Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [137]
He wondered, vaguely, whether she was really the kind of person who became deeply absorbed in her work, impatient of distractions, or whether she was quietly inclined to put on a show. He recalled the first picture he had seen, in which she had stubbornly continued to display the battle scars she had earned in the plague war: a calculated affront to the beautiful people who formed the great majorities of the fully developed nations. He decided in the end that she was by no means innocent of showmanship, but that it was sincere showmanship, deeply felt as well as deeply meant. It was the same judgment he would have passed on himself, and he could not resist a burst of fellow feeling in spite of what he had guessed.
In any case, there was always the infinite canopy to distract him, its multitudinous globular fruits seeming more like the rations of Tantalus with every hour that sped by. Soon, he knew, he would be able to take his own turn in the basket, descending with majestic grace to that part of Tyre that would be as new to his companions as it was to him. Even so, Matthew felt a distinct surge of relief when Dulcie was finally forced to pause while he steered the final load to a soft landing. By now, he had become a master of such elementary skills as this involved, and he was able to absorb himself in the minutiae of the load’s carefully measured fall.
When he looked up again, with a sense of satisfaction at having done the job well, Dulcie was not where he expected her to be. She was, instead, at the very lip of the chasm, standing on a spur of rock beside the water’s hectic edge. The spur projected out over the smooth-washed rocks below; it was the most precarious position available.
She seemed to be drinking in the view. Having already passed leisurely judgment on its spectacular qualities, Matthew certainly could not begrudge her the moment’s pause, and his first impulse was to follow the direction of her gaze and employ verstehen in a conscientious attempt to see it as she was seeing it.
She was, of course, well-used to the views from the crests of the hills surrounding the dead city—but those surrounding slopes had all been gentle, their undulations seeming halfhearted and indolent, and there had been so many of them that none could seem out of the ordinary. There had been slopes everywhere, cutting and confusing lines of vision in every direction. Distant horizons must have been visible, but they were always fragmentary; even when the occasional pinnacle of rock provided some relief from the blurred purple curves, it tended to be framed by nearer objects that robbed it of all grandeur. This landscape was conspicuously different. The plateau’s edge extended for kilometer after kilometer in either direction. Its neatness was interrupted here and there by arbitrary landslips and curtains of purple climbers, but the basic line was clear enough, and its convex curvature was too gentle to provide a disappointing cutoff point for a roaming eye. As for the oceanic canopy beyond, it stretched into the distance with a truly majestic sweep, extending to a horizon that was flat and sharp even on a day that was somewhat less bright than its immediate predecessors.
Matthew watched her as she lowered her eyes. Immediately below the plateau’s edge there was the ragged hem of transitional vegetation, which varied in extent from twenty to sixty meters, but he knew that it gave way soon enough to the paradoxical “savannah”: the empire of the grass-analogues that were taller and far more imperious than grass-analogues had any right to be. The structures were all alike at first glance, but even the untrained eye of an anthropologist would probably find it easy enough to pick out a dozen or so variants. Not all anthropologists would have sufficient critical spirit to challenge the crewman who had