Besides, it’s a terribly long walk to Pao’s.
All the way over through Green Valley and then past the big canal and down, isn’t it? And it’ll be very, very hot, and Dr. Nile would be delighted to see you.
Well?”
She did not answer.
She wanted to break and run.
She wanted to cry out.
But she only sat in the chair, turning her fingers over slowly, staring at them expressionlessly, trapped.
“Ylla?” he murmured. “You will be here, won’t you?”
“Yes,” she said after a long time.
“I’ll be here.”
“All afternoon?”
Her voice was dull.
“All afternoon.”
Late in the day Dr. Nile had not put in an appearance.
Ylla’s husband did not seem overly surprised.
When it was quite late he murmured something, went to a closet, and drew forth an evil weapon, a long yellowish tube ending in a bellows and a trigger.
He turned, and upon his face was a mask, hammered from silver metal, expressionless, the mask that he always wore when he wished to hide his feelings, the mask which curved and hollowed so exquisitely to his thin cheeks and chin and brow.
The mask glinted, and he held the evil weapon in his hands, considering it.
It hummed constantly, an insect hum. From it hordes of golden bees could be flung out with a high shriek.
Golden, horrid bees that stung, poisoned, and fell lifeless, like seeds on the sand.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“What?”
He listened to the bellows, to the evil hum.
“If Dr. Nile is late, I’ll be damned if I’ll wait.
I’m going out to hunt a bit.
I’ll be back.
You be sure to stay right here now, won’t you?”
The silver mask glimmered.
“Yes.”
“And tell Dr. Nile I’ll return.
Just hunting.”
The triangular door closed.
His footsteps faded down the hill.
She watched him walking through the sunlight until he was gone.
Then she resumed her tasks with the magnetic dusts and the new fruits to be plucked from the crystal walls.
She worked with energy and dispatch, but on occasion a numbness took hold of her and she caught herself singing that odd and memorable song and looking out beyond the crystal pillars at the sky.
She held her breath and stood very still, waiting.
It was coming nearer.
At any moment it might happen.
It was like those days when you heard a thunderstorm coming and there was the waiting silence and then the faintest pressure of the atmosphere as the climate blew over the land in shifts and shadows and vapors.
And the change pressed at your ears and you were suspended in the waiting time of the coming storm.
You began to tremble.
The sky was stained and coloured; the clouds were thickened; the mountains took on an iron taint.
The caged flowers blew with faint sighs of warning.
You felt your hair stir softly.
Somewhere in the house the voice-clock sang,
“Time, time, time, time…” ever so gently, no more than water tapping on velvet.
And then the storm.
The electric illumination, the engulfments of dark wash and sounding black fell down, shutting in, forever.
That’s how it was.