to rain, a mist drifting up the inlet from the direction of the sea. We kept remarking on the feeling of relief inside the apartment, the welcome sense of normality.
Alvasund showed me what she said was the material they were using as a shield against the psychic emissions from the towers. It had been placed hard against each of the windows, but it was also possible to see that it extended to each side, and above and below, an unseen layer concealed within the walls.
Alvasund said the material was some kind of plastic, but the moment I looked at it closely I suddenly realized what it was. It was neither plastic nor conventional glass, but a sort of non-metallic alloy created by fusing a number of polymers with glass crystals. In other words it was BPSG, polymerized borophosphosilicate glass, closely similar to the material I had been working with on Ia. It was made so that it remained transparent, and could be used instead of conventional glass. It was also a powerful transducer of energy. When you touched it there was a feeling of tough resilience, like hard rubber, almost impossible to break or shatter, although it could be moulded.
I looked more closely at the BPSG that had been used in the apartment. I touched it again and peered at it by leaning down so that the light from the sky was refracted through it. I saw a faint web of tell-tale halation, a misting of the transparency. This would be normally undetectable in use, caused by the many layers of molecular mini-circuitry within, and visible only at certain oblique angles. The variant we had been experimenting with on Ia was to enable high-energy waves to be collected, condensed, then amplified. Practical applications were yet to be designed, although we were funded by two major electronics companies. We had been experimenting with polarization of the glass at the time I left.
Ever since the incident at the tower on Goorn the thought had been nagging at me that maybe that kind of glass, suitably polarized and strengthened, could be used to divert, transduce or even block whatever those terrifying emanations might be. Now I realized that someone else, working for the Intercession teams, must have had the same idea.
After we had eaten, and because there was still time before we were supposed to meet up with the others, we lay down on the bed and rested. It was good to be there together, undisturbed, affectionate and relaxed.
Neither of us wanted to leave the apartment, return to the unshielded streets outside, but finally we went in search of the rest of the team. We walked through the narrow streets and alleys of Seevl Town, already gripped by the horrible feeling of psychic dread, but because we knew there would be an escape from it when we returned to the flat we could put up with it.
We saw how decrepit most of the town appeared — there was none of the sense of industry and purposeful activity that we had seen in Orsknes, let alone the thriving metropolis of Jethra. Most of the buildings had been constructed from the dark grey local stone. They looked thick and solid, perhaps an attempt to shut out the pervading gloom. They were also shabby. The windows and doors were narrow, with makeshift shutters and blinds. Galvanized iron sheets were laid roughly against many of the entrances.
There seemed to be no wildlife — we heard no birds, not even the gulls which were otherwise found in every port in the Archipelago. When we went down to the quay we saw that the water of the inlet had an oily, lifeless look to it, as if the fish too were repelled by the emanations from the towers.
I began to think that I would find it difficult living in such a place for long, at least without the shielding, but I said nothing of this to Alvasund.
We found the building where the rest of the team was staying overnight, and as I had suspected there was no shielding. The building was just a normal town bar, clearly on the point of going out of business. The team members were stoical about the arrangement, as they had made contact with the Authority and would be moving the next day.
Gloomily we walked with the rest of the team through the town in search of somewhere we could find a meal; worriedly we ate it; and afterwards we dispersed with unenthusiastic farewells.
Once Alvasund and I were in our apartment again, though, our spirits lifted with the closing of the door. It was like shaking off the memory of fog, or removing a bulky garment. In fact, we threw off all our clothes and went straight to bed.
In the morning Alvasund dressed for work. She took out overalls and gauntlets, and so on, from one of the large cartons we had brought with us. The garments were made of heavy fabric, camo green. She put these on over her own clothes, becoming shapeless. Finally, she pulled on a large helmet, which I took at first glance to be made of metal. It covered her entire head as well as her throat and neck. It had a glass visor, which she snapped down over her face, then she tilted her head in a familiar gesture, suggesting she would like me to kiss her. I went across to her, smiling at what she was doing.
She flipped open the visor, and tapped it.
‘I’m protected,’ she said.
‘You’re completely beyond reach!’ I said, groping unsuccessfully across her cumbersome garments, and trying to push my mouth through the narrow slot to kiss her.
‘You know what I mean,’ she said.
I looked closely at the visor, and saw that it was made of the polymerized BPSG. I held her as affectionately as her thick clothing would allow.
‘Don’t take risks, Alvasund,’ I said.
‘I think I know what I’m doing. The others certainly do.’ She drew back from me. Then she added, ‘I want you to do something for me.’
‘What?’
‘All my friends call me Alvie. From now, today, tonight, for ever, I want you to call me that too.’
‘You may call me Torm,’ I said.
‘I already do.’
She snapped down the protective visor, smiled at me through the transductive glass, and walked with wide and awkward steps to the stairs that led down to the road.
I gave her another clumsy hug, and then she was gone. When she was outside I watched her through the window of the apartment as she stood by the side of the street. Soon enough the Authority vehicle appeared with the others aboard, and they drove away towards the edge of town.
I began to feel trapped in that apartment in Seevl Town. Although Alvie returned every day, sometimes early, halfway through the afternoon, and she was as loving and physical with me as ever, inevitably our lives were drifting slowly away from each other. I was alone almost every day. Although there were, or I obtained, the usual distractions, like books, internet access, films, music, it was still a fact that I could only leave when I felt able to brave the psychic aura that drifted around the town. I had no other protection than the discreetly glazed walls of the building. There was no work I could do beyond maintaining distant electronic contact with my former colleagues on Ia.
Alvie rarely talked about the work they were doing, but as they settled into what I assumed were routines she and the others always referred to it as ‘decommissioning’. One day a small freighter arrived in the harbour. A heavy tractor, the kind of thing used in demolition jobs, was unloaded. It bore Authority markings. The driver took it clattering and smoking through the narrow streets and up into the hills away from town.
For me, the weird threat of the towers was gradually being replaced by a more comprehensible longing. In short I was missing the outdoor life I had enjoyed in the subtropical warmth of Ia. My early background on Goorn had created in me an inward habit, one of staying at home, keeping warm, spending time alone, but I had found, a few years earlier when I arrived on Ia, that I much preferred those benign sea winds, the open spaces and cooling heights, the tangled forests, the hotly glittering seas.
Soon I took to walking every day on Seevl, at first simply for the needed change of environment, then later with increasing interest in the area around the town. Of course, unprotected, unshielded, I took the full force of the psychic emanations from the towers, but I discovered that it was possible to get used to them. I realized that they weren’t targeted exclusively on me and after that I could almost ignore them. I also carried the knowledge that at the end of my excursion there was a shielded home sanctuary in which normality would return, not to speak of a happy physical affair with an attractive young woman.
I relished my daily walks, felt myself coming alive again, and a feeling of physical well-being was growing in me. My senses were developing — I felt as if I was seeing, hearing, tasting better than I had ever done before.
After two or three weeks of these long walks, I was hardly noticing the sense of dread. In fact, I so much
