The Crystal World (19 page)

"Lie _down!_ By God, Sanders, you take your chances!"

His mottled face pressed toward Sanders as he lay against the side of the hollow. Then Ventress looked out again at the river and the distant cruiser. His flintlock lay in front of him, its ornamented barrel following every movement as the light outside varied its patterns.

Sanders gazed around the hollow, wondering if Thorensen had taken Serena with him and abandoned the summer house, hoping to trap Ventress there, or whether the latter had reached the pavilion first after the attack that morning in the streets of Mont Royal.

The wooden boards over their heads had vitrified into a rock-like glass, but the outlines of a trapdoor could still be seen in the center. On the ground below, a steel bayonet lay among a few shards laboriously chipped from the edges of the trapdoor.

Ventress pointed curtly to the trapdoor. "You can have a go in a moment. It's damned hard work."

Sanders sat forward. Lifting his arm, he turned over so that he could see across the river.

"Serena-your wife-is she still here?"

Ventress looked up at the beams over their heads. "I'll be with her soon. It's been a long search." Checking himself, he peered along his barrel, examining the sprays of frozen grass that skirted the banks before he spoke again. "So you saw her, Sanders?"

"Only for a minute. I told Thorensen to get her out of here."

Leaving his gun, Ventress scrambled across to Sanders. Kneeling in the hollow like a luminous mole, he peered into Sanders's eyes. "Sanders, tell me-I haven't seen her yet! My God!" He drummed on the wooden beams, sending a dead echo through the platform.

"She's-all right," Sanders said. "Most of the time she's asleep. How did you get here?"

His mind elsewhere, Ventress stared at him. Then he crawled back to his shotgun. He beckoned Sanders forward. He pointed to the bank fifty feet away. Lying face upwards among the grass, the spurs of frost from his crystallizing body merging him into the undergrowth, was one of Thorensen's men.

"Poor Thorensen," Ventress murmured. "One by one they're leaving him. He'll be alone soon, Sanders."

There was another flash from the cannon on board the cruiser. The craft backed slightly in the water, and the steel ball arched through the air, striking the trees a hundred yards from the summer house. As the boom of the explosion drummed around the river, shaking the rails of the balcony, Sanders noticed the light driven from his arm in a series of soft pulses. The surface of the river shifted and settled itself, blades of carmine light lancing into the air.

Kagwa and the mulatto knelt down by the cannon again and began to reload it. Sanders said: "Bad shooting. But Serena-if she's here why are they trying to hit the summer house?"

"They're not, my dear fellow." Ventress was watching the undergrowth along the banks, as if taking no chances that Thorensen might not try to steal up on the summer house during the distractions of the artillery display. After a moment, apparently satisfied, he relaxed. "He has other plans for his big gun. His idea is to loosen the river with the noise-then he can bring his boat right up to the summer house and blast me out of here."

Sure enough, during the next hour a series of dull explosions punctuated the still air. The two Negroes worked away at the cannon, and at intervals of five minutes or so there was a brief flash and one of the steel balls flew across the river. As they rebounded off the bank and trees the echoes of the reports struck vivid red lanes through the petrified surface.

Each time Sanders's jeweled arm and Ventress's suit shed rainbows of light around them.

"What are you doing here, Sanders?" Ventress asked during one of the lulls. There were no signs of Thorensen, and Kagwa and the mulatto worked without supervision. Ventress had crawled back to the trapdoor and was chipping away with the bayonet, now and then pausing to press his head to the platform and listen for any sounds above. "I thought you'd got out?"

"The wife of a colleague of mine at Isabelle-Suzanne Clair-ran off into the forest last night. It was partly my fault." Sanders looked down at the crystal sheath on his arm. No longer having to carry its great weight around he found that he was less frightened of its monstrous appearance. Although the crystalline tissues were as cold as ice, and no movement of his hand or fingers was possible, the nerves and sinews seemed to have taken on a new life of their own, glowing like the hard compacted light they emitted. Only along the forearm, where he had torn away the strip of crystals, was there any marked sensation, but even here it was less one of pain than a feeling of warmth as the crystals annealed themselves.

Another explosion boomed across the river. Ventress threw the bayonet away. He scuttled back to his place near the steps.

Sanders watched the cruiser. It still remained at its mooring in the mouth of the creek, but Kagwa and the mulatto had left the cannon and gone below. Evidently the last round had been fired. Ventress pointed with a bony finger at the small trail of exhaust from the stern. The cruiser began to swing round. As it turned and the cabin windows altered their angle, they could both see a tall blond-haired man behind the wheel.

"Thorensen!" Ventress crept forward, his small body crouching with knees pressed against his chest.

Sanders picked up the bayonet in his left hand. The cruiser was moving astern, the smoke of the exhaust drifting along its hull. It stopped and straightened out.

Full ahead, the cruiser surged forward, its bows lifting through the placid water. An interval of fifty yards separated it from the nearest edge of the petrified crust. As it changed course, selecting one of the faults exposed by the bombardment, Sanders remembered Thorensen testing the lanes through the collapsing surface when Ventress had escaped from the mulatto.

Moving at twenty knots, the cruiser bore down on the edge of the pool, then drove through the thin crystals like an ice-breaker scattering surface ice out of its path. Within thirty yards its speed fell off. A few huge floes piled up across its bows, and the cruiser slewed sideways and came to a stop. There was a flurry of activity on the bridge as the men inside wrestled with the controls, and Ventress leveled his gun at the cabin windows. Three hundred feet away, the cruiser was well out of range. Around it immense faults had appeared in the surface of the river, the vivid carmine light bled off into the surrounding ice. The trees along the bank were still shaking with the impact, shedding the light from their boughs like liquid blossoms.

After a pause the cruiser backed off a few feet, then retraced its path down the lane. Fifty yards back, in the entrance to the pool, it stopped and aligned its bows.

As it drove forward again, lifting on the exposed water, Ventress reached into his jacket. From the shoulder holster he drew out the automatic pistol Sanders had smuggled through the customs.

"Take it!" Ventress leveled his shotgun at the approaching cruiser, shouting at Sanders across the breech. "Watch the bank on your side! I'll look out for Thorensen!"

This time the smooth advance of the cruiser was checked more abruptly. Hitting the heavier floes, it scattered half a dozen of the giant crystal blocks across the surface, then rammed to a half with a fifteen-degree list, its engine racing. The men on board were flung to the floor of the cabin, and it was several minutes before the cruiser righted itself and made a slow reverse passage down the channel.

The next time it approached more slowly, its bows first loosening the surface, then driving the crystal blocks out of their way.

Sanders crouched behind one of the wooden stilts, waiting for the mulatto to fire the cannon before the cruiser came within close range of Ventress. It was now only seventy-five yards from the summer house, its bridge high in the air above them. Ventress, however, seemed composed, watching the banks for any surprise attack.

The ground shook beneath the summer house as the cruiser drove again and again into the crystal pack. The smoke of its exhaust hung around them, fouling the crisp air. Each time it came a few yards closer, its bows splintering into white spars. Already the cruiser had been enveloped by a fine frost, and the mulatto knocked out the crystallizing windows of the cabin with a rifle butt. The deck rails were hung with fine spurs. Ventress maneuvered about, trying to get a shot in at the men in the cabin, but their heads were hidden behind the broken panes. Jerked up on to the surface, the blocks of damp crystals were scattered out of the cruiser's way, and the first pieces skated across to the steps of the summer house.

"Sanders!" Ventress half-stood, his face and chest exposed. "They're landlocked!"

Thirty yards away, its shattered bows rooted in a fault between two floes, the cruiser was heaving from side to side. Its engine roared and faded, then whined and fell silent. Immobile, the cruiser sat in front of them, the fine frost already transforming it into a bizarre wedding cake. Once or twice it rocked slightly as if an oar or a grappling line was being worked from a stern porthole.

Ventress kept his shotgun leveled at the cabin. Ten feet away on his right, Sanders held the automatic pistol in one hand, his other arm on the ground beside him, glowing in its own crystal life. Together they waited for Thorensen to make a move. For half an hour the cruiser was silent, the frost thickening on its decks. Spiral crests formed around the windows of the cabin and ornamented the deck rails and portholes. The shattered bows bristled like the tusks of a frozen whale. Below the bridge the cannon was transformed into a medieval firing piece, its breech embellished with exquisite horns and crests.

The afternoon light was fading. Sanders watched the bank on his right, where the vivid colors had become more somber as the sun sank behind the trees into the west.

Then, among the white sprays of grass, he saw a long silver-bodied creature shuffling along the bank. Ventress crouched beside him, peering through the dim light. They watched the jeweled snout and hooked forelegs in their crystal armor. The crocodile sidled slowly on its stomach in its ancient reptilian motion. Fully fifteen feet long, it seemed to propel itself more with its tail than by its legs. The left foreleg hung in the air frozen within the crystal armour. As it moved the light poured from the glace eyes and from the half-opened mouth choked with jewels.

It stopped, as if sensing the two men under the summer house, and then slid forward. Five feet away, it stopped for a second time, jaws working weakly, its body crushing the grass in its path. Feeling a remote sympathy for this monster in its armor of light, unable to understand its own transfiguration, Sanders watched the blank eyes above the opening mouth.

Then, as the jeweled teeth glittered at him, Sanders realized that he was looking into a gun barrel.

Cutting off an involuntary shout, Sanders lowered his head, then moved a few feet away from the pillar. As he raised his head he saw the mouth of the crocodile open. The gun barrel came forward below the upper row of teeth, and then fired once at the shadow of the wooden pillar.

In the roar of the gun flame Sanders steadied the automatic pistol on the notched surface of his crystal arm and fired at the crocodile's head. It twisted sideways, the barrel searching for him. Inside the jeweled skin Sanders could see a man's elbows and knees on the ground. Sanders fired again at the thorax and abdomen of the carapace. With a galvanic heave the huge beast rose into the air on its hind legs and hovered there like a jeweled saurian. Then it fell over on to its side, exposing the open slit from the lower jaw to the abdomen. Strapped inside, the body of the mulatto lay face up in the dusk, his black skin illuminated by the crystal ship moored like a ghost behind him.

Feet raced along the opposite bank. With a shout Ventress rose on his knees and fired the shotgun. There was a shrill cry, and the half-bandaged figure of Kagwa fell among the sprays of grass ten yards from the summer house. He rose to his feet and stumbled past the house, no longer aware of what he was doing. For a moment the last daylight on his dark skin made him seem almost as white as the small figure of Ventress. The second shot caught him in the chest, knocking him away across the bank. He lay on his face in the edge of the shadows.

Sanders waited in the hollow as Ventress reloaded his shotgun. He scuttled about, peering at the two bodies. For a few minutes there was silence, and then he touched Sanders on the shoulder with the shotgun.

"Right, Doctor."

Sanders looked up at his expressionless face. "What do you mean?"

"It's time for you to go, Doctor. Thorensen and I are alone now."

As Sanders climbed to his feet, hesitating to expose himself, Ventress said: "Thorensen will understand. Get out of the forest, Sanders, you aren't ready to come here yet." As he spoke, Ventress's suit was covered with the jeweled scales of the crystals that had formed there.

So Sanders took his leave of Ventress. Outside, the white ship had begun to merge into the torn surface of the river. As he walked away from the summer house along the bank, leaving behind the three dead men, one still in his crocodile skin, Sanders saw nothing of Thorensen. A hundred yards from the house, where the river turned, he looked back, but Ventress was hidden below his platform. Above him the faint light of a lantern shone in the glazed windows.

At last, late that afternoon, when the deepening ruby light of dusk settled through the forest, Sanders entered a small clearing where the deep sounds of an organ reverberated among the trees. In the center was a small church, its slim spire fused to the branches of the surrounding trees by the crystal tracery.

Raising his jeweled arm to light the oaken doors, Sanders drove them back and entered the nave. Above him, refracted by the stained-glass windows, a brilliant glow of light poured down upon the altar. Listening to the organ, Sanders leaned against the altar rail and extended his arm to the gold cross set with rubies and emeralds. Immediately the sheath slipped and began to dissolve, like a melting sleeve of ice. As the crystals deliquesced the light poured from his arm like an overflowing fountain.