vines and flowering creepers that crowded the porch, pressing against his shoulders. The amber of her eyes was touched by the same overlit spectrum that shone through the trees and blossoms. Everything on the island was becoming a prism of itself.
'Johnson, wake up!'
'I am awake. Christine… I didn't hear you come.'
'I've been here for an hour.' She touched his cheeks, searching for any sign of fever and puzzled by Johnson's distracted manner. Behind her, the inflatable was beached on the few feet of sand not smothered by the vegetation. The dense wall of palms, lianas, and flowering plants had collapsed onto the shore. Engorged on the sun, the giant fruits had begun to split under their own weight, and streams of vivid juice ran across the sand, as if the forest was bleeding.
'Christine? You came back so soon. . . ?' It seemed to Johnson that she had left only a few minutes earlier. He remembered waving good-bye to her and sitting down to finish his fruit and admire the giant butterfly, its wings like the painted hands of a circus clown.
'Johnson – I've been away for a week.' She held his shoulder, frowning at the unstable wall of rotting vegetation that towered a hundred feet into the air. Cathedrals of flower-decked foliage were falling into the waters of the lagoon.
'Johnson, help me to unload the stores. You don't look as if you've eaten for days. Did you trap the birds?'
'Birds? No, nothing yet.' Vaguely Johnson remembered setting the traps, but he had been too distracted by the wonder of everything to pursue the birds. Graceful, feather-tipped wraiths like gaudy angels, their crimson plumage leaked its ravishing hues into the air. When he fixed his eyes onto them they seemed suspended against the sky, wings fanning slowly as if shaking the time from themselves.
He stared at Christine, aware that the colors were separating themselves from her skin and hair. Superimposed images of herself, each divided from the others by a fraction of a second, blurred the air around her, an exotic plumage that sprang from her arms and shoulders. The staid reality that had trapped them all was beginning to dissolve. Time had stopped and Christine was ready to rise into the air…. He would teach Christine and the child to fly.
'Christine, we can all learn.'
'What, Johnson?'
'We can learn to fly. There's no time anymore-everything's too beautiful for time.'
'Johnson, look at my watch.'
'We'll go and live in the trees, Christine. We'll live with the high flowers. . . .' He took her arm, eager to show her the mystery and beauty of the sky people they would become. She tried to protest but gave in, humoring Johnson as he led her gently from the beach house to the wall of inflamed flowers. Her hand on the radio transmitter in the inflatable, she sat beside the crimson lagoon as Johnson tried to climb the flowers toward the sun. Steadying the child within her, she wept for Johnson, only calming herself two hours later when the siren of a naval cutter crossed the inlet.
'I'm glad you radioed in,' the U.S. Navy lieutenant told Christine. 'One of the birds reached the base at San Juan. We tried to keep it alive but it was crushed by the weight of its own wings. Like everything else on this island.'
He pointed from the bridge to the jungle wall. Almost all the overcrowded canopy had collapsed into the lagoon, leaving behind only a few of the original
palms with their bird traps. The blossoms glowed through the water like thousands of drowned lanterns.
'How long has the freighter been here?' An older civilian, a government scientist holding a pair of binoculars, peered at the riddled hull of the Prospero. Below the beach house two sailors were loading the last of Christine's stores into the inflatable. 'It looks as if it's been stranded there for years.'
'Six months,' Christine told him. She sat beside Johnson, smiling at him encouragingly. 'When Captain Johnson realized what was going on he asked me to call you.'
'Only six? That must be roughly the life cycle of these new species. Their cellular clocks seem to have stopped instead of reproducing, they force-fed their own tissues, like those giant fruit that contain no seeds. The life of the individual becomes the entire life of the species.' He gestured toward the impassive Johnson. 'That probably explains our friend's altered time sense great blocks of memory were coalescing in his mind, so that a ball thrown into the air would never appear to land …… A tide of dead fish floated past the cutter's bow, the gleaming bodies like discarded costume jewelry.
'You weren't contaminated in any way?' the lieutenant asked Christine. 'I'm thinking of the baby.'
'No, I didn't eat any of the fruit,' Christine said firmly. 'I've been here only twice, for a few hours.'
'Good. Of course, the medical people will do all the tests.'
'And the island?'
'We've been ordered to torch the whole place. The demolition charges are timed to go off in just under two hours, but we'll be well out of range. It's a pity, in a way.'
'The birds are still here,' Christine said, aware of Johnson staring at the trees.
'Luckily, you've trapped them all.' The scientist offered her the binoculars. 'Those organic wastes are hazardous. God knows what might happen if human beings were exposed to long-term contact. All sorts of sinister alterations to the nervous system-people might be happy to stare at a stone all day.'
Johnson listened to them talking, glad to feel Christine's hand in his own. She was watching him with a quiet smile, aware that they shared the conspiracy. She would try to save the child, the last fragment of the experiment, and he knew that if it survived it would face a fierce challenge from those who feared it might replace them.
But the birds endured. His head had cleared, and he remembered the visions that had given him a brief glimpse of another, more advanced world. High above the collapsed canopy of the forest he could see the traps he had set, and the great crimson birds sitting on their wings. At least they could carry the dream forward.
Ten minutes later, when the inflatable had been winched onto the deck, the cutter set off through the inlet. As it passed the western headland the lieutenant helped Christine toward the cabin. Johnson followed them, then pushed aside the government scientist and leapt from the rail, diving cleanly into the water. He struck out for the shore a hundred feet away, knowing that he was strong enough to climb the trees and release the birds, with luck a mating pair who would take him with them in their escape from time.
