Free Ice by Anna Kavan Page A

frantically for an instant before the crunch of armour-plated jaws.
    I was in a hurry to get back to my lodging. My feet and fingers were numb, my face stiff, my head starting to ache with the cold. As soon as I had thawed out a little in my warm room, I began to write. My main topic, of course, was the Indris, but I still kept up the pretence I had started by writing down anything that seemed of interest about the town. I did not think the security people would bother to read my notes, although they could easily do so while I was out of the room. The childishly simple form of scrambling I used, mixing up sentences about the lemurs with others on local affairs, would at least defeat the woman of the house, who pried into everything.
    I derived great satisfaction from describing the gentle mysterious singing creatures, and seemed to grow more deeply involved with them as I wrote. With their enchanting other- world voices, their gay, affectionate, innocent ways, they had become for me symbols of life as it could be on earth, if man's destructiveness, violence and cruelty were eliminated. I enjoyed writing as a rule, the sentences came to me without effort, as if they formed in my head of their own accord. But now it was quite different, I could not find the right words: I knew I was not expressing myself lucidly, or remembering accurately, and after some minutes put down my pen. Immediately I saw a mental picture of many people crowded into a smoky room, and felt I ought to inform the warden of what I had overheard. At the same time, there was a curious unreality about the memory of that scene, as if I could have dreamt it. And when it occurred to me that the girl might be in real danger I did not quite believe this. I got up, all the same, to go to the telephone. Then, restrained by the peculiar uncertainty as to what was real more than the thought of the woman who would be listening to every word, I decided not to ring up until I got to the café.
    My sense of unreality became overwhelming as I left the house. A strong colourless light was making everything outside as clear as day, though I was quite unable to see where it came from. My amazement increased when I observed that this extraordinary light revealed details not normally visible to the naked eye. It was snowing slightly, and the complex structure of each individual snowflake appeared in crystalline clearness, the delicate starlike, flowerlike forms perfectly distinct and as bright as jewels. I looked round for the familiar ruins, but they were no longer there. I was used to the sight of destruction, but this was different. Nothing whatever was left of the ruined town; its structures had disintegrated, the remains were flattened, spread as though a giant steam roller had passed over them. The one or two vertical fragments seemed to have been left intentionally, with the deliberate object of emphasizing the general levelling. With a dreamlike feeling, I walked on, seeing no one, either alive or dead. The air was full of a sweetish smell, not unpleasant, which I could smell on my own hands and clothes, and presumed had been left by some gas. The absence of fires surprised me; nothing seemed to be burning, I saw no smoke. I only now noticed thin trickles of a white milky fluid moving among the debris, collecting in pools here and there. These white pools continually widened as the liquid eroded their edges, eating away whatever came in contact with it; it was only a question of time before the entire mass of wreckage would be disposed of in this way. I stood still for a moment to watch the process, fascinated by such a practical, thorough method of clearance.
    I remembered that I had to find the girl, searched for her desperately through the endless rubble. I thought I saw her a long way off in the distance, shouted, ran; she changed, disappeared. Like a mirage I saw her still further away; then she vanished again. A girl's arm protruded from a heap of detritus; I took