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If he was sometimes prone to undue delays this was a result, not of
irresolution, but of a reluctance to act at all where complete selfawareness
was impossible--his affair with Beatrice
Dahl, tilted by so many conflicting passions, from day to day walked a narrow
tightrope of a thousand restraints and cautions.
In a belated attempt to re-assert himself, he said to Hardman: "Don't forget
the clock, Lieutenant. If I were you I'd set the alarm so that it rings
continuously."
Leaving the sick-bay, they made their way down to the jetty and climbed into
Kerans'
catamaran. Too tired to start the motor, Kerans slowly pulled them along the
overhead hawzer stretched between the base and the testing station. Bodkin sat
in the bows, the record player held between his knees like a briefcase,
blinking in the bright sunlight that spangled the broken surface of the
sluggish green water. His plump face, topped by an untidy grey thatch, seemed
preoccupied and wistful, scanning the surrounding ring of half-submerged
buildings like a weary ship's chandler being rowed around a harbour for the -
very first time. As they neared the testing station the helicopter roared in
overhead and alighted, its impact tilting the base and dipping the hawzer into
the water, then tautening it and cascading a brief shower across their
shoulders.
Bodkin cursed under his breath, but they were dry within a few seconds.
Although it was well after o'clock, the sun filled the sky, turning it into an
enormous blow-torch and forcing them to lower their eyes to the water-line.
Now and then, in the glass curtainwalling of the surrounding buildings, they
would see countless reflections of the sun move across the surface in huge
sheets of fire, like the blazing facetted eyes of gigantic insects.
A two-storey drum some fifty feet in diameter, the testing station had a dead
weight of twenty tons. The lower deck contained the laboratory, the upper the
two biologists' quarters and the chartroom and offices. A small bridge
traversed the roof, and housed the temperature and humidity registers,
rainfall gauge and radiation counters. Clumps of dried air-weed and red kelp
were encrusted across the bitumened plates of the pontoon, shrivelled and
burnt by the sun before they could reach the railing around the laboratory,
while a dense refuse-filled mass of sargassum
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rowned%20World.txt and spirogyra cushioned their impact as they reached the
narrow jetty, oozing and subsiding like an immense soggy raft.
They entered the cool darkness of the laboratory and sat down at their desks
below the semi-circle of fading program schedules which reached to the ceiling
behind the dais, looking down over the clutter of benches and fume cupboards
like a dusty mural. The schedules on the left, dating from their first year of
work, were packed with detailed entries and minutely labelled arrow sprays,
but those on the right thinned out progressively, until a few pencilled
scrawls in giant longhand ioops sealed off all but one or two of the
ecological corridors. Many of the cardboard screens had sprung off their
drawing pins, and hung forwards into the air like the peeling hull-plates of a
derelict ship, moored against its terminal pier and covered with gnomic and
meaningless graffiti.
Idly tracing a large compass dial with his finger in the dust on the desk-top,
Kerans waited for Bodkin to provide some explanation for his curious
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experiments with Hardman. But Bodkin settled himself comfortably behind the
muddle of box-files and catalogue trays on his desk, then opened the record
player and removed the disc from the table, spinning it reflectively between
his hands.
Kerans began: "I'm sorry I let slip that we were leaving in three days' time.
I hadn't realised you'd kept that from Hardman."
Bodkin shrugged, dismissing this as of little importance. "It's a complex
situation, Robert. Having gone a few steps towards unravelling it I didn't
want to introduce another slip knot."
"But why not tell him?" Kerans pressed, hoping obliquely to absolve himself of
his slight feeling of guilt. "Surely the prospect of leaving might well jolt
him out of his lethargy?"
Bodkin lowered his glasses to the end of his nose and regarded Kerans
quizzically. "It doesn't seem to have had that effect on you, Robert. Unless
I'm very much mistaken you look rather un-jolted. Why should Hardman's
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