Brian W. Aldiss - There is a tide.pdf

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THERE IS A TIDE
by Brian W. Aldiss
How SOOTHING to the heart it was to be home. I began that
evening with nothing but peace in me: and the evening itself
jellied down over Africa with a mild mother's touch: so that
even now I must refuse myself the luxury of claiming any pre-
monition of the disaster for which the scene was already set.
My half-brother, K-Jubal (we had the same father), was
in a talkative mood. As we sat at the table on the veranda
of his house, his was the major part of the conversation: and
this was unusual, for I am a poet, and poets are generally
articulate enough.
"... because the new dam is now complete," he was say-
ing, "and I shall take my days more easily. I am going to
write my life story, Rog. G-Williams on the World Weekly
has been pressing me for it for some time; it'll be serialized,
and then turned into audibook form. I should make a lot of
money, eh?"
He smiled as he asked this; in my company he always
enjoyed playing the heavy materialist. Generally I encouraged
him; this time I said: "Jubal, no man in Congo States, no
man in the world possibly, has done more for people than
you. I am the idle singer of an idle day, but youwhy, your
good works lie about you."
I swept my hand out over the still bright land.
Mokulgu is a rising town on the western fringes of Lake
Tanganyika's nothem end. Before Jubal and his engineers
came here, it was a sleepy market town, and its natives lived
in the indolent fashion of their countless forefathers. In ten
years, that ancient pattern was awry; in fifteen, shattered
completely. If you lived in Mokulgu now, you slept in a bed
in a towering nest of flats, you ate food unfouled by flies,
and you moved to the sound of whistles and machinery. You
had at your black fingertips, in fact, the benefits of what
we persist in calling "Western civilization". If you were more
hygienic and healthyso ran the theoryyou were happier.
But I begin to sound sceptical. That is my error. I happen
to have little love for my fellow men; the thought of the
Massacre is always with me, even after all this time. I could
not deny that the trend of things at Mokulgu and elsewhere,
the constant urbanization, was almost unavoidable. But as
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a man of sensibility, I regretted that human advance should
always be over the corpse of Nature.
From where we sat over our southern wines, both lake
and town were partially visible, the forests in the immediate
area having been demolished long ago. The town was already
blazing with light, the lake looked already dark, a thing
preparing for night. And to our left, standing out with a
clarity which suggested yet more rain to come, stretched the
rolling jungles of the Congo tributaries.
For at least three hundred miles in that direction, man had
not invaded: there lived the pygmies, flourishing without
despoiling. That area, the Congo Source land, would be the
next to go; Jubal, indeed, was the spearhead of the attack.
But for my generation at least that vast tract of primitive
beauty would stand, and I was selfishly glad of it. I always
gained more pleasure from trees than population increase
statistics.
Jubal caught something of the expression on my face.
"The power we are releasing here will last for ever," he
said. "It's already changingimprovingthe entire economy
of the area. At last, at long last, Africa is realizing her
potentialities."
His voice held almost a tremor, and I thought that this
passion for Progress was the secret of his strength.
"You cling too much to the past, Rog," he added.
"Why all this digging and tunnelling and wrenching up of
riverbeds?" I asked. "Would not atomics haye been a cheaper
and easier answer?"
"No," he said decisively. "This system puts to use idle
water; once in operation, everything is entirely self-servicing.
Besides, uranium is none too plentiful, water is. Venus has
no radioactive materials, I believe?"
This sounded to me like an invitation to change the sub-
ject. I accepted it.
"They've found none yet," I assented. "But I can speak
with no authority. I went purely as a touristand a glorious
trip it was."
"It must be wonderful to be so many million miles nearer
the sun," he said. It was the sort of plain remark I had
often heard him make. On others' lips it might have sounded
platitudinous; in his quiet tones I caught a note of sublimity.
"I shall never get to Venus," he said. "There's too much
work to be done here. You must have seen some marvels
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there, Rog!"
"Yes . . . Yet nothing so strange as an elephant."
"And they'll have a breathable atmosphere in a decade,
I hear?"
"So they say. They are certainly doing wonders . . . You
know, Jubal, I shall have to go back then. You see, there's
a feeling, ersomething, a sort of expectancy. No, not quite
that; it's hard to explain" I don't converse well. I ramble
and mumble when I have something real to say. I could
say it to a woman, or I could write it on paper; but
Jubal is a man of action, and when I did say it, I deliber-
ately omitted emotional overtones and lost interest in what
I said. "It's like courting a woman in armour with the visor
closed, on Venus now. You can see it, but you can't touch
or smell or breathe it. Always an airtight dome er a space
suit between you and actuality. But in ten years' time, you'll
be able to run your bare fingers through the sand, feel the
breezes on your cheek... Well, you know what I mean, er
sort of feel her undressed."
He was thinking1 saw it in his eyes"Rog's going to go
all poetic on me." He said: "And you approve of that-
the change-over of atmospheres?"
"Yes."
"Yet you don't approve of what we're doing here, which
is just the same sort of thing?"
He had a point. "You're upsetting a delicate balance here,"
I said gingerly. "A thousand ecological factors are swept by
the board just so that you can grind these waters through your
turbines. And the same thing's happened at Owen Falls
over on Lake Victoria... But on Venus there's no such
balance. It's just a clean page waiting for man to write what
he will on it. Under that CO blanket, there's been no spark
of life: the mountains are bare of moss, the valleys lie in-
nocent of grass; in the geological strata, no fossils sleep;
no arncebae move in the sea. But what you're doing here. . ."
"People!" he exclaimed. "I've got people to consider. Babies
need to be born, mouths must be fed. A man must live.
Your sort of feelings are all very wellthey make good
poemsbut I consider the people. I love the people. For
them I work. . ."
He waved his hands, overcome by his own grandiose visions.
If the passion for Progress was his strength, the fallacy in-
herent in the idea was his secret weakness. I began to grow
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warm.
"You get good conditions for these people, they procreate
forthwith. Next generation, another benefactor will have to
step forward and get good conditions for the children. That's
Progress, eh?" I asked maliciously.
"I see you so rarely, Rog; don't let's quarrel," he said
meekly. "I just do what I can. I'm only an engineer."
That was how he always won an altercation. Before meek-
ness I have no defence. But hostility ran like a sewer below
the level of our conversation.
The sun had finished another day. With the sudden dark-
ness came chill. Jubal pressed a button, and glass slid round
the veranda, enclosing us. Like Venus, I thought; but here
you could still smell that spicy, bosomy scent which is the
breath of dear Africa herself. On Venus, the smells are
imported.
We poured some more wine and talked of family matters.
In a short while his wife, Sloe, joined us. I began to feel
at home. The feeling was only partly psychological; my glands
were now beginning to readjust fully to normal conditions
after their long days in space travel.
J-Casta also appeared. Him I was less pleased to see.
He was the boss type, the strong-arm man: as Jubal's under-
ling, he pandered wretchedly to him and bullied everyone else
on the project. He (and there were many others like him,
unfortunately) thought of the Massacre as man's greatest
achievement. This evening, in the presence of his superiors,
after a preliminary burst of showing off, he was quiet enough.
When they pressed me to, I talked of Venus. As I spoke,
back rushed that humblingbut intoxicatingsense of awe
to think I had actually lived to stand in full possession of my
many faculties on that startling planet. The same feeling had
often possessed me on Mars. And (as justifiably) on Earth.
The vision chimed, and an amber light biinked drowsily
off and on in Jubal's tank. Even then, no premonition of ca-
tastrophe; since then, I can never see that amber heartbeat
without anxiety.
Jubal answered it, and a man's face swam up in the tank
to greet him. They talked; I could catch no words, but the
sudden tension was apparent. Sloe went over and put her
arm round Jubal's shoulder.
"Something up," J-Casta commented.
"Yes," I said.
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"That's Chief M-Shawn on the visionfrom Owenstown,
over on Lake Victoria."
Then Jubal flashed off and came slowly back to where we
were sitting.
"That was M-Shawn," he said. "The level of Lake Victoria
has just dropped three inches." He lit a cheroot with clumsy
fingers, his eyes staring in mystification far beyond the flame.
"Dam okay, boss?" J-Casta asked.
"Perfectly. They're going to phone us if they find any-
thing ..."
"Has this happened before?" I asked, not quite able to
understand their worried looks.
"Of course not," my half-brother said scornfully. "Surely
you must see the implications of it? Something highly un-
precedented has occurred."
"But surely a mere three inches of water. . ."
At that he laughed briefly. Even J-Casta permitted himself a
snort.
"Lake Victoria is an inland sea," Jubal said grimly. "It's
as big as Tasmania. Three inches all over that area means
many thousands of tons of water. Casta, I think we'll get
down to Mokulgu; it won't do any harm to alert the first aid
services, just in case they're needed. Got your tracer?"
"Yes, boss. I'm coming."
Jubal patted Sloe's arm, nodded to me and left without
relaxing his worried look. He and J-Casta shortly appeared
outside. They bundled into a float, soared .dangerously close
to a giant walnut tree and vanished into the night.
Nervously, Sloe put down her cheroot and did not resume
it. She fingered a dial and the windows opaqued.
"There's an ominous waiting quality out there I don't
like," she said, to explain our sudden privacy.
"Should I be feeling alarmed?" I asked.
She flashed me a smile. "Quite honestly, yes. You don't
live in our world, Rog, or you would guess at once what was
happening at Lake Victoria. They've just finished raising the
level again; for a long time they've been on about more pres-
sure, and the recent heavy rains gave them their chance to
build it up. It seems to have been the last straw."
"And what does this three-inch drop mean? Is there a
breach in the dam somewhere?"
"No. They'd have found that. I'm afraid it means the bed
of the lake has collapsed somewhere. The water's pouring into
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