J.G. Ballard - The Crystal World

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.