J.G. Ballard - The Crystal World

Thorensen was gazing over one shoulder at the windows of the summer house, only half-aware of Sanders standing beside him. Sanders noticed that, unlike Ventress's suit and his own clothes, Thorensen's leather jerkin was unaffected by the frost. "Can you take me back to the army post?" he asked Thorensen. "I've been trying to get out of the forest for hours. Do you know the Bourbon Hotel?"

A morose frown twisted Thorensen's long face. "The army's a long way off. The freeze is spreading all through the forest." He pointed across the river with his revolver. "What about Ventress? The bearded man. Where did you meet him?"

Sanders explained himself again. Neither Thorensen nor the mulatto recognized him as Ventress's defender during the attack at Port Matarre. "He was taking shelter in a house near the river. Your house, he said. Why were you shooting at him? Is he some sort of criminal-trying to steal from your mine?"

There was a laugh at this from the young African with the rifle. Thorensen nodded without expression. His manner was furtive and shifty, as if unsure of himself and what to do with Sanders. "Worse than that. He's a madman, completely crazy."

He turned and started to walk up the steps, waving to Sanders as if prepared to let him make his own way into the forest. "You'd better be careful, there's no knowing what the forest is going to do. Keep moving, but circle around on yourself."

"Wait a minute!" Sanders called after him. "I want to rest here. I need a map, I've got to find this Bourbon Hotel."

"A map? What good is a map now?" Thorensen hesitated, glancing up at the summer house as if worried that Sanders might in some way defile its luminous whiteness. As the doctor's arms fell limply to his sides Thorensen shrugged and beckoned his two men to follow him.

"Thorensen!" Sanders stepped forward. He pointed to the young African with the bandaged leg, "Let me look at his dressing and make him more comfortable. I'm a doctor."

The three men on the veranda turned together, even the big mulatto watching Sanders with interest. A note of calculation crossed his bilious eyes. Thorensen was looking down at Sanders as if recognizing him for the first time.

"A doctor? Yes, Radek said-I remember. All right, Doctor-?"

"Sanders. I've nothing with me, no drugs or-"

"That's O.K., Doctor," Thorensen said. "That's good, in fact." He nodded to himself, as if still uncertain to invite Sanders into the summer house. Then he relented. "Right, Doctor, you can come in for five minutes. I might want to ask you for something."

Dr. Sanders climbed the steps onto the veranda. The summer house consisted of a single circular room and a small kitchen and store at the rear. Heavy shutters had been placed over the windows, now locked to the casements by the interstitial crystals, and the only light entered through the door.

Thorensen glanced around at the forest and then holstered his pistol. As the two Africans made their way round to the back Thorensen turned the door handle. Through the frosted panes Dr. Sanders saw the dim outlines of a high four-poster bed, obviously that removed from the bedroom in the mansion where he and Ventress had sheltered from the storm. Gilded cupids played about the mahogany canopy, pipes to their lips, and four naked caryatids with upraised arms formed the corner posts.

Thorensen cleared his throat. "Mrs.-Ventress," he explained at last in a low voice.

They gazed down at the occupant of the bed, who lay back on a large satin bolster, a febrile hand on the silk counterpane. At first Dr. Sanders thought he was looking at an elderly woman, probably Ventress's mother, and then realized that in fact she was little more than a child, a young woman in her early twenties. Her long platinum hair lay in a white shawl over her shoulders, her thin high-cheeked face raised to the scanty light. Once she might have had a nervous porcelain beauty, but her wasted skin and the fading glow of light in her half-closed eyes gave her the appearance of someone preternaturally aged, reminding Dr. Sanders of his patients in the children's ward at the hospital near the _léproserie_ in the last minutes before their death.

"Thorensen." Her voice cracked in the amber gloom. "It's getting cold again. Can't you light a fire?"

"The wood won't burn, Serena. It's all turned into glass." Thorensen stood at the foot of the bed, peering down at the young woman. In his leather jacket he looked like a policeman uneasily on duty in a sick-room. He unzipped the jacket. "I brought these for you, Serena, they'll help you."

He leaned forward, hiding something from Dr. Sanders, and then spilled several handfuls of red and blue gem-stones across the counterpane. Rubies and sapphires of many sizes, they glittered in the thinning afternoon light with a fevered power.

"Thorensen, thank you-" The girl's free hand scuttled across the counterpane to the stones. Her childlike face had become almost vulpine with greed. An expression of surprising craftiness came into her eyes, and Sanders sensed why the burly mine-owner treated her with such deference. Seizing a handful of the jewels, she brought them up to her neck and pressed them tightly against her skin, where the bruises formed like fingerprints. Their contact seemed to revive her and she stirred her legs, several of the jewels slipping to the floor. She gazed up at Dr. Sanders, and then turned to ThorenSen.

"What were you shooting at?" she asked after an interval. "There was a gun going off. It gave me a headache."

"Just a crocodile, Serena. There are some smart crocodiles around here. I have to watch them."

The young woman nodded. With a hand still clutching the jewels she pointed at Sanders. "Who's he? What's he doing here?"

"He's a doctor, Serena. Captain Radek sent him, he's all right."

"But you said I didn't need any doctors."

"You don't, Serena, I know that. Dr. Sanders here was just looking by, to see one of the men." During this labored catechism Thorensen kneaded the lapels of his jacket, looking everywhere around the room but at Serena.

Sanders moved closer to the bed, assuming that Thorensen would now let him examine the young woman. Her tubercular breathing and severe anemia needed little further diagnosis, but he reached forward to take her wrist.

"Doctor-" On some kind of confused impulse Thorensen pulled him back from the bed. He made an uncertain gesture with one hand, then waved Sanders toward the kitchen door. "I think later, Doctor-right?" He turned quickly to the young woman. "You get some rest now, Serena."

"But, Thorensen, I need more of these, you only brought me a few today-" Her hand, like a claw, searched the counterpane for the jewels, the handfuls that Thorensen and the mulatto had taken from the wallsafe earlier that afternoon.

Sanders was about to protest, but the young woman turned away from them and seemed to subside into sleep, the jewels lying like scarabs on the white skin of her breast.

Thorensen nudged Sanders with his elbow. They stepped into the kitchen. Before he closed the door Thorensen looked down at the young woman with wistful eyes, as if frightened that she might dissolve into dust if he left her.

Only half-aware of Sanders, he said: "We'll have something to eat."

At the far end of the kitchen, by the door, the mulatto and the naked African sat on a bench, half-asleep over their weapons. The kitchen was almost empty. A disconnected refrigerator stood on the cold stove. Thorensen opened the door and began to empty the remainder of the jewels from his pockets on to the shelves, where they lay like cherries among the half-dozen cans of corned beef and beans. A light glacé frost covered the enamel exterior of the refrigerator, as everything else in the kitchen, but the inner walls of the cabinet remained unaffected.