The Crystal World (15 page)

Aragon shook his head. "She's with the other visitors at the camp, Doctor. We thought you might come out this way, I've been watching the road." Aragon moved aside, so that the light from his car's headlamps showed more of Sanders's face. He looked into Sanders's eyes, as if trying to assess the inner impact of the forest. "You're lucky to be here, Doctor. Many of the soldiers are feared lost in the forest-they think Captain Radek is dead. The affected area is spreading out in all directions. It's many times the previous size."

The driver in Aragon 's car cut his engine. As the headlamps faded Sanders sat forward. "Louise-she's safe-Captain? I'd like to see her."

"Tomorrow, Doctor. She will come to your friends' clinic. You must see them first, she understands that. Dr. Clair and his wife are at the clinic now. They will look after you."

He went back to his car. It turned and made off at speed down the dark road.

Five minutes later, after a short drive down a side turning past an old mine-works, the Land-Rover entered the compound of the mission hospital. A few oil lamps burned in the outbuildings, and several native families huddled by their carts in the yard, reluctant to take shelter indoors. The men sat in a group by the empty fountain in the center, the smoke from their cheroots forming white plumes in the darkness.

"Is Dr. Clair here?" Sanders asked the driver. "And Mrs. Clair?"

"They both here, sir." The driver glanced across at Sanders, still unsure of this apparition that had materialized from the crystalline forest. "You Dr. Sanders, sir?" he ventured as they parked.

"That's it. They're expecting me?"

"Yes, sir. Dr. Clair in Mont Royal yesterday for you, but trouble in the town, sir, he go away."

"I know. Everything went crazy-I'm sorry I missed him."

As Sanders climbed out of the car a familiar rotund figure in a white cotton jacket, short-sighted eyes below a domed forehead, hurried down the steps toward him.

"Edward-? My dear chap, for heaven's sake-!" He took Sanders's arm. "Where on earth have you been?"

Sanders felt himself relaxing for the first time since his arrival at Port Matarre, indeed, since his departure from the _leproserie_ at Fort Isabelle. "Max, I wish I knew-it's good to see you." He shook Clair's hand, holding it in a tight grip. "It's been insane here-how are you, Max? And how's Suzanne?-is she-?"

"She's fine, fine. Hold on a moment." Leaving Sanders on the steps, Clair went back to the native drivers by the Land-Rover and patted each of them on the shoulder. He looked around at the other natives in the compound, waving to them as they squatted on their bundles in the dim light of the flares. Half a mile away, beyond the roofs of the outbuildings, an immense pall of silver light glowed in the night sky above the forest.

"Suzanne will be thrilled to see you, Edward," Max said as he rejoined Sanders. He seemed more preoccupied than Sanders had remembered him. "We've talked about you a lot-I'm sorry about yesterday afternoon. Suzanne had promised to visit one of the mine dispensaries, when Thorensen contacted me we got our lines crossed." The excuse was a palpably lame one, and Max smiled apologetically.

They entered an inner courtyard and walked across to a long chalet at the far end. Sanders stopped, glancing through the windows of the empty wards. Somewhere a generator hummed, and a few electric light bulbs glowed at the ends of corridors, but the hospital seemed deserted.

"Max-I made an appalling blunder." Sanders spoke rapidly, hoping that Suzanne would not appear and interrupt him. Half an hour from then, as the three of them relaxed over their drinks in the comfort of the Clairs' lounge, Radek's tragedy would cease to seem real. "This man Radek-a captain in the medical corps- I found him in the center of the forest, completely crystallized. You know what I mean?" Max nodded, his eyes looking Sanders up and down with a more than usually watchful gaze. Sanders went on: "I thought the only way of saving him was to immerse him in the river-but I had to tear him loose! Some of the crystals came off, I didn't realize-"

"Edward!" Max took his arm and tried to steer him along the path. "There's no-"

Sanders pushed his hand away. "Max, I found him later, I'd torn half his face and chest away-!"

"For God's sake!" Max clenched his fist. "Yours wasn't the first mistake, don't reproach yourself!"

"Max, I don't-understand me, it wasn't just that!" Sanders hesitated. "The point is-he wanted to go _back!_ He wanted to go back into the forest and be crystallized again! He knew, Max, he _knew!_"

Lowering his head, Clair moved away a few paces. He glanced at the darkened French windows of the chalet, where the tall figure of his wife watched them from the half-opened door. "Suzanne's there," he said. "She's pleased to see you, Edward, but-" Almost vaguely, as if distracted by matters other than those which Sanders had described, he added: "You'll want a change of clothes, I have a suit that will fit you-one of the European patients, deceased, if you don't mind that- and something to eat. It's damned cold in the forest."

Sanders was looking at Suzanne Clair. Instead of coming forward to greet him, she had retreated into the darkness of the lounge, and at first Sanders wondered whether some residue of their old embarrassment still remained. Although Sanders felt that his past affair with Suzanne if anything bound Max and himself together far more than it separated them, Max seemed distant and nervous, almost as if he resented Sanders's arrival.

But Sanders could see the smile of greeting on Suzanne's face. She was wearing a night robe of black silk that made her tall figure seem almost invisible against the shadows in the lounge, the pale lantern of her face floating like a nimbus above it.

"Suzanne-it's wonderful to see you." Sanders took her hand with a laugh. "I was frightened you might both have been swallowed by the forest. How are you?"

"Very happy, Edward." Still holding Sanders's arm, Suzanne turned to face her husband. "Delighted that you've come, you'll be able to share the forest with us now."

"My dear, I think the poor man has had more than his fair share already." Max bent down behind the sofa against the bookshelf and switched on the desk lamp that had been placed on the floor. The dim light illuminated the gold lettering on the leather spines of his books, but the rest of the room remained in darkness. "Do you realize that he's been trapped in the forest since late yesterday afternoon?"

"Trapped-?" Turning away from Sanders, Suzanne went over to the French windows and closed the door. She looked out at the brilliant night sky over the forest, and then sat down in a chair near the blackwood cabinet against the far wall. "Is that quite the word to use? I envy you, Edward, it must have been a wonderful experience."

"Well-" Accepting a drink from Max, who was now half-filling his own glass from the whisky decanter, Sanders leaned against the mantelpiece. Hidden in the shadows by the cabinet, Suzanne was still smiling at him, but this reflection of her former good humor seemed overlaid by the ambiguous atmosphere in the lounge. He wondered whether this was due to his own fatigue, but there seemed something out of key in their meeting, as if some unseen dimension had been let obliquely into the room. He was still wearing the clothes in which he had swum the river, but Max made no move toward helping him to change.

Sanders raised his glass to Suzanne. "I suppose one could call it wonderful," he said. "It's a matter of degree-I was unprepared for everything here."

"How marvelous-you'll never forget it." Suzanne sat forward. She wore her long black hair in an unusual manner, well forward over her face, so that it concealed her cheeks. "Tell me about it all, Edward, I-"

"My dear." Max held up his hand. "Give the poor man time to catch his breath. Besides, he'll want a meal now, and then to get to bed. We can discuss it all over breakfast." To Sanders he explained: "Suzanne spends a lot of time wandering through the forest."

"Wandering-?" Sanders repeated. "What do you mean?"

"Only through the fringes, Edward," Suzanne said. "We're on the edge of the forest here, but there's enough-I've seen those jeweled vaults." With animation, she said: "A few mornings ago when I went out before dawn my slippers were beginning to crystallize- my feet were turning into diamonds and emeralds!"

With a smile, Max said: "My dear, you're the princess in the enchanted wood."

"Max, I _was_-" Suzanne nodded, her eyes gazing at her husband as he looked down at the carpet. She turned to Sanders, "Edward, we could never leave here now."

Sanders shrugged. "I understand, Suzanne, but you may have to. The affected area is spreading. God only knows what the source of all this is, but there doesn't seem much prospect of stopping it."

"Why try?" Suzanne looked up at Sanders. "Shouldn't we be grateful to the forest for giving us such a bounty?"

Max finished his drink. "Suzanne, you're moralizing like some missionary. All Edward wants at this moment is a change of clothes and a meal." He went over to the door. "I'll be with you in a moment, Edward. There's a room ready for you. Help yourself to another drink."

When he had gone, Sanders said to Suzanne, as he filled his glass with soda: "You must be tired. I'm sorry to have kept you up."

"Not at all. I sleep during the day now-Max, and I decided we should keep the dispensary open round the clock." Aware that the explanation was not wholly convincing, she added: "To be frank, I prefer the night. One can see the forest better."

"That's true. You're not frightened of it, Suzanne?"

"Why should I be? It's so easy to be more frightened of one's feelings than of the things that prompt them. The forest isn't like that-I've accepted it, and all the fears that go with them." In a quieter voice, she added: "I'm glad you're here, Edward. I'm afraid Max doesn't understand what's happening in the forest-I mean in the widest sense-to all our ideas of time and mortality. How can I put it? 'Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, stains the white radiance of eternity.' I'm sure you understand."

Carrying his glass, Sanders walked across the darkened room. Although his eyes had become accustomed to the dim light, Suzanne's face still remained hidden in the shadows behind the blackwood cabinet. The faintly quizzical smile that had hovered about her mouth since his arrival was still there, almost beckoning to him.

As he drew closer to her, he realized that this slight upward inclination of the mouth was not a smile at all, but a facial rictus caused by the nodular thickening of the upper lip. The skin of her face had a characteristic dusky appearance, which she had managed to hide by her long hair and a lavish use of powder. Despite this camouflage, he could see the nodular lumps all over her face and in the lobe of her left ear as she drew back fractionally in her chair, raising her shoulder. Already, after his years of experience at the leper hospital, he recognized the beginnings of the so-called leonine mask.

Confused by this discovery, although he had halfanticipated it since Suzanne's first letter to him from Mont Royal, Sanders moved away across the room, hoping Suzanne had failed to notice the telltale way in which he had spilt some of his drink on to the carpet. His first feelings of anger at this crime of nature against someone who had already spent much of her own life trying to cure others of the disease, gave way to a sense of relief, as if this particular disaster were one for which both of them were psychologically well prepared. He realized that he had been waiting for Suzanne to catch the disease, that for him this had probably been her one valid role. Even their affair had been an unconscious attempt to bring about this very end. It was himself, and not the poor devils in the _leproserie_, who had been the real source of infection for Suzanne.

Sanders finished his drink and put it down, then turned to face Suzanne. Despite their previous closeness, he found it almost impossible to express himself to her. After a pause, he said lamely: "I was sorry you left Fort Isabelle at the time, Suzanne. In fact, it was an effort to stop myself following you straightaway. I'm glad you came, though. It may seem a strange choice to some people, but I understand. Who could blame you for trying to escape from the dark side of the sun?"

Suzanne shook her head, either puzzled by this cryptic reference or preferring not to understand it. "What do you mean?"

Sanders hesitated. Although she appeared to be smiling, Suzanne was in fact trying to control this involuntary movement of her mouth. Her once elegant face was twisted by a barely concealed scowl.

He gestured. "I was thinking of our patients at Fort Isabelle. For them-"

"It's nothing to do with them. Edward, you're tired, and I have to be at the dispensary. I mustn't keep your supper any longer." With a brisk movement, Suzanne stood up, her slim figure taller than Sanders. Her powdered face looked down at him with the skull-like intensity he remembered in Ventress. Then once again the deformed smile supervened.

"Good night, Edward. We'll see you at breakfast, you have so much to tell us."

Sanders stopped her at the door. "Suzanne-"

"What is it, Edward?" She half-closed the door, shutting out the light from the corridor that cut across her face.

Sanders fumbled for something to say, and in a kind of half-remembered reflex raised his arms to embrace her. Then, as much attracted as repelled by her injured face, but knowing that he must first understand his own motives, he turned away.

"There's nothing to tell you, Suzanne," he said. "You've seen everything here in the forest."

"Not everything, Edward," Suzanne told him. "One day you must take me there."

The next morning, wearing the dead man's clothes, Sanders met Louise Peret. He had spent the night in one of the four empty chalets that formed the sides of a small courtyard behind the Clairs' bungalow. The remainder of the European medical staff had left the hospital, and before breakfast Sanders wandered through the deserted chalets, trying to prepare himself for the coming meeting with Suzanne. The few books and magazines left behind on the shelves and the unused cans in the kitchen were like the residue of a distant world.