[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]nebulous, and his new psychology of
Neuronics, offered a more valid explanation for the metamorphosis taking place
in his mind than any other. The tacit assumption made by the UN
directorate--that within the new perimeters described by the Arctic and
Antarctic Circles life would continue much as before, with the same social and
domestic relationships, by and large the same ambitions and satisfactions--was
obviously fallacious, as the mounting flood-water and temperature would show
when they reached the so-called polar redoubts. A more important task than map
ping the harbours and lagoons of the external landscape was to chart the
ghostly deltas and luminous beaches of the submerged neuronic continents.
"Alan," he asked over his shoulder, still watching Riggs stamping about on the
landing jetty, "why don't you draft a report to Byrd, I think you should let
them know. There's always a chance of--"
But Bodkin had gone. Kerans listened to his feet dump slowly up the stairway
and disappear into his cabin, the fatigued tread of a man too old and too
experienced to care whether or not his warnings were heeded.
Kerans went back to his desk and sat down. From his jacket pocket he withdrew
the compass and placed it in front of him, cradling it between his hands.
Around him the muted sounds of the laboratory formed a low background to his
mind, the furry puttering of the marmoset, the tick of a recording spooi
somewhere, the grating of a revolving rig estimating a creeper's phototropism.
Idly Kerans examined the compass, swinging the bearing gently in its air-bath
and then aligning the pointer and scale. He tried to decide why he had taken
it from the armoury. Normally it was installed in one of the motor launches,
and its disappearance would soon be reported, probably involve him in the
petty humiliation of admitting its theft.
Caging the compass, he swung it around towards himself, without realising it
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
sank into a momentary reverie in which his entire consciousness became
focussed on the serpentine terminal touched by the pointer, on the confused,
uncertain but curiously potent image summed up by the concept 'South', with
all its dormant magic and mesmeric power, diffusing outwards from the brass
bowl held in his hands like the heady vapours of some spectral grail.
CHAPTER 4
The Causeways of the Sun
The next day, for reasons Kerans was to understand fully only much later,
Lieutenant
Hardman disappeared.
After a night of deep, dreamless sleep Kerans rose early and had breakfasted
by seven o'clock. He then spent an hour on the balcony, sitting back in one of
the beach chairs in a pair of white latex shorts, the sunlight expanding
across the dark water bathing his lean ebony body.
Overhead the sky was vivid and marbled, the black bowl of the lagoon, by
contrast, infinitely deep and motionless, like an immense well of amber. The
tree-covered buildings emerging from its rim seemed millions of years old,
thrown up out of the Earth's magma by some vast natural cataclysm, embalmed in
the gigantic intervals of time that had elapsed during their subsidence.
Pausing by the desk to run his fingers over the brass compass gleaming in the
darkness of the suite, Kerans went into the bedroom and changed into his khaki
drill uniform, a minimal concession to Riggs' preparations for departure. The
Italian sportswear was now hardly de rigeur, and it would only rouse the
Colonel's suspicions if he were seen sauntering about in a pastel-
coloured ensemble with a Ritz hallmark
Although he accepted the possibility that he would remain behind, Kerans found
himself reluctant to take any systematic precautions. Apart from his fuel and
food supplies, for which he had been dependent during the previous six months
on Colonel Riggs' largesse, he had also needed an endless succession of minor
spares and replacements, from a new watchface to a complete rewiring of the
lighting system in the suite. Once the base and its workshop had left he would
soon find himself saddled with an accumulating series of petty annoyances, and
with no accommodating technical sergeant to remove them.
For the convenience of the stores staff, and to save himself unnecessary
journeys to and from the base, Kerans had stockpiled a month's forward
supplies of canned food in the suite. Most
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