaw gave all his actions an air of unpredictability, but during the previous months he had become almost the last pillar of the lakeside community. Ransom found his bellicose manner hard to take – something about the suspicious eyes and lack of charity made him doubtful of the minister's motives – but none the less he was glad to see him. At Johnstone's initiative a number of artesian wells had been drilled and a local militia recruited, ostensibly to guard the church and property of his parishioners, but in fact to keep out the transients moving along the highway to the south.
Recently a curious streak had emerged in Johnstone's character. He had developed a fierce moral contempt for those who had given up the fight against the drought and retreated to the coast. In a series of fighting sermons preached during the last three or four Sundays he had warned his listeners of the offence they would be committing by opting out of the struggle against the elements. By a strange logic he seemed to believe that the battle against the drought, like that against evil itself, was the local responsibility of every community and private individual throughout the land, and that a strong element of rivalry was to be encouraged between the contestants, brother set against brother, in order to keep the battle joined.
Notwithstanding all this, most of his flock had deserted him, but Johnstone stayed on in his embattled church, preaching his sermons to a congregation of barely half a dozen people.
‘Have you been in hiding for the last week?’ he asked Ransom. ‘I thought you'd gone.’
‘Not at all, Howard,’ Ransom assured him. ‘I went off on a fishing trip. I had to get back for your sermon this Sunday.’
‘Don't mock me, Charles. Not yet. A last-minute repentance may be better than nothing, but I expect rather more from you.’ He held Ransom's arm in a powerful grip. ‘It's good to see you. We need everyone we can muster.’
Ransom looked out at the deserted avenue. Most of the houses were empty, windows boarded and nailed up, swimming pools emptied of their last reserves of water. Lines of abandoned cars were parked under the withering plane trees and the road was littered with discarded cans and cartons. The bright flint-like dust lay in drifts against the fences. Refuse fires smouldered unattended on the burnt-out lawns, their smoke wandering over the roofs.
‘I'm glad I stayed out of the way,’ Ransom said. ‘Has everything been quiet?’
‘Yes and no. We've had a few spots of trouble. I'm on my way to something now, as a matter of fact.’
‘What about the police rearguard? Has it gone yet?’
Despite the careful offhandedness of Ransom's question, Johnstone smiled knowingly. ‘It leaves today, Charles. You'll have time to say goodbye to Judith. However, you ought to make her stay.’
‘I couldn't if I wanted to.’ Ransom sat forward and pointed through the windscreen. ‘What's this?’
They turned into Amherst Avenue and stopped by the church at the corner. A group of five or six men, members of Johnstone's parish militia, stood around a dusty green saloon car, shouting at the driver. Tempers flared in the brittle light, and the men rocked the car from side to side, drumming on the roof with their rifles. Fists began to fly, and a sturdy square-shouldered man wearing a dirty panama hat hurled himself at the men like a berserk terrier. As he disappeared from sight in the melee a woman's voice cried out.
Seizing his shot-gun, Johnstone set off towards them, Ransom behind him. The owner of the saloon was struggling with three men who held him down on his knees. As someone shouted ‘Here's the