transport yawned there, waiting for her.
She leaned through and activated the starter of the car, shutting the side as she did so. With delicacy, the car drove itself down the ramp and into the rear section of the jet.
Magdala walked to the jet, climbed through and settled herself in the passenger seat behind the automatic instrument board. The side of the jet dropped down and sealed with a velvet thud. The ozone of the
washed-air percolated the cabin, the motors thrust and the jet rose on its gas cushion.
Moments after, it plunged into the sea, vents sucking up water, evacuating water in a strong white wake. The speedometer danced through fifty, one hundred, two hundred, kph.
There were red letters to the left of the panel, the same letters as on the external I.D.: ECSORNI. She knew what they stood for: Earth Conclave Station, Oceanic Research, Northern Indigo.
She thought of Claudio, shut in the storage compartment, her companion; yet not her companion. Vaguely, she liked the idea of Claudio impotently trapped in this way, at the mercy of her obedience.
But, alone in the dark as the jet carved the night into a deeper darkness, and the polarized screen grew
flecked with black liquid drops, she began to think only of Claudio, as if
80
his soul ate hers, as if she had no life at all, save through him.
Northward and farther north the aqua-jet darted, a flung spear of water and noise through the night.
Northward, Fall had already reached Indigo. Fall when all the blue leaves fell, and the sky deepened and the pre-winter storms came blowing in like the blue-black whales that had once billowed through the blue seas, before Earth Conclave had dispatched them to five hundred zoos and five thousand research faculties. There are no longer whales on earth, few animal species of any sort. Mother Gaea. Her sons left her for other worlds: they sent her presents and never went home.
In the second hour of the journey, a storm spoke on the horizon ahead, out across the dance floor of the
sea.
The jet, catching up to the storm, weatherproofed and motored with a peak of pollution-timid clean technology, clove through the waves and the thick wind like a blade through black butter.
The storm remedied her dreary abnegation somewhat, as if its spark touched off some circuit within
herself. But the token thought of her rebellion at this time was merely a hope that Claudio, the scintillant magician, suffered ennui, unentertained in the seat-storage of the car.
The island emerged out of the sea at three in the morning. Its pivot was a tall conical cliff, muffled in a
static cloud of forest. For six or seven kilometers from the base of the cliff to the water, there extended a uniformly flat plain, featureless but for the blocks and boxes of buildings, and a chain of stalking infra-red
pylons.
As the jet soared closer, Magdala discerned that the flat plain was a reinforced concrete apron, a man-made adjunct to the island which was no more than the conical cliff.
A kilometer from land, the jet swept into a left hand maneuver, turning from the docking basin of the station, and
81
ploughing north westward around the saucerene curve of the concrete foreshore. In less than a minute, the uncompromising blocks were out of sight. The spindle of the forested cliff towered above the apron, which itself presently surrendered to a turmoil of sea. Large rocks, outposts of the cliff, clawed from the water, breakers salivating ferociously between them. The jet shot through a narrow channel, white-winged with surf, and ran up a treated metal ramp.
The motors subsided to an intermediary rumble. But, in the partial silence, the ocean asserted itself, waves hurled loudly against rock, slithering back with smashed spines, then, healed by immersion, hurled forward
again.
Ahead and above, a metal road plunged off from the ramp and straight up the cliff, burying itself in the
trees.
Magdala heard the jet's storage bay open and
She leaned through and activated the starter of the car, shutting the side as she did so. With delicacy, the car drove itself down the ramp and into the rear section of the jet.
Magdala walked to the jet, climbed through and settled herself in the passenger seat behind the automatic instrument board. The side of the jet dropped down and sealed with a velvet thud. The ozone of the
washed-air percolated the cabin, the motors thrust and the jet rose on its gas cushion.
Moments after, it plunged into the sea, vents sucking up water, evacuating water in a strong white wake. The speedometer danced through fifty, one hundred, two hundred, kph.
There were red letters to the left of the panel, the same letters as on the external I.D.: ECSORNI. She knew what they stood for: Earth Conclave Station, Oceanic Research, Northern Indigo.
She thought of Claudio, shut in the storage compartment, her companion; yet not her companion. Vaguely, she liked the idea of Claudio impotently trapped in this way, at the mercy of her obedience.
But, alone in the dark as the jet carved the night into a deeper darkness, and the polarized screen grew
flecked with black liquid drops, she began to think only of Claudio, as if
80
his soul ate hers, as if she had no life at all, save through him.
Northward and farther north the aqua-jet darted, a flung spear of water and noise through the night.
Northward, Fall had already reached Indigo. Fall when all the blue leaves fell, and the sky deepened and the pre-winter storms came blowing in like the blue-black whales that had once billowed through the blue seas, before Earth Conclave had dispatched them to five hundred zoos and five thousand research faculties. There are no longer whales on earth, few animal species of any sort. Mother Gaea. Her sons left her for other worlds: they sent her presents and never went home.
In the second hour of the journey, a storm spoke on the horizon ahead, out across the dance floor of the
sea.
The jet, catching up to the storm, weatherproofed and motored with a peak of pollution-timid clean technology, clove through the waves and the thick wind like a blade through black butter.
The storm remedied her dreary abnegation somewhat, as if its spark touched off some circuit within
herself. But the token thought of her rebellion at this time was merely a hope that Claudio, the scintillant magician, suffered ennui, unentertained in the seat-storage of the car.
The island emerged out of the sea at three in the morning. Its pivot was a tall conical cliff, muffled in a
static cloud of forest. For six or seven kilometers from the base of the cliff to the water, there extended a uniformly flat plain, featureless but for the blocks and boxes of buildings, and a chain of stalking infra-red
pylons.
As the jet soared closer, Magdala discerned that the flat plain was a reinforced concrete apron, a man-made adjunct to the island which was no more than the conical cliff.
A kilometer from land, the jet swept into a left hand maneuver, turning from the docking basin of the station, and
81
ploughing north westward around the saucerene curve of the concrete foreshore. In less than a minute, the uncompromising blocks were out of sight. The spindle of the forested cliff towered above the apron, which itself presently surrendered to a turmoil of sea. Large rocks, outposts of the cliff, clawed from the water, breakers salivating ferociously between them. The jet shot through a narrow channel, white-winged with surf, and ran up a treated metal ramp.
The motors subsided to an intermediary rumble. But, in the partial silence, the ocean asserted itself, waves hurled loudly against rock, slithering back with smashed spines, then, healed by immersion, hurled forward
again.
Ahead and above, a metal road plunged off from the ramp and straight up the cliff, burying itself in the
trees.
Magdala heard the jet's storage bay open and
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