The Complete Short Stories: Volume 2. Adam Thirlwell

was moved by astonishment. Clasping the seat in front of him, he leaned across the rail, the white fabric of his suit transformed into a brilliant palimpsest.

      Our craft moved in a wide arc towards the quay, where a score of power cruisers were being loaded by the townsfolk, and we came within some fifty yards of the prismatic jungle, the hatchwork of coloured bars across our clothes transforming us into a boatload of harlequins. There was a spontaneous round of laughter, more in relief than amusement. Then several arms pointed to the water-line, where we saw that the process had not affected the vegetation alone. Extending outwards for two or three yards from the bank were the long splinters of what appeared to be crystallizing water, the angular facets emitting a blue prismatic light washed by the wake from our craft. These splinters were growing in the water like crystals in a chemical solution, accreting more and more material to themselves, so that along the bank there was a congested mass of rhomboidal spears like the lengthening barbs of a reef.

      Surprised by the extent of the phenomenon – I had expected, perhaps under the influence of the Lysenko theories, little more than an unusual plant disease, such as tobacco mosaic – I gazed up at the overhanging trees. Unmistakably each was still alive, its leaves and boughs filled with sap, and yet at the same time each was encased in a mass of crystalline tissue like an immense glace fruit. Everywhere the branches and fronds were encrusted by the same translucent lattice, through which the sunlight was refracted into rainbows of colour.

      A hubbub of speculation broke out in our craft, during which only myself and the bearded man remained silent. For some reason I suddenly felt less concerned to find a so-called ‘scientific’ explanation for the strange phenomenon we had seen. The beauty of the spectacle had stirred my memory, and a thousand images of childhood, forgotten for nearly forty years, now filled my mind, recalling the paradisal world of one’s earliest years when everything seems illuminated by that prismatic light described so exactly by Wordsworth in his recollections of childhood. Since the death of my wife and three-year-old daughter in a car accident ten years earlier I had deliberately repressed such feelings, and the vivid magical shore before us seemed to glow like the brief spring of my marriage.

      But the presence of so many soldiers and military vehicles, and the wan-faced townsfolk evacuating their homes, ensured that the little enclave of the transfigured forest – by comparison the remainder of the Everglades basin seemed a drab accumulation of peat, muck and marls – would soon be obliterated, the crystal trees dismembered and carried away to a hundred antiseptic laboratories.

      At the front of the landing craft the first passengers began to debark. A hand touched my arm, and the white-suited man, apparently aware of my mood, pointed with a smile at the sleeve of his suit, as if encouraging me. To my astonishment a faint multicoloured dappling still remained, despite the shadows of the people getting to their feet around us, as if the light from the forest had contaminated the fabric and set off the process anew. ‘What on –? Wait!’ I called. ‘Your suit!’

      But before I could speak to him he stood up and hurried down the gangway, the last pale shimmer from his suit disappearing along the crowded quay.

      Our party was divided into several smaller groups, each accompanied by two NCOs, and we moved off past the queue of cars and trucks loaded with the townsfolk’s possessions. The families waited their turn patiently, flagged on by the local police, eyeing us without interest. The streets were almost deserted, and these were the last people to go – the houses were empty, shutters sealed across the windows, and soldiers paced in pairs past the closed banks and stores. The sidestreets were packed with abandoned cars, confirming that the river was the only route of escape from the town.

      As we walked along the main street, the glowing jungle visible two hundred yards away down the intersections on our left, a police car swerved into the street and came to a halt in front of us. Two men stepped out, a tall blond-haired police captain and a Presbyterian minister carrying a small suitcase and a parcel of books. The latter was about thirty-five, with a high scholar’s forehead and tired eyes. He seemed uncertain which way to go, and waited as the police captain strode briskly around the car.

      ‘You’ll need your embarkation card, Dr Thomas.’ The captain handed a coloured ticket to the minister, and then fished a set of keys attached to a mahogany peg from his pocket. ‘I took these from the door. You must have left them in the lock.’

      The priest hesitated, uncertain whether to take the keys. ‘I left them there deliberately, captain. Someone may want to take refuge in the church.’

      ‘I doubt it, Doctor. Wouldn’t help them, anyway.’ The captain waved briefly. ‘See you in Miami.’

      Acknowledging the salute, the priest stared at the keys in his palm, then slipped them reluctantly into his cassock. As he walked past us towards the wharf his moist eyes searched our faces with a troubled gaze, as if he suspected that a member of his congregation might be hiding in our midst.

      The police captain appeared equally fatigued, and began a sharp dialogue with the officer in charge of our parties. His words were lost in the general conversation, but he pointed impatiently beyond the roof-tops with a wide sweep of one arm, as if indicating the approach of a storm. Although of strong physique, there was something weak and self-centred about his long fleshy face and pale blue eyes, and obviously his one remaining ambition, having emptied the town of its inhabitants, was to clear out at the first opportunity.

      I turned to the corporal lounging by a fire hydrant and pointed to the glowing vegetation which seemed to follow us, skirting the perimeter of the town. ‘Why is everyone leaving, corporal? Surely it’s not infectious – there’s no danger from close contact?’

      The corporal glanced laconically over his shoulder at the crystalline foliage glittering in the meridian sunlight. ‘It’s not infectious. Unless you stay in there too long. When it cut the road both sides of town I guess most people decided it was time to pull out.’

      ‘Both sides?’ George Schneider echoed. ‘How big is the affected area, corporal? We were told three or four acres.’

      The soldier shook his head dourly. ‘More like three or four hundred. Or thousand, even.’ He pointed to the helicopter circling the forest a mile or so away, soaring up and down over the date palms, apparently spraying them with some chemical. ‘Reaches right over there, towards Lake Okeechobee.’

      ‘But you have it under control,’ George said. ‘You’re cutting it back all right?’

      ‘Wouldn’t like to say,’ the corporal replied cryptically. He indicated the blond policeman remonstrating with the supervising officer. ‘Captain Shelley tried a flame thrower on it a couple of days ago. Didn’t help any.’

      The policeman’s objections over-ruled – he slammed the door of his car and drove off in dudgeon – we set off once more and at the next intersection approached the forest which stood back on either side of the road a quarter of a mile away. The vegetation was sparser, the sawgrass growing in clumps among the sandy soil on the verges, and a mobile laboratory had been set up in a trailer, ‘U.S. Department of Agriculture’ stencilled on its side. A platoon of soldiers was wandering about, taking cuttings from the palmettos and date palms, which they carefully placed like fragments of stained glass on a series of trestle tables. The main body of the forest curved around us, circling the northern perimeter of the town, and we immediately saw that the corporal had been correct in his estimate of the affected area’s extent. Parallel with us one block to the north was the main Maynard–Miami highway, cut off by the glowing forest on both the eastern and western approaches to the town.

      Splitting up into twos and threes, we crossed the verge and began to wander among the glacé ferns which rose from the brittle ground. The sandy surface seemed curiously hard and annealed, small spurs of fused sand protruding from the newly formed crust.

      Examining the specimens collected on the tables, I touched the smooth glass-like material that sheathed the leaves and branches, following the contours of the original like a displaced image in a defective mirror. Everything appeared to have been dipped in a vat of molten glass, which had then set into a skin fractured by slender veins.

      A few yards