J.G. Ballard - The Crystal World

There were few other craft about. One or two native outriggers moved along by the edge of the banks, half hidden by the overhanging foliage. A mile from Port Matarre they passed the private jetties owned by the cocoa plantations. The empty lighters lay unattended under the idle cranes. Weeds sprang between the tracks of the small-gauge railways and climbed up the gantries of the storage silos. Everywhere the forest hung motionless in the warm air, and the speed and spray of the motor-boat seemed to Dr. Sanders like an illusionist trick, the flickering shutter of a defective cine-camera.

Half an hour later, when they reached the tidal limits of the river, some ten miles inland, Aragon slowed down so that they could watch the water more closely. Dead trees and large pieces of bark drifted past. Now and then they came across sections of abandoned wharves that had been pulled off their moorings by the current. The river seemed untended and refuse-strewn, carrying the litter of deserted towns and villages.

"This is quite a boat, Captain," Dr. Sanders complimented Aragon, as the latter changed fuel tanks to preserve the balance of the craft.

Aragon nodded, steering the boat past the remains of a floating hut. "Faster than the police launches, Doctor."

"I'm sure it is. What do you use it for? Diamond smuggling?"

Aragon turned his head, casting a sharp eye at Sanders. Despite the latter's reserved manner, Aragon seemed already to have made his own judgment of the doctor's character. He shrugged sadly. "So I hoped, Doctor, but too late now."

"Why do you say that?"

Aragon looked up at the dark forest draining all light from the air. "You'll see, Doctor. We'll soon be there."

"When were you last at Mont Royal, Captain?" Sanders asked. He glanced back at Louise. She leaned forward to catch Aragon 's replies, holding her hair against her cheek.

"Not for five weeks. The police took my old boat."

"Do you know what's going on up there? Have they found a new mine?"

Aragon gave a laugh at this, and then steered the boat at a large white bird sitting on a log in their path. With a cry it took off straight over their heads, its huge wings working like ungainly oars. "You could say that, Doctor. But not in the way you mean." He added before Sanders could question him further: "I really saw nothing. I was on the river, it was during the night."

"You saw the dead man in the harbor this morning?"

Aragon paused for half a minute before replying. At last he said: " El Dorado, the man of gold and jewels, in an armor of diamonds. There's an end many would wish for, Doctor."

"Perhaps. He was a friend of Mlle. Peret."

"Of Mlle.-?" With a grimace, Aragon sat forward over the helm.

Shortly after one thirty, when they were almost halfway to Mont Royal, they stopped by a derelict jetty that jutted out into the river from an abandoned plantation. Sitting on the soft beams over the water, they ate their lunch of ham and rolls followed by café royal. Nothing moved across the river or along the banks, and to Sanders it seemed that the entire area had been deserted.

Perhaps because of this, any conversation between them had lapsed. Aragon sat by himself, staring out at the water that swept past. The marked slope of his forehead, and his lean face with its pointed cheekbones, had given him a sharp piratical look along the waterfront at Port Matarre, but here, surrounded on all sides by the oppressive jungle, he seemed less sure of himself, more like some trigger-nerved forest guide. Why he had chosen to take Sanders and Louise to Mont Royal remained obscure, but Sanders guessed that he was drawn back to this focal area by motives as uncertain as his own.

Louise had also withdrawn into herself. As she smoked her cigarette after the meal she avoided Sanders's eyes. Deciding to leave her alone for the time being, Sanders walked away along the pier, picking his way across the broken boards until he reached the bank. The forest had re-entered the plantation, and the giant trees hung silently in lines, one dark cliff behind another.

In the distance he could see the ruined plantation house, creepers entwined through the rafters of the outbuildings. Ferns overgrew the garden of the house, running up to the doors and sprouting through the planks of the porch. Avoiding this mournful wreck, Sanders strolled around the perimeter of the garden, following the faded stones of a pathway. He passed the wire screen of a tennis court, the mesh covered by creepers and moss, and then reached the drained basin of an ornamental fountain.

Sanders sat down on the balustrade, and took out his cigarettes. He was looking across at the plantation house a few minutes later when he sat forward with a start. Watching him from an upstairs window of the house was a tall pale-skinned woman with a white mantilla covering her head and shoulders, the dark creepers clustering at the window around her.

Sanders threw away his cigarette and ran forward through the ferns. He reached the porch and kicked back the dusty frame of the door, then made his way toward the wide staircase. Here and there his shoes sank through the balsa-like boards, but the marble steps were still firm. The house had been stripped of its furniture and he crossed the landing upstairs to the bedroom in which he had seen the woman.

"Louise-!"

With a laugh she turned to face him, the puffy remains of an old lace curtain falling from one hand to the floor. Shaking her hair lightly, she smiled at Sanders.

"Did I frighten you? -I'm sorry."

"Louise-that was a damn silly thing to do-" With an effort Sanders controlled himself, his moment of recognition fading. "How the devil did you get up here?"

Louise sauntered around the room, looking at the patches left behind the pictures that had been removed, as if visiting some spectral gallery. "I walked, of course." She turned to face him, her eyes sharpening. "What's the matter-did I remind you of someone?"

Sanders went over to her. "Perhaps you did. Louise, it's difficult enough, without any practical jokes."

"It wasn't meant as a joke." She took his arm, her ironic smile gone. "Edward, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-"

"Never mind." Sanders held her face to his shoulder, recovering himself in the physical contact with Louise. "For God's sake, Louise. All this will be over once we reach Mont Royal -before I had no choice."

"Of course-" She drew him away from the window. " Aragon -he can see us here."

The lace curtain lay on the floor at their feet, the mantilla Sanders had seen from the drained fountain in the garden. As Louise began to kneel down on it, holding his hands, he shook his head, then kicked it away into the corner.

Later, when they returned to the motor-boat, Aragon met them halfway down the pier. "We should leave, Doctor," he said, "the boat is exposed here-sometimes they patrol the river."

"Of course. How many soldiers are there in the Mont Royal area?" Sanders asked.

"Four or five hundred. Perhaps more."

"A battalion? That's a lot of men, Captain." He offered Aragon a cigarette from his case as Louise walked on ahead. "That incident in the native harbor last night-did you see it?"

"No, I heard this morning-those market boats are always catching fire."

"Perhaps. There was an attack on a man I know-a European called Ventress." He looked up at Aragon. "There was a large motor-cruiser with a cannon on the deck-you may have seen it on the river?"

Aragon 's face gave nothing away. He shrugged vaguely. "It could belong to one of the mining companies. I haven't met this Ventress." Before Sanders could move on he added: "Remember, Doctor, there are many interests in Mont Royal that wish to stop people from going into the forest-or leaving it."

"I can see that. By the way, that drowned man in the harbor this morning-when you saw him, was he lying on a raft, by any chance?"