J. G. Ballard - The Crystal World

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THE CRYSTAL WORLD
by J.G. Ballard
Copyright 1966 by J.G. Ballard
_______________
By day fantastic birds flew through the petrified forest, and jeweled crocodiles glittered like
heraldic salamanders on the banks of the crystalline river. By night the illuminated man raced
among the trees, his arms like golden cartwheels, his head like a spectral crown . . .
_______________
Contents
I. Equinox
1 The dark river
2 The jeweled orchid
3 Mulatto on the catwalks
4 A drowned man
5 The crystallized forest
6 The crash
II. The illuminated man
7 Mirrors and assassins
8 The summer house
9 Serena
10 The mask
11 The white hotel
12 Duel with a crocodile
13 Saraband for lepers
14 The prismatic sun
I. Equinox
1 The dark river
Above all, the darkness of the river was what impressed Dr. Sanders as he looked out for
the first time across the open mouth of the Matarre estuary. After many delays, the small
passenger steamer was at last approaching the line of jetties, but although it was ten o'clock the
surface of the water was still gray and sluggish, leaching away the somber tinctures of the
collapsing vegetation along the banks.
At intervals, when the sky was overcast, the water was almost black, like putrescent dye.
By contrast, the straggle of warehouses and small hotels that constituted Port Matarre gleamed
across the dark swells with a spectral brightness, as if lit less by solar light than by some
interior lantern, like the pavilions of an abandoned necropolis built out on a series of piers
from the edges of the jungle.
This pervading auroral gloom, broken by sudden inward shifts of light, Dr. Sanders had
noticed during his long wait at the rail of the passenger deck. For two hours the steamer had sat
out in the center of the estuary, now and then blowing its whistle at the shore in a half-hearted
way. But for the vague sense of uncertainty induced by the darkness over the river, the few
passengers would have been driven mad with annoyance. Apart from a French military landing craft,
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there seemed to be no other vessels of any size berthed along the jetties. As he watched the
shore, Dr. Sanders was almost certain that the steamer was being deliberately held off, though the
reason was hard to see. The steamer was the regular packet boat from Libreville, with its weekly
cargo of mail, brandy and automobile spare parts, not to be postponed for more than a moment by
anything less than an outbreak of the plague.
Politically, this isolated corner of the Cameroon Republic was still recovering from an
abortive coup ten years earlier, when a handful of rebels had seized the emerald and diamond mines
at Mont Royal, fifty miles up the Matarre River. Despite the presence of the landing craft--a
French military mission supervised the training of the local troops--life in the nondescript port
at the river mouth seemed entirely normal. Watched by a group of children, a jeep was at that
moment being unloaded. People wandered along the wharves and through the arcades in the main
street, and a few outriggers loaded with jars of crude palm oil drifted past on the dark water
toward the native market to the west of the port.
Nevertheless, the sense of unease persisted. Puzzled by the dim light, Dr. Sanders turned
his attention to the inshore areas, following the river as it made a slow clockwise turn to the
southeast. Here and there a break in the forest canopy marked the progress of a road, but
otherwise the jungle stretched in a flat olive-green mantle toward the inland hills. Usually the
forest roof would have been bleached to a pale yellow by the sun, but even five miles inland Dr.
Sanders could see the dark green arbors towering into the dull air like immense cypresses, somber
and motionless, touched only by faint gleams of light.
Someone drummed impatiently at the rail, sending a stir down its length, and the half-
dozen passengers on either side of Dr. Sanders shuffled and muttered to one another, glancing up
at the wheelhouse, where the captain gazed absently at the jetty, apparently unperturbed by the
delay.
Dr. Sanders turned to Father Balthus, who was standing a few feet away on his left. "The
light--have you noticed it? Is there an eclipse expected? The sun seems unable to make up its
mind."
The priest was smoking steadily, his long fingers drawing the cigarette half an inch from
his mouth after each inhalation. Like Sanders, he was gazing, not at the harbor, but at the forest
slopes far inland. In the dull light his thin scholar's face seemed tired and fleshless. During
the three-day journey from Libreville he had kept to himself, evidently distracted by some private
matter, and only began to talk to his table companion when he learned of Dr. Sanders's post at the
Fort Isabelle leper hospital. Sanders gathered that he was returning to his parish at Mont Royal
after a sabbatical month, but there seemed something a little too plausible about this
explanation, which he repeated several times in the same automatic phrasing, unlike his usual
hesitant stutter. However, Sanders was well aware of the dangers of imputing his own ambiguous
motives for coming to Port Matarre to those around him.
Even so, at first Dr. Sanders had suspected that Father Balthus might not be a priest at
all. The self-immersed eyes and pale neurasthenic hands bore all the signatures of the impostor,
perhaps an expelled novice still hoping to find some kind of salvation within a borrowed soutane.
However, Father Balthus was entirely genuine, whatever that term meant and whatever its limits.
The first officer, the steward and several of the passengers recognized him, complimented him on
his return and generally seemed to accept his isolated manner.
"An eclipse?" Father Balthus flicked his cigarette stub into the dark water below. The
steamer was now overrunning its own wake, and the veins of foam sank down through the deeps like
threads of luminous spittle. "I think not, Doctor. Surely the maximum duration would be eight
minutes?"
In the sudden flares of light over the water, reflected off the sharp points of his cheeks
and jaw, a harder profile for a moment showed itself. Conscious of Sanders's critical eye, Father
Balthus added as an afterthought, to reassure the doctor: "The light at Port Matarre is always
like this, very heavy and penumbral-- do you know Böcklin's painting, 'Island of the Dead,' where
the cypresses stand guard above a cliff pierced by a hypogeum, while a storm hovers over the sea?
It's in the Kunstmuseum in my native Basel--" He broke off as the steamer's engines drummed into
life. "We're moving. At last."
"Thank God for that. You should have warned me, Balthus."
Dr. Sanders took his cigarette case from his pocket, but the priest had already palmed a
fresh cigarette into his cupped hand with the deftness of a conjurer. Balthus pointed with it to
the jetty, where a substantial reception committee of gendarmerie and customs officials was
waiting for the steamer. "Now, what nonsense is this?"
Dr. Sanders watched the shore. Whatever Balthus's private difficulties, the priest's lack
of charity irritated him. Half to himself, Sanders said dryly: "Perhaps there's a question of
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credentials."
"Not mine, Doctor." Father Balthus turned a sharp downward glance upon Sanders. "And I'm
certain your own are in order."
The other passengers were leaving the rail and going below to collect their baggage. With
a smile at Balthus, Dr. Sanders excused himself and began to make his way down to his cabin.
Dismissing the priest from his mind-- within half an hour they would have disappeared their
separate ways into the forest and whatever awaited them there--Sanders felt in his pocket for his
passport, reminding himself not to leave it in his cabin. The desire to travel incognito, with all
its advantages, might well reveal itself in some unexpected way.
As Dr. Sanders reached the companionway behind the funnelhouse, he could see down into the
afterdeck, where the steerage passengers were pulling together their bundles and cheap suitcases.
In the center of the deck, partly swathed in a canvas awning, was a large red-and-yellow-hulled
speedboat, part of the cargo consignment for Port Matarre.
Taking his ease on the wide bench seat behind the steering helm, one arm resting on the
raked glass and chromium windshield, was a small, slimly built man of about forty, wearing a white
tropical suit that emphasized the rim of dark beard which framed his face. His black hair was
brushed down over his bony forehead, and with his small eyes gave him a taut and watchful
appearance. This man, Ventress--his name was about all Dr. Sanders had managed to learn about him--
was the doctor's cabinmate. During the journey from Libreville he had roamed about the steamer
like an impatient tiger, arguing with the steerage passengers and crew, his moods switching from a
kind of ironic humor to sullen disinterest, when he would sit alone in the cabin, gazing out
through the porthole at the small disc of empty sky.
Dr. Sanders had made one or two attempts to talk to him, but most of the time Ventress
ignored him, keeping to himself whatever reasons he had for coming to Port Matarre. However, the
doctor was well inured by now to being avoided by those around him. Shortly before they embarked,
a slight contretemps, more embarrassing to his fellow passengers than to himself, had arisen over
the choice of a cabinmate for Dr. Sanders. His fame having preceded him (what was fame to the
world at large still remained notoriety on the personal level, Sanders reflected, and no doubt the
reverse was true), no one could be found to share a cabin with the assistant director of the Fort
Isabelle leper hospital.
At this point Ventress had stepped forward. Knocking on Dr. Sanders's door, suitcase in
hand, he had nodded at the doctor and asked simply:
"Is it contagious?"
After a pause to examine this white-suited figure with his bearded skull-like face--
something about him reminded Sanders that the world was not without those who, for their own
reasons, wished to _catch_ the disease--Dr. Sanders said: "The disease is contagious, as you ask,
yes, but years of exposure and contact are necessary for its transmission. The period of
incubation may be twenty or thirty years."
"Like death. Good." With a gleam of a smile, Ventress stepped into the cabin. He extended
a bony hand, and clasped Sanders's firmly, his strong fingers feeling for the doctor's grip. "What
our timorous fellow passengers fail to realize, Doctor, is that outside your colony there is
merely another larger one."
Later, as he looked down at Ventress lounging in the speedboat on the afterdeck, Dr.
Sanders pondered on this cryptic introduction. The faltering light still hung over the estuary,
but Ventress's white suit seemed to focus all its intense hidden brilliancy, just as Father
Balthus's clerical garb had reflected the darker tones. The steerage passengers milled around the
speedboat, but Ventress appeared to be uninterested in them, or in the approaching jetty with its
waiting throng of customs and police. Instead, he was looking out across the deserted starboard
rail into the mouth of the river, and at the distant forest stretching away into the haze. His
small eyes were half-closed, as if he were deliberately merging the view in front of him with some
inner landscape within his mind.
Sanders had seen little of Ventress during the voyage up-coast, but one evening in the
cabin, searching through the wrong suitcase in the dark, he had felt the butt of a heavy-caliber
automatic pistol wrapped in the harness of a shoulder holster. The presence of this weapon had
immediately resolved some of the enigmas that surrounded Ventress's small brittle figure.
"Doctor . . ." Ventress called up to him, waving one hand lightly, as if reminding Sanders
that he was daydreaming. "A drink, Sanders, before the bar closes?" Dr. Sanders began to refuse
but Ventress had halfturned his shoulder, veering off on another tack. "Look for the sun, Doctor,
it's there. You can't walk through these forests with your head between your heels."
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"I shan't try to. Are you going ashore?"
"Of course. There's no hurry here, Doctor. This is a landscape without time."
Leaving him, Dr. Sanders made his way to the cabin. The three suitcases, Ventress's
expensive one in polished crocodile skin, and his own scuffed workaday bags, were already packed
and waiting beside the door. Sanders took off his jacket, and then bathed his hands in the
washbasin, drying them lightly in the hope that the soap's pungent scent might make him seem less
of a pariah to the examining officials.
However, Sanders realized only too well that by now, after fifteen years in Africa, ten of
them at the Fort Isabelle hospital, any chance he may once have had of altering the outward aspect
of himself, his image to the world at large, had long since gone. The work-stained cotton suit,
slightly too small for his broad shoulders, the striped blue shirt and black tie, the strong head
with its gray uncut hair and trace of beard--all these were the involuntary signatures of the
physician to the lepers, as unmistakable as Sanders's own scarred but firm mouth and critical eye.
Opening the passport, Sanders compared the photograph taken eight years earlier with the
reflection in the mirror. At a glance, the two men seemed barely recognizable--the first, with his
straight, earnest face, his patent moral commitment to the lepers, all too obviously on top of his
work at the hospital, looked more like the dedicated younger brother of the other, some remote and
rather idiosyncratic country doctor.
Sanders looked down at his faded jacket and calloused hands, knowing how misleading this
impression was, and how much better he understood, if not his present motives, at least those of
his younger self, and the real reasons that had sent him to Fort Isabelle. Reminded by the birth
date in the passport that he had now reached the age of forty, Sanders tried to visualize himself
ten years ahead, but already the latent elements that had emerged in his face during the previous
years seemed to have lost momentum. Ventress had referred to the Matarre forests as a landscape
without time, and perhaps part of its appeal for Sanders was that here at last he might be free
from the questions of motive and identity that were bound up with his sense of time and the past.
The steamer was now barely twenty feet from the jetty, and through the porthole Dr.
Sanders could see the khaki-clad legs of the reception party. From his pocket he took out a well-
thumbed envelope and drew from it a letter written in pale-blue ink that had almost penetrated the
soft tissue. Both envelope and letter were franked with a censor's stamp, and panels which Sanders
assumed contained the address had been Cut out.
As the steamer bumped against the jetty, Dr. Sanders read through the letter for the last
time on board.
Thursday, January 5th
My dear Edward,
At last we are here. The forest is the most beautiful in Africa, a house of jewels. I can
barely find words to describe our wonder each morning as we look out across the slopes, still half-
hidden by the mist but glistening like St. Sophia, each bough a jeweled semi-dome. Indeed, Max
says I am becoming excessively Byzantine--I wear my hair to my waist even at the clinic, and
affect a melancholy expression, although in fact for the first time in many years my heart sings!
Both of us wish you were here. The clinic is small, with about twenty patients. Fortunately the
people of these forest slopes move through life with a kind of dreamlike patience, and regard our
work for them as more social than therapeutic. They walk through the dark forest with crowns of
light on their heads.
Max sends his best wishes to you, as I do. We remember you often.
The light touches everything with diamonds and sapphires.
My love,
Suzanne
As the metal heels of the boarding party rang out across the deck over his head, Dr.
Sanders read again the last line of the letter. But for the unofficial but firm assurances he had
been given by the prefecture in Libreville, he would not have believed that Suzanne Clair and her
husband had come to Port Matarre, so unlike the somber light of the river and jungle were her
descriptions of the forest near the clinic. Their exact whereabouts no one had been able to tell
him, or for that matter why a sudden censorship should have been imposed on mail leaving the
province. When Sanders became too persistent, he was reminded that the correspondence of people
under a criminal charge was liable to censorship, but as far as Suzanne and Max Clair were
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concerned, the suggestion was grotesque.
Thinking of the small, intelligent microbiologist and his wife, tall and dark-haired, with
her high forehead and calm eyes, Dr. Sanders remembered their sudden departure from Fort Isabelle
three months earlier. Sanders's affair with Suzanne had lasted for two years, kept going only by
his inability to resolve it in any way. His failure to commit himself fully to her made it plain
that she had become the focus of all his uncertainties at Fort Isabelle. For some time he had
suspected that his reasons for serving at the leper hospital were not altogether humanitarian, and
that he might be more attracted by the idea of leprosy, and whatever it unconsciously represented,
than he imagined. Suzanne's somber beauty had become identified in his mind with this dark side of
the psyche, and their affair was an attempt to come to terms with himself and his own ambiguous
motives.
On second thought, Sanders recognized that a far more sinister explanation for their
departure from the hospital was at hand. When Suzanne's letter arrived with its strange and
ecstatic vision of the forest--in maculoanesthetic leprosy there was an involvement of nervous
tissue--he had decided to follow them. Forgoing his inquiries about the censored letter, in order
not to warn Suzanne of his arrival, he took a month's leave from the hospital and set off for Port
Matarre.
From Suzanne's description of the forest slopes he guessed the clinic to be somewhere near
Mont Royal, possibly attached to one of the French-owned mining settlements, with their
overzealous security men. However, the activity on the jetty outside--there were half a dozen
soldiers moving about near a parked staff car-- indicated that something more was afoot.
As he began to fold Suzanne's letter, smoothing the petal-like tissue, the cabin door
opened sharply, jarring his elbow. With an apology Ventress stepped in, nodding to Sanders.
"I beg your pardon, Doctor. My bag." He added: "The customs people are here."
Annoyed to be caught reading the letter again by Ventress, Dr. Sanders stuffed envelope
and letter into his pocket. For once Ventress appeared not to notice this. His hand rested on the
handle of his suitcase, one ear cocked to listen to the sounds from the deck above. No doubt he
was wondering what to do with the pistol. A thorough baggage search was the last thing any of them
had expected.
Deciding to leave Ventress alone so that he could slip the weapon through the porthole,
Dr. Sanders picked up his two suitcases.
"Well, goodbye, Doctor." Ventress was smiling, his face even more skull-like behind the
beard. He held the door open. "It's been very interesting, a great pleasure to share a cabin with
you."
Dr. Sanders nodded. "And perhaps something of a challenge too, M. Ventress? I hope all
your victories come as easily."
"Touché, Doctor!" Ventress saluted him, then waved as Sanders made his way down the
corridor. "But I gladly leave you with the last laugh--the old man with the scythe, eh?"
Without looking back, Dr. Sanders climbed the companionway to the saloon, aware of
Ventress watching him from the door of the cabin. The other passengers were sitting in the chairs
by the bar, Father Balthus among them, as a prolonged harangue took place between the first
officer, two customs officials and a police sergeant. They were consulting the passenger list,
scrutinizing everyone in turn as if searching for some missing passenger.
As Dr. Sanders lowered his two bags to the floor he caught the phrase: "No journalists
allowed . . ." and then one of the customs men beckoned him over.
"Dr. Sanders?" he asked, putting a particular emphasis into the name as if he half hoped
it might be an alias. "From Libreville University . . .?" He lowered his voice. "The Physics
Department . . .? May I see your papers?"
Dr. Sanders pulled out his passport. A few feet to his left, Father Balthus was watching
him with a sharp eye. "My name is Sanders, of the Fort Isabelle _léproserie_."
After apologizing for their mistake, the customs men glanced at each other and then
cleared Dr. Sanders, chalking up his suitcases without bothering to open them. A few moments later
he walked down the gangway. On the jetty the native soldiers lounged around the staff car. The
rear seat remained vacant, presumably for the missing physicist from Libreville University.
As he handed his suitcases to a porter with _Hotel d'Europe_ stenciled across his peaked
cap, Dr. Sanders noticed that a far more thorough inspection was being made of the baggage of
those leaving Port Matarre. A group of thirty to forty steerage passengers was herded together at
the far end of the jetty, and the police and customs men were searching them one by one. Most of
the natives carried bedrolls with them, and the police were unwinding these and squeezing the
padding.
By contrast with this activity, the town was nearly deserted. The arcades on either side
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of the main street were empty, and the windows of the Hotel d'Europe hung listlessly in the dark
air, the narrow shutters like coffin lids. Here, in the center of the town, the faded white
façades made the somber light of the jungle seem even more pervasive. Looking back at the river as
it turned like an immense snake into the forest, Dr. Sanders felt that it had sucked away all but
a bare residue of life.
As he followed the porter up the steps into the hotel, he saw the black-robed figure of
Father Balthus farther down the arcade. The priest was walking swiftly, his small traveling bag
held in one hand. He turned between two columns, then crossed the road and disappeared among the
shadows in the arcade facing the hotel. At intervals Sanders saw him again, his dark figure lit by
the sunlight, the white columns of the arcade framing him like the shutter of a defective
stroboscopic device. Then, for no apparent reason, he crossed the Street again, the skirt of his
black robe whipping the dust around his heels. His high face passed Sanders without turning, like
the pale, half-remembered profile of someone glimpsed in a nightmare.
Sanders pointed after him. "Where's he off to?" he asked the porter: "The priest--he was
on the steamer with me."
"To the seminary. The Jesuits are still there."
"Still? --what do you mean?"
Sanders moved toward the swinging doors, but at that moment a dark-haired young
Frenchwoman stepped out. As her face was reflected in the moving panes, Sanders had a sudden
glimpse of Suzanne Clair. Although the young woman was in her early twenties, at least ten years
younger than Suzanne, she had the same wide hips and sauntering stride, the same observant gray
eyes. As she passed Sanders, she murmured, "Pardon . . ." Then, returning his stare with a faint
smile, she set off in the direction of an army lorry that was reversing down a side road. Sanders
watched her go. Her trim white suit and metropolitan chic seemed out of place in the dingy light
of Port Matarre.
"What's going on here?" Sanders said. "Have they found a new diamond field?"
The explanation seemed to make sense of the censorship and the customs search, but
something about the porter's studied shrug made him doubt it. Besides, the references in Suzanne's
letter to diamonds and sapphires would have been construed by the censor as an open invitation to
join in the harvest.
The clerk at the reception desk was equally evasive. To Sanders's annoyance, the clerk
insisted on showing him the weekly tariff, despite his assurances that he would be setting off for
Mont Royal the following day.
"Doctor, you understand there is no boat, the service has been suspended. It will be
cheaper for you if I charge you by the weekly tariff. But as you wish."
"All right." Dr. Sanders signed the register. As a precaution he gave as his address the
university at Libreville. He had lectured several times at the medical school, and mail would be
forwarded from there to Fort Isabelle. The deception might be useful at a later date.
"What about the railway?" he asked the clerk. "Or the bus service? There must be some
transport to Mont Royal."
"There's no railway." The clerk snapped his fingers. "Diamonds, you know, Doctor, not
difficult to transport. Perhaps you can make inquiries about the bus."
Dr. Sanders studied the man's thin, olive-skinned face. His liquid eyes roved around the
doctor's suitcases and then out through the arcade to the forest canopy overtopping the roofs
across the street. He seemed to be waiting for something to appear.
Dr. Sanders put away his pen. "Tell me, why is it so dark in Port Matarre? It's not
overcast, and yet one can hardly see the sun."
The clerk shook his head. When he spoke, he seemed to be talking more to himself than to
Sanders. "It's not dark, Doctor, it's the leaves. They're taking minerals from the ground, it
makes everything look dark all the time."
This notion seemed to contain an element of truth. From the windows of his room
overlooking the arcades, Dr. Sanders gazed out at the forest. The huge trees surrounded the port
as if trying to crowd it back into the river. In the street the shadows were of the usual density,
following at the heels of the few people who ventured out through the arcades, but the forest was
without contrast of any kind. The leaves exposed to the sunlight were as dark as those below,
almost as if the entire forest were draining all light from the sun in the same way that the river
had emptied the town of its life and movement. The blackness of the canopy, the olive hues of the
flat leaves, gave the forest a somber heaviness emphasized by the motes of light that flickered
within its aerial galleries.
Preoccupied, Dr. Sanders almost failed to hear the knock on his door. He opened it to find
Ventress standing in the corridor. His white-suited figure and sharp skull seemed to personify the
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bonelike colors of the deserted town.
"What is it?"
Ventress stepped forward. He held an envelope in his hand. "I found this in the cabin
after you had gone, Doctor. I thought I should return it to you."
Dr. Sanders took the envelope, feeling in his pocket for Suzanne's letter. In his hurry he
had evidently let it slip to the floor. He pushed the letter into the envelope, beckoning Ventress
into the room. "Thank you, I didn't realize. . . ."
Ventress glanced around the room. Since disembarking from the steamer he had changed
noticeably. The laconic and offhand manner had given way to a marked restlessness. His compact
figure, held together as if all the muscles were opposing each other, contained an intense nervous
energy that Sanders found almost uncomfortable. His eyes roved about, searching the shabby alcoves
for some hidden perspective.
"May I take something in return, Doctor?" Before Sanders could answer, Ventress had
stepped over to the larger of the two suitcases on the slatted stand beside the wardrobe. With a
brief nod, he released the catches and raised the lid. From beneath the folded dressing gown, he
withdrew his automatic pistol wrapped in its shoulder holster harness. Before Dr. Sanders could
protest, he had slipped it away inside his jacket.
"What the devil--?" Dr. Sanders crossed the room. He pulled the lid of the suitcase into
place. "You've got a bloody nerve . . .!"
Ventress gave him a weak smile, then started to walk past Sanders to the door. Annoyed,
Sanders caught his arm and pulled the man almost off his feet. Ventress's face shut like a trap.
With an agile swerve he feinted sideways on his small feet and wrenched himself away from Sanders.
As Sanders came forward again, Ventress seemed to debate whether to use his pistol and
then raised a hand to pacify the doctor. "Sanders, I apologize, of course. But there was no other
way. Try to understand me, it was those idiots on board I was taking advantage of--"
"Rubbish! You were taking advantage of _me!_"
Ventress shook his head vigorously. "You're wrong, Sanders. I assure you, I have no
prejudice against your particular calling . . . far from it. Believe me, Doctor, I understand you,
your whole--"
"All right!" Sanders pulled back the door. "Now get out!"
Ventress, however, stood his ground. He seemed to be trying to bring himself to say
something, as if aware that he had exposed some private weakness of Sanders's and was doing his
best to repair it. Then he gave a small shrug and left the room, bored by the doctor's irritation.
After he had gone Dr. Sanders sat down in the armchair with his back to the window.
Ventress's ruse had annoyed him, not merely because of the assumption that the customs men would
avoid contaminating themselves by touching his baggage. The smuggling of the pistol unknown to
himself seemed to symbolize, in sexual terms as well, all his hidden motives for coming to Port
Matarre in quest of Suzanne Clair. That Ventress, with his skeletal face and white suit, should
have exposed his awareness of these still concealed motives was all the more irritating.
He ate an early lunch in the hotel restaurant. The tables were almost deserted, and the
only other guest was the dark-haired young Frenchwoman who sat by herself, writing into a
dictation pad beside her salad. Now and then she glanced at Sanders, who was struck once again by
her marked resemblance to Suzanne Clair. Perhaps because of her raven hair, or the unusual light
in Port Matarre, her smooth face seemed paler in tone than Sanders remembered Suzanne's, as if the
two women were cousins separated by some darker blood on Suzanne's side. As he looked at the girl
he could almost see Suzanne beside her, reflected within some half-screened mirror in his mind.
When she left the table she nodded to Sanders, picked up her pad and went out into the
street, pausing in the lobby on the way.
After lunch, Sanders began his search for some form of transport to take him to Mont
Royal. As the desk clerk has stated, there was no railway to the mining town. A bus service ran
twice daily, but for some reason had been discontinued. At the depot, near the barracks on the
eastern outskirts of the town, Dr. Sanders found the booking office closed. The timetables peeled
off the notice boards in the sunlight, and a few natives slept on the benches in the shade. After
ten minutes a ticket collector wandered in with a broom, sucking on a piece of sugar cane. He
shrugged when Dr. Sanders asked him when the service would be resumed.
"Perhaps tomorrow, or the next day, sir. Who can tell? The bridge is down."
"Where's this?"
"Where? Myanga, ten kilometers from Mont Royal. Steep ravine, the bridge just slid away.
Risky there, sir."
Dr. Sanders pointed to the compound of the military barracks, where half a dozen trucks
were being loaded with supplies. Bales of barbed wire were stacked on the ground to one side, next
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to some sections of metal fencing. "They seem busy enough. How are they going to get through?"
"They, sir, are repairing the bridge."
"With barbed wire?" Dr. Sanders shook his head, tired of this evasiveness. "What exactly
is going on up there? At Mont Royal?"
The ticket collecter sucked his sugar cane. "Going on?" he repeated dreamily. "Nothing's
going on, sir."
Dr. Sanders strolled away, pausing by the barrack gates until the sentry gestured him on.
Across the road the dark tiers of the forest canopy rose high into the air like an immense wave
ready to fall across the empty town. Well over a hundred feet above his head, the great boughs
hung like half-furled wings, the trunks leaning toward him. Dr. Sanders was tempted to cross the
road and approach the forest, but there was something minatory and oppressive about its silence.
He turned and made his way back to the hotel.
An hour later, after several fruitless inquiries, he called at the police prefecture near
the harbor. The activity by the steamer had subsided, and most of the passengers were aboard. The
speedboat was being swung out on a davit over the jetty.
Coming straight to the point, Dr. Sanders showed Suzanne's letter to the African charge
captain. "Perhaps you could explain, Captain, why it was necessary to delete their address? These
are close friends of mine and I wish to spend a fortnight's holiday with them. Now I find that
there's no means of getting to Mont Royal, and an atmosphere of mystery surrounds the whole
place."
The captain nodded, pondering over the letter on his desk. Occasionally he prodded the
tissue with a steel ruler, as if he were examining the pressed petals of some rare and perhaps
poisonous blossom. "I understand, Doctor. It's difficult for you."
"But why is the censorship in force at all?" Dr. Sanders pressed. "Is there some sort of
political disturbance? Has a rebel group captured the mines? I'm naturally concerned for the well-
being of Dr. and Madame Clair."
The captain shook his head. "I assure you, Doctor, there is no political trouble at Mont
Royal--in fact, there is hardly anyone there at all. Most of the workers have left."
"Why? I've noticed that here. The town's empty."
The captain stood up and went over to the window. He pointed to the dark fringe of the
jungle crowding over the rooftops of the native quarter beyond the warehouses. "The forest,
Doctor, do you see? It frightens them, it's so black and heavy all the time." He went back to his
desk and fiddled with the ruler. Sanders waited for him to make up his mind what to say. "In
confidence, I can explain that there is a new kind of plant disease beginning in the forest near
Mont Royal--"
"What do you mean?" Sanders cut in. "A virus disease, like tobacco mosaic?"
"Yes, that's it--" The captain nodded encouragingly, although he seemed to have little
idea of what he was talking about. However, he kept a quiet eye on the rim of jungle in the
window. "Anyway, it's not poisonous, but we have to take precautions. Some experts will look at
the forest, send samples to Libreville--you understand, it takes time--" He handed back Suzanne's
letter. "I will find out your friends' address. You come back in another day. All right?"
"Will I be able to go to Mont Royal?" Dr. Sanders asked. "The army hasn't closed off the
area?"
"No--" the captain insisted. "You are quite free." He gestured with his hands, enclosing
little parcels of air. "Just small areas, you see. It's not _dangerous_, your friends are all
right. We don't want people rushing there, trying to make trouble."
At the door, Dr. Sanders asked: "How long has this been going on?" He pointed to the
window. "The forest is very dark here."
The captain scratched his forehead. For a moment he looked tired and withdrawn. "About one
year. Longer, perhaps. At first no one bothered . . ."
2 The jeweled orchid
On the steps outside, Dr. Sanders saw the young Frenchwoman who had taken lunch at the
hotel. She carried a businesslike handbag and wore a pair of dark glasses that failed to disguise
the inquisitive look in her intelligent face. She watched Dr. Sanders as he walked past her.
"Any news?"
Sanders stopped. "What about?"
"The emergency."
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"Is that what they call it? You're luckier than I. I haven't heard that term."
The young woman brushed this aside. She eyed Sanders up and down, as if unsure who he
might be. "You can call it what you like," she said matter-offactly. "If it isn't an emergency
now, it soon will be." She came over to Sanders, lowering her voice. "Do you want to go to Mont
Royal, Doctor?"
Sanders began to walk off, the young woman following him. "Are you a police spy?" he
asked. "Or running an underground bus service? Or both, perhaps?"
"Neither. Listen." She stopped him when they had crossed the road to the first of the
curio shops that ran down to the jetties between the warehouses. She took off her sunglasses and
gave him a frank smile. "I'm sorry to pry--the clerk at the hotel told me who you were--but I'm
stuck here myself and I thought you might know something. I've been in Port Matarre since the last
boat."
"I can believe it." Dr. Sanders strolled on, eyeing the stands with their cheap ivory
ornaments, small statuettes in an imitation Oceanic style the native carvers had somehow picked up
at many removes from European magazines. "Port Matarre has more than a passing resemblance to
purgatory."
"Tell me, are you on official business?" The young woman touched his arm. She had replaced
her sunglasses, as if this gave her some sort of advantage in her interrogation. "You gave your
address as the university at Libreville. In the hotel register."
"The medical school," Dr. Sanders said. "To put your curiosity at rest, if that's
possible, I'm simply here on holiday. What about you?"
In a quieter voice, after a confirmatory glance at Sanders, she said: "I'm a journalist. I
work free-lance for a bureau that sells material to the French illustrated weeklies."
"A journalist?" Dr. Sanders looked at her with more interest. During their brief
conversation he had avoided looking at her, put off partly by her sunglasses, which seemed to
emphasize the strange contrasts of light and dark in Port Matarre, and partly by her echoes of
Suzanne Clair. "I didn't realize . . . I'm sorry I was offhand, but I've been getting nowhere
today. Can you tell me about this emergency--I'll accept your term for it."
The young woman pointed to a bar at the next corner. "We'll go there, it's quieter--I've
been making a nuisance of myself all week with the police."
As they settled themselves in a booth by the window, she introduced herself as Louise
Peret. Although prepared to accept Dr. Sanders as a fellow conspirator, she still wore her
sunglasses, screening off some inner sanctum of herself. Her masked face and cool manner seemed to
Sanders as typical in their way of Port Matarre as Ventress's strange garb, but already he sensed
from the slight movement of her hands across the table toward him that she was searching for some
point of contact.
"They're expecting a physicist from the university," she said. "A Dr. Tatlin, I think,
though it's difficult to check from here. To begin with, I thought you might be Tatlin."
"A physicist--? That doesn't make sense. According to the police captain, these affected
areas of the forest are suffering from a new virus disease. Have you been trying to get to Mont
Royal all week?"
"Not exactly. I came here with another man from the bureau, an American called Anderson.
When we left the boat he went off to Mont Royal in a hired car to take photographs. I was to wait
here so I could get a story out quickly."
"Did he see anything?"
"Well, four days ago I spoke to him on the telephone, but the line was bad, I could hardly
hear a thing. All he said was something about the forest being full of jewels, but it was meant as
a joke, you know--" She gestured in the air.
"A figure of speech?"
"Exactly. If he had seen a new diamond field, he would have said so definitely. Anyway,
the next day the telephone line was broken, and they're still trying to repair it--even the police
can't get through."
Dr. Sanders ordered two brandies. Accepting a cigarette from Louise, he looked out through
the window at the jetties along the river. The last of the cargo was being loaded aboard the
steamer, and the passengers stood at the rail or sat passively on their luggage, looking down at
the deck.
"It's difficult to know how seriously to take this," Sanders said. "Obviously something is
going on, but it could be anything under the sun."
"Then what about the police and the army convoys? And the customs men out there this
morning?"
Dr. Sanders shrugged. "Officialdom--if the telephone lines are down they probably know as
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little as we do. What I can't understand is why you and this American came here in the first
place. By all accounts Mont Royal is even more dead than Port Matarre."
"Anderson had a tip that there was some kind of trouble near the mines--he wouldn't tell
me what, it was really his story, you see--but we knew the army had sent in reserves. Tell me,
Doctor, are you still going to Mont Royal? To your friends?"
"If I can. There must be some way. After all, it's only fifty miles, at a pinch one could
walk it."
Louise laughed. "Not me." Just then a black-garbed figure strode past the window, heading
off toward the market. "Father Balthus," Louise said. "His mission is near Mont Royal--I checked
up on him too. There's a traveling companion for you."
"I doubt it." Dr. Sanders watched the priest walk briskly away from them, his thin face
lifted as he crossed the road. His head and shoulders were held stiffly, but behind him his hands
moved and twisted with a life of their own. "Father Balthus is not one to make a penitential
progress--I think he has other problems on his mind." Dr. Sanders stood up, finishing his brandy.
"However, it's a point. I think I'll have a word with the good Father. I'll see you back at the
hotel--perhaps we can have dinner together?"
"Of course." She waved to him as he went out and then sat back against the window, her
face motionless and without expression.
A hundred yards away, Dr. Sanders caught sight of the priest. Balthus had reached the
outskirts of the native market and was moving among the first of the stalls, turning from left to
right as if looking for someone. Dr. Sanders followed at a distance. The market was almost empty
and he decided to keep the priest under observation for a few minutes before approaching him. Now
and then, when Father Balthus glanced about, Sanders saw his lean face, the thin nose raised
critically as he peered above the heads of the native women.
Dr. Sanders glanced down at the stalls, pausing to examine the carved statuettes and
curios. The small local industry had made full use of the waste products of the mines at Mont
Royal, and many of the teak and ivory carvings were decorated with fragments of calcite and
fluorspar picked from the refuse heaps, ingeniously worked into the statuettes to form miniature
crowns and necklaces. Many of the carvings were made from lumps of impure jade and amber, and the
sculptors had abandoned all pretense to Christian imagery and produced squatting idols with
pendulous abdomens and grimacing faces.
Still keeping Father Balthus under scrutiny, Dr. Sanders examined a large statuette of a
native deity in which two crystals of calcium fluoride formed the eyes, the mineral phosphorescing
in the sunlight. Nodding to the stall holder, he complimented her on the piece. Making the most of
her opportunity, she gave him a wide smile and then drew back a strip of faded calico that covered
the rear of the stall.
"My, that is a beauty!" Dr. Sanders reached forward to take the ornament she had exposed,
but the woman held back his hands. Glittering below her in the sunlight was what appeared to be an
immense crystalline orchid carved from some quartzlike mineral. The entire structure of the flower
had been reproduced and then embedded within the crystal base, almost as if a living specimen had
been conjured into the center of a huge cut-glass pendant. The internal faces of the quartz had
been cut with remarkable skill, so that a dozen images of the orchid were refracted, one upon the
other, as if seen through a maze of prisms. As Dr. Sanders moved his head, a continuous font of
light poured from the jewel.
Dr. Sanders reached into his pocket for his wallet, and the woman smiled again and drew
the cover back to expose several more of the ornaments. Next to the orchid was a spray of leaves
attached to a twig, carved from a translucent jadeike stone. Each of the leaves had been
reproduced with exquisite craftsmanship, the veins forming a pale lattice beneath the crystal. The
spray of seven leaves, faithfully rendered down to the axillary buds and the faint warping of the
twig, seemed characteristic more of some medieval Japanese jeweler's art than of the crude massive
sculpture of Africa.
Next to the spray was an even more bizarre piece, a carved tree fungus that resembled a
huge jeweled sponge. Both this and the spray of leaves shone with a dozen images of themselves
refracted through the faces of the surrounding mount. Bending forward, Dr. Sanders placed himself
between the ornaments and the sun, but the light within them sparkled as if coming from some
interior source.
Before he could open his wallet there was a shout in the distance. A disturbance had
broken Out near one of the stalls. The stall holders ran about in all directions, and a woman's
voice cried out. In the center of this scene stood Father Balthus, arms raised above his head as
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file:///F|/rah/J.%20G.%20Ballard/Ballard,%20J%20G%20-%20Book%203%20-%20The%20Crystal%20World.txtTHECRYSTALWORLDbyJ.G.BallardCopyright1966byJ.G.Ballard_______________Bydayfantasticbirdsflewthroughthepetrifiedforest,andjeweledcrocodilesglitteredlikeheraldicsalamandersonthebanksofthecrystallineriver....

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