it on purpose?" asked Bernard.
"That's how the Indians always purify themselves." He sat down and, sighing,
passed his hand across his forehead. "I shall rest for a few minutes," he said. "I'm
rather tired."
"Well, I'm not surprised," said Helmholtz. After a silence, "We've come to say
good-bye," he went on in another tone. "We're off to-morrow morning."
"Yes, we're off to-morrow," said Bernard on whose face the Savage remarked a new
expression of determined resignation. "And by the way, John," he continued,
leaning forward in his chair and laying a hand on the Savage's knee, "I want to say
how sorry I am about everything that happened yesterday." He blushed. "How
ashamed," he went on, in spite of the unsteadiness of his voice, "how really …"
The Savage cut him short and, taking his hand, affectionately pressed it.
"Helmholtz was wonderful to me," Bernard resumed, after a little pause. "If it hadn't
been for him, I should …"
"Now, now," Helmholtz protested.
There was a silence. In spite of their sadness–because of it, even; for their sadness
was the symptom of their love for one another–the three young men were happy.
"I went to see the Controller this morning," said the Savage at last.
"What for?"
"To ask if I mightn't go to the islands with you."
"And what did he say?" asked Helmholtz eagerly.
The Savage shook his head. "He wouldn't let me."
"Why not?"
"He said he wanted to go on with the experiment. But I'm damned," the Savage
added, with sudden fury, "I'm damned if I'll go on being experimented with. Not for
all the Controllers in the world. l shall go away to-morrow too."
"But where?" the others asked in unison.
The Savage shrugged his shoulders. "Anywhere. I don't care. So long as I can be
alone."
From Guildford the down-line followed the Wey valley to Godalming, then, over
Milford and Witley, proceeded to Haslemere and on through Petersfield towards
Portsmouth. Roughly parallel to it, the upline passed over Worplesden, Tongham,
Puttenham, Elstead and Grayshott. Between the Hog's Back and Hindhead there
were points where the two lines were not more than six or seven kilometres apart.
The distance was too small for careless flyers–particularly at night and when they
had taken half a gramme too much. There had been accidents. Serious ones. It
had been decided to deflect the upline a few kilometres to the west. Between
Grayshott and Tongham four abandoned air-lighthouses marked the course of the
old Portsmouth-to-London road. The skies above them were silent and deserted. It
was over Selborne, Bordon and Farnham that the helicopters now ceaselessly
hummed and roared.
The Savage had chosen as his hermitage the old light-house which stood on the
crest of the hill between Puttenham and Elstead. The building was of ferro-concrete
and in excellent condition–almost too comfortable the Savage had thought when he
first explored the place, almost too civilizedly luxurious. He pacified his conscience
by promising himself a compensatingly harder self-discipline, purifications the more
complete and thorough. His first night in the hermitage was, deliberately, a
sleepless one. He spent the hours on his knees praying, now to that Heaven from
which the guilty Claudius had begged forgiveness, now in Zu?i to Awonawilona, now
to Jesus and Pookong, now to his own guardian animal, the eagle. From time to
time he stretched out his arms as though he were on the Cross, and held them thus
through long minutes of an ache that gradually increased till it became a tremulous
and excruciating agony; held them, in voluntary crucifixion, while he repeated,
through clenched teeth (the sweat, meanwhile, pouring down his face), "Oh, forgive
me! Oh, make me pure! Oh, help me to be good!" again and again, till he was on
the point of fainting from the pain.
When morning came, he felt he had earned the right to inhabit the lighthouse; yet,
even though there still was glass in most of the windows, even though the view from
the platform was so fine. For the very reason why he had chosen the lighthouse had
become almost instantly a reason for going somewhere else. He had decided to live
there because the view was so beautiful, because, from his vantage point, he
seemed to be looking out on to the incarnation of a divine being. But who was he to
be pampered with the daily and hourly sight of loveliness? Who was he to be living
in the visible presence of God? All he deserved to live in was some filthy sty, some
blind hole in the ground. Stiff and still aching after his long night of pain, but for
that very reason inwardly reassured, he climbed up to the platform of his tower, he
looked out over the bright sunrise world which he had regained the right to inhabit.
On the north the view was bounded by the long chalk ridge of the Hog's Back, from
behind whose eastern extremity rose the towers of the seven skyscrapers which
constituted Guildford. Seeing them, the Savage made a grimace; but he was to
become reconciled to them in course of time; for at night they twinued gaily with
geometrical constellations, or else, flood-lighted, pointed their luminous fingers
(with a gesture whose significance nobody in England but the Savage now
understood) solemnly towards the plumbless mysteries of heaven.
In the valley which separated the Hog's Back from the sandy hill on which the
lighthouse stood, Puttenham was a modest little village nine stories high, with silos,
a poultry farm, and a small vitamin-D factory. On the other side of the lighthouse,
towards the South, the ground fell away in long slopes of heather to a chain of
ponds.
Beyond them, above the intervening woods, rose the fourteen-story tower of
Elstead. Dim in the hazy English air, Hindhead and Selborne invited the eye into a
blue romantic distance. But it was not alone the distance that had attracted the
Savage to his lighthouse; the near was as seductive as the far. The woods, the
open stretches of heather and yellow gorse, the clumps of Scotch firs, the shining
ponds with their overhanging birch trees, their water lilies, their beds of
rushes–these were beautiful and, to an eye accustomed to the aridities of the
American desert, astonishing. And then the solitude! Whole days passed during
which he never saw a human being. The lighthouse was only a quarter of an hour's
flight from the Charing-T Tower; but the hills of Malpais were hardly more deserted
than this Surrey heath. The crowds that daily left London, left it only to play
Electro-magnetic Golf or Tennis. Puttenham possessed no links; the nearest
Riemann-surfaces were at Guildford. Flowers and a landscape were the only
attractions here. And so, as there was no good reason for coming, nobody came.
During the first days the Savage lived alone and undisturbed.
Of the money which, on his first arrival, John had received for his personal
expenses, most had been spent on his equipment. Before leaving London he had
bought four viscose-woollen blankets, rope and string, nails, glue, a few tools,
matches (though he intended in due course to make a fire drill), some pots and
pans, two dozen packets of seeds, and ten kilogrammes of wheat flour. "No, not
synthetic starch and cotton-waste flour-substitute," he had insisted. "Even though it
is more nourishing." But when it came to pan-glandular biscuits and vitaminized
beef-surrogate, he had not been able to resist the shopman's persuasion. Looking
at the tins now, he bitterly reproached himself for his weakness. Loathesome
civilized stuff! He had made up his mind that he would never eat it, even if he were
starving. "That'll teach them," he thought vindictively. It would also teach him.
He counted his money. The little that remained would be enough, he hoped, to tide
him over the winter. By next spring, his garden would be producing enough to make
him independent of the outside world. Meanwhile, there would always be game. He
had seen plenty of rabbits, and there were waterfowl on the ponds. He set to work at
once to make a bow and arrows.
There were ash trees near the lighthouse and, for arrow shafts, a whole copse full of
beautifully straight hazel saplings. He began by felling a young ash, cut out six feet
of unbranched stem, stripped off the bark and, paring by paring, shaved away the
white wood, as old Mitsima had taught him, until he had a stave of his own height,
stiff at the thickened centre, lively and quick at the slender tips. The work gave him
an intense pleasure. After those weeks of idleness in London, with nothing to do,
whenever he wanted anything, but to press a switch or turn a handle, it was pure
delight to be doing something that demanded skill and patience.
He had almost finished whittling the stave into shape, when he realized with a start
that he was singing-singing! It was as though, stumbling upon himself from the
outside, he had suddenly caught himself out, taken himself flagrantly at fault.
Guiltily he blushed. After all, it was not to sing and enjoy himself that he had come
here. It was to escape further contamination by the filth of civilized life; it was to be
purified and made good; it was actively to make amends. He realized to his dismay
that, absorbed in the whittling of his bow, he had forgotten what he had sworn to
himself he would constantly remember–poor Linda, and his own murderous
unkindness to her, and those loathsome twins, swarming like lice across the
mystery of her death, insulting, with their presence, not merely his own grief and
repentance, but the very gods themselves. He had sworn to remember, he had
sworn unceasingly to make amends. And there was he, sitting happily over his
bow-stave, singing, actually singing. …
He went indoors, opened the box of mustard, and put some water to boil on the fire.
Half an hour later, three Delta-Minus landworkers from one of the Puttenham
Bokanovsky Groups happened to be driving to Elstead and, at the top of the hill,
were astonished to see a young man standing 0utside the abandoned lighthouse
stripped to the waist and hitting himself with a whip of knotted cords. His back was
horizontally streaked with crimson, and from weal to weal ran thin trickles of blood.
The driver of the lorry pulled up at the side of the road and, with his two
companions, stared open-mouthed at the extraordinary spectacle. One, two
three–they counted the strokes. After the eighth, the young man interrupted his
self-punishment to run to the wood's edge and there be violently sick. When he had
finished, he picked up the whip and began hitting himself again. Nine, ten, eleven,
twelve …
"Ford!" whispered the driver. And his twins were of the same opinion.
"Fordey!" they said.
Three days later, like turkey buzzards setthug on a corpse, the reporters came.
Dried and hardened over a slow fire of green wood, the bow was ready. The Savage
was busy on his arrows. Thirty hazel sticks had been whittled and dried, tipped with
sharp nails, carefully nocked. He had made a raid one night on the Puttenham
poultry farm, and now had feathers enough to equip a whole armoury. It was at
work upon the feathering of his shafts that the first of the reporters found him.
Noiseless on his pneumatic shoes, the man came up behind him.
"Good-morning, Mr. Savage," he said. "I am the representative of The Hourly Radio."
Startled as though by the bite of a snake, the Savage sprang to his feet, scattering
arrows, feathers, glue-pot and brush in all directions.
"I beg your pardon," said the reporter, with genuine compunction. "I had no
intention …" He touched his hat–the aluminum stove-pipe hat in which he carried his
wireless receiver and transmitter. "Excuse my not taking it off," he said. "It's a bit
heavy. Well, as I was saying, I am the representative of The Hourly …"
"What do you want?" asked the Savage, scowling. The reporter returned his most
ingratiating smile.
"Well, of course, our readers would be profoundly interested …" He put his head on
one side, his smile became almost coquettish. "Just a few words from you, Mr.
Savage." And rapidly, with a series of ritual gestures, he uncoiled two wires
connected to the portable battery buckled round his waist; plugged them
simultaneously into the sides of his aluminum hat; touched a spring on the
crown–and antenn? shot up into the air; touched another spring on the peak of the
brim–and, like a jack-in-the-box, out jumped a microphone and hung there,
quivering, six inches in front of his nose; pulled down a pair of receivers over his
ears; pressed a switch on the left side of the hat-and from within came a faint
waspy buzzing; turned a knob on the right–and the buzzing was interrupted by a
stethoscopic wheeze and cackle, by hiccoughs and sudden squeaks. "Hullo," he said
to the microphone, "hullo, hullo …" A bell suddenly rang inside his hat. "Is that you,
Edzel? Primo Mellon speaking. Yes, I've got hold of him. Mr. Savage will now take
the microphone and say a few words. Won't you, Mr. Savage?" He looked up at the
Savage with another of those winning smiles of his. "Just tell our readers why you
came here. What made you leave London (hold on, Edzel!) so very suddenly. And,
of course, that whip." (The Savage started. How did they know about the whip?)
"We're all crazy to know about the whip. And then something about Civilization. You
know the sort of stuff. 'What I think of the Civilized Girl.' Just a few words, a very
few …"
The Savage obeyed with a disconcerting literalness. Five words he uttered and no
more-five words, the same as those he had said to Bernard about the
Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury. "Háni! Sons éso tse-ná!" And seizing the
reporter by the shoulder, he spun him round (the young man revealed himself
