J.G. Ballard - The Crystal World

Recognizing the belt with which he had fastened the wooden spar to Radek's shoulders, Dr. Sanders moved forward, gesturing to the man as if to pacify him. He remembered Ventress's warning, and the pieces of crystal that he had torn away from the body when he dragged Radek from the helicopter. Then, too, he remembered Aragon tapping his eye-tooth and saying "Covered-? My tooth is the whole gold, Doctor."

"Radek, let me help-" Sanders edged forward as Radek hesitated. "Believe me, I wanted to save you-"

Still trying to shift the wooden spar from his shoulders, Radek gazed down at Sanders. Unformed thoughts seemed to cross his face, and then the one blinking eye came into focus.

"Radek-" Sanders raised a hand to restrain him, unsure whether Radek would charge him or bolt like a wounded beast into the forest.

With a shambling step, Radek drew nearer. A gruntlike noise came from his throat. He moved again, almost toppled by the swinging spar.

"Take me-" he began. There was another lurching stride. He held out a bloody arm like a scepter. "Take me _back!_"

He struggled on, the heavy spar swinging his shoulders from left to right, one foot flapping on to the ice, his face lit by the jeweled light from the forest. Sanders watched him as he jerked forward, the arm held out as if to clasp Sanders's shoulder. Already, however, he seemed to have forgotten Sanders, his attention fixed on the light from the icefalls.

Sanders moved out of his way, ready to let him go by. With a sudden sidestep Radek swung the wooden beam and drove Sanders in front of him. "_Take me-!_"

"Radek-!" Winded by the blow, Sanders stumbled ahead, like an onlooker driven towards some bloody Golgotha by its intended victim. One lurching stride after another, his pace quickening as the prismatic light of the forest mingled again with his blood, Radek pressed on, the beam across his shoulders cutting off Sanders's escape.

Sanders ran towards the icefalls. Twenty yards from the first of the blocks, where the clear streams of the subterranean channels ran across his feet, as dark and cool as his memories of the world beyond, he turned and raced down into the shallows. Radek let out his stricken cry for the last time, and Sanders plunged to his shoulders into the river and swam away across the silver water.

Some hours later, as he walked dripping through the edges of the illuminated forest, Sanders came to a wide road deserted in the moonlight. In the distance he saw the outlines of a white hotel. With its long façade and tumbled columns it looked like a floodlit ruin. To the left of the road, the forest slopes moved upwards to the blue hills above Mont Royal.

This time, as he approached the man standing beside a Land-Rover in the empty forecourt of the hotel, his wave was answered by a ready shout. A second figure patrolling the ruined hotel ran across the drive. A searchlight on the roof of the car was played on to the road in front of Dr. Sanders. The two natives, wearing the uniform of the local hospital service, came forward to meet him. In the light from the forest their liquid eyes watched Dr. Sanders as they helped him into the car, their dark fingers feeling at the drenched fabric of his suit.

Dr. Sanders sat back, too tired to identify himself to the men. One of them climbed into the driving-seat and switched on the car's radio transmitter. As he spoke into the microphone his eyes stared at the crystals still dissolving on Dr. Sanders's shoes and wristwatch. The white light sparkled faintly in the dark cabin. The last of the crystals on the dial of the wristwatch gave out their light and faded, and with a sudden movement the hands began to turn.

The road marked the final boundary of the affected zone, and to Dr. Sanders the darkness around him seemed absolute, the black air inert and empty. After the endless glimmer of the vitrified forest the trees along the road, the ruined hotel and even the two men with him appeared to be shadowy images of themselves, replicas of illuminated originals in some distant land at the source of the petrffied river. Despite his relief at escaping from the forest, this feeling of flatness and unreality, of being in the slack shallows of a spent world, filled Sanders with a sense of failure and disappointment.

A car approached along the road. The driver signalled with the searchlight on the Land-Rover and the car turned and came to a halt beside them. A tall man wearing an army battledress over his civilian clothes jumped out. He peered through the window at Sanders, and then nodded at the native driver.

"Dr. Sanders-?" he asked. "Are you all right?"

" Aragon!" Sanders opened his door and started to get out, but Aragon motioned him back. "Captain-I'd almost forgotten. Is Louise with you? Mademoiselle Peret?"

Aragon shook his head. "She's with the other visitors at the camp, Doctor. We thought you might come out this way, I've been watching the road." Aragon moved aside, so that the light from his car's headlamps showed more of Sanders's face. He looked into Sanders's eyes, as if trying to assess the inner impact of the forest. "You're lucky to be here, Doctor. Many of the soldiers are feared lost in the forest-they think Captain Radek is dead. The affected area is spreading out in all directions. It's many times the previous size."

The driver in Aragon 's car cut his engine. As the headlamps faded Sanders sat forward. "Louise-she's safe-Captain? I'd like to see her."

"Tomorrow, Doctor. She will come to your friends' clinic. You must see them first, she understands that. Dr. Clair and his wife are at the clinic now. They will look after you."

He went back to his car. It turned and made off at speed down the dark road.

Five minutes later, after a short drive down a side turning past an old mine-works, the Land-Rover entered the compound of the mission hospital. A few oil lamps burned in the outbuildings, and several native families huddled by their carts in the yard, reluctant to take shelter indoors. The men sat in a group by the empty fountain in the center, the smoke from their cheroots forming white plumes in the darkness.

"Is Dr. Clair here?" Sanders asked the driver. "And Mrs. Clair?"

"They both here, sir." The driver glanced across at Sanders, still unsure of this apparition that had materialized from the crystalline forest. "You Dr. Sanders, sir?" he ventured as they parked.

"That's it. They're expecting me?"

"Yes, sir. Dr. Clair in Mont Royal yesterday for you, but trouble in the town, sir, he go away."

"I know. Everything went crazy-I'm sorry I missed him."

As Sanders climbed out of the car a familiar rotund figure in a white cotton jacket, short-sighted eyes below a domed forehead, hurried down the steps toward him.

"Edward-? My dear chap, for heaven's sake-!" He took Sanders's arm. "Where on earth have you been?"

Sanders felt himself relaxing for the first time since his arrival at Port Matarre, indeed, since his departure from the _léproserie_ at Fort Isabelle. "Max, I wish I knew-it's good to see you." He shook Clair's hand, holding it in a tight grip. "It's been insane here-how are you, Max? And how's Suzanne?-is she-?"

"She's fine, fine. Hold on a moment." Leaving Sanders on the steps, Clair went back to the native drivers by the Land-Rover and patted each of them on the shoulder. He looked around at the other natives in the compound, waving to them as they squatted on their bundles in the dim light of the flares. Half a mile away, beyond the roofs of the outbuildings, an immense pall of silver light glowed in the night sky above the forest.

"Suzanne will be thrilled to see you, Edward," Max said as he rejoined Sanders. He seemed more preoccupied than Sanders had remembered him. "We've talked about you a lot-I'm sorry about yesterday afternoon. Suzanne had promised to visit one of the mine dispensaries, when Thorensen contacted me we got our lines crossed." The excuse was a palpably lame one, and Max smiled apologetically.