[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
with her is no sacrifice for him at all."
Bellow was silent.
"I can understand him changing his mind about that first one, wanting it back
for financial reasons. But this one. Is it meant to be just an ornament to
impress future generations of grave robbers? No, I'm damned if I
understand this book at all."
Page 64
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"There is no reason why you should." The older man sighed. "I do not always
understand Person Gabriel's motives myself, and I have been with him fifteen
years."
Ditmars looked up. "Then you knew her."
"Oh yes." The tone conveyed nothing.
"What was she really like?" Though even as he asked the question he realized
its futility.
Bellow took it seriously, though. "Many ask that. What can I say? You've read
some of the stories, I suppose, but they tell nothing." The gray-haired man
paused, thinking;
there was some kind of a point he wanted to make.
"Milady Rosalys always struck me as a& a lonely woman.
I knew that would seem a strange word to her. She was very, very seldom alone.
In fact, she had a horror of being unaccompanied. But& "
Bellow let his speech trail off, then gestured his inability to say what he
meant. He indicated the book and the small cube in Ditmars' hands. "I hope you
will leave those as we want them."
"I will." He thought he might. He really didn't know.
His visitor sighed again as he rose to his feet, looking considerably less
jaunty than when he had entered the apartment. "I-we-will be anxiously waiting
to hear from you."
Again Ditmars left his vehicle a hundred meters or so from the cemetery,
parked where it should be almost certain to remain unnoticed while he carried
out his business. Then he walked casually over to the fence.
As he was approaching the barrier, he felt a tremor go through the ground
beneath his feet accompanied by a muffled roaring behind him. He turned
quickly to glance back and upward. There the crest of West Ridge seemed to
loom above him, straight as an ocean horizon. During his research he had come
across predictions that soon the whole gigantic West Ridge formation might be
in danger of collapsing, of being shaken out like a wrinkle from a rug.
Fortunately the land movement would take place in the direction away from the
city and not toward it. The landflow in the Old Cemetery was evidence for this
conclusion. Likely the collapse would come near veilfall when stresses in the
system peaked.
Ditmars proceeded, walking. The collapse of West
Ridge was not a present concern. There had been no warning issued yet for
people to stay clear of the ridge. In fact, he could see a couple of tourists'
vehicles crawling along its crest right now. And the next veilfall was not due
for another fourteen days, by which time Ditmars expected to be long gone.
Reaching the glowing fence, he walked along it until he came to an area that
he had earlier decided was best protected from casual observation of any place
along cemetery's perimeter. Three house-sized cylindrical landforms bulked
right at his back, making a good screen
in that direction; directly in front of him there rose the cemetery's central
hill, cutting him off from the view of anyone on its farther side.
He reached into the camera bag and quickly got to work.
The fence gave him no more and no less trouble than he had anticipated. After
about four minutes its glowing strands, where they passed in front of Ditmars,
were subtly altered in appearance. He nodded with satisfaction, and pushed a
tool right through one line of force with no apparent damage. He tried a hand
with the same result, then stepped boldly through. As he had expected, the
passage produced no sensation.
Once inside the fence he stowed his tools before walking briskly up the
terraced side of the central, fort-like hill. It lifted its clustered tombs
and monuments beneath a faded patch of sky. Many of the structures rose higher
than his head. Once among them Ditmars felt almost completely safe from being
Page 65
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
seen.
On the ground between the manmade structures, and often sprouting right from
their sides and roofs, coral grew. When he had been here two days ago the
coral had been bright, the trunks and branches making a rainbow of clear
colors. Today the colors were muted or completely gone. The branches were gray
or brown, the trunks the same in deeper shades, some were even streaked with
ebony. Curiously, Ditmars touched several branches as he passed. They felt
quite smooth and artificial, and when he let his fingers linger on one it
began to feel cool as if chilled water were being pumped through it inside.
Warmth was being sucked from his fingers into the coral.
The library had provided him with some of the essential facts about the
plants; among other things, how their yearly changes in transparency and color
were related to their strange reproductive cycle. This darkening in the
days before veilfall meant that the plants were absorbing as much radiant
energy as possible, storing it up, charging themselves for the violent
broadcast of quantum-spores that was soon to come. That explosive seeding
generally began just hours before the falling of a veil, reached a peak of
intensity within a few minutes, and then gradually fell off, persisting until
after the veil had fallen and the new year had begun. Quantum-spores, behaving
like radiation rather than like matter, could pierce six or eight veils before
their energy was exhausted or their genetic information too badly scrambled.
After traversing six or eight veils they had lost enough energy so that the
next solid matter they encountered stopped them; if it was suitable matter, a
new coral plant began to grow from it at the point of impact.
Just how the native lifeforms could predict veilfall no one knew. Often they
were more accurate than the computers in the sophisticated space stations kept
in orbit around Azlaroc as an alarm system for the benefit of visitors.
Anyway, as veilfall was supposedly still fourteen days away-Ditmars had
checked, and the conclusion of the year had never been known to sneak up on
the world this
early-the danger of spore-radiation from these plants should be vanishingly
small.
He stopped, looking at the scar on the raw ground where the missing monument,
no doubt, had recently been removed. By airlifter, probably, as Bellow had
suggested, for Ditmars could see no tracks of men or machines about.
Beside the scar, half-buried, Milady Rosalys' tomb-
pardon me, Person Bellow, her conditivium-waited.
Ditmars smiled for an instant as he squatted down beside the smooth, bright
masonry. If Rosalys had seemed lonely to Bellow, how had the agent seemed to
her?
The construction of the tomb wall was unlike anything
he had seen elsewhere. This showed how richly mankind could have built on
Azlaroc had they chosen to make the effort. The wall was an amalgam of native
and imported matter, blocks of various kinds of normal, off world stone [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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with her is no sacrifice for him at all."
Bellow was silent.
"I can understand him changing his mind about that first one, wanting it back
for financial reasons. But this one. Is it meant to be just an ornament to
impress future generations of grave robbers? No, I'm damned if I
understand this book at all."
Page 64
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"There is no reason why you should." The older man sighed. "I do not always
understand Person Gabriel's motives myself, and I have been with him fifteen
years."
Ditmars looked up. "Then you knew her."
"Oh yes." The tone conveyed nothing.
"What was she really like?" Though even as he asked the question he realized
its futility.
Bellow took it seriously, though. "Many ask that. What can I say? You've read
some of the stories, I suppose, but they tell nothing." The gray-haired man
paused, thinking;
there was some kind of a point he wanted to make.
"Milady Rosalys always struck me as a& a lonely woman.
I knew that would seem a strange word to her. She was very, very seldom alone.
In fact, she had a horror of being unaccompanied. But& "
Bellow let his speech trail off, then gestured his inability to say what he
meant. He indicated the book and the small cube in Ditmars' hands. "I hope you
will leave those as we want them."
"I will." He thought he might. He really didn't know.
His visitor sighed again as he rose to his feet, looking considerably less
jaunty than when he had entered the apartment. "I-we-will be anxiously waiting
to hear from you."
Again Ditmars left his vehicle a hundred meters or so from the cemetery,
parked where it should be almost certain to remain unnoticed while he carried
out his business. Then he walked casually over to the fence.
As he was approaching the barrier, he felt a tremor go through the ground
beneath his feet accompanied by a muffled roaring behind him. He turned
quickly to glance back and upward. There the crest of West Ridge seemed to
loom above him, straight as an ocean horizon. During his research he had come
across predictions that soon the whole gigantic West Ridge formation might be
in danger of collapsing, of being shaken out like a wrinkle from a rug.
Fortunately the land movement would take place in the direction away from the
city and not toward it. The landflow in the Old Cemetery was evidence for this
conclusion. Likely the collapse would come near veilfall when stresses in the
system peaked.
Ditmars proceeded, walking. The collapse of West
Ridge was not a present concern. There had been no warning issued yet for
people to stay clear of the ridge. In fact, he could see a couple of tourists'
vehicles crawling along its crest right now. And the next veilfall was not due
for another fourteen days, by which time Ditmars expected to be long gone.
Reaching the glowing fence, he walked along it until he came to an area that
he had earlier decided was best protected from casual observation of any place
along cemetery's perimeter. Three house-sized cylindrical landforms bulked
right at his back, making a good screen
in that direction; directly in front of him there rose the cemetery's central
hill, cutting him off from the view of anyone on its farther side.
He reached into the camera bag and quickly got to work.
The fence gave him no more and no less trouble than he had anticipated. After
about four minutes its glowing strands, where they passed in front of Ditmars,
were subtly altered in appearance. He nodded with satisfaction, and pushed a
tool right through one line of force with no apparent damage. He tried a hand
with the same result, then stepped boldly through. As he had expected, the
passage produced no sensation.
Once inside the fence he stowed his tools before walking briskly up the
terraced side of the central, fort-like hill. It lifted its clustered tombs
and monuments beneath a faded patch of sky. Many of the structures rose higher
than his head. Once among them Ditmars felt almost completely safe from being
Page 65
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
seen.
On the ground between the manmade structures, and often sprouting right from
their sides and roofs, coral grew. When he had been here two days ago the
coral had been bright, the trunks and branches making a rainbow of clear
colors. Today the colors were muted or completely gone. The branches were gray
or brown, the trunks the same in deeper shades, some were even streaked with
ebony. Curiously, Ditmars touched several branches as he passed. They felt
quite smooth and artificial, and when he let his fingers linger on one it
began to feel cool as if chilled water were being pumped through it inside.
Warmth was being sucked from his fingers into the coral.
The library had provided him with some of the essential facts about the
plants; among other things, how their yearly changes in transparency and color
were related to their strange reproductive cycle. This darkening in the
days before veilfall meant that the plants were absorbing as much radiant
energy as possible, storing it up, charging themselves for the violent
broadcast of quantum-spores that was soon to come. That explosive seeding
generally began just hours before the falling of a veil, reached a peak of
intensity within a few minutes, and then gradually fell off, persisting until
after the veil had fallen and the new year had begun. Quantum-spores, behaving
like radiation rather than like matter, could pierce six or eight veils before
their energy was exhausted or their genetic information too badly scrambled.
After traversing six or eight veils they had lost enough energy so that the
next solid matter they encountered stopped them; if it was suitable matter, a
new coral plant began to grow from it at the point of impact.
Just how the native lifeforms could predict veilfall no one knew. Often they
were more accurate than the computers in the sophisticated space stations kept
in orbit around Azlaroc as an alarm system for the benefit of visitors.
Anyway, as veilfall was supposedly still fourteen days away-Ditmars had
checked, and the conclusion of the year had never been known to sneak up on
the world this
early-the danger of spore-radiation from these plants should be vanishingly
small.
He stopped, looking at the scar on the raw ground where the missing monument,
no doubt, had recently been removed. By airlifter, probably, as Bellow had
suggested, for Ditmars could see no tracks of men or machines about.
Beside the scar, half-buried, Milady Rosalys' tomb-
pardon me, Person Bellow, her conditivium-waited.
Ditmars smiled for an instant as he squatted down beside the smooth, bright
masonry. If Rosalys had seemed lonely to Bellow, how had the agent seemed to
her?
The construction of the tomb wall was unlike anything
he had seen elsewhere. This showed how richly mankind could have built on
Azlaroc had they chosen to make the effort. The wall was an amalgam of native
and imported matter, blocks of various kinds of normal, off world stone [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]