Claudio's car drive out. It moved along the flank of the jet and pulled up on the road, and the door section of the jet lifted.
The sea screamed. The night smelled dank and oddly menacing with salt, as if the ghost of a great ocean beast moved through it, breathing.
Magdala stepped down from the cabin and walked toward the car. Once she was off the ramp, it began to
sink, carrying the aqua-jet into some concrete shed underground. This vanishing trick struck her curiously, with intimations of impermanence. Where the car had halted, a cement pillar had been set beside the road.
A light stammered in the pillar, and, as she came nearer, an ab-human voice demanded dulcetly: Print and voice check, please. She put her hand on the print plate. Voice, please, said the pillar, Voice, please. A fleeting impulse to offer her own wrong name. Stifled. "Christophine," she said, "del Jan." The blue light
faded. Check, the pillar said. "Fool" she thought. "Fool."
At the base of the cliff, just before the trees smothered the road, huge leprous wounds gaped in the rock, each an unspeakable invitation into blackness.
Despite the road, the ramp, the checkpost, there was 82
nothing civilized about the back door into Marine Bleu. It was a country of caves, decay and supernatural
anger.
She got into the car, and the howling of the sea was muffled. The car started up the fluorescent road, mounting the dark cone into the roll of the trees.
Claudio, lying in the compartment, at the mercy of her obedience, and of the button that would release him, which was on the dash. She could savor that. If she wanted, she could talk to him and he would have to hear.
She did not talk.
The forest was quiet, too. Until a strong wind manifested itself, higher on the cliff. A strong fall wind, the harbinger of the storm the jet had out-paced on the ocean. The fringes of the storm might brush the island, and she wondered how much weather control operated here, and what restrictions applied to it.
Shortly, it occurred to her that the trees were not mitigating the wind, nor did their branches move or their foliage- the ephemeral leaves of fall shake loose. Soon after, she glimpsed a compact steel unit at the roadside with the insc ri ption: Hoi. Panel Housing 9: Ac ti ve. Holostets, ins ti gated by electronics. The forerunner of Claudio's model? But to this, Claudio's model was child to giant. The visual and tactile mirage of a collective forest, kilometers deep, projected in order to clothe the barren slopes of the cliff. Ornament, or disguise?
Precisely then, the wing-tip of the storm flickered over the island. There was a bellow of thunder, chalked by lightning. Magdala cried out.
One moment the world was matte, then, as the white crack of lightning hit the nonexistent tops of the trees, they exploded into fires.
The holostetic forest was acting as one vast lightning absorber, attracting, defusing and storing the electricity of the
storm. The process had an outlandish side effect of brilliant color. Fountains of viridian and turquoise and rose-red light
83
poured down the motionless sinews of the trees; magenta convolutions became silent purple snows; blue coronas broke and fell in lime-green rain.
Unaware, the car shot through it, while, spread on the dash, Magdala's hands gained transparent gauntlets of violet and crimson; while, like infernal sweets, carnation and quince candied and dissolved on the polarized windscreen. Between the tree shapes on her left, a concrete bungalow appeared, reflectively neoned jade, pink, royal blue. And presently, three more bungalows, winking topaz, peacock's eye, vermilion, mazerine.
The whole interior of the car was dyed and re-dyed a hundred variables of color. Then, the frenetic
patterns distilled, faltered. There had been no further lightning. The glowing fires of Hell were seeping back into the cliff. Almost as suddenly as it had commenced, the display ended. Dyes dying out on
The sea screamed. The night smelled dank and oddly menacing with salt, as if the ghost of a great ocean beast moved through it, breathing.
Magdala stepped down from the cabin and walked toward the car. Once she was off the ramp, it began to
sink, carrying the aqua-jet into some concrete shed underground. This vanishing trick struck her curiously, with intimations of impermanence. Where the car had halted, a cement pillar had been set beside the road.
A light stammered in the pillar, and, as she came nearer, an ab-human voice demanded dulcetly: Print and voice check, please. She put her hand on the print plate. Voice, please, said the pillar, Voice, please. A fleeting impulse to offer her own wrong name. Stifled. "Christophine," she said, "del Jan." The blue light
faded. Check, the pillar said. "Fool" she thought. "Fool."
At the base of the cliff, just before the trees smothered the road, huge leprous wounds gaped in the rock, each an unspeakable invitation into blackness.
Despite the road, the ramp, the checkpost, there was 82
nothing civilized about the back door into Marine Bleu. It was a country of caves, decay and supernatural
anger.
She got into the car, and the howling of the sea was muffled. The car started up the fluorescent road, mounting the dark cone into the roll of the trees.
Claudio, lying in the compartment, at the mercy of her obedience, and of the button that would release him, which was on the dash. She could savor that. If she wanted, she could talk to him and he would have to hear.
She did not talk.
The forest was quiet, too. Until a strong wind manifested itself, higher on the cliff. A strong fall wind, the harbinger of the storm the jet had out-paced on the ocean. The fringes of the storm might brush the island, and she wondered how much weather control operated here, and what restrictions applied to it.
Shortly, it occurred to her that the trees were not mitigating the wind, nor did their branches move or their foliage- the ephemeral leaves of fall shake loose. Soon after, she glimpsed a compact steel unit at the roadside with the insc ri ption: Hoi. Panel Housing 9: Ac ti ve. Holostets, ins ti gated by electronics. The forerunner of Claudio's model? But to this, Claudio's model was child to giant. The visual and tactile mirage of a collective forest, kilometers deep, projected in order to clothe the barren slopes of the cliff. Ornament, or disguise?
Precisely then, the wing-tip of the storm flickered over the island. There was a bellow of thunder, chalked by lightning. Magdala cried out.
One moment the world was matte, then, as the white crack of lightning hit the nonexistent tops of the trees, they exploded into fires.
The holostetic forest was acting as one vast lightning absorber, attracting, defusing and storing the electricity of the
storm. The process had an outlandish side effect of brilliant color. Fountains of viridian and turquoise and rose-red light
83
poured down the motionless sinews of the trees; magenta convolutions became silent purple snows; blue coronas broke and fell in lime-green rain.
Unaware, the car shot through it, while, spread on the dash, Magdala's hands gained transparent gauntlets of violet and crimson; while, like infernal sweets, carnation and quince candied and dissolved on the polarized windscreen. Between the tree shapes on her left, a concrete bungalow appeared, reflectively neoned jade, pink, royal blue. And presently, three more bungalows, winking topaz, peacock's eye, vermilion, mazerine.
The whole interior of the car was dyed and re-dyed a hundred variables of color. Then, the frenetic
patterns distilled, faltered. There had been no further lightning. The glowing fires of Hell were seeping back into the cliff. Almost as suddenly as it had commenced, the display ended. Dyes dying out on
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