The Crystal World (9 page)

Sanders stared after him, unsure whether he had in fact seen Ventress-had the white-suited figure been some kind of hallucination set off by the prismatic forest? It seemed impossible for Ventress to have smuggled himself aboard the craft, even by masquerading as one of the agriculture experts, though Sanders had been so distracted by the prospect of seeing the affected zone for the first time that he had not bothered to look closely at his fellow passengers.

"Do you wish to rest, Doctor?" Radek asked. "We can pause for a moment."

"If you like-" They stopped by one of the metal bollards. Sander sat down on it, still thinking of the elusive figure of Ventress and its real significance. Again Sanders felt the sense of confusion which the strange light in Port Matarre had generated, a confusion in some way symbolized by Ventress and his skull-like face. Yet however much Ventress had seemed to reflect the flaring half-light in the town, Sanders was sure that here at Mont Royal the white-suited man would really come into his own.

"Captain-" Without thinking, Sanders said: "Radek, I wasn't entirely frank with you-"

"Doctor?" Radek's eyes were watching Sanders's. He nodded slowly, as if he already knew what Sanders would say.

"Don't misunderstand me." Sanders pointed to the forest glowing across the water. "I'm glad you're here, Radek. Before I was thinking only of myself. I had to leave Fort Isabelle-"

"I do understand you, Doctor." Radek touched his arm. "We must follow the party now." As they walked along the wharf, Radek said in his low voice: "Outside this forest everything seems polarized, does it not, divided into black and white? Wait until you reach the trees, Doctor-there, perhaps, these things will be reconciled for you."

Their party was divided into several smaller groups, each accompanied by two N.C.O.s. They moved off past the short queue of cars and trucks which the last of the European townsfolk were using to bring their possessions to the wharf. The families, those of the French and Belgian mine-technicians, waited their turn patiently, flagged on by the military police. The streets of Mont Royal were deserted, and the entire native popula-. tion appeared to have long since vanished into the forest. The houses stood empty in the sunlight, shutters sealed across the windows, and soldiers paced up and down past the closed banks and stores. The side-streets were packed with abandoned cars, indicating that the river was the only route of escape from the town.

As they walked down to the control post, the jungle glowing two hundred yards away to their left, a large Chrysler with a dented fender swerved down the street and came to a halt in front of them. A tall man with blond hair, his double-breasted blue Suit unbuttoned, climbed out. He recognized Radek and waved him over.

"This is Thorensen," Radek explained. "One of the mine-owners. It looks as if he hasn't been able to contact your friends. However, he may have news."

The tall man rested one hand on the roof of the car and scanned the surrounding roof-tops. The collar of his white shirt was open, and he scratched in a bored way at his neck. Although of powerful build, there was something weak and self-centered about his long fleshy face.

"Radek!" he shouted. "I haven't got all day! Is this Sanders?" He jerked his head at the doctor, then nodded to him. "Look, I got hold of them for you-they're at the mission hospital near the old Bourbon Hotel-he and his wife were supposed to come down here. Ten minutes ago he phoned that his wife's gone off somewhere, he has to look for her."

"Gone off somewhere?" Dr. Sanders repeated. "What does that mean?"

"How would I know?" Thorensen climbed into the car, forcing his huge body into the seat as if loading in a sack of meal. "Anyway, he said he'd be down here at six o'clock. O.K., Radek?"

"Thank you, Thorensen. We'll be here then."

With a nod, Thorensen jerked the car into reverse, backing it across the street in a cloud of dust. He set off at speed, almost running down a passing soldier.

"A rough diamond," Sanders commented. "If I can use the term here. Do you think he did get on to the Clairs?"

Radek shrugged. "Probably. Thorensen isn't exactly reliable, but he owed me a small favor for some medicines. A difficult man, always up to some game of his own. But he's been useful to us. The other mine-owners have gone but Thorensen still has his big boat."

Sanders looked around, remembering the attack on Ventress in the harbor at Port Matarre. "A large motorcruiser? With an ornamental cannon?"

"Ornamental? That doesn't sound like Thorensen." Radek laughed. "I can't remember his boat-why do you ask?"

"I thought I'd seen him before. What do we do now?"

"Nothing. The Bourbon Hotel is about three miles from here, it's an old ruin. If we go there we might not get back in time."

"It's strange-Suzanne Clair going off like that."

"Perhaps she had a patient to see. You think it was something to do with your coming here?"

"I hope not..." Sanders buttoned his jacket. "We might as well take a look at the forest until Max gets here."

Following the visiting party, they turned down the next side-street. They approached the forest, which stood back on either side of the road a quarter of a mile away. The vegetation was sparser, the grass growing in clumps along the sandy soil. In the open space a mobile laboratory had been set up in a trailer, and a platoon of soldiers was wandering about, taking cuttings from the trees, which they laid like fragments of stained glass on a line of trestle tables. The main body of the forest circled the eastern perimeter of the town, cutting off the highway to Port Matarre and the south.

Splitting up into twos and threes, they crossed the verge and began to walk among the glace ferns which rose from the brittle ground. The sandy surface seemed curiously hard and annealed, small spurs of fused sand protruding from the newly formed crust.

A few yards from the trailer two technicians were spinning several of the encrusted branches in a centrifuge. There was a continuous glimmer as splinters of light glanced out of the bowl and vanished into the air. All over the inspection area, as far as the perimeter fence under the trees, the soldiers and visiting officials turned to watch. When the centrifuge stopped, the technicians peered into the bowl, where a handful of limp branches, their blanched leaves clinging damply to the metal bottom, lay stripped of their sheaths. Without comment, one of the technicians showed Dr. Sanders and Radek the empty liquor receptacle underneath.

Twenty yards from the forest, a helicopter prepared for take-off. Its heavy blades rotated like drooping scythes, sending up a blaze of light from the disturbed vegetation. With an abrupt lurch it made a labored takeoff, swinging sideways through the air, and then moved across the forest roof, its churning blades gaining little purchase on the air. The soldiers and the visiting party stopped to watch the vivid discharge of light that radiated from the blades like St. Elmo's fire. Then, with a harsh roar like the bellow of a stricken animal, it slid backwards through the air and plunged tail-first toward the forest canopy a hundred feet below, the two pilots visible at their controls. Sirens sounded from the staff cars parked around the inspection area, and there was a concerted rush toward the forest as the aircraft disappeared from view.

As they raced along the road Dr. Sanders felt its impact with the ground. A glow of light pulsed through the trees. The road led toward the point of the crash, a few houses looming at intervals at the ends of empty drives.

"The blades crystallized while it was near the trees!" Radek shouted as they climbed over the perimeter fence. "You could see the crystals deliquescing. Let's hope the pilots are all right!"

A sergeant blocked their way, beckoning back Sanders and the other civilians who were crowding along the fence. Radek shouted to the sergeant, who let Sanders go past, and then detached half a dozen of his men. The soldiers ran ahead of Radek and Dr. Sanders, stopping every twenty yards to peer through the trees.

They were soon within the body of the forest, and had entered an enchanted world. The crystal trees around them were hung with glass-like trellises of moss. The air was markedly cooler, as if everything was sheathed in ice, but a ceaseless play of light poured through the canopy overhead.

The process of crystallization was more advanced. The fences along the road were so heavily encrusted that they formed a continuous palisade, a white frost at least six inches thick on either side of the palings. The few houses between the trees glistened like wedding cakes, their white roofs and chimneys transformed into exotic minarets and baroque domes. On a lawn of green glass spurs a child's tricycle glittered like a Faberge gem, the wheels starred into brilliant jasper crowns.

The soldiers were still ahead of Dr. Sanders, but Radek had fallen behind, limping along and pausing to feel the soles of his boots. By now it was obvious to Sanders why the highway to Port Matarre had been closed. The surface of the road was now a carpet of needles, spurs of glass and quartz five or six inches high that reflected the colored light from the leaves above. The spurs tore at Sanders's shoes, forcing him to move hand over hand along the verge.

"Sanders! Come back, Doctor!" The brittle echoes of Radek's voice, like a faint cry in an underground grotto, reached Sanders, but he stumbled on along the road, following the intricate patterns that revolved and expanded over his head like jeweled mandalas.

Behind him an engine roared, and the Chrysler he had seen with Thorensen plunged along the road, the heavy tires cutting through the crystal surface. Twenty yards ahead it rocked to a halt, its engine stalled, and Thorensen jumped out. With a shout he waved Sanders back down the road, now a tunnel of yellow and crimson light formed by the forest canopies overhead.

"Get back! There's another wave coming!" Glancing around wildly, as if searching for someone, he set off at a run after the soldiers.

Dr. Sanders rested by the Chrysler. A marked change had come over the forest, as if dusk had begun to fall. Everywhere the glace sheaths which enveloped the trees and vegetation had become duller and more opaque. The crystal floor underfoot was occluded and gray, turning the needles into spurs of basalt. The brilliant panoply of colored light had gone, and a dim amber glow moved across the trees, shadowing the sequined floor. At the same time it had become considerably colder. Leaving the car, Dr. Sanders began to make his way back down the road-Radek was still shouting soundlessly to him- but the cold air blocked his path like a refrigerated wall. Turning up the collar of his tropical suit, Sanders retreated to the car, wondering whether to take refuge inside it. The cold deepened, numbing his face, and making his hands feel brittle and fleshless. Somewhere he heard Thorensen's hollow shout, and he caught a glimpse of a soldier running at full speed through the icegray trees.

On the right of the road the darkness enveloped the forest, masking the outlines of the trees, and then extended in a sudden sweep across the roadway. Dr. Sanders's eyes smarted with pain, and he brushed away the crystals of ice that had formed over the eyeballs. As his sight cleared he saw that everywhere around him a heavy frost was forming, accelerating the process of crystallization. The spurs in the roadway were over a foot in height, like the spines of a giant porcupine, and the lattices of moss between the trees were thicker and more translucent, so that the trunks seemed to shrink into a mottled thread. The interlocking leaves formed a continuous mosaic.

The windows of the car were covered by a heavy frost. Dr. Sanders reached for the door handle, but his fingers were stung by the intense cold.

"You there! Come on! This way!"

The voice echoed down a drive behind him. Looking around as the darkness deepened, Dr. Sanders saw the burly figure of Thorensen waving to him from the portico of a mansion near by. The lawn between them seemed to belong to a less somber zone, the grass still retaining its vivid liquid sparkle, as if this enclave were preserved intact like an island in the eye of a hurricane.

Dr. Sanders ran up the drive toward the house. Here the air was at least ten degrees warmer. Reaching the porch, he searched for Thorensen, but the mine-owner had run off again into the forest. Uncertain whether to follow him, Sanders watched the approaching wall of darkness slowly cross the lawn, the glittering foliage overhead sinking into its pall. At the bottom of the drive the Chrysler was now encrusted by a thick layer of frozen glass, its windshield blossoming into a thousand fleur-de-lis crystals.

Quickly making his way around the house, as the zone of safety moved off through the forest, Dr. Sanders crossed the remains of an old vegetable garden, where waist-high plants of green glass rose around him like exquisite sculptures. Waiting as the zone hesitated and veered off, he tried to remain within the center of its focus.

For the next hour he stumbled through the forest, his sense of direction lost, driven from left to right by the occluding walls. He had entered an endless subterranean cavern, where jeweled rocks loomed out of the spectral gloom like huge marine plants, the sprays of grass forming white fountains. Several times he crossed and recrossed the road. The spurs were almost waist-high, and he was forced to clamber over the brittle stems.

Once, as he rested against the trunk of a bifurcated oak, an immense multi-colored bird erupted from a bough over his head and flew off with a wild screech, aureoles of light cascading from its red and yellow wings.

At last the storm subsided, and a pale light filtered through the stained-glass canopy. Again the forest was a place of rainbows, a deep iridescent light glowing around him. He walked down a narrow roadway which wound toward a large colonial house standing like a baroque pavilion on a rise in the center of the forest. Transformed by the frost, it seemed an intact fragment of Versailles or Fontainebleau, its pilasters and friezes spilling from the wide roof like sculptured fountains.