However, all these belated efforts have now been brought to an end. As I write to you, here within the quiet and emptiness of the Hotel d'Europe at Port Matarre, I see a report in a two-week-old issue of _Paris-Soir_ (Louise Peret, the young Frenchwoman who is with me here, doing her best to look after the wayward whims of your former assistant, had hidden the paper from me for a week) that the whole of the Florida peninsula in the United States, with the exception of a single highway to Tampa, has been closed, and that to date some three million of the state's inhabitants have been resettled in other parts of the country.
But apart from the estimated losses in real-estate values and hotel revenues ("Oh, Miami," I cannot help saying to myself, "you city of a thousand cathedrals to the rainbow sun!") the news of this extraordinary human migration has prompted little comment. Such is mankind's innate optimism, our conviction that we can survive any deluge or cataclysm, that most of us unconsciously dismiss the momentous events in Florida with a shrug, confident that some means will be found to avert the crisis when it comes.
And yet, Paul, it now seems obvious that the real crisis is long past. Tucked away on the back page of the same issue of _Paris-Soir_ is the short report of the sighting of another "double galaxy" by observers of the Hubble Institute on Mount Palomar. The news is summarized in less than a dozen lines and without comment, although the implication is inescapable that yet another focal area has been set up somewhere on the surface of the earth, in the temple-filled jungles of Cambodia or the haunted amber forests of the Chilean highland. But it is still only a year since the Mount Palomar astronomers identified the first double galaxy in the constellation Andromeda, the great oblate diadem that is probably the most beautiful object in the physical universe, the island galaxy M 31. Without doubt, these random transfigurations throughout the world are a reflection of distant cosmic processes of enormous scope and dimensions, first glimpsed in the Andromeda spiral.
We now know that it is time ("time with the Midas touch," as Ventress described it) which is responsible for the transformation. The recent discovery of anti-matter in the universe inevitably involves the conception of antitime as the fourth side of this negatively charged continuum. Where anti-particle and particle collide they not only destroy their own physical identities, but their opposing time-values eliminate each other, subtracting from the universe another quantum from its total store of time. It is random discharges of this type, set off by the creation of anti-galaxies in space, which have led to the depletion of the time-store available to the materials of our own solar system.
Just as a super-saturated solution will discharge itself into a crystalline mass, so the super-saturation of matter in our continuum leads to its appearance in a parallel spatial matrix. As more and more time "leaks" away, the process of super-saturation continues, the original atoms and molecules producing spatial replicas of themselves, substance without mass, in an attempt to increase their foot-hold upon existence. The process is theoretically without end, and it may be possible eventually for a single atom to produce an infinite number of duplicates of itself and so fill the entire universe, from which simultaneously all time has expired, an ultimate macrocosmic zero beyond the wildest dreams of Plato and Democritus.
In parenthesis: reading this over my shoulder, Louise comments that I may be misleading you, Paul, by minimizing the dangers we all experienced within the crystalline forest. It's certainly true that they were very real at the time, as the many tragic deaths there testify, and that first day when I was trapped in the forest I understood nothing of these matters, beyond those which Ventress confided to me in his ambiguous and disjointed way. But even then, as I walked away from that jeweled crocodile up the sloping lawn towards the white-suited man watching me from the window, his shotgun pointed at my chest-
Lying back on one of the glass-embroidered chesterfields in the bedroom upstairs, Dr. Sanders rested after his chase through the forest. As he climbed the staircase he had slipped on one of the crystallizing steps and momentarily winded himself. Standing at the top of the staircase, Ventress had watched him clamber to his feet, the glacé panels splintering under his hands. Ventress's small face, the tight skin now mottled by vein-like colors, was without expression. His eyes gazed down, showing not even a flicker of response as Sanders grappled for his balance at the banisters. When Sanders at last reached the landing Ventress motioned him toward the floor with a curt gesture. He then took up his position at the window, driving the butt of the shotgun through the broken panes as they annealed themselves.
Dr. Sanders brushed the frost off his suit, picking at the crystal splinters embedded like needles in his hands. The air in the house was cold and motionless, but as the Storm subsided, moving away across the forest, the process of vitrification seemed to diminish. Everything in the high-ceilinged room had been transformed by the frost. Several plate-glass windows appeared to have been fractured and then fused together above the carpet, and the ornate Persian patterns swam below the surface like the floor of some perfumed pool in the _Arabian Nights_. All the furniture was covered by the same glacé sheath, the arms and legs of the straight-backed chairs against the walls embellished by exquisite curlicues and helixes. The imitation Louis XV pieces had been transformed into huge fragments of opalescent candy, whose multiple reflections glowed like giant chimeras in the cut-glass walls.
Through the doorway opposite, Dr. Sanders could see into a small dressing-room. He assumed he was sitting in the principal bedroom of an official residence maintained for some visiting government dignitary or the president of one of the mine companies. Although elaborately furnished-straight from the catalogues of a Paris or London department store-the room was devoid of all personal possessions. For some reason, the large double bed-a four-poster, Sanders guessed from the patch on the ceiling-had been removed, and the other furniture pushed to one side by Ventress. He still stood by the open window, peering down at the stream where the jeweled boat and the crocodile lay embalmed. His thin beard gave him a fevered and haunted aspect. Half-bent over his shotgun, he pressed closer to the window, ignoring the sections of crystal sheath that he dislodged from the heavy brocaded curtain.
Dr. Sanders began to stand up, but Ventress waved him back.
"Rest yourself, Doctor. We'll be here for some time." His voice had become harder and the gloss of ironic humor was absent. He glanced away from his gunbarrel. "When did you last see Thorensen?"
"The mine-owner?" Sanders pointed through the window. "After we ran to search for the helicopter. Are you looking for him?"
"In a manner of speaking. What was he doing?"
Dr. Sanders turned up the collar of his jacket, brushing away the fine spurs of frost that covered the material. "He was running around in circles like the rest of us, completely lost."
"Lost?" Ventress let out a derisive snort. "The man's as cunning as a pig! He knows every dell and cranny of this forest like the back of his hand."
When Sanders stood up and approached the window Ventress beckoned him away impatiently. "Keep away from the window, Doctor." With a brief gleam of his old ironic humor, he added: "I don't want to use you as a decoy just yet."
Ignoring this warning, Sanders glanced down at the empty lawn. Like footsteps in dew-covered grass, the dark prints of his shoes crossed the sequined surface, merging into the pale-green slope as the process of crystallization continued. Although the main wave of activity had moved off, the forest was still vitrifying itself. The absolute silence of the jeweled trees seemed to confirm that the affected area had multiplied many times in size. A frozen calm extended as far as he could see, as if he and Ventress were lost somewhere in the grottoes of an immense glacier. To emphasize their proximity to the sun, everywhere there was the same corona of light. The forest was an endless labyrinth of glass caves, sealed off from the remainder of the world and lit by subterranean lamps.
Ventress relaxed for a moment. Raising one foot to the window-sill, he surveyed Dr. Sanders. "A long journey,
Doctor, but one worth making?"
Sanders shrugged. "I haven't reached the end of it yet, by any means-I've still got to find my friends. However, I agree with you, it's an extraordinary experience. There's something almost rejuvenating about the forest. Do you-?"
"Of course, Doctor." Ventress turned back to the window, silencing Sanders with one hand. The frost glimmered on the shoulders of his white suit in a faint palimpsest of colors. He peered down at the crystal vegetation along the stream. After a pause he said: "My dear Sanders, you're not the only one to feel these things, let me assure you."
"You've been here before?" Sanders asked.
"Do you mean-_déjâ vu?_" Ventress looked round, his small features almost hidden behind the beard. Dr. Sanders hesitated. "I meant literally," he said.
Ventress ignored this. "We've all been here before, Doctor, as everyone will soon find out-if there's _time_." He pronounced the word with a peculiar inflexion of his own, drawing it out like the tolling of a bell. He listened to the last echoes reverberate away among the crystal walls, like a fading requiem. "However, I feel that's something we're all running out of, Doctor-do you agree?"
Dr. Sanders tried to massage some warmth into his hands. His fingers felt brittle and fleshless, and he looked at the empty fireplace behind him, wondering whether this ornate recess, guarded on either side by a large gilt dolphin, had been fitted with a chimney flue. Yet despite the cold air in the house he felt less chilled than invigorated.
"Running out of time?" he repeated. "I haven't thought about it yet. What's your explanation?"
"Isn't it obvious, Doctor? Doesn't your own 'specialty,' the dark side of the sun we see around us here, provide a clue? Surely leprosy, like cancer, is above all a disease of time, a result of over-extending oneself through that particular medium?"
Dr. Sanders nodded as Ventress spoke, watching the man's skull-like face come alive as he discussed this element that he appeared, on the surface at least, to despise. "It's a theory," he agreed when Ventress had finished. "Not-"
"Not scientific enough?" Ventress threw his head back. In a louder voice, he declaimed: "Look at the viruses, Doctor, with their crystalline structure, neither animate nor inanimate, and their immunity to time!" He swept a hand along the sill and scooped up a cluster of the vitreous grains, then scattered them across the floor like smashed marbles. "You and I will be like them soon, Sanders, and the rest of the world. Neither living nor dead!"
At the end of this tirade Ventress turned away and resumed his scrutiny of the forest. A muscle flickered in his left cheek, like distant lightning marking the end of a storm.
"Why are you looking for Thorensen?" Dr. Sanders asked. "Are you after his diamond mine?"
"Don't be a fool!" Ventress swore over his shoulder. "That's the last thing-gem-stones are no rarity in this forest, Doctor." With a comtemptuous gesture he scraped a mass of crystals from the material of his suit. "If you want I'll pluck you a necklace of Hope diamonds."
"What are you doing here?" Dr. Sanders asked evenly. "In this house?"
"Thorensen lives here."
"What?" Incredulously, Sanders looked again at the ornate furniture and gilded mirrors, thinking of the burly man in the blue suit at the wheel of the dented Chrysler. "I saw him for only a few moments, but it doesn't seem in character."
"Precisely. I've never seen such bad taste." Ventress nodded to himself. "And believe me, as an architect I've seen plenty. The whole house is a pathetic joke." He pointed to one of the marquetry divans with a spiral bolster that had transformed itself into a brilliant parody of a rococo cartouche, the helix twisting like the overgrown horns of a goat. "Louis Nineteen, perhaps?"
Carried away by his jibes at the absent Thorensen, Ventress had turned his back on the window. Looking past him, Dr. Sanders saw the crocodile trapped in the stream lift on its weak legs, as if snapping at a passer-by. Interrupting Ventress, Sanders pointed down at it, but another voice anticipated him.
"Ventress!"
The shout, an angry challenge, came from the crystal shrubbery along the left-hand margins of the lawn. A second later a shot roared out into the cold air. As Ventress swung round, pushing Sanders away with one hand, the bullet crashed into the ceiling over their heads, bringing down a huge lattice-like section that splintered around their feet into a mass of flattened needles. Ventress flinched back, and then blindly fired off a shot at the shrubbery. The report echoed around the petrified trees, shaking loose their vivid colors.
"Keep down!" Ventress scuttled along the floor to the next window, then worked the barrel of the shotgun through the frosted panes. After his initial moment of stunned panic he had recovered his wits, and even seemed to seize on this chance of a confrontation. He peered down at the garden, then stood up when the cracking of a distant tree appeared to mark the retreat of their hidden assailant.
Ventress walked across to Sanders, who was standing with his back to the wall beside the window.
"All right. He's gone."
Sanders hesitated before moving. He glanced around the trees at the edges of the lawn, trying not to expose more than a glimpse of himself. At the far end of the lawn, framed between two oaks, a white gazebo had been transformed by the frost into a huge crystal crown. Its glass casements winked like inlaid jewels, as if something were moving behind them. Ventress, however, stood openly in front of the window, surveying the scene below.
"Was that Thorensen?" Sanders asked.
"Of course." This brief passage-at-arms seemed to have relaxed Ventress. The shotgun cradled loosely in his elbow, he strolled around the room, now and then pausing to examine the puncture left by the bullet in the ceiling. For some reason he obviously assumed that Sanders had taken his side in this private duel, perhaps because Sanders had already saved him from the attack in the native harbor at Port Matarre. Sanders's actions, however, had been little more than reflex, as Ventress no doubt was aware. Patently Ventress was not a man who ever felt under much obligation to other people, whatever they might have done for him, and Sanders guessed that in fact Ventress had sensed some spark of kinship during their voyage by steamer from Libreville and that he would plunge his entire sympathy or hostility upon such a chance encounter.
The movement inside the gazebo had ended. Sanders stepped forward from his hiding place behind the window.
"The attack on you in Port Matarre-were those Thorensen's men?"
Ventress shrugged. "You might well be right, Doctor. Don't worry, I'll look after you."
"You'll have your work cut out-those thugs meant business. From what the army captain at the base told me the diamond companies don't intend to let anything get in their way."
Ventress shook his head, exasperated by Sanders's obtuseness. "Doctor! You persist in finding the most trivial reasons-obviously you have no idea of your real motives! For the last time, I am not interested in Thorensen's damned diamonds-and nor is Thorensen! The matter between us-" He broke off, staring vaguely through the window, his face for the first time showing any sign of fatigue. In a distracted voice, more to himself, he went on: "Believe me, I respect Thorensen- however crude, he understands that we have the same aim, it's a question of method-" Ventress swung on his heel. "We'd better leave now," he announced. "There's no point in staying. Where are you going?"
" Mont Royal, if that's possible."
"It won't be." Ventress pointed through the window. "The storm center is directly between here and the town. Your only hope is to reach the river and follow it back to the army base. Whom are you looking for?"
"A former colleague of mine and his wife. Do you know the Bourbon Hotel? It's some distance from the town. Their mission hospital is near the hotel."
"Bourbon?" Ventress screwed up his face. "Sounds like the wrong century-you're out of time again, Sanders." He made for the door. "It's an old ruin, God only knows where. You'll have to stay with me until we reach the edge of the forest, then work your way back to the army base."
Testing each s
tep, they went down the crystallizing staircase. Halfway down, Ventress, who was in the lead, stopped and beckoned Sanders forward.
"My pistol." He patted his shoulder holster. "I'll follow you. See if you notice anything from the door."
As he retraced his steps. Sanders walked across the empty hail. He paused among the jeweled pillars, uneager, whatever Ventress's instructions, to expose himself in the wide doorway with its colonnaded portico. From the center of the hail the garden and trees beyond were silent, and he turned and waited among the pillars by the alcove on his left, dozens of reflections of himself glowing in the glass-sheathed walls and furniture.
Involuntarily Sanders raised his hands to catch the rainbows of light that ran around the edges of his suit and face. A legion of El Dorados, all bearing his own features, receded in the mirrors, more images of himself as the man of light than he could have hoped for. He studied a reflection of himself in profile, noticing how the bands of color softened the drawn lines of his mouth and eyes, blurring the residue of time there that had hardened the tissues like the scales of leprosy itself. For a moment he seemed twenty years younger, the ruddy overlay of colors on his cheeks more skilful than the palette of any Rubens or Titian.
Turning his attention to the reflection facing his own, Sanders noticed with surprise that among these prismatic images of himself refracted from the sun he had found one darker twin. The profile and features were obscured, but the skin was almost ebony in color, reflecting the mottled blues and violets of the opposite end of the spectrum. Somehow menacing in this company of light, the somber figure stood motionlessly with its head turned away from him, as if aware of its negative aspect. In its lowered hand a lance of silver light flared like a star in a chalice.
The Crystal World Page 8