changes of light and the sounds of wind, then ran them both through a synthesizer, augmenting the wind sounds with vocals and instrumentals, the views with actors, dancers, and special effects. The final result was a work of art that was greater than the sum of its parts, or so the critics were fond of saying. She loved caverns and was never so happy as when she was wandering into the unexplored, leaving a trail of relay transmitters behind her to bounce every nuance of the experience to the waiting recorders in her desert car above. Her last abyss, the one that kept her busy for almost a year in its honeycombed caverns, turned out to be where the last Martians had died a very long time before.
Of course, Matty had no idea she was going to find remnants of a lost people, their bones, their pictures, their wordson the walls. She was just going into the darkness the way she usually did. I always carry my copy of her original recording of that cavern. I watch it whenever Iâm lonely for her, from the first transmission in the outer cavern as she fingers the control wand of her light-helmet to make narrow beams, like brushes full of starshine to glisten the dark walls, then hard, sun-amber chisels to shatter the shadows, and at last wide-flung sprays of blood and sunset to blush the cold stone into life. Farther in, she uses waves of baffling, beautiful blues, shading every hollow, caressing tall columns with amethyst wavelets until watery light pours across the arched ceiling and runs down the sides to fill the cavern with opalescent foam. When she wades through it, her feet raise pygmy fountains of gilded dust, every step an iridescent spout of glory, a fire-dotted line that follows her farther in and farther in and farther down and farther downâ¦
She passes a series of dead ends, pockets leading nowhere. Then she finds a perplexing passageway along a narrow shelf that towers on one side and plummets on the other, ramifying into side trails dark as pits. The shelf becomes a narrow bridge over a bottomless gulf where the wind comes up moaning, full of lost voices, and I watch her going across it like a glowing spider, weaving a web of tenuous tints as she goes, feeling her way, silent as a wraith over that narrow slab, then along another ledge no wider than her shoulders that leads to a long, horridly twisted way full of spiked stones. The narrow path weaves among them into the final place, the fanged mouth of a bubble with one way in and no other way out, the end of the journey.
Over and over I watch her stop just inside the bubble, a single beam reaching from her helmet, a finger probing the dark. The light touches a wall with a difference, taps it once, veers away in surprise, then snuffles its way back like an animal to an enticing but unfamiliar smell, whiskering it gently, nose wrinkling, before exploding into a radiance that illumines the entire cavern with all its carvings, pictures, people, creatures, wordsâ¦Glory! Wonder! Marvel!
How she moved that day is still as clear and familiar to me as her face. I always carry her original record of the exploration and the album she made from it. Theyâre half the size of the palm of my hand. Itâs hard to believe such little things can hold all that glory. Touch the button on the side and all the marvels hover in the air: the winding cavern, the awful bridge over darkness, the twisting channel, and, finally, the curving walls of the Room of Witness, as Matty named it, carved all over with words and pictures. The pictures show two sorts of creatures, tall and short, biped and quadruped, both sorts always in company, walking, running, leapingâ¦
I was with her that day, oh, not down in the caverns, but I was in the desert car. I liked to sit there, waiting for her, fascinated by the recording screen, seeing what she saw. I was waiting there when she came up from the cavern, and Iâve never seen such happiness and awe on anyoneâs face, before or
Of course, Matty had no idea she was going to find remnants of a lost people, their bones, their pictures, their wordson the walls. She was just going into the darkness the way she usually did. I always carry my copy of her original recording of that cavern. I watch it whenever Iâm lonely for her, from the first transmission in the outer cavern as she fingers the control wand of her light-helmet to make narrow beams, like brushes full of starshine to glisten the dark walls, then hard, sun-amber chisels to shatter the shadows, and at last wide-flung sprays of blood and sunset to blush the cold stone into life. Farther in, she uses waves of baffling, beautiful blues, shading every hollow, caressing tall columns with amethyst wavelets until watery light pours across the arched ceiling and runs down the sides to fill the cavern with opalescent foam. When she wades through it, her feet raise pygmy fountains of gilded dust, every step an iridescent spout of glory, a fire-dotted line that follows her farther in and farther in and farther down and farther downâ¦
She passes a series of dead ends, pockets leading nowhere. Then she finds a perplexing passageway along a narrow shelf that towers on one side and plummets on the other, ramifying into side trails dark as pits. The shelf becomes a narrow bridge over a bottomless gulf where the wind comes up moaning, full of lost voices, and I watch her going across it like a glowing spider, weaving a web of tenuous tints as she goes, feeling her way, silent as a wraith over that narrow slab, then along another ledge no wider than her shoulders that leads to a long, horridly twisted way full of spiked stones. The narrow path weaves among them into the final place, the fanged mouth of a bubble with one way in and no other way out, the end of the journey.
Over and over I watch her stop just inside the bubble, a single beam reaching from her helmet, a finger probing the dark. The light touches a wall with a difference, taps it once, veers away in surprise, then snuffles its way back like an animal to an enticing but unfamiliar smell, whiskering it gently, nose wrinkling, before exploding into a radiance that illumines the entire cavern with all its carvings, pictures, people, creatures, wordsâ¦Glory! Wonder! Marvel!
How she moved that day is still as clear and familiar to me as her face. I always carry her original record of the exploration and the album she made from it. Theyâre half the size of the palm of my hand. Itâs hard to believe such little things can hold all that glory. Touch the button on the side and all the marvels hover in the air: the winding cavern, the awful bridge over darkness, the twisting channel, and, finally, the curving walls of the Room of Witness, as Matty named it, carved all over with words and pictures. The pictures show two sorts of creatures, tall and short, biped and quadruped, both sorts always in company, walking, running, leapingâ¦
I was with her that day, oh, not down in the caverns, but I was in the desert car. I liked to sit there, waiting for her, fascinated by the recording screen, seeing what she saw. I was waiting there when she came up from the cavern, and Iâve never seen such happiness and awe on anyoneâs face, before or
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